Audiences are sick of being treated as consumers

In 2026, journalism will return to the people who never left the work. The future will belong to reporters, editors, publishers, and voices rooted in community, the ones who have spent years building real relationships and earning trust through presence, accountability, and consistency. Audiences are sick of being treated as consumers. They want to follow journalists who know their communities extremely well and stand by the work for the right reasons.

Paywalls and scarcity pushed people away at the moment they needed it most. The next phase is simple: High-quality reporting must be free and open, supported by collective models that value impact over manufactured growth. Sustainability is possible when journalists think together, not in isolation or competition.

The rise of AI has made this even clearer. Machine-generated content is flooding every platform and lowering public expectations of what information should be, but it cannot replace journalists who have lived the stories they cover, or who have spent years earning credibility by being intentional in all they do. AI will never scale trust, so let’s stop pretending that it can or that corporate media models will save us. They never will.

The next year will push journalists to slow down, reject the rush to publish instantly, and produce work that shows care and a human voice. Individual storytellers and community newsrooms rooted in journalism’s disciplined craft are leading the way. They have been doing it for years and will continue.

The work is the work. The people who never stopped doing it will define the path forward. We are on the cusp of a new golden age of journalism, and I am so excited for it.