Sustainable Media Center Substack

In this week’s Sustainable Media Center Substack Live, Emma Lembke sits down with Hywel Mills for a wide-ranging conversation about media, trust, technology, and the future of journalism in an age shaped by algorithms and AI.

Together, they explore why The Signal

was created as an alternative to attention-driven media, and what it means to build a news platform focused less on outrage and clicks and more on helping readers ask better questions and understand the world on their own terms. Hywel reflects on the failures of today’s engagement economy, the corrosive incentives behind modern media business models, and why trust can only be earned through rigor, transparency, and intellectual humility.

The conversation also dives into the broader crisis facing journalism and public discourse, from algorithmic amplification and partisan incentives to the growing tension between truth, trust, and monetization in both media and AI platforms. Along the way, Hywel offers a hopeful vision for rebuilding healthier relationships between audiences, technology, and information, grounded in curiosity, expertise, and long-term thinking rather than engagement bait and outrage cycles.

A thoughtful and deeply relevant discussion about the future of media, the economics of attention, and why optimism still matters in a rapidly changing digital world.