The media industry is having a legitimacy crisis, and nobody can agree on the diagnosis.
Former NBC News chairman Andy Lack sat down with The Daily Cardinal to talk about journalism’s structural challenges and political polarization. In Copenhagen, CPH:DOX is framing documentary filmmaking as democratic infrastructure ahead of Denmark’s elections.
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One is diagnosing decline from inside the news machine. The other is making an affirmative case for documentary as civic architecture.
That tension plays out differently depending on where you sit. In global entertainment, the question is more transactional: content gets made wherever talent, IP, and financing converge.
The BBC is adapting YA novels. A Spanish film market is elevating first-feature female directors. China’s domestic box office is generating $600 million franchises without Hollywood’s involvement.
The throughline: the industry is still sorting out what it exists to do, and nobody is waiting for consensus.
What Is Journalism Actually For Right Now?
Andy Lack spent years running NBC News and MSNBC. When he talks about journalism’s existential problems, he is describing structures he helped build.
His conversation with The Daily Cardinal covers familiar territory (trust erosion, business model collapse, political polarization), but the fact that a former network news chief is speaking this openly tells you how normalized the crisis has become. Lack is not an outside critic. He ran the operation.
His diagnosis focuses on audience fragmentation, revenue decline, the challenge of covering politics when half your potential audience believes you are operating in bad faith. No clear fixes for any of it.
Copenhagen’s documentary festival is approaching the same question from a different angle. CPH:DOX managing director Katrine Kiilgaard told Variety that the festival’s role is “to be an open platform for the democratic dialogue,” treating documentary filmmaking as civic infrastructure rather than entertainment programming.
The festival runs March 11-22, overlapping with Denmark’s election cycle, and Kiilgaard is explicit that this timing matters.
Both acknowledge that media’s traditional claims to purpose (inform the public, hold power accountable, create shared cultural reference points) no longer command automatic legitimacy.
This determines what gets funded, what audiences trust, and who gets to decide what counts as legitimate media work. A film festival and a former NBC News chairman are offering completely different answers.
The Global Content Machine Keeps Running
While journalism debates its raison d’être, entertainment is running a more pragmatic playbook: follow the IP, the talent, and the money.
The BBC dropped a trailer for Crookhaven, its adaptation of J.J. Arcanjo’s YA novels about a boarding school where every student is hiding something. Dougray Scott, Julie Hesmondhalgh, and Keith Allen star. Launches March 22.
Crookhaven fits a familiar pattern: book IP with a built-in fanbase, adapted for a broadcaster with global distribution ambitions. The casting suggests the BBC is treating it as a flagship project. Find a story with audience interest already baked in, secure the adaptation rights, and attach recognizable talent. The content pipeline is functioning as designed.
That pipeline operates at multiple scales. In Málaga, the Festival Fund & Co Production Event (MAFF) is showcasing projects featuring Alberto Ammann (Narcos), Catalina Sopelana (The Crystal Cuckoo), and a wave of first-feature female directors.
Variety’s coverage emphasizes the co-production market structure connecting filmmakers with financing partners and distribution networks. MAFF is infrastructure: the place where the next generation of Spanish-language cinema gets packaged and sold.
The female director emphasis matters. First features from women directors are a market segment that buyers actively seek, which means festivals like MAFF position themselves as discovery engines for talent that major distributors want to sign.
Then there is China. Pegasus 3 earned RMB168.9 million ($23.8 million) in its third weekend and is approaching $600 million cumulative according to Artisan Gateway data.
It is a domestically produced racing comedy from PMF Pictures. No Hollywood co-production. No international stars or IP recognition outside China. Nine-figure revenue from a domestic market that can support franchise-level commercial cinema on its own.
The content pipeline is global, but the capital and audience bases are regionalizing.
The People Getting Recognized Are the Ones Who Adapted
Industry awards often lag behind actual innovation, but the signals here are consistent: the people getting honored figured out how to translate old-world expertise into new-world fluency.
The London Book Fair gave an innovation award to a “North East book lover,” per Yahoo News UK’s coverage. The sourcing doesn’t elaborate on what the innovation entailed, but the signal is the location: publishing innovation outside London or New York.
Similarly, Justin J. Moen was celebrated for excellence in radio and digital marketing. The recognition comes from the radio industry, but the framing tells you everything: Moen built a career bridging terrestrial radio and digital marketing. That hybrid skill set is what earned the honor.
Radio professionals who stayed radio-only are not the ones collecting awards.
These data points reinforce the larger pattern. The industry is rewarding people who operate in multiple modes: traditional publishing expertise plus innovation outside major markets, radio experience plus digital marketing capabilities. The adaptation skill set means extending legacy media skills into adjacent territories where the work actually gets funded and distributed.
What This Means
The lesson across all of these stories is the same: the industry is renegotiating its foundational assumptions in real time, and the people who succeed will be the ones who can operate without consensus.
Journalism is trying to figure out what it exists to do. Entertainment is following money and IP wherever they lead. Recognition is going to professionals who bridge the old and the new.
That creates opportunity. When institutions lose their monopoly on defining what counts as legitimate work, the field opens up.
The BBC is adapting YA novels. A Spanish film market is betting on first-feature female directors. China is producing $600 million franchises without Hollywood. A documentary festival in Copenhagen is claiming a democratic mission. None of those are traditional paths. All of them are producing work that audiences want.
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Media is arguing about what it is for, and the answers are all over the map. That is the operating environment.
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