CEO of News Media Holding spoke about the challenges and the future of the media industry

Maxim Iksanov, CEO of News Media Holding, said that modern journalism is going through a deep crisis and is forced to adapt to new formats of information consumption. In an interview with Ink, he noted that classical approaches to editorial work are increasingly losing out to the requirements for speed and emotional presentation of content.

"Journalism is in a huge crisis, but it is vital. It is absolutely vital," Iksanov stressed. According to him, the audience is increasingly choosing short, vibrant formats instead of traditional materials: "Journalism today can consist of three words and one photo, and this is no worse than an analytical article that has been written for three years."

He also drew attention to the need to find a balance between the speed of publication and fact-checking: "Excessive meticulousness will leave you in the past. Speed and emotional coloring are increasingly crucial here," he noted.

Separately, the head of News Media Holding spoke about the introduction of artificial intelligence in the work of editorial offices. For example, AI is already helping to solve a number of technical problems, but it's too early to fully trust it to create content. When it comes to generating texts and videos, the neural network behaves like "a three—year-old child who, of course, will learn later, but now he can talk complete nonsense."

At the same time, neural networks are already actively used in media production to create visual content and analyze large amounts of data. With their help, Maxim Iksanov checks major investigations of the holding's projects.:

"AI is good for processing big data — this is its coolest and so far underestimated option. <...> This is a great danger for officials, because any open data on government spending can be analyzed with the help of AI and violations and changes can be detected in seconds for investigations."

The conversation was not without questions about the slowdown of Telegram, because the messenger was the largest traffic platform for many of the company's projects. But Maxim Iksanov does not consider the situation problematic. The traffic was diversified: the part of the audience that left due to the slowdown of Telegram was replaced by a new one in MAKS. Companies are cutting marketing budgets, and we need to come to terms with this.:

"It's not a disaster yet, it's just cutting off the fat. In 2027, budgets are unlikely to return to their previous level — the media market will definitely not be the same as before, when everything was growing," the head of the holding warned.

When Mash ran out of inventory of advertising placements, experimental models were used — this is how a new round of business, brand media, was born from the idea.:

"With a limited marketing budget, companies are looking for alternative ways to efficiently allocate funds. That's how the brand media business was born. We create and run channels for large companies on Telegram and VK."

News Media Holding unites more than 70 publications and over 280 media platforms. The holding's structure includes, in particular, Mash, SHOT, LIFE and other projects, including its own video production.