"Audiences following the news closely are disappearing and news avoidance keeps rising, but when I try to be optimistic, I think maybe 2026 will be the year the industry turns things around by taking seriously what digital technologies make it easy to forget. News is not merely the business of producing and distributing journalism; it is about the experience of staying informed."
"In recent decades, many in the industry have operated as though they merely sell individual bits of information - headlines, listicles, scoops, deep dives - in exchange for audience attention. More clicks, more eyeballs, more time spent consuming more content meant more revenue. Users consumed whatever assemblage of bits they happened to encounter in whatever order they happened to encounter them. Every bit competed with every other bit."
"This model never really worked, but it has begun breaking down entirely. Incidental arrivals through search or social media once powered seemingly exponential growth. Now shifting tech company priorities and AI summaries have led to increasingly obstructed pathways if not blocked ones entirely. Meanwhile, it turns out that even news lovers have limits. Most aren't looking to spend more of their lives following the news. They care about the quality of how they spend that time."
Audiences who follow news closely are shrinking and news avoidance is increasing. The industry treated news as discrete information bits—headlines, listicles, scoops—competing for attention and monetized through clicks or reader revenue. That model depended on incidental traffic from search and social platforms, but tech shifts and AI summaries are obstructing those paths. Even engaged consumers have limited capacity and prefer quality over constant consumption. Continuous streams of outrage boost short-term metrics but exhaust audiences. The marketable product is an experience that leaves people informed, empowered, and able to continue their day, not an endless feed of competing bits.
Read at Nieman Lab
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