Six insightful reactions to the Digital News Report 2025

Two or three years ago, if you wanted insightful commentary on the annual Digital News Report, you went to Twitter. It’s a clear signal of how the world has changed that I found all the good commentary on this year's edition either on, or via, LinkedIn. The metajournalism discussion has clearly exited X, and is largely found on the revitalised professional social network.

That said, I spent yesterday in the company of a room full of journalists who were forthright in their absolute hatred of the platform…

Anyway, whether you’re on LinkedIn or not, here’s some worthwhile commentary for you:

Missing the audience target

Lea Korsgaard, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Zetland, on audiences and formats:

Unsurprising conclusion: Around the world, consumption of traditional news is in free fall, but people still find themselves to have access to reliable information. In other words: traditional journalism is missing its audience – but the audience isn’t missing traditional journalism.

Beautifully concise summary of the problem: what we’re doing has strayed so far from user needs that they’re moving on from us, and fast. Unless we address this, the industry in its current form deserves to die.

Distribution > Production

Matt Capon, a fellow lecturer here at City St George’s, as well as an all-round insightful guy on the future of video:

The bottom line from the Reuters Digital News Report: distribution now outranks production. A generation that wakes up scrolling expects stories built for the scroll—short, clear, explain-first, and on demand. Publishers that learn the language of vertical video, alert craft and data-driven distribution will stay in the conversation. The rest risk watching the audience drift into someone else’s For You feed.

That’s a theme taken up by Sophia Smith Galer on the news influencer:

This DOES NOT MEAN your news publisher needs a TikTok or IG account. It means your reporters do. Are they amplifying themselves on video; if not, why not? When that’s how audiences have told us for years now that this is one of the most accessible ways we can reach them?

Pivot, pivot back, realign…

Nikita Mandhani explores this necessary pivot back to video, which many publishers might be wary of, given what happened last time:

Only this time, the shift is toward personality-led, platform-native, creator-driven video. I wouldn’t call this a new pivot — it’s a realignment. And it’s urgent. Because the audience isn’t adapting to legacy formats. We need to adapt to them.

Do you spot a consistent message here at all? 😇

Local news for local people

Here's Jonathan Heawood on the future of the part of journalism most desperately in need of reinvention – local news:

Once again, this highlights how local news providers MUST find a way to provide something different and valuable to win their community’s attention, engagement and trust. It’s hard to see local news ever recapturing a majority of local audiences but there is a path to a significant minority (30%+) that are interested in things that only news can provide.

So much of what people used to get from local newspapers is better handled by social media and messaging apps. Journalism.co.uk’s own Jacob Granger has similar thoughts:

Some stats: Social media and search engines are now seen as better sources for local activities (-6 net preference), services like transport information (-11), and buying/selling locally (-23). What local news excels at should not be any surprise (local politics, crime, notices).
It's eerily reminiscent of what Joshi Herrmann said at our last Newsrewired conference back in May: "People get micro updates from group chats and social media now — what readers really want is help navigating society and emotional resonance rather than being bombarded with news."

Much to think on.