IMS staff and partners share their expert insights on media development in different global contexts.
More smartphones. More media outlets. More journalists with university degrees. Yet, important questions remain about whether Ethiopia’s media ecosystem is delivering the information people need and enabling journalists to do their work safely and independently.
Members of the second Ukrainian cohort of IMS’ MERIT Forum gathered in the Carpathian Mountains for a workshop to advance the first full draft of their Change Project, exploring how Ukraine’s media sector may evolve through the country’s European integration process and after eventual accession to the European Union.
AI can summarise, translate, transcribe, search, compare and suggest at remarkable speed. Many newsrooms already use it for exactly that. But by itself, AI does not know what a newsroom stands for. it does not know its editorial standards, its archive, its audience, its local context or the professional judgement built through years of reporting. That is where the AI Newsroom Pilot begins.
On the quiet shores of Lake Bishoftu on 23-24 July 2026, away from the daily noise of Ethiopia’s political and media pressures, journalists, editors, civil society actors, media support organisations and freedom of expression advocates gathered around one urgent question: how can Ethiopia better protect those who risk their lives, liberty and wellbeing to inform the public?
In 2011, Gohar Khodjayan first travelled to Kyiv to assess the state of Ukraine’s media market. Since then, she has seen Ukraine before Euromaidan, during the 2013–2014 protests, after the occupation of Crimea, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion and today, as Ukrainian media continue to work under conditions of prolonged war, financial pressure and constant information attacks.
IMS Executive Director Jesper Højberg introduced the IPI-IMS Press Freedom Hero and Free Media Pioneer awards at the 2026 Gabo Festival in Bogotá, Colombia. Below is his speech from the event.
Discussions at IPI's Innovation conference reflected a sector in transition: moving beyond debates about whether journalism can attract investment and toward more grounded questions of capital fit, institutional maturity, and ecosystem architecture.
The EU doesn’t need its own Facebook or wild west development - it needs the digital equivalent of public parks, libraries, and townhall meetings. And some of the best blueprints already exist outside Europe.
On 6 June, Ukraine marks Journalists’ Day. Reconstituted after 1991 as a system of independent media, Ukrainian journalism has, over the past 35 years, travelled from post-Soviet transformation to a digital and wartime reality.
