As young audiences increasingly turn to social media for news, Kashmir's journalists are adapting to algorithm-driven storytelling while grappling with the rise of influencer journalism, shifting audience habits and new ethical challenges.

Kashmir’s new “verification drive” claims to root out impostors, yet its heavy bureaucratic demands mainly sideline the independent freelancers who still dare to report in a shrinking media landscape. But here’s the unsettling question that hangs over the Valley like fog at dawn: who really benefits when the storytellers without institutional shields are pushed out of the frame?