The News for All report makes a significant contribution to discussions about journalism’s relationship with communities, particularly those who feel underserved or misrepresented by mainstream media. It highlights the importance of participatory approaches to news production and points towards the potential for deeper collaboration between journalists and the people they report on.
However, while the report is valuable in identifying a shift towards a more community-centred model, it does not engage with existing participatory media ecosystems, such as projects like Talking Shop, community radio stations, and other civic platforms that already provide accountable, trusted spaces for discussion, storytelling, and engagement. This gap in the research signals an area that requires more detailed exploration, as these platforms offer direct evidence of how participatory media functions in practice.
Community-led media initiatives are not just adjuncts to journalism but essential components of community development and civic engagement. Platforms such as community radio, public discussion spaces, and grassroots media networks enable people to communicate on their own terms, without needing validation from traditional media institutions.
They demonstrate that direct media participation is not merely an alternative to mainstream journalism but a necessary part of building social capital, fostering dialogue, and creating inclusive civic spaces. The absence of engagement with these platforms in the report suggests an opportunity to expand the discussion and examine how existing participatory media models can inform future journalistic practice.
Another important issue that the report raises, though perhaps unintentionally, is the problematic nature of the term ‘marginalisation’. While the concept is widely used in discussions about social inclusion, it often reflects a perspective imposed by those who position themselves at the centre of power, rather than how communities define themselves. Many groups reject the label of being ‘marginalised,’ seeing it as a top-down categorisation that reinforces existing hierarchies rather than challenging them. There is a growing sense of resentment towards the term, particularly when it is used in ways that reduce people’s complex identities to a predefined social status.
The phrase ‘marginalised communities’ also risks becoming an empty catch-all, failing to account for the agency, self-determination, and resilience of the very people it seeks to describe. If participatory journalism is to be truly inclusive, it needs to move beyond such static definitions and engage in a more evidence-based, context-specific examination of exclusion, representation, and engagement. Rather than assuming that certain communities are marginalised, there is a need to ask whether people themselves identify with this term, and if not, why it does not reflect their lived experiences. This would require a more nuanced approach, one that takes into account power dynamics, self-representation, and the evolving nature of civic and media participation in networked societies.
The solutions proposed to address ‘marginalisation’ often focus on incremental changes within existing institutions rather than reconsidering the fundamental structures that shape participation and engagement. There is a risk that initiatives designed to ‘include’ marginalised voices serve primarily as fig leaves for outdated institutions, allowing them to claim progress without making meaningful structural change.
In a networked and distributed media environment, the question should not simply be how traditional journalism can become more inclusive, but whether the entire system of news production and civic communication needs to be fundamentally restructured to reflect the realities of a society where information flows are decentralised and communities are already creating their own narratives through social and digital media.
The report makes an important contribution in advocating for participatory approaches to journalism, but it needs to go further in exploring how existing participatory media initiatives already function and what lessons can be learned from them. It also needs to critically examine the language and assumptions used to frame discussions about inclusion and representation.
Journalism can no longer afford to see participation as a corrective to its own shortcomings—it must recognise that direct media engagement is an intrinsic part of how people build community, share knowledge, and assert their identities in a networked world. If journalism is to remain relevant, it must evolve to work alongside these forms of engagement, rather than attempting to retrofit participatory elements into outdated institutional structures.