The need for a global approach to journalism can be understood as a long overdue reaction to the changing status quo of the world, its shifting power structures and the complex dynamics driving this transformation, rooted in the growing crises we face in a globalized context.

Global journalism did not materialize out of the blue: the fact it has emerged just now is not an accident. Swedish media theorist Peter Berglez, having in mind variety of theorists and their works (Ulrich Beck, Nancy Fraser, Anthony Giddens, David Harvey among others) has identified two factors in its development:

1. The crises we face, which were once local, have suddenly become global, while human condition itself has become cosmopolitan. This is exemplified by the coverage of migration: not that long ago, this topic was considered almost exclusively a foreign issue, sometimes culminating in crises somewhere far from the EU or the so-called developed world. But recently, as the effects of these crises have been felt at the EU borders, it is now treated as much as a domestic as a foreign issue. In this content, a global approach to coverage is better suited to covering migration and other issues.
   
2. The world is undergoing seismic geopolitical changes. The Westphalian order, built around the sovereign state and its associated power structures, is now giving way towards a post-Westfalian order. This changing context needs to be understood and reflected by journalists themselves.

To cope with these changes, journalism requires new skills and knowledge (see next chapter). In the words of Peter Berglez, ‘Global journalism becomes a global version of local journalism, taking on the mission to construct a neighbourhood consisting of seven continents’.