‘If you’re making a billion dollars off a bunch of news articles, you’re not doing news correctly’

Journalism is in a crisis. That’s according to HuffPost editor-in-chief Danielle Belton, and 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox.

Speaking at Collision in Toronto, the pair discussed how journalism is being jeopardised by those seeking to profit from it: “There are too many people who [think they can] become billionaires off of media,” said Danielle (pictured above).

“Journalism is something you do because it will better society as a whole, for us to be well-informed and well-educated … journalism is a public good. If you’re making a billion dollars off of a bunch of news articles, you’re not doing news correctly.”

Danielle’s comments come following a series of cutbacks in the global media industry over the past 18 months. In 2023, 8,000 jobs were cut in the US, UK and Canada, while the Los Angeles Times, among others, has announced plans to cut a significant chunk of its staff. Media outlets such as The Messenger, Sports Illustrated and Pitchfork have also closed their doors this year. 

Despite HuffPost being profitable for the last three years, Danielle said that the news business is becoming increasingly difficult: “There are fewer avenues to create an audience and get traffic. [Outlets are] being shut off and with the threat of AI, search engines can literally just take the content [and] repurpose it.”

“And we all know no one’s going to click further than that. So, how do you contend with that? How do you make yourself a destination? How do you build on a future?,” Danielle added. “If people don’t come to our sites, how are we going to continue to exist and make money and still produce the news?”

Joseph shared Danielle’s concerns, saying: “There’s an entire ecosystem of these news websites that will scrape your content, reword it, and then publish it – and then they get the ad revenue.”

“We’re really in a crisis here, where we need to protect our journalism, our IP, and our distribution.”

Joseph called for journalists to be given the reins: “A journalist being in charge of that could be a better way forward.”

These comments were made as part of a wider discussion on viable business models for media outlets at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:

• Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
• Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
• Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
• Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password
• Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
• Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
• Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
• Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
• Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

About Web Summit: 

Web Summit runs the world’s largest technology events, connecting people and ideas that change the world. Half a million people have attended Web Summit events – Web Summit in Europe, Web Summit Rio in South America, Collision in North America, Web Summit Qatar in the Middle East, and RISE in Asia – since the company’s beginnings as a 150-person conference in Dublin in 2009.

This year alone, Web Summit has hosted sold-out events in Qatar, which welcomed more than 15,000 attendees, and in Rio, where more than 34,000 people took part. Our events have been supported by partners including the Qatar Investment Authority, Snap, Deloitte, TikTok, Huawei, Microsoft, Shell, Palo Alto Networks, EY, Builder.ai and Qatar Airways. 

Web Summit’s mission is to enable the meaningful connections that change the world. Web Summit also undertakes a range of initiatives to support diversity, equality and inclusion across the tech worlds, including Impact, women in tech, Amplify, our scholarship program, and our community partnerships.

Useful links

• Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
• Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
• Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
• About Web Summit: about.websummit.com