From Friday – Sunday, May 8 to 10, the Brown Institute hosts Media Party NYC 2026, bringing together journalists, technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs from around the world to take on the forces reshaping news: AI-driven workflows, shifting audience behavior, and the creators and platforms now mediating how people find information.
We’re in a post-search era. A generation now encounters journalism through individual creators and vertical video, and traditional consumers are increasingly getting their information straight from AI platforms…not homepages, not search, not television broadcasts. Newsrooms worldwide are adopting generative AI tools, but unevenly, at different scales, applied to different problems, with results that range from genuine editorial advancement to cautionary failures.
At a critical moment for the industry, Media Party focuses squarely on this transition: how newsrooms and content creators must adapt when AI reshapes the information landscape.
Media Party is not a traditional conference. It combines keynotes, workshops, a media fair, and a hackathon. Innovators from media organizations, small and large, technology providers ranging from startups to big platforms, and the scientific and open source communities will convene across four themes:
News Influencers & Vertical Video. Individual journalists are increasingly becoming the primary distribution channel for news, building audiences on platforms optimized for personality over institution. What does this shift mean for editorial standards, ethical boundaries, and sustainable business models—and how do creator dynamics differ across media markets worldwide?
Local News & Civic Technology. AI tools promise new capabilities for under-resourced newsrooms: automated translation, audience engagement, data analysis at scale. But implementation demands more than technology. How do we ensure that things as crucial as understanding community trust, local information ecosystems, and the specific vulnerabilities of civic journalism are valued by the platforms and systems we adopt?
Internal Tools & AI Workflows. Newsrooms are building and adopting AI systems with limited cross-industry collaboration and inconsistent evaluation. This track creates space for practitioners to compare approaches, surface what hasn’t worked, and develop frameworks for assessing AI tools in real production environments.
Audiences & Algorithmic Distribution. As AI-driven systems increasingly mediate discovery, news organizations must understand not only what they publish but how it travels and to whom. What strategies can we deploy to reach and retain audiences across fragmented platforms and diverse global markets?
Keynotes include talks from Eli Pariser (New_Public), Lisa Gibbs (Pulitzer Center), Laura Zommer (FactChequeado), Alexios Mantzarlis (Indicator), Harlan Mandel (Media Development Investment Fund), Stefano Wrobleski (InfoAmazonia), Kathryn Kotze (Daily Maverick), and Jacopo Ottaviani (Code for Africa), and Joanna Geary (Bloomberg). The full schedule is at mediapartybrownny2026.sched.com.
We hope to see you this weekend! If you have yet to register, do so today at mediaparty.org!