Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Newsrooms are usually hierarchical places: you have an editor who tells you if you can do a story or not, and you have a CEO who ultimately decides the strategic direction. Often there will be layers between you and the decision maker. What if that wasn't the case? How would you decide your organisational strategy without a CEO? How do you pitch stories without an editor? How does anything get done without someone to say yes or no?! In this session, we will share some of the approaches to being non-hierarchical self-organising media organisations. We will look at various approaches, what we think works well, what the challenges are, and ultimately what we think is the best way to run an organisation. We'd like to make sure the discussion is participatory, so please join us to share and discuss your experiences of non-hierarchical structures, whether in the workplace or outside.