This blog post is a summary of Reuters’ Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 report, outlining the major pressures, platform shifts, AI developments, and business challenges facing news organisations. The findings paint a picture of an industry under strain, but also one actively experimenting with new strategies, technologies, and formats in response to rapid change.
Key Takeaways
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Following the trend from previous years, only 38% of publishers interviewed for the report express confidence in the future of journalism. That is 22 percentage points less than in 2022. This declining confidence can be attributed to three main factors: the rapid adoption of AI, growing disconnection from younger and less news-interested audiences, and political actors increasingly undermining and denigrating journalism.
Falling revenues have also increased reliance on government funding in some regions, while a growing number of laws restrict journalists’ ability to operate freely. As a result, the World Press Freedom Index is now at its lowest level since the index was established.
Reuters predicts that politicians will increasingly bypass traditional news media, choosing instead to communicate directly with audiences via social media and podcasts. At the same time, news organisations are expected to invest more effort in countering negative narratives about journalism and rebuilding trust.
Social media has shifted away from connecting friends and family towards endless video feeds created by strangers. Platforms increasingly prioritise entertaining content over serious or depressing real-world news. As a result, referrals from platforms such as Facebook and X have fallen by over 40% in the past two and a half years.
Publishers increasingly view Facebook and X as declining platforms and are instead prioritising YouTube, AI-driven platforms, and TikTok. Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Google Discover are seen as important alternative traffic sources. A newer addition is Substack, where some publishers are experimenting with blogs and newsletters as part of a changing content discovery ecosystem.
In response to the dominance of video platforms, publishers are investing heavily in vertical video content that can be published on their own sites and repurposed for social channels. Uploading to YouTube and TikTok is particularly important, as younger audiences increasingly use these platforms as primary news sources.
Social media consumption is also shifting from phones to the living room, with younger audiences watching YouTube via television. Trending content increasingly resembles traditional TV, with talk shows and entertainment formats dominating.
Algorithm-driven feeds and easy-to-use creator tools have fuelled a new creator economy in which the boundaries between media organisations and independent creators are increasingly blurred. On TikTok, for example, creators often share breaking news alongside their own commentary.
Around 70% of respondents are somewhat or very concerned about creators taking attention away from their reporting, while 39% fear losing journalistic talent to creator career paths.
In response, many publishers are adopting creator-style approaches, focusing more on authenticity, personality-driven formats, and direct audience relationships. Around 76% say they plan to encourage journalists to behave more like creators, while 50% are partnering with creators for distribution. However, journalists remain constrained by editorial standards and ethical obligations, requiring a careful balance between personality, objectivity, and reputational risk.
Some organisations have chosen to hire creators directly. Daily Mail, for example, aims to reach younger audiences while creating new revenue streams through sponsored and paid content.
To counter misinformation, regulators and industry bodies are exploring frameworks that allow responsible creators to sign up to journalistic codes of conduct, potentially extending traditional regulation models to individuals.
AI is rapidly reshaping the digital landscape. For publishers, one of the most immediate and significant concerns is declining traffic as search engines move from traditional results towards AI-generated answers. AI search increases zero-click searches, reducing referrals to publisher websites. You can read our longer piece on how AI has changed traffic here.
Global Google search traffic fell by 33% between November 2024 and November 2025, although it is unclear how much of this decline is attributable to AI Overviews. Referrals from ChatGPT are growing rapidly, but remain insignificant compared to traffic from Google.
Publishers expect traffic to decline by 20–75% over the next three years, with 20% seen as an optimistic scenario. Some outlets are already experiencing sharp drops, while others have seen little change. Lifestyle and utility content have been hit hardest, while breaking news sites are less affected, as AI systems struggle with rapidly evolving stories and are prone to hallucinations.
Responses to AI include legal action against AI companies for unauthorised data use, as well as licensing and revenue-sharing deals. However, most publishers do not expect these agreements to materially improve revenues.
In the coming year, Reuters expects growth in Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) services and for industry organisations to start representing smaller organisations in litigation over the use of their content in LLMs and AI chatbots.
As AI becomes capable of generating content across many subjects, publishers increasingly believe their value lies in being distinctive. The focus is shifting towards original, high-quality journalism, including on-the-ground reporting, contextual analysis, community engagement, human stories, fact-checking, opinion pieces, and live coverage. Creating content is about building experiences that drive habitual use. Service journalism, general news, evergreen content, and Q&A formats are seen as most vulnerable to AI replacement.
Investment in audio and video continues, with 79% planning to invest more in video and 71% in audio. These formats are harder for AI to summarise effectively and are more likely to be consumed in full.
At the same time, some publishers are embracing AI to increase speed and scale, while maintaining human oversight. Used carefully, AI can free journalists’ time for original reporting rather than replace it.
AI-generated content now accounts for a rapidly growing share of the internet; by some estimates, most of the content being produced online is already AI-generated. So-called “AI slop” raises concerns that genuine human content will be drowned out by misinformation.
AI-generated images, audio, and video have already been used by politicians around the world. While many such cases have been quickly debunked, the potential for electoral manipulation remains high, particularly as AI-generated media becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic content. These risks are compounded by the rollback of content moderation and fact-checking on major social media platforms, following political pressure in the United States during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Most publishers believe that the growing volume of AI-generated content will ultimately strengthen the position of trusted news media, as audience concerns about fake, misleading, and low-quality information continue to rise.
Reuters predicts that, in response to the growing volume of “AI slop”, the industry will step up initiatives to add metadata to professionally produced content to prove its provenance. Progress so far has been slow: only around 1% of news images and videos currently contain provenance metadata. Meaningful progress will require buy-in and adoption across the entire content ecosystem.
Reuters also expects platforms to increase their efforts to detect synthetic or manipulated content. To date, detection has been only partially effective. For example, TikTok is currently able to automatically identify less than half of AI-generated content on its platform. In addition, platforms are expected to invest more in educating content creators about what needs to be labelled, and why transparency around AI use is important.
Alongside these efforts, the rise of AI content farms remains a significant concern. An increasing number of fake news sites are being automatically generated at scale, producing large volumes of low-quality, misleading content designed to exploit algorithms rather than inform audiences.
Beyond public-facing content, the indiscriminate use of AI tools in the workplace has led to what some describe as “work slop”. In these cases, AI-generated documents and presentations add little value and fail to meaningfully advance work. As awareness of this grows, a backlash against low-quality, poorly applied AI use is increasingly expected.
News organisations are also embracing AI in their newsrooms to improve efficiency and, in some cases, journalistic quality. This remains a delicate balancing act. Several leading organisations have criticised the accuracy of AI chatbots when it comes to news content, and, according to a study by the EBU, AI chatbots misrepresent news content almost half of the time.
Despite these concerns, publishers rate a wide range of AI use cases as very important to their businesses, and the number of use cases continues to grow each year. The most important applications currently include backend automation, coding and product development, distribution and recommendation, commercial use, and newsgathering.
Coding, in particular, has risen sharply in importance, increasing by 16%. When assessing the impact of their current AI initiatives, 13% of respondents described them as transformational, 44% as promising, 42% as having limited impact, and just 2% as disappointing.
So far, investment in AI has not led to significant job reductions in newsrooms. In fact, some organisations report that AI adoption has created new roles rather than eliminating existing ones.
Some examples of effective newsroom AI use include:
Looking ahead, Reuters expects growth in agentic AI for research, wider use of synthetic presenters, smarter content personalisation, and AI-powered chatbots to improve site navigation. Experiments are already underway at organisations such as BBC, VG, and Amazon.
AI continues to shape the development of consumer technology. New browsers and applications that incorporate AI are being developed to challenge Google Chrome. These tools often include agentic capabilities, allowing them to carry out tasks on behalf of users, such as shopping, drafting emails, translating content, or creating audio briefings. According to the report, 75% of respondents expect these AI-driven browsers to have a significant impact.
Beyond browsers, AI-enabled devices are also expected to become more widespread. Many smartphones now include built-in AI features, and Meta is developing smart glasses that integrate AI capabilities, pointing to a broader shift towards ambient and assistive computing.
At the same time, an opposing trend is emerging in the form of growing anti-screen sentiment. Australia has banned social media use for under-16-year-olds, and other countries are considering similar measures. In parallel, new types of phones have been introduced that offer only basic messaging functions or deliberately reduce screen time by making apps less visually appealing. While sales of so-called “dumb” phones have increased, this is unlikely to become a mass movement. However, restrictions on social media use for under-16-year-olds could have a far more significant impact if adopted more widely.
A significant number of publishing executives lack confidence in their business prospects, particularly in the news sector, where traditional subscription models are declining faster than new digital revenue streams are growing. Subscriptions nevertheless remain the most important expected revenue source, cited by 76% of publishers. At the same time, native advertising has seen renewed interest, rising to 64% (up 5 percentage points), while events (54%, up 6 percentage points) and funding from platforms (37%, up 17 percentage points over the past two years) have also grown in importance.
Meanwhile, many outlets operating in countries with limited press freedom were severely affected by the US government’s decision to cut international aid in early 2025. These cuts led to closures and layoffs, further weakening already fragile media ecosystems.
When it comes to innovation, most organisations are currently focused on improving existing products, with 59% citing this as their main priority. However, more than a third of respondents (37%) say their primary focus is on developing new products and services. AI is widely seen as a key enabler for both improving current offerings and building new ones, largely because it is relatively low-cost to implement. At the same time, publishers remain cautious: AI’s tendency to hallucinate information presents clear risks, while a lack of resources, insufficient skills, and misaligned strategies continue to act as major barriers to development in newsrooms.
Reuters expects further consolidation, partnerships, and economies of scale, as publishers seek the size and resources needed to compete with global technology platforms. This is likely to lead to continued mergers and acquisitions across the industry.
New models for local news are also expected to emerge. In Finland, for example, Kaleva is planning a new approach to local journalism based on gamification, reflecting broader experimentation with engagement-driven business models.
The Reuters report makes clear that journalism is entering a decisive period. AI, platform shifts, and changing audience behaviour are eroding long-standing distribution and revenue models faster than replacements are emerging. At the same time, these pressures are reinforcing the value of trusted, distinctive journalism and accelerating experimentation across formats, technology, and business models.
The coming years will continue to reshape journalism in ways that are only just becoming clear. Whether news organisations can survive in this changing ecosystem will depend on their ability to build trust, maintain relevance, and develop direct relationships with audiences.