It has been a decade since the signing of the agreement between HEKIMEN (the Association of Popular Media Initiatives in Basque) and the Universities (EHU, MU, DU and, later, UEU) and the creation of Behategia (the Observatory) in January 2016. In these pages, Alberto Barandiaran Amillano spoke of transferring academic work to communication companies and bringing to the university the needs and concerns of media professionals who were about to create the Observatory. Shortly after, Libe Mimenza Castillo spoke of an antenna that would measure and interpret the beats of the sector with multiple complementary views, in the recent creation of the Observatory, promote research, develop innovation and foresight, collect data... and all this in a bidirectional flow, from the media to the universities and vice versa.
Thus began the creation of Datutegia, the largest searchable database on the Basque media in history, which provided a fairly complete snapshot of the sector. The first research papers began to be published in this yearbook, which aimed to raise awareness of the sector’s potential for the future and to develop new strategies; which highlighted the need for studies that specifically measured consumption in Basque; or which analyzed in depth the annual evolution of digital traffic.
Immediately after its launch, the Observatory began to make its contribution with its research, reports, conferences, summer courses or works published on the web. The progressively built referentiality led to contact with the public administration and allowed a bridge between the sector and policy makers, feeding a space with three components of great potential: media, university and administration. In this sense, it is to be welcomed that, as Igor Astibia Teiletxea, director of Hekimena, points out in the first article of this issue, this effort, whose main activity last year is the acquisition of more resources for the media, has borne fruit, at least in some areas.
In these ten years of challenges, digitalization has also been and is very present, a central line of work in the activity of both the Basque media and Behategia. Important research, training and implementation tasks have been carried out to adapt to this global transformation. There are, for example, the organized training programs or the advisory resources offered, as well as the BEHA and Behategia Analytics tools for monitoring and analyzing data (details are provided in the summary of the trajectory of the BEHA project developed in the last five years, in the seventh article of this issue). According to Josu Amezaga Albizu, a professor at the EHU (University of the Basque Country) and member of Behategia and his colleagues in the analysis carried out for this issue, the media of the popular initiative entirely in Basque have successfully faced part of the great challenge of digitalization to date; they are eliminating inertias in the face of profound changes, starting to act in new ways, focusing on data and internalizing the culture of data.
Immersing oneself in the open sea of data requires rowing with common sense and clarity, with instruments that avoid dissipating forces and with compass that maintain the direction. Now that the observatory has just turned ten years old, it is appropriate that this word has started to look back at the path traveled. Because that’s how it goes forward: looking back, seeing the path traveled, close to where the seas would be.
To do this, we also have this yearbook that helps us visualize the horizon of tasks. This year’s issue includes thirteen articles, including the two mentioned above. As we have already mentioned, Igor Astibia Teiletxea, director of Hekimena, focuses on the call for grants in the Basque Country, praising the achievements made but highlighting the shortcomings: “...The new system of subsidies has represented a new step forward, but in general it has not achieved the expected momentum.”
Pello Urzelai Agirre reviews international trends and challenges and makes clear from the outset the impact of the endless and cruel massacre against the Palestinians, including in the field of communication. It also denounces the situation of freedom of the press and refers to another issue of concern to those responsible for the media: the phenomenon of creative content. “Some will look for journalists who act as creators, while others will make alliances with creators or hire them directly.”
The signing section has been dedicated to the journalist and professor Ane Zuazubiskar Iñarra, who has dared with a hot topic. In his opinion, these digital squares, full of public, must be filled with Basque content, with uncertain and successful applications in the hands of foreign tycoons. “Let’s not decide to go to the corner squares as if being in the big square wasn’t important and strategic.”
To open the window of the sector, we have turned to the Basque Radio Stations in the Northern Basque Country, which have made an important transformation in consolidating their network, reforming and interconnecting their websites and positioning themselves in the face of the difficult challenge of the DAB+ system. To do this, we have invited Teixa Ihidoy, director of the Euskal Irratia network, which brings together the six radio stations in Basque, to write the article. In the same section, we have collected the text written by José Luis Román Jiménez, director of EITB Media and his colleagues (Iker González Rodríguez, head of the EITB digital newsletter; Maite Goñi Eizmendi, director of radio and audio of EITB; Iraide Muga Zubiaur, head of Primeran; and Nerea Zendoia Elexpuru, head of Makusi), on the multi-platform strategy of EITB, which makes a reading of the different platforms they have launched and collects the data obtained in 2025. In addition, Aitziber Agirre Ruiz de Arkaute has informed us about the process of reflection and creation of the renewed digital publication Elhuyar Zientzia. In this same section of the sector, Libe Mimenza Castillo summarizes the trajectory of the BEHA project, designed for the media, together with the contributions of Irutxuloko Hitza and Naike Usabiaga Urruzola and Aitziber Arzallus Elola, from the GUKA media, among others. To close the section, Lukas Hiriarte, from the Basque Public Institution, has made the first promotion of the Diploma in Journalism in Basque project and has awakened our desire for the second edition.
Opening the section of long articles in the field of research, we have the study “The social value of the Word and Eleven of Lea-Artibai, Mutriku and Busturialdeko”, carried out by Ane Zuazubiskar Iñarra and Eneko Bidegain Aire of Mondragon Unibertsitatea. As with previous works of this type, in which the social impact of six media has already been analyzed, there is no doubt about the contribution that these two media in Basque make to society, although social and cultural wealth is rarely given sufficient value in the realm of money.
Next comes “Participatory, community and alternative journalism in the Basque Country: closeness and criticism in times of disinformation and AI”, by Ander Goikoetxea Pérez and Udane Goikoetxea Bilbao of the EHU (University of the Basque Country). This study, which starts from the concern expressed in the title, shows the importance of what the previous study concludes. These two works feed on each other, reinforcing the call for a tendency towards communitarianism in the face of a unidirectional disinformation wave.
The third article is also closely related to the previous two, inhales in a similar way and, in addition, reinforces the presence of radio stations in the Northern Basque Country in this issue. Xalbat Alzugaray Etxeberri, “From the popular waves to the social wave: The study “The importance of the direct follow-up of the Korrika in the radios of Iparralde” is based on the Master Thesis of the same name, winner of the EITB Prize.
The following is the article by Arantza Gutierrez Paz of the EHU and her colleagues Tania Arriaga Azkarate, Maider Eizmendi Iraola, Itxaso Fernández Astobiza and Erika Fernández Cabello entitled “The presence of women in the media of Hego Euskal Herria: GMMP photo after five years» article. The authors have analyzed the sample of Hego Euskal Herria in the global measurement carried out by the Global Media Monitoring Project, a project that measures the presence and role of women in the news and in the media and that is the second time that some of the local media have been included. On this occasion, the presence of women in the media in Hego Euskal Herria is even greater than in the international media and more and more women are working on information in companies.
To close the section and, therefore, the publication, we have the analysis “Audiences of the media websites of the popular initiative in Basque in 2025: a new record” by Josu Amezaga Albizu, Ane Martínez Juez and Libe Mimenza Castillo of the EHU. They analyze digital traffic and, as the title indicates, the media in Basque have broken the record of visits they had established in the year of the pandemic. As the authors point out, although this growth has not been very high, it is significant for two reasons: because it is an increase in real traffic (not due to the increase of websites) and because it occurs at a time when trends in the environment and at a global level show a downward trend of informative websites.