By Miguel García
In a world increasingly defined by overlapping crises—ranging from climate change and environmental collapse to rising authoritarianism, conflict, inequality, and social unrest—journalism faces a profound test. Reporters are tasked not only with documenting these challenges but also with navigating the risks they themselves encounter: threats to safety, censorship, exile, and the pressures of working under hostile conditions.
In this conversation, investigative journalist Jazmín Acuña explores how journalism can respond to these complex realities. She highlights the resilience of newsrooms, particularly in Latin America, where reporters combine curiosity, innovation, and conviction to sustain the public’s right to know. Acuña reflects on how traditional journalistic principles—freedom of expression, accountability, and democracy—remain vital, even as structural and technological shifts strain their practice.
Acuña also introduces the concept of Change-Centric Journalism, an approach that encourages newsrooms to move beyond publication metrics and design reporting that intentionally contributes to societal change. Drawing on Latin American traditions of community and popular communication, this framework emphasizes journalism as a practice with tangible effects: guiding communities, fostering civic engagement, and promoting accountability.
Through her insights, this Q&A examines both the challenges and the transformative potential of journalism in a world where information, influence, and impact are more interconnected—and more urgent—than ever.
We are living in an interconnected world facing polycrisis, rising authoritarianism, wars, crime, climate and environmental crisis, deepening inequalities, debt, poverty and hunger. In your view how is journalism in general coping with this?
Jazmín Acuña: On the one hand, journalism is doing a remarkable job documenting these crises. Journalists have been sounding the alarm on issues like the climate crisis or the rise of tech authoritarianism way before they entered mainstream debates.
Recently I spoke with a researcher in Chile studying the expansion of AI data centers in Latin America. She told me that without the reporting of journalists documenting this rapid growth and its impact on communities, her research would not be possible. Journalism often functions as the canary in the coal mine.
But journalists are also living through these crises. In Latin America, exile journalism is rising as authoritarian leaders turn reporters into public enemies. In Gaza, journalists documenting the genocide have also become victims of it. When you consider this, the picture becomes much more fragile: journalism is both documenting the polycrisis and increasingly suffering its consequences.
The right to inform and be informed, freedom of expression, the protection of democracy, holding those in power accountable—has journalism strayed from the path? Are these principles still valid in journalism today?
JA: Those principles are even more valid and urgent in today’s world for journalism.
We have long known that the most powerful actors rarely care about democracy, the rule of law, or institutions. They defend them only as long as those principles do not threaten their interests. What feels different today is that the pretense is fading, while the concentration of power has reached dangerous levels. Big Tech companies are a clear example of this shift.
Yet from Gaza to the United States, journalists and newsrooms continue to do the vital work of recording, documenting, and exposing wrongdoing. At a time when algorithmic manipulation and information overload distort public debate, journalism still brings much-needed clarity and common sense to public conversations.
Whether journalism alone can ensure that people access quality information or safeguard democracy is another question. It would be unfair to measure journalism’s success solely against the health of these principles. Journalism is only one actor within a broader system where power is deeply unequal. Its ability to uphold these ideals is increasingly constrained, for example, by its growing dependence on digital platforms to reach audiences.
But platforms have only worsened a long standing structural problem that stems from ideology. That is when information is not treated as a public good that deserves protection but rather as a commodity. This mindset is what needs to change in the first place to save journalism.
What about the Latin American context, how is journalism facing crisis and what are the principles that hold it?
JA: Latin America journalism is extremely resilient, and some of the principles that hold it in spite of multiple crises are curiosity, innovation, commitment and conviction.
From informative journalism to activist journalism to solutions journalism, how did Change-Centric Journalism emerge and what does it represent?
JA: Change-Centric Journalism emerged from a decade of co-leading El Surtidor. But the idea is also shaped by conversations with colleagues around the world who are grappling with a fundamental question: what is the real value of journalism today?
Many newsrooms are beginning to look beyond vanity metrics to measure the impact of their reporting. Some are experimenting with qualitative indicators of change that their work inspires. Others are building relationships with their communities through engagement initiatives, from live performances to conversations that spark civic actions and movements.
What I see across these efforts is a shared intuition that journalism can do more than produce information. But many of these initiatives still lack a coherent framework to explain what they are trying to achieve. Change-Centric Journalism is an attempt to offer that language and orientation.
The idea draws inspiration from traditions such as community journalism in Latin America, engagement journalism, and solutions journalism. But it differs from them in one key way: Change-Centric Journalism moves beyond the content paradigm. It invites newsrooms to adopt a more intentional practice, one that practices journalism not only to inform, but to contribute to meaningful change with concrete steps.
The work we have done at El Surtidor, and the examples I see around the world, show that journalism often already plays this role. Some outlets are rebuilding the social fabric of communities damaged by xenophobia. Others are countering civic apathy while helping people rediscover the joy of participating in public life.
What Change-Centric Journalism proposes is that journalists recognize these contributions, design their work around them, and articulate their value with much greater clarity.
Processes such as educommunication, popular communication, action research promoted in Latin America by Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, or rural and community Journalism, concepts that are so influential in the social sciences in Latin America, are these included into the proposal of Change-Centric Journalism?
JA: The contributions of these schools of thought are definitely present in Change-Centric Journalism. While they are not explicitly incorporated into my proposal, which focuses more on contemporary discussions around engagement and impact, their influence is impossible to ignore.
I come from a region where the social role of media has profoundly shaped my understanding of journalism. Traditions such as popular communication have long shown that media can be far more than channels for information. In many parts of Latin America, outlets like community radio have helped teach languages, prevent disease, and support conflict resolution.
My partners at El Surtidor and I understand journalism as deeply connected to social justice and democratization. Its value is not abstract. Journalism is a practice with tangible effects on people’s lives.
At the same time, we are not naïve about its history. Too often journalism has been used as a tool of the powerful to uphold an unjust status quo. We launched our outlet precisely to challenge that instrumentalization.
What function does journalism serve in promoting change, and how does it amplify or respond to the interests of citizens and communities?
JA: Journalism has everything to do with change. It is one actor within a larger ecosystem of actors that play a role in changemaking. I want us to acknowledge this fact and understand that much of our value lies there, and more importantly, that AI cannot replace it.
Journalism not only reveals, denounces or alerts. It guides, it helps people make sense of the world they live in, and it sparks action that can lead to the change people need. That is how it also serves citizens and communities.
More information on Change-Centric Journalism at https://www.changejournalism.com/