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The Daily Digest: December 16, 2025
Journalism establishes a physical presence“2026 will push us back toward the physical and tangible in the spaces we work, the ways we engage, and the products we create.” By Terry Parris Jr.. |
Newsrooms build the muscle to survive many futures at once“Scenario planning — done consistently, cross-functionally and proactively — will become a core newsroom discipline.” By LaSharah S. Bunting. |
The rise of the throwaway news app“Instead of expensive and ambitious apps that will require updating and maintaining, in 2026 we will use AI to make quick one-page web apps that let a user search through some data to find something they are interested in.” By Matt Waite. |
Collaboration becomes civic memory“We don’t need a mega newsroom. We need an infrastructure layer — a shared repository to upload interviews, link articles, and dump the results of open records requests — all with a clear chain-of-custody protocol.” By Saba Long. |
Journalism will break from the hero narrative“We’ll stop reflexively searching for a main character, a face for the movement, someone to put on the cover.” By Sabrina Hersi Issa. |
Google will look beyond volume journalism“The total click pool will shrink; remaining clicks will favor stories too semantically deep to be easily summarized.” By Ritvvij Parrikh. |
The gap between nonprofit and for-profit local news will widen“The harsh truth is that taken in isolation, there is likely no viable economic model for decent news provision in economically struggling cities or rural areas.” By Lance Knobel. |
Everyone is a journal-ish“Instead of AI writing the future of journalism, we need to return to organizing the profession around its moral, ethical, and practical foundations and welcome in those curious to learn more.” By Joan Donovan. |
Why creator-journalists, not brands, will get invited to the party“The most successful newsrooms will find ways to position the work of creator-journalists as partnerships, rather than as property.” By Julia Munslow. |
Every media business becomes an events business“People show up for figures who can build strong parasocial connections. But none of that matters if the other people who show up can’t hang.” By Francis Zierer. |
Journalism realizes it has a business talent problem“The journalism support industry invests handsomely in creativity — new business models, news products, technologies, ambitious reporting projects — but neglects the operational systems that sustain innovation and impact.” By Christiaan Mader. |
Local news starts becoming local infrastructure“The news organizations that thrive will stop thinking of themselves as publishers and start operating as community information utilities.” By Ulrike Langer. |
The pedestal we’ve placed “journalism” on will crumble. And that’s brilliant.“It is a fact that ‘slop’ did not arrive with large language models and free AI image generators. We, in journalism, have produced endless amounts of slop since the internet opened up around us. Breaking-news-slop. Clickbait-slop. Repurposed-stories-from-other-media-so-hey-don’t-ask-for-factchecking-slop.” By Jakob Moll. |
Creator partnerships are ripe for opportunities, if newsrooms do the work“It’s the ultimate experiment in loosening the control the mainstream media has desperately held onto as the information landscape has changed.” By Rachel Lobdell. |
The year AI companies pay for the value of publishing“A healthy publishing industry is good for the AI industry because it means better, more accurate, information flowing into the models.” By Nicholas Thompson. |
The press realizes where it’s failed and starts to change“Thirty years after the development of the public internet, journalism is still offering a largely 20th-century product insufficient and ill-suited to the 21st century.” By Tom Rosenstiel. |
Journalists will start asking the right questions“Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We are not entitled to be relevant. We have to earn it, every single day.” By Sharon Moshavi. |
Journalism producers will (re)see their product as a business“To be successful, news information producers will need to conduct a smart market analysis to determine the demand, demographics, economics and startup costs to launch.” By Amy Mitchell. |
Publishers will see no meaningful AI licensing revenue“As long as Google’s search crawler and its AI-training crawler are functioning as a single system, the market for licensing journalism into AI models is effectively stalled.” By David Skok. |
“Show your work” makes a triumphant return“News organizations will realize that sharing their methods — like publishing detailed methodologies, developing projects in the open, and yes, giving away stuff for free — is essential to building trust with their communities.” By Scott Klein. |
Publishers leave the dead malls of Web 2.0“Ultimately, publications need to be compelling enough for readers to remember to type their URLs in a web browser.” By Joanne McNeil. |
Journalism becomes a house of commons“If journalism is to endure, it must be designed and governed as a commons, both in principle and in practice.” By Adam Thomas. |
Local investigative reporting will make money again“Basically, we get paid to be right, to be rigorous. Because if the story is wrong, the investment or the lawsuit fails. Markets and courts, while severely flawed, are still fairly good at getting to the truth.” By Sam Koppelman. |
The year journalists abandon the press conference“Beat journalism needs to de-locate itself from a dependency on the old, reliable places where news could be expected to happen.” By Nik Usher. |
The AI winners won’t be the biggest newsrooms“Everything we generate starts with human insight. AI frees up time for strategy and developing relationships — the work only humans can do.” By Anita Li. |
Information germ theory“We’ll see our field acknowledge that journalism without strategy is just storytelling. And storytelling alone isn’t public service.” By Simon Galperin. |
Please learn how to use your computer“The number of professionals in journalism, media, communications, and academia who still don’t understand how to use the very tools they depend on for their livelihood is, frankly, staggering.” By Joe Amditis. |
Local news embraces its consumer product role“A shift from ‘story’ to ‘service’: The new first question is not ‘What story do we want to tell?’ but ‘What problem are we solving, and for whom?'” By Eric Ulken. |
Editors will start tackling the 5% challenge — and it won’t be fun“Expect many newsroom leaders to become busy next year figuring out what exactly makes their brand stand out in the emerging sea of content.” By Alexandra Borchardt. |
Exiled media will leave grant dependency behind“Diversification has been a talking point for years, but until 2025, few truly believed the money could vanish almost overnight.” By José J. Nieves. |
What we’re reading
—Doug Sovern, a veteran journalist at San Francisco radio station KCBS-AM. KCBS "took steps to mitigate the potential of drawing further attention from conservative influencers or [Brendan] Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to eight current and former station employees who insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisal." (Associated Press)
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BBC News / Christal Hayes, Aoife Walsh, and Ian Aikman
BBC says it will defend Trump defamation lawsuit over Panorama speech edit →
“Before Trump filed the lawsuit, lawyers for the BBC had given a lengthy response to the president’s claims. They said there was no malice in the edit and that Trump was not harmed by the program, having been re-elected shortly after it aired.”
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The amount for which Trump sued the BBC, claiming defamation from a documentary (CNBC / Dan Mangan)