NPA Summit 2025 In October 2025, 400 news leaders from over 300 news organizations across five continents came together for two days of learning, collaboration, and inspiration at the first in-person News Product Alliance Summit in Chicago.
Attendees represented the full spectrum of the industry — global publishers like The New York Times, Reuters, and Politico; national outlets such as ProPublica, USA Today, and Grupo Clarín; regional newsrooms like The Texas Tribune and Newswell; and hyperlocal organizations including The Jersey Bee and QCity Metro, serving communities at the center of democratic life.
The sold-out event demonstrated the growing strength, diversity, and strategic influence of the news product community: a majority of participants are directly shaping how news products are built, distributed, and sustained.
Click here to watch recordings of the keynotes and panels of the NPA Summit 2025.
One idea resonated strongly throughout the two days: journalism must rethink how it serves communities in a rapidly evolving, technology-driven landscape.
Conversations across 50+ sessions moved beyond incremental improvements to focus on transformational change — tackling discoverability, data, and AI; bridging editorial, product, and technology teams; and aligning strategy with execution to drive real impact. In just two days, teams put new ideas into action — refining analytics frameworks, launching audience research cycles, testing new revenue models, and building networks that will continue to strengthen their work long after the Summit.
“The challenges facing news and information are steep, but being at an event with 400+ people who care about solving these problems made me feel hopeful.”
That sense of hope came from seeing people at the frontier of knowledge — experimenting, testing, and sharing ideas you wouldn’t learn anywhere else.
“I have never been to a conference with so many sessions so relevant to my job. It was almost impossible to choose! I came away with tons of tips and tricks I would like to apply to my own role and products.”
This year’s Summit opened with a keynote from Anthony Maggio, VP of Product Management at Airtable, who shared how AI is reshaping product teams: accelerating workflows, collapsing development cycles, and expanding their influence across entire organizations. As he noted, “we are at the start of another major transition moment — and it’s changing every day. Not just in the way news is consumed, but the way we create news products, the way we engage and maintain audience relationships. It’s bringing new challenges around trust and credibility, and we will have to work more agilely, adapting to new consumer preferences and meeting audiences with more personalization.”
On Day 2, Briar Cromartie, Head of Advertising Product & Technical Operations at Vox Media, underscored that the future of advertising in journalism is not just a business issue; it’s a question of public access to information. He stated in his keynote: “Personalization can lead to profitability, and it's a path forward for all of us. It’s a matter of actually parsing out what our audience wants, and doing so in an ethical way, in a way that users trust, and in a way that benefits us.”
Across both days, we hosted panels that brought together newsroom and product leaders navigating some of the most pressing questions in journalism today — from platform fragmentation to synthetic audiences and the evolving role of AI in editorial workflows.
Participants were also able to dive into hands-on workshops and masterclasses on newsletter strategies, audience segmentation, and open-source technology, designed to help teams translate ideas into action. Finally, our Show & Tells showcased real product experiments from newsrooms around the world in the form of quick, energizing examples of what’s possible.
Thanks to our NPA Sustainers and sponsors, we were able to offer 27 community-supported tickets and 15 travel stipends to professionals who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to participate.
As one participant put it, “The sense of community was one of the best parts of these few days. When I got asked about this trip after getting home, the first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘the people were so lovely’. NPA is filled with some of the smartest, kindest, and most generous people who want to make this industry better, whether that’s helping readers better understand the world or mentoring the next generation of product thinkers.”
The ideas shared in Chicago won’t stay in Chicago. They’ll continue to evolve through our community programs, research, and collaborations — building the shared infrastructure of skills, standards, and support for the next generation of product-led newsrooms.
Want to be part of conversations like these year-round? Join our global community of news product professionals here.
Photos by Andrew Weeks Photography
Recordings
You can watch recordings of the keynotes and panels of the NPA Summit 2025 by clicking on the session title below — these are available for free to our community thanks to our generous sponsors and NPA Sustainers!
