From Competition to Collaboration: Building Bridges in the News Ecosystem

“Competition sharpens us, collaboration sustains us.”

That was the central message from Andy Thomson, Executive Director of Business Operations at Sky News Group, during his closing keynote at INMA World Congress. In a session focused on the future of the news ecosystem, Thomson made a compelling case for why media organizations must continue to compete fiercely while also recognizing the areas where collective action is essential.

“In our industry, strong organizations know that we compete, but also we need to collaborate,” Thomson said.

For Sky News, competition still matters. It drives distinctive journalism, sharper storytelling, and the daily work of earning audience trust. Yet Thomson argued that the industry’s biggest challenges now extend beyond the reach of any single newsroom. Shifting audience behavior, platform disruption, AI, misinformation, and pressure on traditional business models are shared problems that require shared solutions.

“The question for us isn’t whether we compete. Of course we do compete,” he said. “But where and how we find the right partnerships.”

A major focus of the session was artificial intelligence, which Thomson described as one of the clearest areas where publishers need to work together. He pointed to risks around disinformation, lack of fair compensation, loss of control over content, and the growing difficulty of understanding how generative AI tools use publisher material.

That is where industry initiatives like SPUR, which stands for Standards and Publisher Rights, come in. Thomson described SPUR as an effort to create ground rules that give publishers more visibility, fairness, and accountability in an AI-centered media environment.

“This isn’t about limiting competition,” he said. “It’s about transparency, fairness, and accountability.”

Collaboration, Thomson emphasized, is also about creating stronger journalism products. He highlighted Sky News’ partnership with Tortoise Media on War Game, a scenario-based podcast that combined Sky News’ defense expertise with Tortoise’s long-form audio storytelling. The result was a distinctive editorial product that topped Apple charts for eight weeks and gained strong traction with audiences.

He also pointed to partnerships around politics podcasts, international distribution, commercial products, and technology, including work with platforms and partners to strengthen audience experience and improve access to trusted journalism.

Across these examples, Thomson returned to the same idea: collaboration works best when each partner brings a clear strength. It should add value to the journalism, expand reach, or help create sustainable models for the future.

As news consumption spreads across TV, streaming, social platforms, podcasts, apps, and emerging formats, internal collaboration has become just as important as external partnership. Thomson explained that Sky News is rethinking newsroom workflows so editorial, product, and production teams can work together from the beginning of a story, considering how it will be distributed and experienced across platforms.

“Our reporting is no longer tied to a single place or TV schedule,” he said.

That shift requires new skills, new systems, and a willingness to rethink how journalism is packaged for different audiences. For Thomson, the future depends on knowing when to compete and when to build together.

“We must collaborate where it makes sense to do so across industry, commercially, platform and certainly coexistence,” he said.

The closing takeaway was clear. News organizations should continue to compete for trust, talent, audiences, and impact. That competition makes the industry better. But in the areas that determine journalism’s long-term survival, collaboration is no longer optional.

As Thomson put it: “Competition sharpens us, collaboration sustains us.”