The rise of citizen journalism, the rethinking of long-form content, the evolution of video, and the exploration of AI opportunities are key elements of the media landscape forecast for 2025, according to a report from Harvard University's Nieman Lab
At the end of each year, many global institutions interested in the issue of media practice have been keen to present their readings and predictions of what the media landscape might be like in the coming year. Some of these institutions have been working for years to reveal the visions, strategies, and goals of media institutions. Nieman Lab is a project affiliated with Harvard University that seeks to help identify news trends in the Internet age. Nieman Lab recently asked a number of experts and those interested in the field to present their insights and predictions of what the global media landscape might be like. This year's readings were distributed among several topics, but the issues of benefiting from artificial intelligence applications within newsrooms, developing the audience, and meeting its needs, were the most prominent.
How do we benefit from the capabilities of artificial intelligence?
David Cohn, director of research and content development at Advance Local, believes that the discussions about leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence in newsrooms have reached their peak. However, the impact of this technology has not yet reached the level of discourse surrounding it.
David Cohn, director of research and content development at Advance Local, believes that the discussions about leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence in newsrooms have reached their peak. However, the impact of this technology has not yet reached the level of discourse surrounding it.
In his article titled "AI helps us revisit old journalism territory", Cohn suggests developing old practices using artificial intelligence that help to benefit from its unexplored and untapped areas such as:
- Niche Search Engines: Using artificial intelligence to answer questions submitted by the public, a function that was widespread in some American press institutions before the emergence of the Google search engine, but the answers came from journalists.
- Return of citizen journalism: The writer believes that there is an opportunity for artificial intelligence to restore the glow of what was known as the concept of "citizen journalism", which was popular from 2004 to 2012, but its lustre was extinguished with the arrival of social media. Artificial intelligence can ingest the huge amount of information that reaches the public through citizen journalism, and work to filter it and choose the useful ones.
- Re-pivot to video: Many startups have sought to benefit from artificial intelligence to convert text into video, and it has become clear that creating video with artificial intelligence is possible, easy, and inexpensive.
Artificial intelligence can ingest the huge amount of information that reaches the public through citizen journalism, and work to filter it and choose the useful ones.
As for the writer Shakeel Hashim, editor-in-chief of the newsletter specialising in artificial intelligence topics "Transformer", he approaches the subject from the perspective that we should not look at artificial intelligence as a source of concern, but rather we should benefit from it.
In an article titled: “The media reckons with AGI,” he warns of the delay of newsrooms in benefiting from the potential of artificial intelligence and gives an example of what happened to the phenomenon of climate change, which did not receive the attention it deserved despite warnings about it since 1988.
“I fear we may make the same mistake with general artificial intelligence, AI that can achieve or exceed human-level performance across a wide range of cognitive tasks,” says the author. Maggie Harrison Dupré of Futurism examines how AI companies are approaching news production, focusing on the huge overlap expected in 2025 between tech companies and media organisations.
In her article “AI companies grapple with what it means to be creators of news, she argues that as generative AI creeps into the areas of news discovery, delivery, and consumption, both media and tech companies will increasingly find themselves in a strange new digital landscape where tech giants are not just news receptacles, but news creators.
We conclude the articles on AI in the media with “Publishers find the AI era not all that lucrative”, by Ramsus Kleis Nielsen, a professor of communication at the University of Copenhagen, who argues that AI in 2025 will not be as profitable for media as expected because tech companies are not willing to pay for their content. Nielsen believes this could help focus editorial thinking by providing something people will want to care about and perhaps pay for.
The author concludes his article by saying: “So my prediction for 2025 is that most publishers will not get any meaningful revenue from licensing content to tech companies, and that those who do will likely be large publishers who get a small percentage of incremental revenue at most.”
Developing Audiences and Meeting Their Needs
We begin this chapter with an article by Dmitry Shishkin titled: “Why 2025 is all about user needs”. Shishkin believes that the topic of audience engagement has not been given attention by media institutions, and for a long time, it has been treated as a side issue rather than a central goal. Shishkin, CEO of Media Ranger International, says that many newsrooms around the world are working with great enthusiasm to produce their models of audience needs and that they are taking advantage of artificial intelligence tools to provide media content based primarily on audience needs. He adds that it contributes to reaching implementable editorial insights and ideas, by changing the ways of telling journalistic stories.
Geetika Rudra, CEO of the Craft-A-Books Foundation, believes that 2025 should witness a revival of long-form content models. She argues in an article titled: “The longform renaissance” that there are not a few segments of the audience that have become eager for the deep content provided by long-form models. She stresses that despite assumptions about shrinking attention spans, there are signs that there is an audience willing to read long forms.
Writer Geetika Rudra, CEO of the Craft-A-Books Foundation, believes that the year 2025 should witness a revival of long-form content models. She argues in an article titled: “The long-form renaissance that there are not a few segments of the audience that have become eager for the deep content provided by long-form models.
She cites some statistics to support her point:
Video: The average length of high-performing YouTube videos is 20 minutes.
Podcast: 61% of listeners prefer episodes that are longer than an hour.
Books: Print book sales are expected to grow by 25% in 2026.
Newsletters: In 2023, Substack surpassed 2 million paid subscriptions. The average visitor spends 12 minutes reading a single newsletter. These trends are a testament to one thing: when content is compelling and authentic, people are willing to invest their time.
We conclude the audience development and needs section with an article by Lynn Walsh, assistant director of Trust News, titled “Focusing on what people actually need”. The basic idea behind the article is that newsrooms have long produced content based on their vision, preferences, and policies without thinking about what their audience really wants. The author believes that by 2025, news organisations will start designing content that fits people’s real lives and provides news that is not only useful, but also easy to engage with. She adds that news organisations will focus on how people consume news, instead of bombarding their audience with torrents of breaking news, we will see more new news products such as concise end-of-day summaries that give a clear sense of what is important, stories broken down into smaller, more digestible formats such as explainers and visuals, materials that answer common questions people ask, and content that reflects what is happening in their areas of residence.