## Is it time to return to X? In certain parts of the internet, there has been growing talk of a return to X. The obvious competitors – Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon – aren't delivering for many people. Casey Newton has a good reason for going back: > And so, in the coming days, I plan to resume posting on X. I am doing so not because I think it’s any better — it isn’t — but because I have exhausted all of the alternatives. I continue to believe that anyone who can avoid posting on X should. But my calculus about the tradeoffs involved for my own work has shifted: as the stakes of the AI conversation have risen, boycotting X over my disagreements with management has grown both more costly and less effective. If you're reporting on AI, it's hard to avoid X. It's where AI people talk to each other. Some people's reasons I find harder to get my head around: > The only network that compares to X, size-wise, is Threads — but Threads’s algorithm is weirder than X’s now, and the content I see there is relatively boring. My Threads timeline is full of engagement bait without being engaging. And if you want to judge a platform by its owner, “ _I’m grossed out and/or appalled by Elon Musk so I’m going to Mark Zuckerberg’s joint_ ” isn’t a way to avoid being grossed out and/or appalled by the owner. Bluesky and Mastodon are too small for most people to care about — and, worse, they are the networks where politics are, in my experience, unavoidable. Maybe John Gruber – the author of the above – has curated his feed better than me, but that is _absolutely_ not my experience when I return to X. It's actively pushing the most polarising politics at me. It keeps recommending posts by Graham Linehan to me, for example, a man I have never followed, even when he was a beloved presence on Twitter. (_That_ feels like a long time ago now.) But Mathew Ingram has a long and journalistically relevant take on this issue, which is well worth your time: > Casey put his finger on the main problem: if you are interested in the growth of artificial intelligence (or whatever Trump is forcing people to call it now) and the risks and potential benefits and what they say about the nature of consciousness — which I very much am — then Bluesky and Threads and Mastodon are just not going to cut it. All of the leaders of this multi-trillion-dollar industry in the making, whether it’s Sam Altman of OpenAI or Dario Amodei and Jack Clark of Anthropic, or some of the leading scientists behind Google’s DeepMind, are posting on Twitter. Not only that, but some of the industry’s most prominent skeptics and critics are there as well. And they aren’t just posting the occasional quip now and then — many of them are posting long and thoughtful comments about what is happening as it happens, whether it’s the Hugging Face hack or the recent news that some of Anthropic’s new models might be able to replicate themselves using any internet-connected device rather than a data centre. Why some people (including me) are spending more time on TwitterYes, I still call it Twitter. Mostly because I am old and set in my ways, but also because I have spent what feels like most of my life on there — certainly a large portion of my professional life — and for the vast majority of that time it was calledThe Torment NexusMathew Ingram * * * ## Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. Well over 18 months ago, City St George's decided that it was time for a change that's been batted around for over a decade: the MA Newspaper Journalism needed to be rethough. Three weeks ago, our first cohort of MA Journalism students arrived, the first to go through a new, expanded course that incorporates the best of MA Newspaper, MA Interactive and MA Data Journalism. This week? _Press Gazette_ publishes a story about it... City University ends Newspaper Journalism post grad after 44 yearsCourse which boasts many famous alumni replaced with Journalism MA.Press GazettePhin Hubbard One of the story’s co-authors is from the final cohort of the MA Newspaper degree. I was still supervising his final project only two months ago. * * * ## Betteridge's Law applies A good sceptical take on how some people are pitching AI agents: > These AI assistants are like putting an intern in charge of your life. Do you really want to middle-manage all of this, focus on quality control and all, rather than just do the thing yourself? The doing, that friction that it brings, that is the life, that is the work! Do we all want to be middle-managers for AI assistants? – The Waving Cat * * * ## Mercury rising in Derby Paul Linford: > George Allen spent ten years at his hometown paper the Derby Telegraph/Derbyshire Live, rising to the role of head of content. > George […] left the title last month after taking advantage of a voluntary redundancy scheme which saw around 50 journalists leave the publisher. > Now he has set up the Derby Mercury, a new subscription-based website on Substack which promises three ‘long reads’ about the East Midlands city each week. Another town gets a deep reads site on the _Manchester Mill_ model. * * * ## Well, this isn't going to worry media lawyers at all… Thomas Baekdal on a massive leak of data about the public in Denmark, thanks to a company with access to it's _terrible_ security: > Through journalistic work, Danmark Radio (DR) managed to uncover which company it is, but in respect of the investigation, also decided to withhold the information. And then? > So… what do you think happened? Yep… Perplexity immediately identified the company and provided me with a link to their website, showing it to be under construction. This… changes the dynamic of anonymity in news, doesn't it? Note to journalists: AI can now uncover what you are trying to withhold - BaekdalBaekdal is your premium site for media reports and trend analysis. Subscribe from €7.55/monthBaekdalThomas Baekdal Have a great weekend, folks. See you on Monday…

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I have a confession. And a boast. Boast first, then confession. I’ve been teaching and consulting in SEO for the past 14 years. I’ve left newsrooms for the airport after three days with a team, their search traffic already well up. Graphs of increasing visibility and click-throughs in a declining market have delighted clients. While there are people out there who are better or more knowledgeable about technical SEO, I have no false modesty about my skill in getting journalists to do better SEO, and seeing their work get the readers it deserves. I’m _good_ at editorial SEO change management. And now the confession: I’m finding it very challenging to care about it. Last week, I drove along the Brighton seafront, on my way to meet my family for the Ocean Film Festival. I saw the big hoardings up for BrightonSEO. In the past, that has often triggered FOMO – the sense that I really should be there, catching up with the latest news. But this year, I just shrugged, parked and enjoyed sushi and some movies with my wife and daughters. Equally, the News and Editorial SEO Summit (NESS) is running at the time of writing, but I’m, well, only abstractly interested. I’m sure the presentations are great. Some fantastic people of my acquaintance – like Nick Petrie – are speaking. But my interest in SEO as a whole is waning in direct proportion to Google’s declining interest in search. ## The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference Before you jump to conclusions, it’s not because I buy into the “zero click” search future. There will always be some search traffic, either directly or as a reduced volume from LLM responses. This is not an “SEO is dead” piece. SEO is very much alive and well, and I was giving our new MA Journalism students a firm foundation in it just yesterday. In some fields (your money or your life (YMYL) fields, in SEO parlance), it may remain the dominant audience-acquisition tool. But something has changed in the past two years. And you _know_ why. It’s two letters long. Yes, _those_ two. I still read the SEO blogs, and follow the key players in editorial SEO, but the moves are clearly small, incremental. Google’s focus isn’t on improving (or even evolving) the existing search experience. The focus is all on Gemini and the AI overviews. And we know that the returns from our content appearing in AI results are a tiny fraction of what we get from conventional search. ### Have you tried my snake oil? It’s called GEO! Yes, there’s an attempted pivot going on towards GEO – generative engine optimisation – but that’s still very much snake oil right now. Models are changing at such a pace that what works and what doesn’t is evolving faster than you can implement the changes. It’s certainly moving faster than consultants can evolve their decks. Conversely, SEO is moving more slowly than ever. The key principles have settled down after the waves of change we saw around search intent, entities and E-E-A-T. Just as I don’t track every tiny algorithm shift on the social platforms, only the general direction of travel, I no longer feel it’s necessary to track SEO day-to-day. In the end, my apathy exists because the days of SEO as an independent area of focus are over. I don’t believe that it’s possible to build a business just on search traffic any more. Even if it is, it’s profoundly unwise to do so. Too many businesses have died when the single platform they relied on changed the game around them. SEO’s importance has been on the wane for a while, as our business models shift. The AI changes are only accelerating this. But a decline in importance is not the same as irrelevance. ## Just another tool in the toolbox SEO is – and will remain – another tool in our audience toolbox. Still an important one, mind. But a tool. And like most tools, you’ll do far better work with it if you know how to use it in conjunction with the other tools we have in that toolbox. You need to know how to use, when to use and how to deploy it with the most impact. And you also need to know how it fits in with other tools. If you look closely at this year’s NESS schedule, day three isn’t actually about SEO at all. It’s about other audience relationships tools. That’s the future for that event – it’ll have to evolve into something like NEAS: the news and editorial audience summit. As for BrightonSEO? Unless they’re smart, and find a good pivot, it’ll become BrightonGEO, before disappearing in a cloud of hallucinated evidence. And for me? Well, now I’m settling into my expanded role at City St George’s, I’m looking at what I do with my remaining time for consulting and training. For one, I’d like to work with slightly fewer clients, but more intensely. But I’m also going to reshape my courses when I start offering them again. And, as part of that, I think the days of a “pure” SEO course are numbered. Anything I do will have to be as much about what you do with the traffic once you have it as about acquiring it. So, perhaps this is less apathy than a necessary rebalancing of SEO’s role in today’s increasingly audience-centric newsroom. * * * ### Further reading This is an interesting round-up of how newsroom leaders are seeing the shift in the relevance of SEO: Life after SEO: How newsrooms are adapting to the AI search shiftExperts from Axios, the Guardian, and The Athletic explain why building brand authority matters more than chasing traffic in a zero-click worldReuters Institute for the Study of JournalismGretel Kahn This presentation from Clara Soteras has come the closest to persuading me that GEO is not snake oil than anything has so far. She largely does it by the sleight of hand of defining GEO as "good SEO that also works for LLMs", though. Understanding GEO: How to Optimise Content in the New AI Era and Compete Across Google and LLMs - Clara SoterasOn 14 October 2026, I had the pleasure of delivering my workshop, “Understanding GEO: How to Optimise Content in the New AI Era and Compete Across Google and LLMs,” at the FIPP World Media Congress 2026, held at the RIU Plaza España Hotel in Madrid. The session explored how the evolution from Search Engine Optimisation […]Clara SoterasClara Soteras

There are no more terrible words for a journalist and compulsive event blogger to hear than “off the record”. It is manifestly worse than “Chatham House rule”. But those were the exact words said by TikTok staff to a room full of journalists, creator journalists — and those aspiring to be. Fair enough, though. I wasn't at TikTok News's Next Generation event to report on it. I was there to gather information for my students – and make sure I knew how to guide them accurately towards this growing field of journalism. But I think I can get away with some meta-commentary about the event, without breaking the “off the record” rule, and making myself _persona non grata_ with the news team at TikTok UK. And that's what I'll do, after these anodyne and non-rule breaking photos from the event: Record shots of an off-the-record event ## TikTok ❤️ Journalism (for now) First of all, the existence of the event is interesting in its own right. It isn't really a surprise that TikTok has a news partnerships-type team. Facebook, Twitter (as was) and even Reddit did back in the day, although most have gone now. TikTok, however, has a unique problem that the other sites didn't: a reputation as a site where people dance. And I've been to parties for journalists, and believe you me, you don't want to see most of them dancing. If TikTok is to cement its role as the front door to culture for a good swathe of the population, it needs to move beyond that image in the public consciousness, as the number of times the “dancing” problem was mentioned makes plain. The platform _needs_ news in the mix. And as we've heard in the most recent Reuters Digital News Report and at the Future of Media Technology conference (in a panel I've yet to write up), the creator journalist is becoming a significant force in news. ByteDance clearly wants to nurture the next generation of this talent. Should we accept this invitation? Yes. Concerns about the ownership of the platform aside, the big audience rule applies: fish where the fish swim. And for an ever-growing part of the population, TikTok _is_ where they swim. 0:00 /0:14 1× Reassuringly, nothing the assembled panels of experts and working creator journalists said was new to me - or varied significantly from what I've been teaching for some years. There was, perhaps, some difference in emphasis. I've been talking about the need for a three second hook in social video for the past decade - but some suggested that it was tightening towards two seconds or even less. Interesting - and challenging. Equally, the fact that a creator's visible body of work probably only represents a fraction of their actual work is something I need to surface more in my teaching. That's true in two ways: successful creators generally shoot more videos than they publish. Some just don't work, some take too long and the attention moment for that story passes. But also, that 90 seconds to three minutes of video often represents hours of work researching and distilling the essence of the story into an amusing and compelling video. This field of work - what I'm increasingly calling “ambient media” – is often misunderstood as shallow because it's short. We should know that news stories can be compelling and important - and short. The same is true of a vertical video. ## To educate and entertain Yes, Victoria Derbyshire was there. But perhaps the most important, yet incredibly simple, idea I came away was this: > If a video doesn't educate or entertain, it won't work. The best ones tend to do both. A simple but elegant metric to judge our work against. While we need to stay aware that TikTok is a platform, and like so many platforms, a possible trap, we also can't deny that it's a growing way of reaching audiences, so experimentation there is worthwhile. We just need to remember to work on ways of bringing those developed relationships off-platform, too. ## The third “E”: experimentation And the other message? This is not yet anywhere near a calcified format for news. There is no one template for a compelling creator journalist video. Experimentation is still very much at the heart of the growth of news on the platform. Several of the speakers have hugely successful accounts, with fewer than 200 videos to their names. The opportunities are there. The audience is there. The format is the question. A couple of my first-year undergraduates were there, learning and networking. Good for them. This is one field where young journalists with ideas and a commitment to testing and learning can build a career without needing permission from an established publisher..

I do like to keep up with former students’ work. But once in a while, that can be troubling to my mental equanimity. Certainly it was last month, when I was flicking through my emails. I spotted the latest newsletter from an MA Newspaper graduate – Isolde Walters – in which she had some negative things to say about her time here at City (as it was then). Now, I didn't take that criticism personally. I was but a humble visiting lecturer back then, who only taught her for 20 hours of a full Master’s. I was a small drop in the ocean of her learning. But it always saddens me when _any_ student I’ve taught leaves their time at City St Georges’ unhappy with what they got for their outlay – and especially someone as talented and sparky as I remember Isolde being. She was in a very strong cohort, full of some big personalities and talents. For example, she was a contemporary of the late David Knowles, although he was on the MA Interactive, rather than MA Newspaper. Here’s what she said: > To the uninitiated, City is probably the best journalism school in the UK. I’m not sure it merits that reputation and it certainly isn’t selective - if you can pony up the cash for the masters, you’re in - but many, many successful journalists have happened to go through City. It becomes something of a self-perpetuating loop: the alumni heavyweights help out recent leavers and those recent leavers clamber up to become heavyweights who then go on to help recent leavers etc. An old boys’ network of sorts. A few things worth noting here: 1. Because of the way that UK universities are funded right now, there is always pressure to take as many students as we can. As far as I can see – and I have no direct role in recruitment – City St George’s does a good job of walking the line between taking as many students as possible within the constraints of the number of staff we have, and making sure that the people we take have both the abilities and the interest needed to make it through the course and take away value from it. It’s certainly not true that everyone who applies and who can stump up the money gets offered a place. 2. The self-perpetuating loop she describes is absolutely accurate. I mentally call it the alumni flywheel. There’s a reason it works that I’ll come back to because I think it’s important. But yes, we take a very great deal of pride in the fact that we maintain good relationships with our alumni, that they comes back as guest and visiting lecturers, and that working relationships develop between them and recent graduates. So, again, yes, that is an old students’ network. (Given the number of our graduates who are female these days, I can’t quite accept the “old boys” framing.) But – and this is an essential and big but* – the moment we stop turning out graduates who are newsroom-ready, that flywheel stops turning. Our graduates hire our graduates _because they know they can rely on them to be skilled, committed, and ready to work without handholding_. Although, looking to the future, I do think one of the most important paragraph’s in Isolde’s post is this: > I did Newspaper Journalism - and shouldn’t have. Newspaper was the most prestigious one. But I really should have gone for Magazine Journalism which focusses on the things I enjoy and am good at: long form writing, features etc. I am not a news hound, never have been and never will be. Even my papa told me to ‘do the one you actually want to do’. And yes, I suspect she’s right. If I’d done an MA before I went into journalism, I’d have regretted taking the MA Newspaper rather than MA Magazine. I’ve always been a long-form/features/multimedia guy, not a newshound. ## The future of journalism education The world has changed a lot in the decade since Isolde graduated. That shift is why that paragraph of Isolde's has been living rent-free in my head since I read it a couple of weeks ago. It sums up a challenge that really is uppermost in my mind going into the 26/27 academic year — because there is no more MA Newspaper. Our final graduates from that Masters have just completed their degrees. Instead, we’re teaching the first year of our new MA Journalism, with a very marked uptick in numbers. And it will be – and has to be – more than MA Newspaper with the serial numbers filed off. That’s a significantly more challenging thing for those of us in the teaching team, led by the very capable Paul Solman, to approach in 2026 than it was in 2016 – or even in 1995 when I was entering journalism. The old news/features/subs split looks incredibly simple compared to today’s multi-axis journalism world, with short and long form both mattering across word, images, video, and audio – and multimedia aggregations of those. And, perhaps, one of our ongoing challenges in journalism academia will be helping students navigate that. We need to be able to welcome people interested in a career in journalism, and help them find their way into the style of journalism that is going to suit them. And, of course, where they can do financially sustainable work that matters. Check back with me in a year. I might have a better idea of how that will look by then… Anyway, you should read Isolde's whole piece. It's a really fascinating look at how it's felt to be a young(ish) journalist navigating the last decade in the media world: How I got here: A curriculum vitae of sortsAn extremely long and unnecessarily detailed account of my career so far, including Page Three girls, ayahuasca, New York, getting sober and more…Things We Don't Talk About (But I Do)Isolde Walters * * * _*Yes, my sense of humour is informed by my 11 year old. Thanks for noticing._

👨‍💻 __These are live-blogged notes from a session at the Future of Media Technology conference. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. Post will be improved in the coming days (and this part of the warning removed).__ ### Panel * Dan Rua, CEO, Admiral * Anna Sbuttoni, deputy head of digital, _The Times_ and _The Sunday Times_ * Liz Wynn, chief support officer, _The Guardian_ * **Chair** : Sarah Ebner, editorial and strategy consultant * * * ## How do we define visitor yield? **Liz Wynn** : I think visitor yield sounds very reductive. I think it means maximising the engagement and support potential of the audience. What really matters is to get back to the fundamentals of how you deliver for your audience. **Anna Sbuttoni** : The whole conversation is moving away from volume, views and reach – and to value. But also the value we give to a subscriber? It’s not necessarily just about volume. It’s about find ways of measuring engagement — both in terms of how often they’re coming to us, and what actions they’re taking. Not only that, but it’s a good discussion because it incentivises quality and good journalism. Getting them to download the app is the key thing. Over 70% of the readers use the app. **Dan Rue:** What’s the next thing you can do to move that visitor along the chain of engagement. There are dozens of steps — and you can cultivate that process over time. When you start a relationship in real life, you don’t jump straight to marriage. You introduce yourself, you have a date, a meal, a holiday. **LW** : We think a lot about shared goals — how can all parts of the business work towards that relationship. We think a lot about frequency, about triggering habit. We have a shared goal are community. The moment of departure can be a trigger for return. You need the habit, the impulse to return. These things really matter: the newsletter, visitors signing in, and finally the app. All roads lead to the app. ## Areas of focus in audience growth **AS** : We’ve introduced a new metric called the daily return rate. What is the key thing we want to drive? Daily habit. And we made that a north star we’re all driving towards. The metric is daily active users divided by monthly active user expressed as a percentage. It incentivises quality, and that has to be the message for everyone, including the newsroom. We have a whole new emphasis on community, and we have a new head of community, Rachel Duffy. **LW** : The Guardian is investing in more innovation around our editorial — particularly multimedia and community building. It’s not purely an off-platform thing, but it enriches the core community. The return of community is really important. **DR** : There are a couple of things that are almost implied in what you’ve discussed. Firstly, there’s a commitment to the overall journey. That’s really critical — and it needs to come from the top. You also need unifying metrics and the teams aligned about the idea that it’s a single visitor journey. If we’re going to have a relationship with that person, we require a caretaker of that journey. ## How is AI impacting what you do? **LW** : We’re invested to make sure we have better visibility of the audience data. The possibilities that technology and AI lend to this space are really exciting. I think there is a force for change there. Looking after the plumping as well as the intent is critical. **AS** : We’re testing using AI to recommend next actions. A lot of the community team’s time used to be comment moderation — but AI has brought that workload down. It’s a really clear win — it’s solved a hard, horrible job and freed up time to innovate. **LW** : We’ve been super powering our predictive models with AI. We’ve had some very successful pilots of ML-enabled predictive model techniques. **DR** : AI is infused in everything we do across the journey — it’s journey optimisation, but we also use it in engagement and conversation with visitors. The newest thing they do is the visitor copilot, which tunes the content into a conversational experience. ## Is there a danger that publishers are focusing on existing readers over acquiring new ones? **LW** : We have a significant and valuable advertising business alongside our supporter revenue. It’s always a balance about how heavily you go for an intervention to deepen the relationship, like a sign-in request. As traffic trends change, we need to be present wherever our audiences want us to be. That has a dual purpose — it’s powerful in the upper funnel, but it does also drive engagement in of itself. **AS** : Reach is still important when it’s meaningful reach — when you’re consciously thinking about who you are going over with this piece, when you’re targeting people who are more likely to subscribing to _The Times_. A lot of our off-platform work is about brand consideration. There’s a complete switch and change in how we approach our social video formats — putting the journalists front and centre in that. We’re “heroing” our people for the right audiences. Social is essential still at _The Times_. **DR** : There’s an ongoing risk of just renting audiences on platforms rather than investing in your existing ones. ## Audience Q&A ### The Guardians stopped asking audiences to support a particular beat. Why? **LW** : We do some of that still, but we want our audiences to understand why we’re different and why our funding is so different, so we do choose elements of our coverage to foreground. Our messaging has been tested quite throughly, and we have the scale to do A/B test quite quickly. ### How many Times subscribers come for the games, and move to the content? **AS** : Our puzzles are an important part of driving habit. We’ve switched into quick play games — we’ve recently launched Picle, which you should play. We use images from _The Times_ archive, and you have to guess the year and the location. But you learn something new every time. ### One actionable takeaway? **AS** : Distinctiveness and personality, and focus on what’s worth paying for and what you can’t get anywhere else. **DR** : We have free tag to size the revenue leakages that normal analytics don’t pick up — do that. **LW** : Foreground your direct connections with your audience. Everything you can do there is important.

## Jon Slade, CEO, _Financial Times_ 👨‍💻 __These are live-blogged notes from a session at the Future of Media Technology conference. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. Post will be improved in the coming days (and this part of the warning removed).__ Jon’s talk started with a lot of very familiar notes: this shift away from pure reach metrics, a more sophisticated understanding of our relationships with subscribers. Nothing, in fact, that we haven’t been hearing for a while from conferences like this. But then he said something that would have actually made me cheer, if I’d finished my first cup of coffee: “It all starts from the audience.” Oh, what sweet words to hear. Not “it all starts from the story”, or “it’s all about the news.” It’s all about the audience. This, my friends, is my song, and it’s becoming a chorus. But what does that look like in practice? Dominic Ponsford pointed out that the _FT_ has an unusually high number of younger readers. And that’s no accident. “We have put a lot of time and effort into building our younger audiences,” said Slade. ## How the FT woos younger audiences He explained that he tries to speak at a school or university once a month. He talks to them about where they get their news, and what websites they trust. It’s clear from those conversations that they won’t default to coming to you – you have to give them a reason to head to a product. There were numerous micro efforts around the company on attracting young audiences, so they brought them together, with a target of 350,000 recognised readers under 35. Not necessarily subscribers, but registered and identifiable individuals. They recognise that they won’t convert to subscribers immediately, and certainly not in this calendar year. And that was a mindset shift for them. So the Future Audiences intuitive was born. There’s a range of projects, raging from work on social content to a Substack for Alphaville, which has grown really fast, and which converts really well. FT Schools make the FT free for anyone under 18 if the school registers for it. Their aim is, as Slade, puts it, to build relationships “from schoolroom to the boardroom”. “People are drawn to quality journalism because they trust it,” said Slade. “Usually, they start because someone in a position of authority told them they should trust it. But today young people are more looking horizontally for signals of trust, from social platforms.” ## Surviving the AI age The _FT_ ’s approach to Ai? Slade sums it up as “we think we can be both the data and the destination in the AI age”. But how? “Invest in journalism, and focus on things that can’t be replicated in a chat window,” he said. Oh, he knows how to say things I’ll like. On the data side, they want a big red button to pull the live feed from the AI companies if they misuse it, or fail to attribute — and licensing agreements give them to do that. Uncontrolled theft of the content is a different matter. “So there’s defence – how do you stop them stealing content? We’ve built their tools to do that.” ## Fighting content theft with tools and deals A startling figure: In one eight-hour window their tools detected 1.23 million access request from one trial account, from a range of IP addresses and countries. “That’s unlicensed crawling. That’s theft,” said Slade. “We need a regulatory regime to stop this happening”. That’s the stick they want — but ether’s also a content carrot in play. “We want to develop marketplaces where the FT can be the destination as well as the data.” And the AI companies voracious desire for content is the carrot. He points out that they require fresh data to keep their product current. And that means they need to provide a financial incentive to people to create that fresh content. They’ve already done many deals with AI companies, but they take a lot of time, and there are no standards in this space yet. “There is a safe way to be a supplier, if we get the terms right,” he said. > “Everyone’s really good with change — until it’s them who needs to change” ## Audience Q&A ### Does FT Edit work? It was originally aimed at a younger audience. What they found was that creating a single stand-alone app is really hard and expensive, and discoverability is tough. So, it’s now integrated it into the main app. It works well both as a downgrade product to keep existing subscribers, or as a starter product. ### How are the FT’s one chatbot experiments going? This is Ask FT, built on top of 25 years of FT journalism. You have to work really hard to make sure that the answers are accurate. You should introduce prompts to the audience — suggesting the starts of questions people should ask because they often don’t know where to start. But it’s working well. ### Does social long form work for reader acquisition? “I don’t tink I can give you a good answer to that. I don’t think it’s just an off-platform experience — homepage video is working well. The longer form? It’s an upper funnel development tool.”

When I wrote yesterday that I felt that I was on the cusp of a new era in my working life, I wasn’t expecting that to be confirmed so very quickly. Earlier on, I discovered that the old Next Conference site, which I contributed to for over 14 years, was now redirecting to the homepage of Accenture in Germany. Given that the site only stopped publishing back in April, when a strategic change of direction led to the cancelling of this year’s event, that was much sooner than I expected. My work isn’t lost – I have multiple back-ups of my writing there over the decade or so I worked with them – over 1000 posts, in all – but it is gone from the web. I survived my “strategic realignment” courtesy of a lamp post. My work didn't service one decided by a budget-setter. And that really hammers home that this feels like the end of an era — and reminds us how fragile online archives are. ## My post-full time journalism career Since I went self-employed in 2012, the vast majority of my writing has only appeared in a few places: this site, my more personal blog – and the NEXT Insights blog. The latter was my first client when I left RBI in 2011, and I worked with them for 14 years, with a small slow down in the early pandemic. To see much of that body of work just gone from the main internet is slightly shocking. Some of it can still be found on the conference’s Medium account. And, of course, the Wayback Machine has just about the whole site. But a body of work, swept away by (presumably) a corporate cost/branding decision. The internet is both remarkably robust — you can still read almost everything I've written on this site over 23 years — and shockingly ephemeral, since a single decision can wipe work out entirely. Many of the blogs I launched at RBI back in the 2000s now only exist via the Wayback Machine. Years of work, by dozens of people, abandoned and scrubbed from the record. And, unlike with paper publications, there won’t be copies stored in the legal deposit libraries for future generations to look back at. ## Preserving the journalistic record I’m a natural archivist. I think we should keep our journalism online and accessible for as long as we can – because we never know when that old story, that old quote, that old revelation could become relevant again. But, all too often, the closure or merger of a title leads to the loss of the archives. My work for my first two journalism jobs only existed in paper copies, but would be findable with enough time in the libraries. The same would apply to my decade on _Estates Gazette_ — but all of my work there was also posted online. Does that online content still exist given the sale of the title a year or so back? Difficult to tell, given that much of the content is behind a paywall, but I can find articles of mine going back to the 1990s, including what might well have been my first piece there, so I suspect it does. It saddens me that publishers are withdrawing from having their work archived by the Internet Archive, because of worries over AI using it as a training backdoor. It makes the legacy of our online work all the more fragile. Keeping good digital archives is a service to the future of journalism. I wish more people paid attention to it. For example, I wonder how many of today’s Substack users keep regular backups of their content there. How much of today’s discourse from the internet will be lost as .substack.com sites evaporate at some future date, just as all the .typepad.com ones did last year? As one poster on the Facebook Archivists Think Tank group put it: > I was browsing online tonight and found out that Typepad is defunct when I clicked on a link in an article. Typepad was the hosting service for my late friend Marianna's blog. How much of it is archived and how much is lost forever I don't know. But it's a reminder not to assume that "the Internet is forever." No, the internet certainly is not forever.

I’m back. My six-week break from the site wasn’t planned, but it proved to be necessary. After my accident, back in March, I just didn’t stop. Sure, I had a week recuperating, but then I carried on working, around the follow-up appointments, and the surgery, and all the rest of it. And that then plunged me into my daughter leaving primary school, and the summer marking season and… … and I realised I needed to slow down, or I was going to burn out massively before Christmas. So, I did. I did the work I _needed_ to do – and no more. I disconnected from the web, and social media, and my email as much as I could afford to. Carefully, I fit in the work I _had_ to do around spending time with my daughters, and generally tried to decompress from the internet firehose. It was hard at first. Part of me was still panicking about losing my two longest-established streams of work: my training via journalism.co.uk and my writing work for NEXT Conference, both killed by a change of ownership (one in a matter of months, one took years…). But, it was clearly the end of an era, I had money in the bank, and I’d had a serious injury. Some R’n’R was needed. ## My plans for 2026 and beyond So, I’ve had a slow, digitally light summer, and feel much the better for it. Or, at least, I would if the family hadn’t managed to catch ‘flu in the last week. (And I mean ‘flu, the proper “wouldn’t get out of bed for £50”-type, not a cold). But here’s what’s next: * * * ## Lecturing I’m upping my hours at City St George’s. The new head of department, the ridiculously supportive Karen, had been hinting at it for a while, and the wonderful Kath, who runs the undergraduate courses and the podcasting masters, had been rather more direct about it. I’ll now be working for CSG four days a week, and myself for one. I was reluctant to give up my independent consultancy entirely, but the prospect of a more stable income source as my girls get older and more expensive, but also the chance to build some things at the university — well, it was too tempting. ### Consultancy That shift in my working balance means I will be more selective about the clients I work with on a consultancy and training basis. Now I don’t _need_ the work, I can throw my passion into those I care about. ### Training There will be more training courses coming from me in the near future – but in different ways than in the past. More on that in the upcoming weeks. * * * One side-benefit of all of this, is that I truly hope I’ll have a bit more time to work on this blog. I desperately miss it as both a place to work out what I’m thinking by forcing myself to write it down, and as an outboard brain, a backup of the links and ideas I’ve gathered from elsewhere in my work. As my shifting role at City St George’s focuses my work, so I can focus my writing here to match. Look, I know that’s a bit vague. There’s a lot of moving pieces to sort out (including official confirmation of my hours shift…). But as soon as they land, and I can talk more about what I’ll be doing, you will all be the first to know. So, anyway, great to see you again. How’ve you been…?

Interesting, and not unexpected, move from the team at Ghost, the CMS I use to run this site. John O'Nolan: > Ghost now includes built-in GEO tools that generate the files AI systems expect and provide Markdown versions of your public content, which you can activate in your admin panel under **Settings → Meta data** If you're wondering what the hell GEO is, it's “generative engine optimisation” – making your site more likely to be found and process by AIs for use in their responses. Some people know it as AEO: “answer engine optimisation”. Both are basically the same thing. So, should I turn it on? The Ghost team acknowledge the dilemma indirectly: > We understand that not everyone wants to engage with AI, so this feature is off by default for existing sites. If you'd like to enable it, simply toggle it on in Settings. Otherwise, there's nothing you need to do; it will remain switched off. I'm tempted, on a experimental basis, just to see it it makes any discernible difference to the dribble of traffic I do get from LLMs already. The paid content on the site isn't exposed to the crawlers: > Only publicly available content is included. Members-only and paid posts are listed with their public title and excerpt, but their protected content is not. Private sites don’t serve these files at all. So, I wouldn't be exposing anything that isn't already freely accessible for the AI trainers to crawl. I'd just be making it easier for them. I suspect I will end up turning it on. I've always used this site for experiments, some successful, some much less so. But I thought I'd canvas some opinions first…

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Is Meta treading the path followed by Yahoo, MySpace and even AOL into cultural irrelevance? Julia Angwin thinks so, in a piece from a couple of months ago: > I believe the company — one of the most powerful media organizations in the world and one of the most valuable members of the S&P 500 — is at the start of a long, slow decline that will trigger aftershocks to our economy and our society. There's much to think about in her piece - but also some things to argue with. The lack of mentions of Instagram, a Meta property highly used by people of all generations, is a significant weakness in her argument. Still, this is a fair point: > Death is different on the internet. Lifeless companies like AOL and Yahoo are still technically with us. You can visit their websites. They have customers. They may even be profitable, as they cut staff and monetize their last remnants of traffic. But they are, as the kids say, peak cringe. Many teenagers wouldn’t be caught dead with an AOL account, a Yahoo email address — or a Facebook profile. When I ask our year one undergraduates who uses Facebook, tow hands going up is a big number these days. Those that do use it, only use it for Facebook Marketplace. It feels like Meta is slowly losing its position of cultural dominance – and that tends to be a one-way journey. ## Meta's pervert glasses Rather more recently, one of Meta's attempts to move into the mainstream, of tech again seems to be backfiring. Meta Glasses – the hot product for the forward-thinking geek last Christmas – are developing the “ick” factor: > I saw all these comments about if you wear those glasses you're basically a predator or a creep, and I was like, 'oh, maybe it's not a good idea to have those,'" [Will Kujawa, a freelance video producer] told Engadget. But he says he understands why people have concerns. "I didn't really think that through all the way ... there are a lot of times where it's not appropriate to wear cameras on your face. And even though I would have no intention of do[ing] anything creepy with them, it didn't even occur to me [that] other people just assume that automatically." _Futurism_ is even more direct about it: > The wearables have become so alienating that many people have taken to simply referring to the shades as “pervert glasses.” For years, _Daring Fireball_ 's John Gruber has characterised Facebook as a company with little taste, but I think it runs deeper than that. Its senior leadership are now so disconnected from the average human being, that they have very little understanding of how their products will be received in the world. And, as a result, it's speed running the same curve that Google Glass went through, with their users eventually shunned as “Glassholes”. Facebook is in no danger of shutting down – but unless something changes at the top of Meta, irrelevance feels like its long-term fate. A “me, too” AI product will not save it. And, frankly, given how toxic it has become, that might be a good thing.

Three months ago today, I tripped up a kerb while crossing a roundabout, and smashed my head on a lamppost. The time since has been something of a journey, from the initial stay in hospital, to my initial recuperation in Bristol, to eye surgery, and now working with the optician to get my sight as close to it was before the accident as they can. It has not been an easy process. Having surgery on a traumatised eye is tricky. The sort of laser surgery I had is normally done with only a topical anaesthetic and a lens pressed onto the eyeball — but my traumatised eye couldn’t tolerate that. So, oil the end, oral sedation and local anaesthetic were needed. Although I’ve been discharged from the care of the eye hospital, my left eye will never be quite the same again, and is at a (very) slightly increased risk of retinal detachment. We’re experimenting with contacts lens power to find out what will give me the best vision they can. And, of course, I will always have very visible scars on my forehead. Scenes from a recovery I’ve kept working through it all as best as I can. No workshops for clients were cancelled – I’ve done three in the last few weeks – and the worst that happened at City St George’s is that some marking was a week late (with approval). I suspect that this is the last time I’ll write about this. I’m accepting the scars and the eye issues as my new normal. Sometimes I forget about the eye problems, as my brain gets better at editing out the floaters, and sometimes I can see them clearly. Sometimes I forget about the scars, and sometimes they feel uncomfortably tight, or I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and do a double take. But most of all, it has me thinking about how fragile our existences are. I could easily have been brain-damaged, split my skull or lost an eye. It has me thinking a lot about what I want to accomplish in how many years I have left. I wouldn’t say I had an encounter with mortality, as much as caught its eye across the street, and was reminded of an imprecise appointment in the future. Change has happened, change is coming. That’s been the lesson of the last three months. Onwards!

Google just missed its climate goals again -- and the culprit is a technology that it's been pouring resources into.

Exciting news from the Audiencers Festival, which I’ve always wanted to attend, but never had my applications accepted, about a project one of my former students is involved with – although not everyone agrees, as you’ll see. Over to Charlotte Tobitt at Press Gazette: > Wired is launching a new forum-style app which lets readers interact with its editorial team. > The app, said to be launching “very soon”, is set to feature forums on which subscribers can interact with Wired journalists about the title’s key coverage areas across tech and politics. > Arielle Goldstein, audience development manager at Wired, said the app will serve as a “community power play” and is one of several ways the brand is aiming to keep readers on its own platforms rather than social media. This is an interesting experiment? Another step forwards in the news business’s careful return to owned community building, rather than handing everything over to the social platforms, right? Well, journalist and former _Guardian_ technology editor Charles Arthur doesn’t think so: > Oh, sure, the thing every journalist absolutely wants more than anything else in the world is to have readers directly contacting them in a forum to tell them what they thought of what they wrote, and interacting with each other to discuss the content. More. Than. Anything. So, yeah, not universally welcomed as an idea. ## The community backlash I’m a dedicated reader of Charles’s (mostly) daily newsletter, The Overspill. It’s an invaluable source of compelling links with some analysis. But, for once, I’m going to take issue with his commentary. Why? Well, to give you an idea, he asks some questions which I can answer, in part: > And has the Audience Development Manager (who one suspects has not done a lot of direct interacting with that audience) considered how the forum is going to be moderated and who is going to pay for that? Arielle has spent a couple of years as a community editor at The Telegraph, which has pivoted hard into community as paper of its membership revenue. So yes, she’s worked in an environment where professional moderation is need, and the costs and tech involved are known. Has she spent as long interacting with the _WIRED_ audience? No. She’s relatively new to the position. But Condé Nast’s audience strategy is under the aegis of Sarah Marshall, who has been in the trenches for the best part of 20 years, so knows what she’s doing… > Does she not know the history of what happened to comments on news sites? She should do. She’s had to sit through several of my lectures on this topic… Arielle is a graduate of one of our journalism Masters at City St George’s, and she took my Audience Strategy elective, which goes into the history and challenges of community management at scale, as part of the module. ## Community versus comments > This is a terrible idea. How long do we give it to survive from launch – six months? Nine? Maybe. Certainly, there is a chance it will fail. But there is a big – not transformative, but still big – between the community efforts of 20 years ago and those of today. And that’s usually that today’s efforts prioritise paying members over free “drive by” commenting. To go back to the _Press Gazette_ piece: > “So you might be thinking to yourself, can’t people just go to Reddit for that? The answer is no, because our journalists aren’t hanging out on Reddit. They will be in the app, they will be able to answer your questions in the app, and really drive discussion.” > She added that this means a paid subscription will offer a “rapport with the subject matter expert who you’ve been reading for years, and who you want to continue to build a relationship with”. So, yes, this is a community offer for paid members. That’s a very different ball game from the old days of comment, when it was open to anyone with an email address. This is an increasingly common approach. You’ll often find sites like _404 Media_ adopting this approach. They even tout it as a benefit of membership: ## The problem of pay-to-access community In essence, you swap one problem for another. With “open to all” community building, you tend to get the difficulties of scale. The volume and toxicity of comments are difficult to manage. With “paid members only”, you have the issue of getting _any activity at all_. You’re working with a much smaller pool of potential community members, and that means you have fewer conversations starters and regular users. Success or failure comes down to the efforts of the team in developing and building _community_ , not just commenting. So this effort could fail: but it’s just as likely to fail through a lack of interaction than a surfeit of it…

Carole Cadwalladr: > “Welcome to a Hay first,” I said. “An author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if Mark Zuckerberg is an arsehole.” The stage was at this year’s Hay Festival. And the “Sarah” in question is Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the book about the early years of Facebook _Careless People_. The reason for the hostage situation? Facebook has a legal injunction to stop her, a former high-level employee, talking about the book. As the other panelist, Tim Wu, put it: > “This is censorship,” […] “This is a demonstration that some of the worst abuses in our time are not confined to kings, emperors, governments … but to a class of companies that have assumed the sovereign affect, and seek to assert their power the same way that some of those despotic nation states do.” I read Careless People last year. I could barely put it down. I read it in the sofa in the journalism office between lectures. I read it on the train home, rather than my preferred activity on that train (napping). It was compelling in the way that a horrible accident is compelling: you have to look, even thought you know what you’re seeing is horrible. It is the story of one woman’s loss of faith in a company that she, rightly, thought could change the world. And her horror in the way it did so. As Carole explains: > But the strength of the book is not the details drawn from documents about Facebook’s relationship with China. That’s what made headlines at the time of publication. Far more revelatory, in my view, is the gossip: it’s seeing who these people really are, up close, mask off. The title is bang on: these are careless people. ## Let everybody know about the Careless People So, here’s what you can do: read the damn book. And then we can all create the “Wynn-Williams Effect”: > Activist arbitrators (and courts) may well have the power to issue orders to Wynn-Williams to tell her she can’t promote her book. But they can’t order me — or you—not to promote her book. And if such improper orders triggered 10,000 others to promote her book in response, such orders would become self-defeating. > So, inspired by the Streisand Effect, let us launch the Wynn-Williams Effect: > **If a whistleblower is ordered by a court or arbitrator not to discuss or promote or explain a published work, then we all should discuss and promote and explain that published work for her. At least, any of us not employed by or profiting from that promotion.** That’s Lawrence Lessig, American law professor and founder of Creative Commons. And I could not agree with him more. We, as journalists, should absolutely not stand by while this kind of censorship is imposed. And, for those of you on the social platforms beat, there’s more you can do, just as Carole is doing: > My message to other present and former employees is: where are you? Your silence is complicity. Find a backbone. Speak up. Email me or another journalist. What’s the worst that these tech companies can do? Some absurdist theatre in the rolling Welsh hills? Grab your copy from Bookshop.org, Amazon or Apple Books.

When you’re flicking through your RSS reader, this is not the sort of thing you want to see: > Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends. I didn’t really know Om, but I’ve been reading him for the best part of a quarter of a century. I've regularly linked to his work from here. His original blog, _GigaOm_ was one of the first blogs I followed regularly, and early in my blogging career, a link from him was one of the first taste I had of how much traffic a power blogger could send. And that wasn’t even his main blog, it was a side-project that he ran for the non-resident Indian community, linking to a photo post of mine that featured an (attractive) NRI woman. We had a brief email exchange after that. And never communicated again. But I kept on reading him, happy to know that he was, sometimes at least, reading me too. And in the decades since, he remained a consistent voice, finding the narrow path between tech boosterism and tech cynicism. He’s precisely the sort of voice we need in the midst of the AI shift – and we’ve lost him. I’ll leave more detailed celebrations of the man to those who knew him better (I’ve linked to a couple below), but my reading time will be so much poorer for the lack of his insights. Thank you, and rest in peace. * * * John Gruber: > Om and I often sat next to each other at Apple keynotes. This was not at all surprising or odd, insofar as we’d been friends for 20 years. Folks at Apple PR knew that we were close, and would often pair us together in post-keynote media briefings. I always enjoyed being paired with him. He asked keen questions. He saw through bullshit. He found holes in arguments. He took everything in. When I felt overwhelmed, he seemed serene. Om always seemed serene, period. His own photography reflects his presence. * * * Mathew Ingram: > Some of my best memories are sitting with Om at a conference or at the Indian place he loved, or on one of our trips to Amsterdam or London for conferences, and talking about what was happening in tech and who was worth watching or listening to. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he knew everyone — and he knew where a lot of the bodies were buried, and who was just a lot of hot air in a suit jacket, and he was not afraid to say so (longtime friend Matt Mullenweg says he wants to organize an OmFest to celebrate Om).

Can you remember the last time a technology was sold to you purely through fear? If you exempt AI, I can’t remember the last time one was marketed to us not through its benefits, but through the downsides of _not_ adopting it. But that’s _precisely_ what we’re getting with AI: fear-based marketing. If you don’t adopt AI, you’re screwed, or so we’re being told. And that’s a problem. New technologies need an exploration phase, a period of time when people muck around with them and see what works. And we’re being denied that as we’re chased into mass adoption by the fear of mass-unemployment or business failure. ## Fear is an effective marketing strategy The reason for this is clear. As Kevin Indig put it on Search Engine Land: > Fear sells. Tapping into our primal fight-or-flight response is a sure way to get attention. And layoffs act as a double agent in this environment: They make companies that underperform or overhired look good (“Look, we don’t need as many people anymore because we’re so innovative!”) and feed the substitution positioning narrative. And AI companies _really_ need to sell their products in a way that previous disruptive technologies didn’t. OpenAI is losing money hand-over-fist: > 2025 — OpenAI Had $13.07 Billion In Revenue, $34 Billion In Costs and Expenses, and $20.92 Billion In Losses, with a net loss attributable to the company of $38.53 Billion These are almost unimaginable numbers, purely subsidised by investors, to keep the costs of AI to consumers and businesses low. ## Paying the true cost of AI And when those consumer costs start to approach the reality, then suddenly panic starts hitting users: > Consulting giant Accenture is trying to figure out how to stop non-technical workers from blowing through companies’ AI token budget on trivial tasks like converting PDFs to presentation slides, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media. Across the industry Accenture is seeing “soaring token spend,” according to the audio. It was only a few months ago that Accenture was requiring senior staff to use AI: > An Accenture spokesperson told CNBC the report was correct. They added: “Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work. That requires the adoption of the latest tools and technologies to serve our clients most effectively.” The sudden reversal of that shows how much we are all, collectively, shoving our head deep in the warm, comforting sand about the true costs of AI. And even todays successful projects might look less appealing if we have to pay what AI compute _actually costs_. _(Full disclosure: Accenture was a client, until a month ago.)_ ## Hello inflation, my old friend We won’t be able to hide from those costs for much longer, even if we don't use AI. The second order impacts are hitting. After years of tech getting cheaper and more accessible, AI is causing a rapid reversal. Need a new Mac, like I do? I have bad news: > The iPhone maker has hiked the prices of some laptops and tablets by almost 20%, saying the electronics industry is facing an "unprecedented challenge" due to an "extraordinary surge" in demand for chips to power AI data centres. And don’t think you can escape the bad news through playing on your gaming console: > Not long after Apple's announcement, Xbox said it had decided to significantly raise the price of its popular gaming console for the second time in less than a year due to the current "components crisis". The Microsoft-owned company said on Thursday that the price of its basic console will go up by $100 (£75) to $499, while the price of a console with more memory will go up by $150, to $749. New prices will take effect from August. AI's insatiable need for more and more computing power is sucking out the RAM and chips needed for our digital lifestyles, making them massively more expensive. And all that’s before we even start touching on the environmental costs of all this. ## We need to slow down on the AI panic I think it’s clear that the power of AI is being massively over-hyped right now. I’m hearing from more and more sources that the majority of their first wave AI projects are failing because the results aren’t good enough, or the time needed to check its work negates any gains. The upwards pressure on AI token cost is only worsening that. We need to step back and remember that we _know how to do this_. Fear is blocking us from seeing what to do. We have to stop panicking, stop trying to rewire our businesses overnight, and start _playing_ , cheaply and experimentally, until we understand what this technology is – and isn’t. Then, and only then, can we rewire our businesses based on what we learn. And I’d bet a significant chunk of cash that was AI is good for will turn out to be new different things we weren’t doing before, rather than just replacing existing processes. Because that’s what technology _always_ does. Play, learn, integrate. Think, analyse, share experiences. There’s reasons to be afraid, but they should weight more heavily on the heads of the AI company CEOs with the unimaginable burn rates and the insignificant incomes than it does on us. If they fail, their technology will survive. And we will find economic, effective and useful ways of using it. But only if we stop being afraid, and start playing.

Earlier this week, the annual Reuters Institute _Digital News Report_ , and so I dragged myself out of my bed at an ungodly hour to get to Canary Wharf for 9am. But it was worth it. Hearing the discussion around a report that proves that we have crossed a tipping point on how people find their news is a good trade for the couple of hours of sleep I lost. After the usual scene setting from Reuters employees like Joanna Webster, global editor, agency news strategy and Rebecca Vincent, director of innovation and insight, as well as Mitali Mukarjee, director of the Reuters Institute, the new lead author Jim Egan took the stage to talk about the core changes in the report. ## Jim Egan: the platformisation of news Jim Egan, lead author of the Digital News Report It’s easy to get lost in the details of the data of the report, but as lead author Jim Egan pointed out as he introduced the findings, there’s lots of instability in the data this year. And that underpins it as a year of some dramatic changes after a more stable few years preceding it. However, he was clear on the key message: the platformisation of news. Indirect discovery of reporting via third-party social media platforms is now the dominant vector. I suspect that will a surprise for most people reading this, but for different reasons. It was only a few years ago that I felt compelled to write about the fact that social media isn’t dead because that seemed to be the received wisdom in the industry. And indeed, it isn’t. It’s dominating news discovery. Our perspective was skewed by the shift in platforms and the drop in referral traffic from social media. For others – probably the younger readers, it’s a surprise that it hasn’t been the dominant mode of discovery until now. And, of course, one clear result of this that the younger generation will be most attuned to is the rise of what we’re calling “news creators” as a major force in the journalism world. ### The declining web As Egan went on to explain, this in is the context of _another_ significant drop in trust in journalism after a few more stable years. And news is becoming less central to people’s lives. They’e abandoning websites as they once abandoned newspapers. “There’s a drift away from traditional sources to platforms – shifting away from owned digital properties, which are now behaving like traditional formats,” said Egan. “They are no longer the preferred sources of news for any age group.” However, interestingly, and revealingly, trust in individual news brands is holding up quite well. Understanding _why_ and which brands are making this work for them is like to be a critical skill for navigating the next decade in journalism. ### Podcasts, TV, and AI News podcasts are not growing significantly (apart from Australia). That’s not podcasts generally — just news ones. Is that a question of saturation, or of formats? Something to watch. The pivot point between TV and social media as key sources of news appears to be around 35, with the older cohort more likely to get news from the TV. Worryingly, news disengagement is growing, particularly among the younger generation. More people under 35 were not consuming any Iran news at all than were following it. And ⅓ of under-35s in the US are not using TV or web-delivered news at all. Use of chatbots has gone from 7% to 10%, and usage of chatbots in the UK is among the lowest in the world- 4%. Audiences not really found a single use they love for news from AI chatbots. The reach of UK news brands hasn’t changed much. But in the US, there are big drops for some news brands. ### Trust 29 of 48 markets are seeing drops in trust. And there are other indications of a nervous audience in the data, including growing concerns about fake news. News avoidance is up — 48% globally, 50% in the UK. It’s more marked among women. “People are more concerned about the trustworthiness of the general news ecosystems, but still trust existing news brands — even if their relationship is more elongated,” said Egan. Trust in news generally is higher than that that found on social media or AI. UK trust levels in brands have barely changed. In the US, trust in some major news brands has gone down more than general trust events have – a symptom of the very charged political environment of the US right now. ### Video Pretty much all growth in online video is going to third-party platforms. Publishers are losing both market share and seeing absolute terms decline in video traffic. And it’s not all about short form and mobile-friendly video. Younger people are doing more longer form consumption on YouTube. And the TV set is taking on a new role — as container for YouTube or other apps. Linear, broadcast TV might be dying as a format, but the device itself might have a bright future ahead. ### Creators I think myself pretty close to this space, but even I was surprised to hear that a quarter of respondents globally are using news creators as part of their regular news diet. In some countries, the percentage is much higher. For example, in Thailand, that’s nearly half of people using news creators. Reassuringly, only 13% of people globally are finding news creators to meet all their news needs. But they seem to be playing a complementary role in the news diet: creator usage seems to drive people to use the established brands more. Thankfully, only 3% of people globally are relying exclusively on creators. Creators are easier to understand and more entertaining — but less trusted. But the more people use them, they prefer them. So we can’t ignore this emerging trend. ### News Values One unexpected piece of good news from Egan: the percentage of people who prefer news to support their point of view has gone down! However, UK audiences are very unhappy with how we are covering stories — and that’s not true of every country. In Norway, people are generally happy about stories. I’m genuinely beginning to wonder if we’re reaching the limit of tricking traditional wine into new digital bottles, and the UK media needs to more throughly reinvent itself. Public service news? Only 37% of people thought it was positive for society. Political leanings play a big role. Mostly, the left are more positive about public service news, than the right. Not a surprise — but good to see it clearly in the data. ### Paying for news Some quick figures: * 17% pay for online news globally. * 10% in the UK. * ⅔ are doing so via recurring payments rather than other methods. Why do they pay? Unique, distinctive content is still the fundamental attraction. But it’s not just about personal benefit — there’s a strong signal that people will pay to support outlets that share their values. * * * ## Panel Discussion Mitali Mukarjee, director of the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism The launch event concluded with a panel discussion, chaired by Mitali Mukarjee. #### The Panel * Simon Robinson, executive editor, Reuters * Emily Kent Smith, editorial director, Goalhanger * Jim Egan, lead author, _Digital News Report_ * Kamal Ahmed, executive editorial director, _Fortune_ UK & Europe 👨‍💻 __These are live-blogged notes. Prone to error, inaccuracy and howling crimes against grammar and syntax. These are my summaries of what was said, not the speakers' exact words.__ ### On the platformisation of news Simon Robinson, executive editor, Reuters **Simon Robinson** : Many websites saw this coming. Most large traditional newsrooms produce content for the platforms. The content remains theirs. But this has massive implications for revenue — if you’re not driving audiences to your platforms, it’s harder to make money. The industry has seen this coming and has adapted — but it’s not perfect. **Kamal Ahmed** : It’s about understanding our audience and what creates value for them. The _Fortune_ 500 index started in 1955 — it was a really clear proposition to our audience and an example of full-service provision. We see newsletters as a way of giving our communities specific material for them specifically. It’s a tool that allows us to differentiate our audiences. And we’re emphasising that it’s human made: journalists spend time meeting people, talking to people. And we have an understanding of how our audiences want to consume. Social media is just one channel — but it’s a very difficult one to monetise. But events, newsletters, and magazines are where real value is. And that events part… is _really_ where value is created. **Robinson** : The great hope is that is you build audiences on platforms, and when they get a job they’ll subscribe. I don’t think that will happen now in the way it has traditionally. They won’t start watching the evening news — so we need to figure out how to deliver for them in a way that works for the companies, too. ### Redefining journalism Emily Kent Smith, editorial director, Goalhanger **Emily Kent Smith** : What _is_ journalism? People listening to _The Rest is History_ are incredibly informed — but are not news junkies. A lot of the ideas behind Goalhanger podcasts are offbeat — they probably won’t be commissioned by traditional companies. Goalhanger is making money with membership models, and other things like the members-only Rest is History festival and t-shirts. One of their (highest tier) Athelstan members said that they support the podcast because it “feels like I’m having a pint with two great professors”. She joined partially to launch their newsletter strand. Their success has come from bringing experts together to comment on things, including news events. The key is depth, expertise, and intimacy. ### Responding to news creators Kamal Ahmed, executive editorial director, __fortune__ UK & Europe **Ahmed** : We have a very specific audience — c-suite, or those aspiring to be them. We do get deep engagement via the written word. But it would be silly to ignore video. We do have video podcasts. We are looking at different ways of creating value for the audience. But it’s also about expertise and how you want it and when you want it. Our audiences are very PC-based — and are not really scrolling for news when they’re on their phone. We’re about high-value moments when they come to _Fortune_. How do we transfer the engagement on short form on their phone into engagement with long form conversations? And how do we do it in a way that gets more than 50 views a week… **Robinson** : It’s particularly challenging for a newsroom like Reuters that was a B2B operations and has only moved into the consumer approach in the last few years. How do we do it without undermining our values, when there are individuals, who are out there in this space, who are much more opinionated? We really need to get better at that consumer space — but we’re moving pretty quickly. There is an absolute tension between the way creators approach news — often building off the reporting of mainstream organisations. They’re not in Iran, but they’re using video created by journalists there. They’re doing it in a more entertaining way — but the audience trusts it less. So, the challenges are to maintain our own journalistic standards, but to be more entertaining and relatable. Jim Egan, lead author, __Digital News Report__ **Jim Egan** : Such strong polarisation of views is making life harder and harder for public service media. They don’t have the luxury of focusing on a niche — they need to serve everybody. It is extremely hard as you see these polarising forces starting to tear countries apart. ### Leaning into humanity in an age of AI **Robinson** : Reuters benefits from being part of Thompson Reuters, which has heavily invested in AI. You’ll see a bifurcation between news which is easily scrapeable — like financial reporting, where we should invest in AI to deliver that, and more human-centred news reporting, which we’ll have the human time freed up to invent in. Our broad strategy is to use AI to automate as much as possible and then invest in the human stuff. **Kent Smith** : We’re human-led, based on personalities and depth, and there’s no intention of using AI in an audience-facing way. And audiences are looking for authenticity and depth from us in a way they can’t elsewhere. They want to see Rory Stewart work out what his thinks about something in real time. “News” is used as too broad a term. We need to rethink about what “news’ is versus what being informed is. **Robinson** : Do Goalhanger employees count as journalists? I think they should be. **Kent Smith** : People do want to spend time being informed — but not necessarily with “news”. **Egan** : The data tells a tough story. People are nervous and worried. We should remember that people are concerned - and they are alive to what is happening. They need news organisations to make sense of it all. Given the hyper-competitive environment on social media, you could argue that news is actually doing quite well despite the range of more entertaining options so easily available. **Kent Smith:** People are finding news on one platforms, and coming to us for analysis. The sense of authenticity is important — as well as the sense of what they know and don’t know. Creators are good at this, whereas traditional media reaches too quickly for the answer. People do feel let down, and that leaves a space for alternative media. * * * ## Explore the Report Digital News Report 2026Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism ## Watch the launch event

Last week, I had the delight of talking to a group of journalists and coders at OphCon, an annual get-together of people interested in the use of audience data in the newsroom. So, why didn't I liveblog it? Simple: it was held under the Chatham House Rule. So I can talk a little about what was said, but not who said it. And I'm certainly not going to betray some of the confidential information sharing that was going on. As the threats from outside gather around journalism, I find myself increasingly drawn to smaller events like this; ones where practitioners share experiences and successes, rather than the more grandstanding “big names talking at you” style events. For example, the first section of the day was an unconference, where attendees pitch session titles on post-its and then vote on each others' suggestions using little stickers. The unconference pitching ## Unconferencing attention The two sessions I joined were about: 1. Maintaining editorial integrity while chasing the algorithm 2. How do we cope as search traffic tends towards zero ### Chasing the algorithm This was a really interesting discussion. There was a clear awareness that we needed, more than ever, to be visible, active and successfully on social media platforms, but that this work comes with significant reputational risks. The consensus emerged that it's important to keep your focus on _why_ you're using the platform, and what your editorial mission is. Viral content that does big numbers feels satisfying, but doesn't inherently serve the needs of the business or our audience. From people most active in the space, there was a clear message that you certainly can “borrow” the formats of viral content, but use them as a container for something with journalistic value. But there was also a strong suggestion that we shouldn't be too wedded to the idea that we _have_ to take the “dad dancing” approach of following the trendy formats. Ruthless experimentation, where you analyse what works and what doesn't via attention to the metrics, allows us to create formats that can be both journalistically valid and deliver good engagement. It was a surprising hopeful discussion. ### What happens when Google stops ending traffic? This was a less cheery discussion. Most people attending had seen significant drops in traffic from Google as it pivots towards providing more answers directly via AI. The interesting element was that not everyone is being hit equally – and that some topics are suffering more than others. There was a strong hunger for a little more careful data sharing amongst publishers, so we can build a stronger picture of exactly how the changes are impacting us. Honestly, I found myself wondering if this was something we could facilitate at City St George's for the benefit of the whole industry. There was also a strong streak of anger and fear about the way Google, and the tech industry in general is approaching this. The contract that was implicit in search historically has been completely destroyed by the advent of AI, with Google keeping more and more queries within its own site, answered by AI from our data and reporting. And there was a clear feeling that we need to fight back, not meekly accept this. ## Bring me my tools The tools session, with presentations from The FT, the BBC, the Guardian, the Mail and the Telegraph The next session was a series of short presentations on newsroom tools. I have to be very vague here, for confidentiality reasons, but the two things that were of most note: * a fascinating example of how Ai can be used for fact-checking, automatically, but with the human writer and editor having to approve any change before it happens. There was a general mood of _extreme_ caution about using AI for anything audience facing – and some examples of failed experiments, simply because AI could not be made reliable enough. * Everyone is building data tools to better understand how their platform activity actually impacts the reach of their journalism. As an audience and social media person, this obviously pleases me. But just as interesting were the platforms different titles were choosing to monitor. Oh, how I hate the Chatham House Rule right now, for I can say no more… ## Closing keynotes The closing speakers Finally, after a lovely lunch and network session, we had the closing keynotes. Three subjects covered: * What mainstream newsrooms can learn from the tools independent journalism outlets are using * C2PA - a technical approach to embedding provenance into digital media, and one step towards an ecosystem that can rebuild trust in news. * How to make real, lasting newsroom change happen, and why so many innovation and change projects fail at the final hurdle. ## More like this, please I ended up at OphCon because I left a comment on former student Sophie Murray-Morris's LinkedIn post about it last year, saying I would give at least a portion of my left arm to attend. The BBC's Alfie Gerrard took me up on that. I'm glad that the cost wasn't quite that high (thanks, Alfie!), but I'm also convinced we need more low key, focused, knowledge-sharing events like this in journalism. We need ones that bring related disciplines together, cross-company. And we need ones that allow big and indie journalism to come together. The OphCom team are doing.sterling job, and I hope they let me attend the next one. But where else can we bring journalists and support teams together like this?

Once, many years ago, I was sat in a budget hotel in Hamburg, thinking to myself “I don’t want to stop doing this”. It was the day after NEXT18, and my mind was buzzing with the ideas I’d been exposed to. In particular, one of the closing talks by Indy Johar was stuck in my mind. It was one of those that I _needed_ to continue exploring in my writing. He had given us the right questions, without any pretensions to delivering answers: > There are very few parts of the world that have the democratic infrastructure to have these conversations – but they are fundamental conversations. How we have them, and who we design for, will be profound. We are sitting at the precipice of war, famine, revolution, or another disaster. They change things. Can we avoid that? I couldn’t imagine not being part of that conversation. ## Planning for change The conference had been a freelance client since 2012, and I knew that every conference, every piece I wrote for them could potentially be my last. But I know that if that day came, I’d want to carry on writing about those issues; to keep looking into the future and start conversations about what’s next. That was the secret of the conference: unlike so many tech events, it was more interested in what today’s tech would do to society in 10 years, than about the latest app or startup. To take a day a week and look outside journalism, at how the world was changing, and what that means for all us, was a blessing I would rather not let go of. So, I set up my fallback. A domain name that perfectly encapsulated the ideas I was thinking about. A Ghost install. And a steady flow of random pieces that didn’t really fit in with what I’m doing with One Man & His Blog, but which kept the domain (and its Google ranking) alive. ## Change arrives. With coffee. Today, I activate the plan. There’s been a strategic shift at Accenture, NEXT26 won’t be happening, and the site is, for now, on hiatus, while the lovely team decide what NEXT will be in the future. And so, while that happens, I’m picking up where I left off. Drinking coffee. Exploring complexity. Charting a course to what’s next. I didn’t want to stop doing this. It turns out I don’t have to. The next piece will be in your inboxes later today – but if this doesn't sound like you kind of thing, then you can hit unsubscribe below. But I really hope you’ll join me on the journey.

If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you’ll know I’m obsessed with publishers, publications, and journalists owning their relationships with audiences, not “borrowing” them from platforms and other businesses. I usually frame that in terms of the benefits – but how about the threats of not doing it? Right now, there are two swords of Damocles dangling over publishers – one physical, one digital; one UK-based, one global – that could destroy titles and businesses that haven’t truly absorbed this idea. And the publishers have no impact on the chances of that sword falling. Let’s go physical and local first. ## UK Magazines after TG Jones This first came to my attention because, of all things, a recommended post on Facebook. This may be the first time the Facebook algorithm has delivered me something unexpected and useful. It was from a group (which I’m not a member of) called The Mighty World of British Comics, and it seems to be where aging fans and creators of UK comics from the _Beano_ to things like _2000AD_ hang out. And they’re worried: > Does anyone realise that if TG Jones, goes under in the UK.........magazines and comics, will collapse? They are the only UK retailer for mags and comics left in the UK. For non-UK readers, TG Jones is the new name for the high street branches of the venerable newsagents WH Smiths. A couple of years ago, the original company sold off everything bar the transport hub shops, and the new venture capital owners rebranded it to the mind-numbingly generic TG Jones. TG Jones in Worthing and Shoreham-by-Sea ### Magazine discovery under threat That acquisition hasn’t gone well: > TG Jones will likely go into administration at the end of June if a wide-scale restructuring plan, involving the restructuring of its financial, leasehold and supply obligations, is not legally sanctioned, The Bookseller understands. This could be a serious blow for the UK magazine industry. Supermarkets have been reducing their selection of mags for years. The limited selection of magazines in my local supermarket The number of newsagents that still have a significant range of titles is vanishingly small — most are basically convenience stores these days. The major discovery channel for UK magazines might be about to implode. If the company does go down – or even if they drastically decrease their number of shops – publishers face both short-term hits from the loss of sales, and longer-term declines as discovery erodes. Magazines can survive and throve as subscription businesses, but that’s only going to get harder if their major discovery channel all but disappears from physical shops. Frankly, many magazine publishers need much, much better digital presences than they do now, if they want to survive a TG Jones collapse. And they may only have a month. ## Google breaks its contract with the web “Google Zero” is the latest panic gripping the publishing industry, in its endless oscillation from sticking its head in the sand over new tech, and then completely over-reacting when it does pay attention. It’s the idea that, as Google gets ever more focused on AI as the core mode of its search engine, traffic to websites will crash. I’m skeptical that things will be that extreme, but let’s assume, for now, that this is a major risk. In that case, if you still reply on SEO as a major component of your discovery, you might need a change of underwear: > The era of the “ten blue links” is officially over. See? I’ll wait while you change. OK, here’s some detail: > Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs. Here’s a Google video outlining the change: Now, look, the smart money has already been reducing reliance on SEO as a major audience acquisition vector, let alone a key monetisation approach. But this is only going to increase the downwards pressure on traffic from search. ## Publishers need to own their audience relationships We’re always going to use other channels – ones we don’t own – as part of the discovery mechanism of our publications. But we need to be incredibly careful when one vector becomes dominant. The slow collapse of the UK newstrade has left TG Jones on outsized player – and this is a threat. And the monopolistic power of Google over search has made it equally dangerous. Where are the vulnerabilities in your audience acquisition model?

One of the current bogeymen of publishers is what's variously called “zero click search” or “Google zero”. It's the idea that, as Google introduces more and more Ai into their search engine, traffic from search will trend to zero – or maybe even disappear altogether. Right now, I'm of the opinion that this is overblown. I think traffic from search _will_ drop, but different types of content will be more impacted than others. But I don't think the fundamental "search for something to read/watch/listen" element will ever entirely disappear. But for future linking purposes, I've decided to create this little living article where I can add thoughts and links to support my skepticism – or acknowledge that I was wrong, if we do end up in a zero click world. ## Why am I skeptical? * Google has said that the links are not going away. In essence, you’ll get different search experiences based on your search intent. * The whole business model for AI (such as it is) collapses if there isn’t a steady supply of fresh material to train on. Disincentivising the creation of new original content is literally starving the AI businesses. * There’s consumer resistance to AI-driven search, with other search engines like DuckDuckGo benefiting, as people shift to AI-light or AI-free alternatives. * Fundamentally, zero click search assumed that the _only_ reason people use search is for commodity information – and that's not borne out by the reality of search patterns.

Have I got an aural treat for you this morning. I'm on this week's episode of the _Stop The Press!_ podcast, talking about the future of journalism – a topic that will be of interest to most people reading this. It all came about because my piece _Journalism isn't dying_ from February went viral: Journalism isn’t dyingThe crumbling edifice of traditional media means the growth of emerging media is more important than ever.One Man & His BlogAdam Tinworth It caught the attention of Nick Copson from the podcast. It took a wee while to get a date in the diary, but I think the conversation is worth your time. Here it is: And it's on YouTube, too, for those who like their podcast that way: Do pop back and let me know what you think.

These are my (rather belated) notes from a panel discussion held at City St George's two months ago, about the legacy of Alistair Cooke and the challenges of reporting on Trump's America. ### Chair Dr Glenda Cooper * Dr Glenda Cooper ### Panel * Jonathan Freedland, journalist and author * Professor Inderjeet Parmar, Professor of International Politics * Jon Sopel, journalist, author, and podcaster * Marianna Spring, BBC social media investigations correspondent * Katie Tarrant, news reporter * * * 💻 These are live-blogged notes from a public event, captured quickly during the session. While the gist should be correct, these are not the speakers' words, just my interpretation of what they were saying. * * * ## The legacy of _Letter from America_ **Glenda** : In the archives, we found an early 40s memo, where Cooke argued that the BBC should employ a USA correspondent. It wasn’t warmly received at the time. But six year later, Cooke got his way, with _Letter from America_. Cooke was a real innovator, not just in reporting on America, but also in how he did it. Arguably, he was the first podcaster in the way he eschewed the “voice of God” narrator style of the time. We forget how different it was because he’s had so many imitators since. The media landscape was very different then: the BBC set the agenda, and most people had never visited America and had no expectation of ever doing so. Cooke often reflected on the responsibility of the journalist in his work. His work highlights the importance of experience: he could draw parallels between current events and the past, because of his long run on that one show. ****Jonathan Freedland**** **Jonathan Freedland** : His delivery gives a sense of calmer, more placid days. But he reported on a turbulent time: McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1968, the year of assassinations. The media is much different — and more turbulent — now. Then, he was the singular voice from America. Even in the 1990s, it was difficult to see what was on the front page of the _NYT_ from London. Now, with social media, everyone has a voice – a cacophony of voices. Amongst that is disinformation and AI slop. And, of course, the other big change is the partisanship of the media. Brits were used to newspapers of the left and right slugging it out, but there was no real equivalent of that in the US. The newspapers worked strenuously to avoid any sign of bias – to an almost ridiculous degree. That’s all changed; the US media wears their politics on their sleeve now. There is a greater need for outsiders like Cooke, a British eye on America. It was a luxury in its day, but now it’s essential. The US public can’t “get it straight” from the US media. ## The need for Cooke-style reporting now ****Marianna Spring**** **Marianna Spring** : Having a specialist in the worlds of social media, algorithms, and trolling has been vital. These are controlled by big companies, powerful and rich, who are very hard to hold to account. Inside the Rage Machine on BBC2 explored the impact of politics on what is happening on social platforms. Decisions are being made about what is politically expedient, not what will make people safe. The memification of war is entirely different to what you would have had a decade ago. Rage-bait is shaping and impacting politics — because it impacts on how different politicians communicate. Understanding and holding to account the social media companies, the AI companies, are so pertinent. For me, reporting America is about accountability for these companies, and the power of the algorithm to shape politics. ****Katie Tarrant**** **Katie Tarrant** : I spent four months travelling in the US last year. I saw Trump deploy the national guard in DC, strikes on boats in the Caribbean, the longest shutdown in US history. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Lots happened in four months. Trump’s presidency is about flooding the zone — so the challenge for reporters is sifting through all this and choosing what the audience need to see. There’s an illusion of access to power through social media — but that’s an illusion, based on what I saw on the ground. Access to power for professional journalists is diminishing. How much would Cooke’s journalism be consumed today? Would he get the same listeners? Would he be trusted in the same way? ## The changing role of the US in the world ****Professor Inderjeet Parmar**** **Professor Inderjeet Parmar** : I have been studying the relationship of the US and the world for decades. One of the things that has struck me is how close the US/UK relationship is — and how much the “special relationship” formulation conceals. “American exceptionalism” is a belief in their superiority — it’s a hegemonic belief. “Special relationship” is an invention of Winston Churchill, and is an elite to elite dialogue. And we are viewed by many as the UK as the US’s poodle, following wherever they follow. The “Special relationship” is a drug UK elites take to cope with the fact that they are the inferior power. The British foreign policy establishment still holds to the idea of imperial level power. But the “special relationship” is the marking of the passing of power from the British Empire to the USA. It was a decision of the 40s that an Anglo-American alliance would allow the UK to maintain world power — but it would mean following the US into places they didn’t want to go. The UK is a class-dominated society — the old school tie still does a lot of work today. The UK national interest is an elite interest, not a whole nation one. And so we need to report it accurately, with regard to its origins. Legacy media has to reflect on the role it has played in the past 80 years to bring us to the point we are now. ## Doing journalism now ****Jon Sopel**** **Jon Sopel** : When CBS was great, Leslie Stott reported a conversation with Donald Trump, in which she asked why he kept attacking the press. He said he did it to discredit and demean you all — so nobody will believe you when you write negative stories about him. You have a war on truth being waged by the administration — and he’s having astonishing success with that. I’ve seen an awful lot of that: where people don’t believe a word you’re saying. At a Trump Kennedy Centre board meeting, he told stories about European leaders that weren’t true. He claimed that he predicted 9/11, that he predicted the problem in the Straits of Hormuz. None of it true. We can’t surrender to misinformation — so what tone can we adopt when reporting on Trump? Constantly accusing him of lying gets boring, but _he keeps lying_. If you believe in the mechanisms of democracy, you have to say that what Donald Trump is saying is without foundation. We have to calmly, resolutely say “this is not true” from time to time. It’s uncomfortable because it looks like we’re putting a thumb on the scale — but we’re not. If we are to retain the trust of our audience, we have to be credible in what we do. There has never been a more difficult time to be a journalist. But there has never been a more important time to be a journalist. Democracy relies on a well-informed electorate. ## What do we do? **JF** : There are so many people invested in the idea that Trump would revert to normality. You could even see it back in 2016. It never happened. There was this desire for a return to normality. That includes journalists — they know that world, and how to report on it. The people who reported on it accurately were accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But they were right. Nixon lied like someone who was aware of the truth. Trump doesn’t recognise a lie. You see the same in world leaders, an impulse to try to pull Trump back to normality. It’s been a huge institutional shift to report that the president has “baselessly said”. There is a role for those professional outsiders — and they have developed a traction they never had because they’re not sucked into that. The era of TWA journalism — those wacky Americans — is done. **MS** : You have to understand trolling and rage-baiting. Trump is the rage-bait king. I still see huge numbers of journalists resharing this to say it’s not true. You need to step back and understand the thinking and tactics behind it. Politicians across the spectrum, but the populists in particular, are much better at using and understanding this. There’s an increasing gulf between traditional media versus social media on etiquette and rules. We need to better understand the tactics and how this works. **JS** : We’re seeing a big difference in Trump’s second term – all these institutions which were quite bold in standing up to him in the first terms are now bending the knee. **KT** : What happened two weeks ago? Two months ago? What should we go back and assess the impact of? In the first weeks of the second term, he signed more executive orders than in the whole of his first term. We need to investigate the impacts of these. As a newsroom, you have to work out your resources between relating the crazy things said, and reporting the impact on people. **JS** : One of the things is the normalisation of corruption. Trump has accepted a jumbo jet — where do we go from there? The Swiss president gave him a gold bar with 47 on it — and a gold Rolex clock. And it worked. They negotiated down their tariff. When this becomes normalised, something is missing. **JF** : Our readers have limited bandwidth and attention. We have a say in this — we don’t always have to follow him, but we can pull back and choose what we say. ## Insights from the Q&A ### Twitter / X **MS** : There was a time when Twitter was, while imperfect, a credible place. But since Elon Musk took over, it has completely transformed. The prevalence of certain type of hate, of disinformation and AI content is clear. But parts of the media still treat X like it was what it used to be. That needs to change. ### Fear and power **JS** : In the UK, we don’t stand up when the PM comes in — he’s not the head of state. However, in the US, Trump is. He uses intimidation. If Donald Trump mobilises against you, it can turn your life upside down. Nobody dares do it because Trump comes after you. And his social media trolls come after you.

Yesterday, I was a guest on a recording of the Stop the Press! podcast. _(If you read_ yesterday’s post_, you know I very much have a face for podcasting right now.)_ They invited me on to expand and defend my thesis that journalism isn’t dying. in an episode due for release early next week. While I was deep into expounding my theory of how journalism is changing, one of the hosts put it to me that maybe this is a process without end; that the ongoing change in tech means that journalism will have to keep evolving. He was absolutely bang on. Short of some unforeseen factor hitting the brakes on tech innovation, we are In for a long, long ride of disruption. (Mind you, the growing shortage of tech components caused by the AI boom could be exactly that sort of brake…) But we’re not always very good at spotting how much technology has _already_ changed journalism. There’s an interesting streak of small “c” conservatism in journalism, a deep nostalgic attachment to the formats of the past. I’m prone to it. I had a deep burst of nostalgia for my old magazine days when I got my hands on the latest issue of XCity, the magazine produced by our MA Magazine Journalism students. But nostalgia is not a business model, and we need to look at the reality of how people get news and information now. And, online, that’s changed. Even the web is a somewhat nostalgic product now. ## The true face of media distribution in 2026 A recent issue of Casey Newton’s Platformer newsletter [£] made an offhand remark that I think both sums up how the modern media word operates — and which I know many media businesses haven’t completely assimilated as an idea yet: > The mass audience has now moved fully to video; the personal audience now lives in the group chat. Professionals are getting their information from newsletters and podcasts. The information landscape has changed almost completely from even a decade ago. The social platforms function very differently, and how people choose to get their information has gone through a slow revolution. The four points that dominate today’s media ecosystem are: * Video-based social media * Closed chat communities * Newsletters * Podcasts So, what of the web? It’s still there. We still visit it. But, increasingly, we only do so when prompted by _something else_ to do so — or when a specific need (in SEO terms, an “intent”) drives us there. ## The new shape of editorial products This is important to grasp because so many media businesses I work with still see the website as the main and default part of the business, and these other elements as, essentially, promotional tools. But they’re not. They’re products within your portfolio of publications; they’re editorial products in their own right. To use a personal example, I mainly interact with _Prospect_ and the _New Statesman_ through their podcasts. I occasionally buy an issue, or catch something on the web, due to my interest being piqued by the podcast. But for me, personally, their podcasts are their main product. And that’s good news – because that’s a direct relationship, unmediated by AI or SEO or social algorithms. Well, good news as long as they can make money off my listening, of course… Many of you reading this post now will be doing so in your inbox, even though _OM &HB_ is also a website that’s existed for 23 years. With a few exceptions, it’s an editorial product that is more consumed as a newsletter than as a website. ## Persuading people that change is here One of my personal failures over the last 18 months has been failing to convince my colleges and students at City St George’s about the critical importance of newsletters to modern journalism. We’ve got it on podcasting; we have an entire Masters pathway devoted to it. We’re pretty close to being there on social video. But we don't, yet, have a module, or a pathway, or even consistent teaching around newsletters. So, we need to take the form much more seriously than we do, and I occasionally feel like I’m screaming into the void on this one. Only last summer, I was told that newsletters were an “emerging” form. Reader, I did not take that well. But here, all we’re seeing is not some failing of my excellent colleagues, but an accurate reflection of the industry’s mixed understanding of where we are now – and a damning critique of my own persuasive abilities. And something I suspect that addressing will be on my workload allocation for next year… This challenge is faced right across the industry. The media world has changed around us. If you don’t understand and believe the paragraph from Casey above, you’re not ready for that. ## From content strategy to product strategy I used to run a content strategy course, but haven't done so for a few years. I need to resurrect it, but also almost entirely rebuild it, with more of a focus on editorial product thinking. It might even need a new name. We're already running a version of what this should be for our undergraduate students, in their second year. And they produced some truly excellent products this term. The module is going into the labs for expansion and upgrade to be a bigger year three module in the 27/28 academic year. But media businesses that want to survive can't wait for our grads to come save them. We need to reset our mindsets. The web, and podcasts, and newsletter and video are co-equal tools we can use to get our journalism in front of our readers. Which we choose, and how we use it, will be determined by a mix of audience need, the nature of the story, and the business model of the title. Ready? * * * ## About those video figures There is one other paragraph from that _Platformer_ newsletter that I want to highlight, but for entirely different reasons: > And the bigger picture is that text-based social networking is a rounding error compared to video. Telecom provider Ericsson estimated that by the end of 2025, 76 percent of all mobile data traffic was video. Aargh. I’ve seen variations of this figure for _years_ , and yes, the percentage keeps ticking up. But it needs context; otherwise it’s meaningless. A text-only post to a social network is usually only a few kilobytes in size, and certainly less than 1 MB. Add a photo, and you’re looking at a few megabytes, up to maybe 15 MB. A video post on any network? It _starts_ at 20 MB, and can go up from there to the 100s of megabytes. So yes, video posts might account for 76% of all mobile data traffic — but each video can be up to 1000 times the size of a text post. This is not a like-for-like comparison. This is not to argue that video isn’t the dominant medium — it is — but that this figure is meaningless without some form of context and explanation. It doesn’t imply that 75% of all social media activity is on video.

I'm not going to lie to you, it has been a tough month since my last update. For the first couple of weeks after my accident I was relentlessly upbeat. “Heal, keep going, heal, keep going, get back to normal as soon as possible” was very much my mantra. I'm now realising that I was hiding from myself just how serious the accident was. My brain is slowly letting me accept that I won't be “back to normal” any time soon - and I may be dealing with some permanent changes to my body. One colleague has suggested that I might look into counselling to help with the trauma and depression that I've been suffering on and off, but we'll see. I suspect it's just part of the natural healing process, both physically and psychologically. Not, in fact, Frankenstein's Monster cosplay ## Health Update What I now know: * It will be months before my left eye returns to normal, as the fracture heals and the eye settles back into place. * I may always be dealing with floaters in my vision from some damage to the back of the eye, although my brain will “edit” them out over time. * I will need a small amount of surgery on my eye in the coming months. Waiting at the Southland Eye Clinic for more tests on my left eye * My forehead is healing well, but it may be years before I regain full sensation there – if I ever do. * I'm still largely wearing my glasses - contacts are still uncomfortable in my left eye. This is certainly the most I've worn my glasses since I was 18. But they do end up serving as a visual reminder that things aren't “normal”. Talking of which… ## Work This has been one of the toughness starts to the working year I can remember, and not just because of the accident. Luckily, my colleagues at City St George's have been both understanding and helpful, and are supporting me on staying on top of that part of my work as we move into marking and final project season. I'm profoundly glad that this didn't happen during lecturing season, as that would have been much harder to manage. As for the rest of my work, well that's more challenging. Illness and accidents are the bane of the freelancer – and that's what I'm dealing with now. I have workshops and training courses with existing clients coming up over the next couple of months, which I'm more than well enough to deliver, which is a relief and takes some of the financial pressure off. However, as some of you are aware, my working relationship with my long term business partner on training, which had been strained for a while, collapsed completely at the beginning of the year, and in spectacularly unpleasant fashion. It's still astonishing to me that my second-longest working relationship in my time self-employed (only beaten by NEXT Conference) ended in such a toxic way. But it has, and that's the new reality I'm dealing with. ### New beginnings for my training business Endings are the chance for fresh starts. The upside of that was the opportunity to rebuild my training work on my own terms, and under my own control. Sadly, thanks to the accident, those plans have had to, inevitably, slow down. There's some positives to that. We're starting a small house refurbishment next week, which will create a brand new home office for me, which I'll be better able to set up for online training. Future deluxe online training suite I have the money in hand for new equipment, and the new setup will allow a direct wired link from the training computer to the fibre modem, which should give me a fast and stable connection. I was having some very interesting conversations about pricing models and approaches with some trusted friends and mentors before the accident, and I'm really looking forwards to unveiling what I'm planning in the coming months. I intend to start putting time into developing the website to support that, which is already online in rudimentary form, in the coming months. But that will have to wait until the marking hump is out of the way. And, I've suddenly realised, I'll need a new profile photo with the scars on my forehead in place. If you want to keep updated on that side of my work, then you can sign up for emails. ## And how about this site? This blog has really been neglected, hasn't it? I really want to get going on it again. It's been part of who I am for 23(!) years. But the accident isn't the only reason it's been quiet. I've been thinking about what I want to do with it. When it started, I was very much a contrarian voice talking from the outside of the mainstream journalism world, I drifted more into the mainstream through the 2010s, but now I feel like I'm being pushed back out of the mainstream debate. The space I once had largely to myself has become noisy, with more and more people clamouring to make their voices heard in the future of journalism discussion. But that's OK. Too much of the mainstream debate is just plain wrong. Some of it is deeply ill-informed. Some of it is too rooted in the past. The vast majority is too inwards looking, and focusing on the _wrong_ threats (and opportunities) from outside journalism. I'm actually looking forwards to being a contrarian voice again. As I've just been brutally reminded by a lamppost, life is short and unpredictable. And it's just too damn short for me to carry on holding my tongue just to be “accepted”. The audience might not be vast. But they're open-minded, welcoming of new ideas and just good people. And so, I'll write for them, and for myself. I have Things To Say. And I will say them. Onwards!

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IT insult adds to physical injury

First, the good news. I'm home. With my vision more than good enough to drive, despite the fact I have some healing left to do, I was able to make my way slowly back to Sussex, largely sticking to A and B roads, over the weekend. As an extra special treat, I got to spend the night in a Travelodge on the way, too… Behold, my fabulous life! It was nice to sink back into the routine of family life, as far as I can in my somewhat damaged state. Well, it was until my wife lobbed a casual problem my way. “Oh, the iMac upstairs is playing up,” she said. “It's shut down unexpectedly once or twice.” Uh-oh. So, on Sunday evening, I ran Disk Utility across it, and found a whole bunch of unfixable errors. Time to make sure my Time Machine backup was up-to-date, and do a wipe and reinstall. So, I set the back-up going, and went to bed. ## Farewell, old SSD Two things happened overnight: 1. The backup finished. 2. The internal SSD gave up the ghost. And so my first day back “working” was largely consumed by finding a fast external SSD I had, clearing it down, and using Internet Restore to install a new version of MacOS on it. My SSD saviour, so far… What I'd forgotten is that an internet restore puts back the OS that the computer originally came with. In this case, as it was an early 2020 purcahse, it was 2019's Catalina: Ah, Catalina. It's been a while. I'd forgotten quite how much the visual style of macOS has changed over six years: Kickin' it Catalina-style So, next step was to get it updated to the newest version it can run, which is macOS Sequoia, which was, again, fairly painless. Back to the (near) present. And then to restore it from a Time Machine backup. As of now, it's all working. ## My Mac future Why am I going to so much effort to resurrect a 2020, pre-Apple Silicon computer rather than just buying a new one? Well, I had already planned to replace this iMac with a Mac Mini and a new screen sometime this year. The problem is that you can't get hold of a Mac Mini for a couple of months, due to what is probably a combination of demand from AI folks, and a production rundown before the launch of the M5 version. So, if I can keep this machine working for a few months, I will. My back-up plan is to just get the new screen now, and use my MacBook Pro with it. And it might yet come to that. Fingers crossed… ## Recovery check-in For the interested, this is how I'm looking now, a week after the accident: Luckily, I didn't have any good looks to ruin.

Hello, folks, I just wanted to give a quick admin update on why things have been a little quiet around here. Originally, it was because we were in the final weeks of teaching at City St George's, and that tends to consume all my time, as students prepare for important assessments. I was planning on coming back strong after the Easter weekend, but then something rather unfortunate happened. I argued with a lamppost, and lost convincingly. I tripped over a kerb, windmilled into a lamppost. taking the brunt of the impact on my forehead and left eye. I ended up in the Bristol Royal Infirmary with part of my skull showing, being patched up by the very skilled maxillofacial team there. Up until the last 24 hours, any extended screen work hasn't really been possible, as my left eye slowly recovers from the damage done. I'm also getting used to routinely wearing glasses again, as contact lenses are only going to be feasible again once my eye heals fully. I have a very small fracture in the orbit around the eye, but the trauma team have concluded that it is minor enough to be safe to let heal on its own. I am now able to spend time on the screen, and hopefully I'll post as and when I can. I certainly need distraction from the slow and somewhat painful healing process. So, my apologies for the silence. I hope you'll understand. And I advise not picking fights with lampposts. Turns out they're complete bastards.

## More on journalism and AI The _NYT_ have binned a freelancer they caught using AI. From The Guardian: > The New York Times has cut ties with a freelance journalist after discovering he used artificial intelligence to help write a book review that echoed elements of a review of the same book in the Guardian. > It came after a New York Times reader flagged similarities between the paper’s January review of Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, written by author and journalist Alex Preston, and an August review of the same book written by Christobel Kent in the Guardian. It’s about a year since I first heard editors on an in-house training course talking about dropping freelancers because they were clearly using AI. And it makes sense. After all, an editor can prompt an AI themselves – they don’t need you to do it. They’re paying you for your journalistic skills, not your AI ones. Friend of the blog David Mattin had a thoughtful response on LinkedIn: > An LLM is emphatically not a person. But as a rough guide, if a writer would ask another person to perform a task and we'd all think that was okay, then it is okay to ask an LLM to perform the same task. Well worth reading the whole thing. * * * ## The best neologism since “slop” is… ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now