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The global news industry is heading into a defining year in 2026, caught between the growing power of agentic artificial intelligence and a creator economy that is reshaping how audiences discover, trust and consume information, according to the latest Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions report, released this week by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Based on a survey of 280 digital leaders in 51 countries, the report describes an industry engaged in what it calls a “delicate balancing act” as economic, technological and political forces converge.
Nic Newman, the report’s author, says news organisations are “likely to be further squeezed” by two competing pressures: generative AI systems that can efficiently summarise information and human creators who are winning audiences on authenticity and relevance.
Confidence among media leaders is falling fast. Only 38% of respondents say they feel optimistic about the future of journalism, down 22 percentage points since 2022. While 53% remain positive about their own companies, the wider ecosystem is viewed with growing alarm.
That pessimism is fuelled by a hostile political climate described in the report as the “Trump 2.0 playbook” – a strategy of bypassing traditional media to communicate directly with voters via social platforms while attacking the press. The approach, the report says, has spread well beyond the United States.
“Populist politicians have discovered the way to disintermediate the role of traditional media by labelling it as fake news,” said one South American media president surveyed for the report.
The report points to escalating tensions, including a White House website feature described as an “Offender Hall of Shame” targeting outlets such as the Washington Post and CNN. Similar pressures are cited elsewhere, from the UK, where a dispute over speech editing led to high-profile resignations at the BBC, to Switzerland, where a referendum could sharply cut public service media funding.
Commercially, the most immediate threat is the collapse of the traditional search model. The report predicts 2026 will mark a decisive shift from search engines to what it calls “answer engines”. Google’s AI Overviews and new AI Mode increasingly resolve queries directly on the results page, reducing the need for users to click through to publisher sites. Survey respondents expect referral traffic to fall by 43% over the next three years, accelerating the rise of so-called zero-click search.
“We are still at the early stages of another big shift in technology,” the report says. “Search engines are turning into AI-driven answer engines … raising fears that referral traffic for publishers could dry up.”
Data from analytics firm Chartbeat, commissioned for the report, suggests the shift is already under way. Referrals from Google Search fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025.
In response, publishers are experimenting with answer engine optimisation, or AEO, an approach – one that attracts much scepticism – aimed less at driving clicks and more at ensuring content is cited or visible inside AI chatbots that now mediate access to information.
Content strategies are also changing. Faced with a surge of low-cost, AI-generated material, newsrooms are retreating from what many executives describe as “commodity” journalism.
Survey respondents plan to increase investment in original investigations, which recorded a net positive score of 91%, along with contextual analysis at 82% and human-centred storytelling at 72%. At the same time, they expect to cut back on general news coverage, down 38%, and service journalism, down 42%, areas increasingly handled by automated systems.
“When social media platforms are flooded with fake news and toxic content, it’s the right time for journalism to prove its value,” said Le Quoc Minh, editor in chief of Nhan Dan Newspaper in Vietnam.
The report expands upon the idea of “liquid content” – journalism produced as flexible components rather than fixed articles, designed to shift between text, audio and video depending on audience context and platform.
Distribution strategies are being rewritten as well. The report declares the mid-life crisis of traditional social media complete, with traffic from Facebook and X falling 43% and 46% respectively over the past three years.
Video is now the priority. YouTube and TikTok top the list of platforms where publishers plan to invest, with net priority scores of 74% and 56%. The report describes a “video-fication of everything” that requires newsrooms to produce journalism that is performed and visual, not just written.
At the same time, the creator economy is emerging as a direct competitor. Audiences, particularly younger users, are increasingly placing their trust in individual personalities rather than institutional brands. The report says leading creators now resemble “Hollywood moguls”, building media businesses that rival legacy outlets for attention and revenue.
Publishers are uneasy. Seventy percent of respondents worry about creators diverting audience attention, while 39% fear losing top editorial talent to more lucrative creator-led ventures. “Responding to the increased competition … three-quarters (76%) of publisher respondents say they will be trying to get their staff to behave more like creators this year,” the report says.
Inside news organisations, AI adoption is accelerating. The report characterises 2026 as the year AI becomes truly agentic, capable of carrying out complex tasks with limited human supervision. Ninety-seven percent of respondents say back-end automation is now critical to their operations.
Among the emerging tools is “vibe coding”, a term coined in 2025 for systems that allow users to build apps or workflows simply by describing them to an AI. The technology promises to lower barriers to experimentation inside newsrooms.
Efficiency gains, however, come with consequences. While 67% of respondents say AI has not yet led to direct job cuts, many report that hiring has slowed. There is widespread concern that as AI agents improve, they will begin to replace entry-level reporting and production roles.
Financial prospects for 2026 are increasingly uneven. Subscription-focused, upmarket publishers express cautious optimism, citing stronger audience relationships and clearer paths to profitability. For outlets reliant on advertising and search traffic, the outlook is far darker.
Licensing content to AI companies is emerging as a key fault line. One in five respondents, largely from large international brands, expect meaningful revenue from licensing deals. A similar proportion expect no returns at all, raising fears of a two-tier market in which smaller and local publishers are excluded.
Even so, the report ends on a note of guarded resilience. In an environment saturated with synthetic content, deepfakes and misinformation, it argues that verified, human reporting has become more valuable, not less.
“I think it is an incredible time to be in news and journalism,” said Justin Stevens, director of news at ABC Australia. “The public are seeking out trustworthy news and information.”
