Journalism Between Survival and Relevance

The news you read, the videos you watch, the viral tweets you see—none of it is random. Today, nearly all information flows through digital platforms where public mediation has been automated by invisible algorithms designed to capture attention, predict behavior, and shape collective thinking. This radical transformation operates quietly: it reorganizes values, obscures relevant topics, and privileges commercial performance over the civic function of information.

The entities responsible for this shift are the Big Tech companies—Google, Meta, Amazon, Twitter/X, TikTok, and others—that now control political, economic, and social agendas on a global scale. They operate on opportunistic business models rooted in the exploitation of personal data and the maximization of engagement at any cost.

These companies have amassed unprecedented power over the flow of information and remain largely unaccountable to any form of democratic governance. Moreover, they have become de facto monopolies—structures that, by suffocating competition and limiting the diversity of voices, pose a direct threat not only to democracy but to capitalism itself. Monopolies erode the checks and balances of power and foster environments ripe for authoritarianism, reinforcing fascist dynamics by centralizing influence over public opinion and collective behavior.

This rupture marks the replacement of human, editorial, and institutional mediation with automated systems driven by commercial interests. The most serious consequence is not just misinformation, but the dismantling of the public sphere, the fragmentation of common sense, and the collapse of shared references that underpin democratic life.

Thinkers like Shoshana Zuboff, Yochai Benkler, and Zeynep Tufekci have been warning us about this new reality. They all point to an undeniable fact: algorithms now control the architecture of social communication, yet are subject to no democratic oversight. This is the new censorship—algorithmic, invisible, distributed, and silent.

The Marketplace Has Taken Over the Public Square

Advertising technology—not just the backbone of the digital economy but the organizer of society’s informational and cognitive flows—was thoroughly dissected in the Guide to Advertising Technology by Columbia University’s Tow Center. Algorithms do not inform; they sell. They sell by optimizing emotions, reinforcing biases, and disintegrating social consensus.

Public debate on social media—where most people now consume information—is governed by systems designed not to seek truth but to maximize engagement. This largely explains the rise of extremism, political polarization, and the global erosion of trust in institutions.

Zuboff calls it “surveillance capitalism.” Benkler describes the corrosion of the public sphere. Tufekci shows how algorithms manipulate emotions and reward radicalization. What they all agree on is this: we are not merely facing a content crisis, but a crisis of information infrastructure.

Journalism Has Failed Twice

In this context, journalism has failed in two critical ways. First, by not forcefully exposing this deep reconfiguration of the public arena. Second, by submitting to it—transforming newsrooms into departments of click optimization, audience tracking, and subscription sales.

Most news organizations, with few exceptions, have abdicated their role as builders of democratic public space. They’ve invested in paywalls and subscription models while ignoring the potential to create systems of public listening, coverage of social conversations, and thematic structuring of civic demands.

No major media outlet has sought to foster social information networks around society’s structural issues—health, education, sanitation, public safety, science—edited with journalistic curation and open to public interaction.

It’s also worth noting that to this day, fewer than 20 newspapers worldwide have surpassed the threshold of 500,000 paying digital subscribers. Even the 50,000 mark remains elusive for most. This underscores the reality that subscription-only models are not a viable solution for the majority of news organizations and do not guarantee the sustainability of journalism’s public function.

The result is that newspapers are no longer seen as pillars of active citizenship but as fragmented consumer products—detached from the civic purpose that gave rise to the press in the first place.

A New Mission for a Radically New Era

Journalism was born as a system of mediation. For decades, it served as the city’s main public arena. In Brazil, Júlio Mesquita once said: “I never imagined I had the right or duty to shape public opinion. All I ever tried to do was to probe it and allow myself to be quietly carried along by the currents that seemed most just.”

That idea—that the newspaper is a meeting place, not a pulpit—is more alive than ever. But journalism must reincarnate this mission within the digital architecture of contemporary society.

It is time to invest in dynamic thematic platforms based on curation, public listening, knowledge aggregation, and the construction of trust networks. Journalism must stop competing for pennies per thousand impressions with Google and Facebook, and start offering structural information services for communities.

This demands new tools, new mindsets, and new alliances. Journalists must become architects of community information systems, mediators of public dialogue—not merely broadcasters over the networks, but actors within them.

From the Pulpit to the Digital Square

We are living through a profound revolution. Segmentation, interactivity, personalization, and computing power have ushered in a new informational era in which narrative, not just news, is the core driver of public perception. Whoever controls the narrative, controls memory, imagination—and ultimately, politics.

In this world, information architecture is public policy. And journalism, if it hopes to remain a civilizing force, must fight to shape that architecture. This means abandoning the role of mere content emitter and embracing the role of organizer of the social networks of meaning and action.

The renewal of the analog economy depends on the vitality of the digital one. Likewise, journalism’s rejuvenation hinges on rediscovering its role as a qualified mediator of public intelligence.

Journalism must go beyond a technical understanding of advertising technologies and platforms. It must confront them, hack them, and surpass them—not with code, but with vision. With strategy. With services that respond to society’s need for articulation in a hyperconnected world.

There are not two worlds—analog and digital. There is one social fabric in transformation, and it needs new public infrastructures of information.

The press will only regain its relevance when it becomes, once again, a partner of society. The narrative is the message. And the message now is: we must reinvent journalism.

Rodrigo Mesquita
Journalist, board member of InovaUSP, and researcher of the informational ecosystem. Former editorial director at Jornal da Tarde and Agência Estado.