The Next Decade of News and The Battle for Our Minds

If you are a pessimist, you might say that the peak of news publishing in the United States was 1984 when US daily newspapers reached 63 million people.  

If you are an optimist, you will note that nearly all Americans report owning a mobile phone today, which is an audience more than five times the size of our best year of circulation. 

Regardless of where you stand emotionally, the facts show us that this moment in time has the potential to redefine how we create and deliver news, if we embrace the trends defining the marketplace. 

The distribution of news and content, overall, is undergoing three dramatic shifts concurrently, which is probably why we don’t always see it that clearly. Trends in behavior and progress in technology that is incremental usually escapes our attention. 

Three Market-Shaping Trends  

AI agents now conduct more than 50% of all online activity worldwide. Their mission, related to open-source information, is to identify content and then retrieve and return it to its home base, often via an app. 

Google and Facebook, parts of the two largest media platforms on planet earth have also been the two largest referrers of traffic to news publisher sites over the past decade. In 2015, they each referred about 35% of the traffic to news publisher sites or more than 70% together. Today, google accounts for about 14-15% of referral traffic and Facebook is responsible for about 4%. 

Why is that? 

It is a combination of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT that lead to zero click search and ever improving content feeds in Facebook, so we don’t feel a need to click and learn more. 

The third trend relates to who delivers content to us. According to a WPP report, advertising for content creator platforms will be higher than all news publishing platforms in 2025. 

So, machines are conducting more of the search, generative AI is decreasing our need to search further and individuals are becoming our main source of knowledge.

That is an earthquake in the world of media. 

Time to Create and Embrace a New Media Model  

When YouTube was launched in 2005, few expected individuals to have more weight in their recommendations than seasoned experts. 

When smartphones became available in 2007, many said it was just a phone. 

Gaming was viewed as entertainment, but it became a new social platform with more than three billion users. 

Podcasting was supposedly boring and too long-form, now it is a multi-billion-dollar industry with high growth potential. 

Only developers could code, until no code software was created. 

The list goes on. 

Technology transformation has a long arc. It methodically changes our landscape, while we debate yesterday’s issue. 

What is Ahead for Journalism and Media Overall? 

What the trends are telling us works in favor of journalism, but against the distribution system of news today. 

We have a very strong desire for powerful narratives. That has not changed. 

What we care less about is whether these narratives are delivered by a journalist or our favorite content creator. In fact, most of us are ambivalent on this point. 

We believe trust in information is critical, yet we build trust over time via repetition, which often favors the person in front of us most often. Our patterns of communications must adapt. 

We love when trust and convenience combine, so when we get a comprehensive and clear answer, our instinct is not to keep searching, leading to zero click search. Media’s embrace of large language models is important to provide the answers we require when we visit. 

The distribution system of news has already changed. There is no return desk to ask for our old model back. And even if there was, no one is working there. 

Important Next Steps

Here are five ways we can improve tomorrow. 

• First, acknowledge that content creators are equivalent to media outlets.  We embrace their approach and reach and figure out how to advertise, influence and share our story with them. 
• Second, accept that generative AI leads to zero click search, so our job is to make our story available through all open-source platforms. Enable generative AI to find and share our stories.
• Third, study how content creators gain awareness and build their audience. Let them teach us how to create and share our stories more effectively. Be willing to change. 
• Fourth, realize we are at the beginning of a transformative arc that will continue to change how we access content over the next decade. News will be delivered to us via highly personalized news feeds from AI-driven newsrooms that work 24/7. 
• Fifth, find a balance to regulate AI systems to protect society without impeding the natural course to integrate ecommerce, news, and general content into our apps. 

Back in 1967, the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago created an iconic ad campaign that featured a Maytag Repairman patiently waiting for service calls that never came, since their washers and dryers were that good. Funny then, but we have to be careful that this same symbol doesn’t apply to news sites waiting for subscribers who never show up and gradually go away. 

Technology is integrating the online world for us. What is not yet fully integrated is how we all work together. 

It takes courage to embrace the future. 

That is our next chapter.