The 3 premises of inclusive journalism (2026)

A manifesto

By Sanne Breimer

Six years ago, in 2020, I wrote “The Six Characteristics of Inclusive Journalism.” It was the explanation of what I was building, in the context of renewed global debates about representation in the media following the Black Lives Matter protests. Many newsrooms at the time were grappling with questions about diversity, bias, and whose voices were being heard in journalism.

Those conversations were necessary. But over the past years, media professionals of colour and Indigenous media initiatives have led to advanced insights that representation alone cannot transform journalism if its structure remains unchanged.

Journalism today is part of an information environment that is profoundly different from even a decade ago. News organizations compete with content actors in the platform and attention economy, face unstable business models, and an increasing concentration of ownership. Journalists experience burnout under permanent time pressure and can hardly keep up with technological and ideological changes. Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the production and circulation of information. Audiences increasingly disengage from the news altogether. Navigating this requires strengthening skills that have been underused before.

At the same time, global debates about colonial history, positionality, and knowledge systems have expanded and become rich. These debates raise fundamental questions for journalism:

Who defines what counts as knowledge?
Whose perspectives shape the narratives through which societies understand themselves?
What kind of journalism is needed in a world facing climate breakdown, geopolitical conflict, and technological disruption?

Inclusive journalism emerged from my work in diverse media and developed through the work with international media organizations, teaching journalists in different parts of the world, and engaging with decolonial theory alongside practices of meditation and reflection.

Over time, I have come to see inclusive journalism not as a niche approach or a style of reporting, but as a framework for practising journalism responsibly in a complex world. It is not meant to be a genre of journalism. Just as there are many styles of yoga, there are many forms of journalism: investigative journalism, broadcast journalism, solutions journalism, constructive journalism, slow journalism, and many others. In the end, it is just journalism. For that reason, inclusive journalism is written in lowercase from now on.

3 premises

Inclusive journalism highlights the holistic approach, which is newly described in three premises:

A decolonial lens
A constructive approach
Well-being as the foundation

Together, they shape how journalism functions in a complex world.

1. A decolonial lens

The journalism profession as we know it developed alongside modern nation-states. Although journalism itself is not a Western invention, the modern press was strongly shaped by Enlightenment thinking and evolved in close interaction with colonial empires.

Colonial information systems positioned Europe as the seeing subject and colonized peoples as the seen; the “others.” Observation, categorization, and distance became journalistic habits. Over time, these hierarchies of knowledge became normalized, and continue until this day in practices such as “parachute journalism.”

The press also developed alongside advertising markets, mass literacy, and the formation of national publics. Journalism was connected to both markets and political power from the very beginning.

Decolonial thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Rolando Vázquez argue that modernity and coloniality cannot be separated. The same system that produced what we call “progress” also created lasting hierarchies of race, geography, gender, and knowledge. Quijano has described it as the colonial matrix of power.

It shows up in:

Eurocentric standards of expertise
Prioritization in the sourcing of state and institutional authorities
Event-driven reporting instead of systemic analysis
“Both-sideism” in unequal conflicts
Parachute journalism
Story extraction

A decolonial lens introduces cracks in these assumptions and asks questions of positionality: Who speaks? From where? With what interests and stakes?

It places justice at the center of reporting and also introduces care as a method. A decolonial perspective shifts journalism from reporting about communities to reporting with them. It reframes storytelling from owning stories to owing them. Journalism accountable to the people whose lives are represented.

At the same time, new ideological movements are growing rapidly that also challenge existing institutions, including journalism itself. Parts of the technology sector promote visions often described as accelerationism: the belief that technological progress should be intensified to rapidly transform society. These ideas intersect with developments in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, blockchain governance, and longevity research.

Some of these communities frame themselves as alternatives to state institutions, universities, and traditional media. In that sense, they sometimes appear to overlap with critiques of Western dominance or institutional power in decolonial thinking. But their ethical foundations often diverge sharply.

Where decolonial thinking emphasizes historical responsibility, relationality, and justice, accelerationist visions frequently prioritize technological power, radical individualism, and market autonomy. These technological ideologies also intersect with other online ecosystems, including parts of the so-called manosphere, where misogynist and authoritarian ideas circulate alongside technological futurism and optimalization of our bodies.

For journalists, understanding these ideological landscapes is increasingly important. Many of the actors shaping the future of information infrastructures emerge from these spaces. A decolonial lens requires critical literacy about future and forgotten ideologies.

2. A Constructive approach

The neoliberal transformation of media intensified journalism’s position within hyper capitalism. Ownership concentration, performance metrics, and the attention economy pushed newsrooms toward constant production. In this environment, negativity became structural, and journalism has long defined itself through the idea that “bad news” is the most important news, with a focus on clickbait.

The result of this model, in which outrage spreads faster than understanding, is often a feeling of helplessness and fear. A constructive approach does not abandon journalism’s critical role but expands the scope of inquiry. Methods like solutions journalism and complicating the narrative investigate not only problems but also how societies respond to them.

The focus shifts to

root causes
evidence-based responses (with quantitative and/or qualitative data)
what works and what does not
follow-up reporting (long term commitment to a story)
systemic analysis
historical and geographical context.

Constructive journalism is not activism or PR. It applies the same journalism standards of verification and evidence, and simply widens the lens through which journalism examines reality. This connects to the growing problem of news fatigue and studies repeatedly showing that audiences feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of breaking headlines.

Journalism has a role in helping societies develop healthier information environments, including recognizing that different types of media play different roles. The 24-hour news cycle emerged alongside large legacy news organizations capable of producing continuous coverage. But the contemporary media landscape includes many other forms of journalism: local reporting, investigative projects, niche publications, slow journalism initiatives, and independent digital media. Not every newsroom or journalist needs to compete for the fastest headline.

A constructive approach involves understanding the media ecosystem and recognizing that journalism’s value does not lie only in speed or quantity, but in depth and understanding.

3. Well-being as a foundation

Journalism cannot remain ethical if the people producing it are exhausted. Yet many legacy newsroom habits still equate professionalism with constant availability and emotional detachment, and journalists across the world report increasing levels of burnout.

Major global events have also exposed the limitations of traditional objectivity frameworks. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and the genocide in Gaza have intensified debates about neutrality, bias, and moral responsibility. Well-being, therefore, goes beyond being a personal concern and becomes an ethical foundation for journalism.

Transparency is creating credibility:

transparency about methods
transparency about funding
transparency about sourcing decisions
transparency about uncertainty and limitations.

Well-being also includes aftercare for both journalists and communities. Reporting often involves exposure to trauma, violence, and grief, and there is guidance and space needed to process these realities.

A well-being foundation invites a holistic understanding of knowledge: environmental destruction is connected to conflict, Indigenous and locally rooted knowledge are forms of expertise, and lived experience matters alongside statistical data.

Restructuring journalism around well-being requires structural change through alternative business models, a different leadership culture, more time for reporting, and genuine community participation.

Methods of inclusive journalism

If the premises define the worldview, the methods translate them into daily practice, or “praxis,” as they say in decolonial thinking. Inclusive journalism develops practical tools that journalists, news organizations, and anyone working in public storytelling can apply in their work.

Examples include:

Positionality tools: exercises and editorial routines that help journalists examine their perspective, background, and blind spots, and learn how to integrate them in stories.
Language discipline and style guides: attention to framing and terminology to avoid reproducing harmful or incomplete narratives.
Impact tracking beyond metrics: evaluating journalism not only through clicks and reach but through wider learning, dialogue, and societal impact.
Interdisciplinary storytelling formats: collaborations with artists, researchers, designers, and communities.
Investigative research and mapping: identifying patterns and systemic dynamics across stories.
Journalism as a method: understanding journalism not only as a profession but as a structured way of investigating reality.

Inclusive journalism is a repeated practice.

Journalism in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping journalism, and in many organizations, AI is discussed primarily as a cost-cutting tool: executing the same mission with fewer people. The danger in that approach is that it replicates what journalism has done so far. And the premises of inclusive journalism make clear that structural change is needed. There is also an ethical question regarding the use of AI because of its environmental impact.

The advantage of AI is that it can help journalists cover more surface area without reproducing the constant churn of legacy newsrooms. It can assist with tasks that previously consumed large amounts of reporting time: parsing documents, building timelines, extracting entities from datasets, analyzing transcripts, and identifying patterns across large bodies of text.

This creates more space for the human work that journalism depends on:

building relationships with sources
making ethical judgments and editorial decisions
verifying claims and understanding context
flag risks and deciding what should or should not be published

Artificial intelligence can expand journalistic ambition, but it cannot replace the human judgment required for responsible reporting. It can help imagine what kind of journalism becomes possible now that was previously out of reach.

Inclusive journalism today

Journalism faces a convergence of crises, related to the world’s polycrises: declining trust, unstable business models, information overload, technological disruption, and global conflict.

Technology alone will not solve these challenges, even though accelerationists might think it will. Journalism needs clarity about its purpose, and inclusive journalism helps with that.

We want to expand your capacity to understand the world more deeply, more responsibly, and more relationally. By integrating a decolonial lens, a constructive approach, and well-being as its foundation, journalism can evolve into a practice that remains both rigorous and humane.

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