What's Next, Now: February 2024
This month, our crystal ball predicts a splintering news landscape, a growing rift in trust in AI, a new prioritization on sleep, and more.
We’ve been following the trend of newsroom cuts since 2020, when more than 16,000 journalists lost their jobs. But newsrooms don’t seem to be adjusting to the new normal like they could have over the past four years, and journalism jobs are continuing to hit the cutting room floor. In January of this year alone, more than 500 journalists were laid off, from major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal, popular online publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider, news startups like The Messenger, and local outlets like LA Times and the Washington Post.
With a market in continuous turmoil, many journalists hit by layoffs have been forced to join the niche and independent media landscape. For example, former TechCrunch managing editor Darrell Etherington announced a new newsletter focused on tech news, and TechCrunch digital culture reporter Morgan Sung launched a newsletter about the internet — both hosted on popular newsletter platform Substack, which now boasts more than 3 million paid subscribers.
The niche media landscape has been growing over the past few years, both from former reporters creating independent content and non-traditional journalists entering the market. Even traditional media is starting to look to niche news as legitimate competition — so much so, that the New York Times is creating an entire beat to report on “non-traditional media organizations, including those behind newsletters, podcasts and new video formats.”
The growth of the independent media market gives journalists a chance to report on their own terms, without answering to any publisher agendas or metrics-hungry hedge funds. But it’s also created a splintered landscape that makes it harder for consumers to find news they can trust, and for brands to connect with qualified journalists who can help tell their story. The quality of traditional news will suffer as journalists are forced to cover more beats they are unfamiliar with, and independent media is often difficult to locate if you’re not already in the know, leaving room for bad actors. These factors will place additional onus on brands engaging with media to operate with precision to effectively reach the audiences that matter most to them.