A trend report for the news industry
With consumer expectations moving at a rapid pace, embracing change while staying true to core journalistic values will be the key balancing trick for news media during the year ahead. Changes to search will become a major grievance for a news industry that has already lost social traffic and fears a further decline in visibility as AI interfaces start to generate ‘story like’ answers to news queries, Reuters Institute says in a trend report for 2025.
“The US election also highlighted the growing power of an alternative news ecosystem that includes partisan personalities and creators that often operate outside journalistic norms, and some say have now eclipsed the mainstream media in terms of both influence and trust.”
“Despite these difficulties many traditional news organisations remain optimistic about the year ahead – if not about journalism itself. Uncertain times tend to be good for business and the prospect of ‘Trump unleashed’ could lead to a surge in web traffic and even in subscriptions.”
One key challenge will be to re-engage audiences that have fallen out of the habit of consuming news and to find ways of attracting the next generation. “Many publishers will be looking to dramatically upscale the quality of their own websites, create more personalised news experiences, and invest further in audio and video.”
The survey comprises 326 digital leaders from 51 countries and territories.
Just 41% of editors, CEOs, and digital executives say they are confident about the prospects for journalism in the year ahead, with 17% expressing low confidence.
“Stated concerns relate to political polarisation, a rise in attacks on the press, and media capture – all of which in combination are seen as significant threats to journalism’s ability to operate freely.”
56% say they are confident about their own business prospects, a significant jump on last year’s figure. Many publishers expect traffic boosts amid the expected chaos of a second Trump presidency, others report continuing growth in online subscriptions, while others still think that the rapid growth of unreliable AI-generated content could bring audiences back to trusted media.
74% say they are worried about a potential decline in referral traffic from search engines this year.
“Data sourced for this report from analytics provider Chartbeat shows that aggregate traffic to hundreds of news sites from Google search remains stable for now but publishers fear the extension of AI-generated summaries to important news stories.”
“This comes after big falls in referral traffic to news sites from Facebook (67%) and Twitter (50%) over the last two years.”
“In response to these trends, publishers will be putting more effort this year into building relationships with AI platforms (+56 net score) such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, both of which have been courting high-quality content in return for citations and/or money.”
“With consumer attention switching to video, more publisher effort is also being planned for YouTube (+52) and TikTok (+48) – despite a possible ban in the United States early in 2025 – as well as Instagram (+43%).
The report confirms publisher sentiment towards X/Twitter (-68 net score) has worsened this year following the politicisation of the network under Elon Musk. The Guardian, Dagens Nyheter, and La Vanguardia are amongst those to have stopped posting on the platform, with Bluesky (+38) a key beneficiary.
“Google Discover (+27) is becoming a more important – if volatile – traffic source that has become critical to many news businesses over the last year. Our survey finds publishers ambivalent but also realistic about their dependence on platforms overall, with a similar proportion looking to cut ties (31%) as strengthen them (31%). Most of the rest (36%), are planning to maintain ties at existing levels.”
On the business side, almost four in ten (36%) of our commercial publishers expect licensing income from tech and AI companies to be a significant revenue stream – twice as many as last year. But the amount and structure of any deals remain a point of contention.
72% said they would prefer to see collective deals that benefited the whole industry rather than each company negotiating in their self-interest (19%). A further 6% say they would rather not enter into any deals.
More widely, subscription and membership remain the biggest revenue focus (77%) for publishers, ahead of both display (69%) and native advertising (59%). The majority are now relying on three or four different revenue streams, including events (48%), affiliate revenue (29%), donations (19%), and related businesses (15%).
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