How to Stop Optimising for the Wrong Thing: Dmitry Shishkin on User Needs, Creators, and the AI Era

Dmitry Shishkin was once introduced on stage as the Godfather of User Needs. His reaction said everything about someone who started all of this with a practical question at the BBC in 2016: why have we stopped producing content that answers what audiences actually need?In this episode, Kerstin sits down with Dmitry Shiskin, independent media strategist and the mind behind the User Needs framework, to ask why legacy media is still losing ground a decade after the answer was hiding in plain sight. The Digital News Report 2026 just confirmed what the User Needs model has been arguing for a decade: audiences know exactly what they want and they're finding it elsewhere. Social has overtaken TV and news websites as the primary news source globally for the first time ever. 27% of people get news from creators weekly. And newsrooms are still telling their teams to be more inspiring.They go deep into what the Sports User Needs Model reveals about where editorial output actually goes, why "be more inspiring" is a brief and not a strategy, and what Dmitry calls the Agents Readiness Layer, his framework for surviving an AI-mediated information environment where your nuances of reporting risk being flattened into a single sentence.Guest: Dmitry Shishkin, independent media strategistHost: Kerstin Hasse, Young Audiences Initiative Lead, INMA