Mario García: Vertical Design & AI Mastery
By Stella Xu
The survival and relevance of today’s news organisations depends on AI literacy and pivoting from a conventional print-first approach while preserving the irreplaceable “scent of the human,” noted García during his keynote address at WAN-IFRA’s Asian Media Leaders Summit in Singapore.
Revolution 1: Shifting from rectangular production to vertical consumption
The first revolution demands a complete spatial and structural reset, García said.
Highlighting the disconnect between how content is produced and how it is consumed, García noted that while 75% of all content is conceptualised for rectangular viewing, such as traditional broadsheet print newspapers or laptop computers, 82% is actually consumed vertically on mobile devices.
This misalignment results in the “journalism of everywhere and interruptions,” where the focus is fractured by social media alerts and notifications. When content isn’t built for the small screen,reader engagement plummets to an average of just 13 seconds.
The fix is non-negotiable: newsrooms must plan all content for the “small platform first” and then adapt it for larger screens. This forces editors and writers to embrace a digitally minded, visual-first approach.
The traditional “print mentality” of never interrupting text must be replaced with a “wriet and show” method, creating a narrative flow akin to a WhatsApp conversation, where visuals are woven directly into the text.
“The world is consuming it vertically. You must write from small to large platforms, forcing the mentality of the editors to be digitally minded,” García said.
The measurable return on this shift is dramatic, with engaged time spent on a story surging from 13 seconds to between 120 and 140 seconds. This mobile-first discipline also streamlines workflow, eliminating the need for a seperate “multimedia team,” as García argued that “everybody is a multimedia journalist.” Print retains its value not as a digital imitation, but as a showcase for things digital cannot do best, such as maximising impact with “big photos.”
Revolution 2: leveraging AI utility and mitigating superintelligence risk
The second revolution,AI,did not arrive gradually,it “kicked the door open.” Dr. García framed AI not as a replacement for the journalist, but as a powerful a