Digital media professional and Head of Editorial and Innovation at BellaNaija, Oluwadunsin Sanya, was among featured speakers at the Financial Times “News in the Digital Age” Conference in London, joining global media executives and thought leaders to interrogate the rapidly evolving future of journalism. At the high level forum, she addressed shifting audience behaviour, the rise of AI driven news consumption and the urgent need for innovation in digital publishing, drawing attention to Nigeria’s dynamic media landscape while challenging newsrooms to rethink strategy, storytelling and long term relevance in an era increasingly defined by algorithms and artificial intelligence. Chiemelie Ezeobi reports
Digital media professional and Head of Editorial and Innovation at BellaNaija, Oluwadunsin Sanya recently took the stage as a speaker at the Financial Times “News in The Digital Age” Conference in London, United Kingdom, contributing to high-level conversations on the evolving future of journalism and digital media innovation.
Oluwadunsin Sanya, who serves as a leading voice in Nigeria’s digital media ecosystem, joined international media executives and thought leaders to discuss how audience behavior has shifted dramatically in the social media era, and what this means for newsrooms, publishers, and content platforms worldwide.
The session explored key themes including the shift from homepage-driven traffic to algorithm-driven discovery, the rise of short-form, platform-native storytelling, audience loyalty in an era of constant scrolling, and the future of community-building in digital publishing.
The panel also examined Nigeria’s rapidly evolving media landscape, referencing the Next Gen News 2 research, which found that 33% of Nigerian respondents — the largest share of any country surveyed — often receive news from AI programs.
Responding to this shift, Sanya encouraged digital platforms to move beyond traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and begin embracing what she described as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
“People are gradually shifting from traditional search engines and web browsers to AI chatbots to find answers to their questions. Before, people would go to Google and other search engines for answers to their questions. Today, people are asking ChatGPT and Gemini these questions instead. This means, in today’s world, we’re not only creating content for people, but also for the AI tools that deliver information to them,” she said.
She also shared how BellaNaija has achieved success by taking a positivity and solutions-focused approach to stories, noting that audiences are tired of always reading about problems. Now, they want to read solutions too. “The world is hard enough”, she joked, “they want to read happy, inspiring stories”.
Finally, she encouraged media professionals to go beyond the present into thinking of what news would look like in the future.
She said, “Today, we’re here to talk about News in the Digital Age, but to remain innovative, we must look into future trends and think of what news would look like in years to come. Look at the Next Gen News that shares what audiences would want in 2030, that is thinking ahead. Beyond asking ourselves what news looks like in today’s digital age, we must also ask what it would look like in the future and prepare for that.”
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