2024 was a year of great change in the U.S. media. But even after a year of seemingly constant turmoil related to reporter layoffs, the rise of substacks and AI, and a divisive political election, 2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal time of both upheaval and possibility. Here are a few trends we predict will accelerate in 2025 and beyond.
Fractured mainstream media landscape: Perhaps the biggest news story of 2024 lasted the entire year. The presidential election, which many have now dubbed “the podcast election, ” saw the results of an increasingly fragmented media landscape, with the presidential and VP candidates hitting a variety of influential podcasts. It used to be that mainstream media (debates, interviews) was where candidates promoted their platform to large audiences. Not anymore. This election proved how podcasts reach a wide variety of audiences – with the importance of a range of podcasts solidified. The power of podcasts will be a major media story to watch in 2025.
Continued consolidation: Coming into 2024, the news industry experienced its worst 12 months since the Covid downturn, having shed 2,700 journalism jobs. The media downturn was fueled by a multitude of factors, including a slow economy and increasingly fractured and declining audiences. Unfortunately, those layoffs continued throughout the year, with the latest cuts coming at Hearst in November. More consolidation is predicted in 2025.
Substack story: Not all the news was bad. Substack, a platform that allows journalists to launch their own newsletters easily, was a bright spot. Substacks and newsletters emerged as influential new outlets and money-makers for journalists as an alternative to mainstream media. Since 2020, dozens of influential journalists have not only launched Substacks and newsletters, but many have built successful businesses on those platforms. Some popular and influential substacks in the tech world include Eric Newcomer’s Newcomer, which generated $1 million in revenue in 2023, and Casey Newton’s Platformer, which initially launched on Substack but then moved to the publishing platform Ghost.
AI and journalism: When ChatGPT came on the scene two years ago, it changed every industry monumentally, and journalism was no exception. We are watching closely to see how newsrooms are adopting this technology, as it has deep implications for the news business. Most recently, the New York Times said that while it uses AI for investigative stories and data analysis and to help increase access to its journalism, the publication will never use it to write stories, while the AP has been bullish about AI for more than a decade.
2025 will continue to see massive shifts driven by all of these trends. We’re expecting media fragmentation to continue and newsletters and podcasts to rise in importance. And AI will affect journalism in untold ways that will have ripple effects across the industry.
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