Juris Mendzins, CEO of LETA, Re‑imagining Europe’s News Agencies: From Traditional Wire Services to AI‑Powered Data Hubs
Juris Mendzins, the CEO of LETA, proposes in this EANA Top Voices interview that European news agencies evolve into AI‑driven data hubs serving media, businesses, governments, and NGOs. By blending journalism with extensive data monitoring, analytics, and robust AI safeguards, Juris Mendzins says news agencies can deliver high‑value decision‑support products, counter misinformation, and adapt to regulatory and security challenges—positioning themselves as essential competence centers in a rapidly changing information ecosystem.
Q: News agencies in Europe have navigated rapid changes over the past decade, from digital disruption to shifting audience habits. How would you describe the current role of news agencies in today’s media ecosystem, and where do you see this role heading in the next few years? What major shifts or evolutions do you anticipate for news agencies by the end of this decade?
A: First of all, we need to understand that redefining the current news agency’s role and purpose is inevitable. If we continue treating ourselves as an outsourced newsroom for publishers—as was the case in the mid-19th century, during the early days of news agencies—we will reach a dead end very soon.
This redefinition must apply to both sides: the news agency as a service provider and its customers. Expanding our customer base beyond the media sector to include businesses, government institutions, and other organizations is essential. The media landscape is changing, and traditional media outlets are being transformed into multi-point content access options, run not only by media professionals but also by individuals and organizations. In some cases, these content access points are even more influential than traditional media; for example, Joe Rogan’s podcast has a larger audience than The New York Times.
Given these changes, we envision the news agency as a data-processing and data-interpretation organization that delivers its products to a wide range of customers and helps them make data-driven strategic decisions. In doing so, the agency moves beyond the boundaries of the traditional media and communication space.
We still believe that news journalism is an essential part of this new concept, but it should be treated as just one data source among many. Media monitoring and the processing of other publicly available data must become as important components of the data pool as newsstories, delivered by professional reporters of newsrooms. Data should be transformed into high-quality, sophisticated products with far greater added value than traditional news production alone. And we must offer these products to a wide range of customer sectors, including traditional media outlets, which represent just one of those sectors.
Of course, organizations subsidized by the state or other financial sources can survive within the old model for a long time. However, it’s still comparable to keeping a grandmother alive on artificial life-support systems.
Q: AI and automation are increasingly being integrated into newsroom workflows, from generating news updates to aiding in research, translation, and content distribution. How is your agency strategically incorporating artificial intelligence into its editorial and operational processes? What benefits do you expect AI to bring to news production and delivery, and how are you addressing the potential risks or ethical challenges (for instance, maintaining accuracy, avoiding bias, and protecting your agency’s content) that come with AI adoption?
A: AI tools are deeply integrated into our organization’s daily operations. However, we have established clear rules for AI use and incorporated them into our internal procedures. This means AI usage must be transparent, and humans retain final responsibility for all content.
We support the augmented use of AI, but we do not publish synthetic news except in very narrowly defined cases where content is generated from raw data received regularly from trusted sources through our API or similar technology. We use speech-to-text tools for interviews, DeepL for translation, and a wide range of assistants for summaries and suggestions—such as headline ideas.
In the data processing department, which also includes our media monitoring business line, AI use is both critical and essential. Here, we create and deliver products that would not be possible without AI.
In general, AI solves two main challenges: reducing HR workload and creating new value or new products. We firmly believe we are moving toward the second option, though we acknowledge that broader AI adoption may require different skill sets, which could lead to changes in staff.
We treat our data as a highly valuable asset and place strong emphasis on data protection. For this reason, we have invested in dedicated hardware, including high-performance GPUs, and have deployed in-house LLM and RAG systems. As a result, we can run advanced AI tools internally without relying on global platforms.
Last but not least, we believe that human judgment will remain critical at every stage of AI development, and we are committed to being prepared for that future.
Q: Europe’s news agencies have been tested by major geopolitical crises, notably the ongoing war in Ukraine since 2022. What has covering a conflict of this scale taught your agency about its responsibilities and challenges? How do you ensure accurate, impartial reporting in such high-stakes situations, and what measures are you taking to protect journalists on the ground and to combat misinformation or propaganda during conflict coverage?
A: The major impact of the geopolitical crisis on our agency has been a dramatically increased wave of cyberattacks from Russia, including massive DDoS assaults. However, we have learned from these incidents, strengthened our cyber-resilience, implemented new security solutions, and are now far more secure and significantly less vulnerable than we were before the war in Ukraine.
As a small organization from a small country, we rely heavily on our international partner agencies that cover global hotspots. We use only trusted sources and place full confidence in their reporting. In addition, as a sales agent for major global picture agencies in the Baltics, we have taken numerous steps to ensure that images from conflict zones are available to our media customers. In this way, we help provide society with a complete and accurate picture of what is happening.
The impact of the geopolitical crisis on local political rhetoric—and the resulting actions, including increased defense budgets—is clear. We naturally cover these developments in real time, with as much detail, accuracy, and breadth as possible.
At the end of the day, the information landscape has reached a point where, amid an overwhelming wave of disinformation, fake news, and populist narratives, the news agency has reemerged as a core source of value—providing stability and a reliable compass for understanding what is real and what is actually happening.
Q: Recent political events like the 2024 European Parliament elections (and also elections at national level throughout Europe) have highlighted the role of news agencies in supporting democracy. What responsibilities, if any, in your view, do news agencies have in countering misinformation, political polarisation, or voter apathy during election cycles, and how do you balance speed with accuracy when reporting on election outcomes and controversies?
A: We all know that the political landscape has a pendulum-like nature—left is replaced by right, liberals by conservatives, and then the cycle reverses. Today, however, we believe the amplitude of these swings is increasing, and the frequency is rising as well; in other words, the shifts are happening faster. If traditional theory suggested that major global economic crises occur roughly every 12 years, then today—after the U.S.–China trade war, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and their respective consequences—we are seeing such crises occur almost much more frequently.
So our primary and ultimate task is to document the situation, provide the audience with the most objective picture possible, and deliver information that is as accurate as it can be. In addition to photographic accuracy and neutrality, we actively gather data from as many sources as possible and work to build a comprehensive understanding of future developments and the next steps we should expect.
We do our job as well as we possibly can, and we believe this is the most effective way to combat misinformation, political apathy, and the polarization of political views. We are convinced that data-driven decision-making is the best remedy for these challenges, and our role is to provide the tools needed for that treatment.
Q: The relationship between news agencies and big tech platforms is evolving amid new regulatory frameworks in Europe. With initiatives such as the EU’s Digital Services Act, the EU AI Act and other platform regulations, how do you see the interaction between news providers and tech companies changing? Are these regulations and the push for platforms to take more responsibility (or even remunerate content creators) an opportunity for news agencies, or do they introduce new challenges? How is your agency navigating issues like content distribution on social media, algorithmic reach, and negotiating fair terms for the use of your news content online?
A: The EU DSA primarily applies to large platforms (VLOPs and VLOSEs) that interact with users and user-generated content, with the goal of regulating platform rights and responsibilities. The DSA requires platforms to implement mechanisms for users to report illegal content, conduct risk assessments, ensure advertising transparency, limit dark patterns, and more.
None of this directly applies to the operations of a news agency because, first, our core business is B2B; second, we do not work with advertising or e-commerce; and third, user interaction with a news agency and it’s content is very limited.
Similarly, when we look at the EU AI Act, the primary obligations that apply to us are the Deployer’s obligations, but our internal procedures and AI usage policy already cover these requirements. We handle input data responsibly, and our strategy is to minimize the use of such data in external AI platforms altogether. For this reason, we have implemented local AI instances, which inherently address data protection concerns as well. We use AI mainly as an augmented tool, and the final output and judgement is always the responsibility of a human.
One of the biggest challenges related to the widespread use of AI is the general assumption that every new technology entering the market extracts value from existing industries by making products simpler and cheaper. This happened to the media industry after the dot-com bubble, and we see signs that a similar trend may continue with the rapid spread of AI.
Economist and Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in his article “The Impact of AI and Digital Platforms on the Informational Ecosystem” that in the age of AI, misleading or even entirely fabricated information becomes cheaper to produce and often reaches a wider audience than trusted, accurate news. This dynamic can shift the informational equilibrium and potentially harm the news ecosystem as a whole.
Naturally, as part of this ecosystem, we are preparing for a scenario in which reliable news may no longer be valued as highly as it is today. Therefore, we are exploring alternative business models and developing data-driven decision-making tools that offer higher added value for high-level customers.
Q: Finally, as a leader in the news agency world, what gives you optimism about the future of news agencies in Europe? Despite all the challenges discussed so far — from financial pressure to technological disruption and geopolitical events — what inspires confidence that news agencies will continue to thrive and serve the public good in the coming years? Feel free to share any guiding vision or principle that you believe will keep news agencies relevant and essential in the evolving media landscape.
A: I believe the answer to this question has already been partially addressed in my first response. To survive and remain optimistic about the future, we must redefine both what a news agency is and who our customer is. We need to rethink our value proposition and take a broader view of what we can offer to a world experiencing extremely high levels of uncertainty (as illustrated by the behavior of the VIX index in 2025).
I believe that, in the future, news agencies will evolve into competence centers or think-tanks that help organizations and communities make data-driven decisions. If we are able to provide a sense of order and certainty in this chaotic world, communities will come to rely on us, and we will be fine.
