At this year’s World News Media Congress, the session hosted by TEMS (Trusted European Media Data Space) focused not on the latest trends, but on an often-overlooked opportunity: how trusted data collaboration can strengthen European journalism at its core.
The session opened with a reflection on why data remains underused across much of the news ecosystem. While digitalisation has changed formats and workflows, many media organisations are yet to harness the full value of content, metadata, audience data, and personalisation in a coordinated, scalable way. One reason: trust. As the moderator Christophe Israël put it, “data moves at the speed of trust”—a phrase that would echo through the remainder of the discussion.
Four ongoing trials taking place at the moment in the TEMS project were presented, selected for their direct relevance to the news media industry.
The first, led by AFP, is creating a B2B exchange platform for fact-checking content, addressing the challenges of visibility, funding, and cross-border reuse in a sector that remains fragmented despite rising demand. By linking certified organisations and integrating with the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the platform aims to unlock new revenue and reuse models, including data services for AI systems.
Next came the Digital Revenue Initiative (DRIVE), introduced by Christiane Düsterfeld of dpa. Bringing together 30 regional publishers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, who agree to share their usage data, this initiative uses a shared data warehouse and standardised analytics to better understand user needs and grow digital subscriptions. The project is already processing over 90 million data points per day and has received international recognition.
“We exchange not only data, but also knowledge,” Düsterfeld said, emphasising the importance of collective learning across newsrooms.
Representing Spanish publisher Henneo, Ignacio Gómez presented a trial tackling privacy-preserving advertising. As third-party cookies disappear, the project explores how to use clean room environments and AI-based propensity models to serve targeted ads while complying with GDPR. The value lies not just in the technology, but in the collaborative model behind it.
“We are competing against giants—and sharing is our only way to scale,” Gómez explained.
Across the board, the message was clear: these trials are not theoretical—they’re live, structured efforts to build working models that can be scaled. And they’re not isolated pilots either, but bridges between existing local initiatives and a future common infrastructure.
As the session wrapped, Christiane Düsterfeld summarised what TEMS is ultimately designed to enable: “A shared media data space that can remove hurdles, facilitate exchange, and promote innovation. It offers a central place to connect—and that’s where the real value begins.”
For the many in Krakow exploring how journalism can adapt to change, TEMS offered not just tools, but a direction: toward cooperation, trust, and shared intelligence.