Taking journalism down to its studs

In 2025, the cracks in our shared reality metastasized into chasms.

Communities are experiencing one reality, while institutions describe another. The mechanisms that once bridged the gap like trusted institutions, reliable data, and moderated platforms have collapsed or been dismantled. As a result, people increasingly trust only what they can see and who they know over what any institution tells them.

In 2026, we need to take journalism down to its studs.

First, we need to build a foundation that can withstand the test of time. It’s not a new platform or set of product offerings. It’s trust.

In our old model, journalists assumed their credibility came with their institutional affiliation. Building trust with your audience was not in our job descriptions. So we built our reporting, products and distribution systems on top of a foundation that didn’t really exist. Our crisis is not about technology or finding the right revenue model: It’s structural.

Building trust with an audience is incredibly hard work. It is not earned by how many views or prizes you get. It is earned before your first story ever runs. In the words of my friend Ashley Alvarado, it starts with a give, not an ask.

The Boyle Heights Beat began 15 years ago as a youth journalism program serving East Los Angeles. Students were offered a free computer if they signed up. They wrote stories about their community, and their work reflected the daily lives of their neighbors. Parents understood that their kids were developing new skills, and saw The Beat as a community asset.

Last year, the Beat was integrated into The LA Local, a new community centered reporting initiative covering neighborhoods across L.A. Reporting and editing capacity expanded. Since then, the audience has massively expanded. Community members stop by in person to share tips and ideas — work that is only possible because of the foundational trust they’d built over time.

Now we’re learning what it takes to replicate that foundation in new neighborhoods. It means reaching out to stakeholders before reporters ever hit the ground. Stakeholders include leaders (elected and unelected), PTA presidents, neighborhood gossips, small business owners, community organizers, to name a few. It means our journalists need skills beyond traditional reporting chops: community organizing, patient listening, understanding how communities celebrate themselves. We’re not writing happy news. We’re reflecting all dimensions of these places, their celebrations and their challenges, their achievers and their solutions. But none of that reporting is possible without first earning the right to be there.

Having this foundation of trust in place matters now more than ever.

When ICE agents grab people off our streets, residents need documenters they already trust. If you haven’t built that trust beforehand, you won’t get those calls. You won’t get access. You won’t understand what’s happening in your own backyard. And when people in power deny it happened, your inability to document becomes their evidence that it didn’t.

Trust determines whether you’re documenting history or adding to people’s confusion.

Once our foundation of trust is solid, we can start rebuilding the frame. We can put up the studs; verifying, documenting, understanding what information is missing and what facts are being withheld. Then we can add new systems. We can rebuild our distribution through relationships versus algorithms and make room for other people doing the work of documenting and verifying.

My prediction for 2026 is that more newsrooms grasp this fundamental change in our work and start critically examining their own foundations. That means asking: Who in our community would call us first when something happens? Who trusts us to tell their story accurately? Who is distributing your work?

The ones who stop renovating their existing houses and start rebuilding from the ground up are the ones who will be built to survive whatever comes next.