Media industry

Media industry

As we mentioned earlier this week, podcast consultancy and content company Sounds Profitable has released The Creators: Understanding the Modern Podcast Creator Landscape. The 35-page (plus appendices) presentation slide package covers three broad topics: Format evolution Creator diversity Sustainability challenges The study was fielded by Signal Hill Insights, and queried over 5,000 Americans 18 years and older. Sounds Profitable commissioned an earlier, similar study in 2022.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced plans to sell Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios and streaming service HBO Max to Netflix, following a bidding war that also ended with a hostile takeover bid by Paramount. The planned sale would create a mammoth streaming and production giant with intellectual property rights to beloved franchises including Batman and Harry Potter. It's also sure to draw scrutiny from antitrust enforcers at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Myth. Google Search has changed dramatically. Ten blue links have morphed into search engine results pages (SERP) with zero-click features such as AI Overviews, knowledge panels, and a tab to AI Mode. But SEO is alive - and you need this expertise in your newsroom to help you navigate. An SEO may tell you that users search Google to " Know, Do, Go," that users perform:

AI is becoming a big part of online commerce. Referral traffic to retailers on Black Friday from AI chatbots and search engines jumped 800% over the same period last year, according to Adobe, meaning a lot more people are now using AI to help them with buying decisions. But where does that leave review sites who, in years past, would have been the guide for many of those purchases?

discuss what will happen as the Supreme Court considers whether a president can remove leaders of independent agencies without cause, how the overt signals about immigration and "erasure" in the new National Security Strategy are meant to stir up cultural anxiety in Europe, and the high-stakes merger drama between Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. with guest Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law School and author of the new book The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.

State of play: WBD' s board has 10 days to respond to a hostile takeover bid from Paramount, launched Monday after WBD announced a deal to sell its studio and streaming businesses to Netflix for $83 billion. While the board has said it believes Netflix's offer was superior to Paramount's for financial reasons, it will need to weigh whether choosing to reject Paramount's tender offer could invite shareholder lawsuits.

The first year of the second Trump administration has already seen new heights in unlawful efforts to cut off access to information (and to punish newsrooms for doing their job). From unconstitutionally booting the Associated Press from the Oval Office because of its editorial stance, to creating unlawful press access policies at the Pentagon, the administration is desperately seeking to choke coverage it doesn't like. The currents shaping these efforts are only likely to intensify in 2026.

For 2026, I keep coming back to one truth: The future of journalism depends on our ability to diversify revenue far more intentionally. For years, I believed one of my former employers was among the strongest examples of this model. During my tenure there, they had newsletter sponsorships, events, digital and print advertising, and a clear playbook for how each line supported the others. Today's landscape requires an even deeper level of diversification. It's not enough to have multiple revenue lines.

This past August, clips of the millennial comedian and podcaster Adam Friedland speaking about the war in Gaza collected millions of views online, becoming some of the year's most influential bits of commentary. In the footage, Friedland is slouched in a leather chair on a wood-panelled stage set, wearing a blue suit jacket with jeans, his curly hair foppishly askew. The vibe is casual, but his words have a sober urgency.

Boxing delivered an exceptional slate of marquee fights this year, resulting in significant movement across ESPN's annual list of the top 100 fighters in men's boxing. Two fighters who occupied top-10 spots in 2024 suffered losses in 2025, and a third announced his retirement and has not competed over the past year. Meanwhile, standouts such as Terence Crawford, Dmitry Bivol, Devin Haney, Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez recorded major wins that propelled them higher in the rankings.

In 2026, my prediction (and hope) is that the outlets that matter most to democracy move away from reflexive "gotcha" coverage of politicians and toward a practice that centers voters' lived experience, allows idealism back into the frame, and treats accountability as something deeper than a takedown. Learning to see through voters' eyes At least twice in my career, I have had to cover the unexpected rise of an Indian male politician.

'They're like an invasive species,' one source said. 'They overpower all the resources and make the businesses in those neighborhoods vulnerable. That's where dollar stores can thrive. No matter what community, the cause of food deserts stem from one route, and that's economic disinvestment in vulnerable communities.' Wright's work, which , shows the approach of the nonprofit, Black-led national newsroom with local newsrooms in Atlanta and Gary, Indiana.

"Not only is it 'over,' it was never a thing," an insider told People. "Aoki is learning to navigate her private life in a public sphere. And that can be difficult. However, Kimora was concerned to see her daughter in that kind of relationship due to what she herself went through. When Amanda asked Kimora what her "reaction" was to Aoki and Vittorio's romance, the mom of five replied, "I let my kids make their own mistakes...

I know there are tons of ways to operationalize and measure trust, but trust, at its core, is a belief that someone or something will live up to their proclaimed commitments. I've surveyed people all over the United States (with a hyperfocus on vulnerable communities in the Midwest), and there's a few things that are clear. First, trust is a universal challenge, and people don't trust a lot of things right now.