News organizations have to battle multiple challenges this year – political hostility, economic headwinds, and a struggle to protect intellectual property amid the onslaught of AI-driven platforms, according to the Reuters News Trends for 2025. Changes to search would be a challenge for the news industry, which has lost social traffic and which fears a further decline in visibility as AI interfaces generate ‘story-like’ answers to news queries, the report by Nic Newman and Federica Cherubini says.
Despite all these challenges, traditional news organizations remain optimistic about the year ahead – if not about journalism itself.
The Reuters survey between 20 November and 20 December 2024. drawn from a strategic sample of 326 digital leaders from 51 countries and territories, says just four in 10 (41%) of the editors, CEOs, and digital executives are confident about the prospects of journalism in the year ahead, with one in six (17%) expressing low confidence. Threats to journalism’s ability to operate freely include political polarization, attacks on the press, and media capture.
On the brighter side, 56% of publishers feel confident about their business prospects, up from last year’s figure. Some feel the surge of unreliable AI-generated content could bring audiences back to trusted media – just like during the Covid days.
The surge of AI
News publishers will focus on building relationships with AI platformsPublishers feel their carefully crafted, evidence-based news articles will be harder to access in 2025 as social referrals dry up and traditional search links are at least partly replaced by AI aggregations, often drawn from their own work. Arguments over copyright and fair compensation will rage on throughout the year, with the outcomes having a significant bearing on the shape and size of the news industry that eventually emerges. Despite these challenges, this report shows that news leaders will be looking to do all they can to turn the tide.
Three-fourths (74%) of respondents feel referral traffic from search engines could fall this year. Data from analytics provider Chartbeat shows aggregate traffic to hundreds of news sites from Google search remains stable as of now but publishers fear the extension of AI-generated summaries to important news stories. This comes after big falls in referral traffic to news sites from Facebook (67%) and Twitter (50%) over the last two years.
According to another unverified report not cited by Reuters, Google’s share of search traffic fell below 90% for the first time in 10 years. Google’s share was 89.34% in October 2024, 89.99% in November, and 89.73% in December. Although the platform remains the search market leader, this is the first time since 2015 that its share in search traffic has been less than 90% for three consecutive months.
As a countermeasure, publishers will focus on building relationships with AI platforms (+56 net score3) such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, both of which have been courting high-quality content in return for citations and/or money, the report says.
New revenue sources
With consumer attention switching to video, more publisher effort is also being planned for YouTube (+52) and TikTok (+48) as well as Instagram (+43).
On the business side, 36% commercial publishers expect licensing income from tech and AI companies to be a significant revenue stream – twice as many as last year. With the money and structure of deals remaining a point of contention, 72% said they would prefer to see collective deals benefiting the whole industry rather than each company negotiating in their self-interest.
Subscription and membership remain the biggest revenue focus (77%) for publishers, ahead of display (69%) and native advertising (59%). The majority rely on three or four different revenue streams – events (48%), affiliate revenue (29%), donations (19%), and related businesses (15%).
New product development will be a priority with many considering new products around games (29%) or education (26%) with a fifth (20%) looking to launch an international or foreign language version.
News organizations’ use of AI technologies continues to increase across all categories, with back-end automation (60%) considered very important by publisher respondents, many of whom have rolled out AI toolkits to support new workflows this year. 87% say newsrooms are being fully or somewhat transformed by Gen AI, with13% saying not so much or not at all.
Audience-facing uses of AI are likely to proliferate in 2025. Publishers would actively explore features that turn text articles into audio (75%), provide AI summaries at the top of stories (70%), or translate news articles into different languages (65%). Over half (56%) respondents would look into AI chatbots and search interfaces.
Influencers and creators
News media organizations are worried about the rise of news influencersPublishers are ambiguous about whether influencers and creators are good or bad for journalism. Around a quarter (27%) feel institutional news reporting could get squeezed out. Others (28%) feel news organizations can learn from them in terms of storytelling creativity and building communities. Some publishers worry about losing their editorial stars in a more personality-led ecosystem.
The report says media will learn to work with influencers and see more tie-ups between the two, with both looking to enhance their credibility and reach. Romanian news website PressOne, for example, started collaborating with influencers in 2022 to promote news consumption among young audiences, followed the next year by a project on drug policy.
A major concern is attracting and retaining talent in product and design (38%), data-science (52%), and engineering (55%) at a time when new product development is becoming more important than ever.
The report concludes by saying that part of the task for news leaders in the year ahead will be to redefine the role and value of journalistic institutions in an age of polarization, misinformation, and super-abundant content in a way that resonates with both staff and audiences.
