BEYOND NEWS brings together young media professionals and leaders from public service, commercial and public interest media. Together, they work on the future of journalism.
BEYOND NEWS was launched in 2025 as a conference, initiative and network. It focuses on questions that concern the entire industry:
2026: Pilot ideas for everyone
In October 2026, almost 90 young media professionals and leaders met at Deutsche Welle in Bonn and developed more than a dozen pilot ideas. Two examples: a Young Minds mentoring network within newsrooms is designed to ensure that young audiences and young perspectives feature in coverage every day. The Urban News Club would bundle the paid offerings of different publishers behind a single login and payment method, both on the publishers’ news sites and in a shared app.
Many of the ideas can be tested on a small scale: trial phases are built in, as is a concrete first step. All pilot ideas are available here to read and develop further:
Pilot ideas catalogue (in German, PDF)
What’s next
BEYOND NEWS continues as an open network. The partner organisations are developing selected ideas further together and staying in touch throughout implementation. Young media professionals laid the foundation for the network at the first conference in Hamburg in November 2025, where they drew up seven demands for the journalism of tomorrow.
7 recommendations for the journalism of tomorrow (in German, PDF)
BEYOND NEWS was launched in 2025 as a conference, initiative and network. It brings together journalists from public service, commercial and public interest media. The event is hosted by ARD, with concept and implementation by Holtzbrinck Berlin. BEYOND NEWS 2026 was made possible by its partners PUBLIX, Deutsche Welle, ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS, ARD Kultur, dpa, Fazit-Stiftung, ZEIT Verlagsgruppe, IPPEN.MEDIA, ZDF, CORRECTIV, Initiative18, Handelsblatt and RTL Deutschland/RTL Nord.
