Let’s start with a grim truth. Many venerable news organizations will, in all likelihood, die an undignified death. The second piece of bad news is that many talented journalists risk ending up in a seemingly endless unemployment line. In a new, AI-mediated reality, there may simply no longer be a need for them.
The hope lies in this: the future of journalism is not predetermined. Independent news media can still play a crucial role in the future ecosystem of information and public debate. But it will require major change. In this essay, I propose what some of those changes could be.
Before we get there, I want to introduce you to mister Wallace Hartley, a man I increasingly find myself identifying with.
Hartley, born in Lancashire in the late 19th century, was the son of a Sunday-school teacher who introduced his local congregation to the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee. And that is precisely what young Wallace eventually did: he moved closer to his Maker at a speed of 21 knots.
On 10 April 1912, the violinist Hartley signed on to what was then the largest and most advanced means of transport in the world — more astonishing in its day than self-driving cars and high-tech drones are today. Three days later, Hartley stood on deck with the rest of his orchestra. They were wet, cold and frightened, but apparently not ready to put down their instruments. They remained at their posts, entertaining their audience into the night.
Then RMS Titanic sank.
More often than I care to admit, I identify with bandleader Wallace Hartley. Not musically, obviously. But we share a certain fate. A few years ago, not a living soul believed that VG, the successful Norwegian news organization I lead, could sink. Now I find myself standing in the cold, waiting for the ship to list. We have hit an iceberg. Possibly several at once. They have torn open the hull and exposed the fact that our construction was not quite as watertight as we liked to believe. Water is pouring in. We may sink.
But we keep playing! Just as before. And me? I wave the conductor’s baton and urge the newsroom to keep time: “Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!”
Most people in media understand the metaphor. The Titanic represents the proud news organizations of the Western world, some with roots stretching back to the age of the Morse telegraph. These institutions are shaped by strong cultures that have served them well, but those cultures have also cemented working methods and created a mentality that can, at times, border on arrogance.
The iceberg in my analogy can have many names: OpenAI, Meta, Perplexity or Claude. Agentic consumption, liquid content, creators. Take your pick. Every new competitor, every shift in behaviour, has the potential to tear traditional media business models to pieces. We can already see the tips of the icebergs above the waterline, but none of us knows how far they extend beneath the surface. The only thing we can be reasonably certain of is that they are much larger than what we can see with the naked eye.
Our great challenge is this: a ship the size of the Titanic cannot change course in a second. Unlike smaller vessels, we are not built to navigate quickly and efficiently through treacherous waters. In conditions like these, it is easier to be a start-up defined by curiosity, technological understanding and agility than an establishment with the self-image of the Sun King.
Some will find these reflections provocative, perhaps even frightening, or to be thoughts an editor would be wiser to keep as an inner monologue. I strongly disagree. The most dangerous thing we can do as media leaders is to downplay the challenges facing journalism. That is why I use metaphors like this regularly with the organization I lead. I am open about the fact that despite all our progress, despite reaching half the Norwegian population every day, despite 80 per cent of our users coming directly to us, we could still be dramatically diminished within a few years.
In my view, it is impossible to create a genuine understanding of the need for change in a legacy organization without being brutally honest about the weaknesses in today’s journalism and the products we offer our audiences. There is no shortage of people claiming to possess the objective truth about the future of independent news media. I, for one, have limited faith in self-appointed oracles and travelling futurists. I trust the people who are genuinely uncertain — and who dare to admit it. I think uncertainty builds trust, at least in organizations populated by thinking people and critical journalists.
If I had to describe the culture I want to create at VG — the state of mind that I believe gives us the best possible chance of facing the future — I would call it constructive paranoia. We should always be alert, never take our users’ trust for granted, and always look for ways to improve — incrementally and radically — but never become paralysed by uncertainty.
No-regret moves to keep the horse trotting
In Norway, we have an old expression about carrying oats to a dead horse. The English equivalent would be flogging a dead horse. It describes projects, initiatives or arguments that are doomed to fail. Faced with an agentic internet, chatbots capable of producing generic news faster than any newsroom, and platforms devouring our business models at roughly the speed of a hummingbird’s heartbeat, it is not entirely unreasonable to compare traditional media to horses receiving palliative care.
I take great pride in trying to keep the horse alive. I believe there is a cure. I believe we can gallop again. But I am fairly certain we will not do so in the same form as before. The problem is that we do not really know what will be expected of news media in the future. We do not know who our competitors will be, or how the information ecosystem will work.
We are in a period of transformation. It may last several years, perhaps less. Either way, we should make every move we can today to prepare ourselves for a very different tomorrow. In a landscape where we have no map and barely recognize the terrain, the smartest approach is to look for no-regret moves. Fortunately, there are quite a few. Below, I list ten suggestions.
1. Understand what users expect
Yes, it sounds obvious, but the truth is that too many newsrooms still fail to navigate according to signals from their audiences. If we are to succeed in the transition to an AI-driven media world, the first commandment is to use our resources as effectively as possible. That requires understanding which problems we are supposed to solve for an audience whose expectations of journalism are constantly changing.
We need quantitative data, but we also need to meet our users face to face, on equal terms, if we want to understand their needs and expectations.
The days of distribution monopolies are over. Soon, so too will the era when audiences came to us simply to receive information they had neither asked for nor particularly needed. We are entering a period in which users will have different reasons for seeking out news media. We are moving from attention to intention. That is a profound change. If we do not understand our users’ intentions and needs better, we will fall behind. And if our strategy is simply to continue making the products we think are brilliant and hope that audiences will eventually understand why, we will fail.
2. Structured journalism
The article is not sick. It is stone dead. I do not mean that the article as a format will disappear, but that there is little relevance in journalism today still being planned, produced and structured around a format created for cellulose-based publications that enjoyed their golden age while Mark Zuckerberg was still in diapers.
If we are going to version our content and serve a diverse audience with news in the form each user actually needs, we have to change the way we structure our proprietary data. It must be readable by machines as well as humans. Journalists need to focus on the story, not the article. We have to prepare for a world in which much of the value lies in atoms of journalism — quotes, images, audio, verified facts and data.
I do not know whether, in the future, machines rather than humans will be our most frequent visitors. But I am absolutely convinced that, like our new competitors, we need to offer some form of liquid content. Not exactly as they do, though. We must do it in a way that preserves our editorial, ethical and professional standards.
3. Culture eats everything
The media world is full of executives who go on study trips or attend conferences where ideas and insights are endlessly recycled, then return home clutching a new tool they promptly order the entire staff to use. My view — hardly a controversial one — is that media companies focus far too much on technology and far too little on creating a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
A new tool will not save the media. Nor will a clever new CMS. What matters is our ability to act quickly. What matters is a culture of innovation. That kind of culture is extremely difficult to create if there is no trace of it to begin with, but it is more important than ever to give people and teams with the ability and willingness to rethink journalism the freedom to experiment.
Highly hierarchical media organizations with a taste for top-down decision-making will struggle to keep up and to create a genuine learning culture. One of the most important things the media industry can do now is invest in education. We need to educate our staff in AI. Because this shift is not primarily about teaching people to use new tools. It is about giving them the knowledge they need to apply new technology intelligently within their own domains. That is how we create real value from AI. It does not help if the people at the top understand what is hitting us if the crew is given neither the time nor the space to prepare.
4. Document every workflow
What actually happens inside a newsroom? How is journalism produced? How is it quality-assured? What is our secret sauce? What distinguishes the content produced by your newsroom, your department or your beat from everyone else’s? In traditional media, surprisingly many of these questions remain unanswered. The knowledge exists, but it is not sufficiently documented.
Without that insight, it is difficult to realize the potential of AI, and it is almost impossible to reprioritize resources. If you do not understand where your resources are being spent, you risk becoming stuck in old methods simply because that is how things have always been done. Insight is a prerequisite for change.
At Schibsted, we have now done the heavy and rather boring work of mapping all our editorial workflows. And for the first time, we have data on every newsroom process across every Schibsted brand. We have assessed time spent, tool support, AI potential and urgency.
Why? Because we now have a much better understanding of where we can free up capacity. And we know where to focus our AI efforts in order to move resources towards unique journalism.
5. Automate as much as you can
There are many important and productive discussions about how journalists should use AI. Different media organizations have different identities and will make different choices. That is entirely natural. Some may want to market themselves as created by humans. Others will choose to use AI much more actively. There is nothing wrong with pursuing different strategies. It comes down to understanding your audience.
But I believe every newsroom will benefit from automating wherever it can. AI gives us the opportunity to improve and streamline almost every part of the journalistic process. We can find more information, process it faster, improve our analysis of complex datasets, version content more effectively and write faster.
Rather than moving cautiously, I think media organizations should push towards the boundary. Automate until it hurts a little. Because only by doing that will we understand the possibilities in front of us. And, more importantly, only then will we be able to free up the most valuable resource in any newsroom: people.
6. Double down on what AI cannot replace
I have said this before, and I am happy to say it again. Adopting AI is not the difficult part. Anyone with a little technical understanding can now build new editorial tools. The much harder task is identifying the journalism we can actually make a living from after the paradigm shift.
We need to understand what each individual media organization does that genuinely matters to its audience, and define the kinds of content that machines cannot replace. The answer will vary from one organization to another. But in my view, it will involve many of the classical virtues of journalism: building source networks, finding information that someone is trying to keep hidden, analysing complex issues, and being out there in the real world alongside the people we serve.
Seen from that perspective, AI could turn out to be extremely positive for news media. It gives us the opportunity to push more of our effort — and more of our journalism — higher up the value chain. That sounds wonderful. In reality, it is difficult. Because this is not only about time. It is also about competence.
Anyone who has spent time in a newsroom knows how much effort and talent it takes to build a good source network. Reporting from a front line is not for everyone. Many of us simply do not have the qualities required to communicate with real credibility and authenticity from difficult situations. One plausible scenario is that there will be fewer journalists in the future. But the very best — those with unique skills and qualities — may have a brighter future than ever.
7. Trust, trust, trust
What will be the most important KPI in the future? Some will say scale and reach. Others will point to the direct relationship with users. I believe trust will become even more important than it is today.
If we lose the trust dimension, convenience wins. And if convenience is all that matters, people might as well ask a chatbot instead of seeking out an independent news organization. But trust is not simply about whether people believe the individual facts we publish. Trust has many drivers. Relevance, for example. The ability — and willingness — to correct mistakes. Adherence to recognized and publicly understood standards of journalistic ethics.
In my view, it is absolutely essential that media organizations become more transparent about our editorial decisions, our ethical trade-offs and our dilemmas. We take it for granted that audiences understand the difference between journalism and all the other information they encounter. We should not.
There is an opportunity here. I believe greater transparency builds trust. And I am convinced that we can build our ethical standards and internal quality-control processes directly into the systems we automate. That could become a genuine differentiator in the new media market.
8. Launch speedboats
When everything changes quickly, there is a danger of becoming paralysed and falling behind. Many of us will face the same Gordian knot. We have loyal users who are very happy with the products we already offer. They do not want radical change. They may be sceptical of new storytelling techniques and artificial intelligence. At the same time, there is a potentially huge new audience expecting an entirely different user experience. They will not use us unless we change radically.
Satisfying both groups at the same time is difficult, perhaps impossible. The danger of changing established products too quickly is that we lose the very people who are paying for our transformation.
The answer is not to sit still. Our existing products have to evolve. But we cannot move too quickly. One answer is to create sandboxes in which we can think from scratch.
At VG, we have chosen another maritime metaphor. We call them speedboats. These are real products in the market, but designed for the next generation of news consumers. There, we can think differently, take bold decisions and experiment without risking the trust of — or simply irritating — the users of our main products.
There is no guarantee that these speedboats will develop into products that grow and survive. That is not necessarily the point. The learning is the point. What we learn from these experiments can gradually be brought back into the mothership once we have evidence that the changes actually make things better.
9. Don’t get lost
When everything changes quickly and visibility is poor, you have to hold on tightly to the compass. The opportunities for media are almost endless. We can create new products and take journalism in directions we could barely have imagined a few years ago. In that kind of environment, it is easy to drift off course, forget the mission and throw the craft overboard.
Many people misunderstand the core of journalism. They think it is about writing, formats and politics. That is not even half the story. Journalism is about giving citizens the information they need to make informed choices. That is a prerequisite for a functioning democracy.
But journalism is about something else as well. As we navigate the rough seas ahead, we must not forget the people we are here for, the people who depend on us. People and vulnerable groups subjected to abuse or neglect. People carrying stories that need to be told. People who depend on us to be heard, seen and taken seriously.
That part of journalism is unlikely to be replaced by technology. It remains our responsibility. Regardless. And always.
The dream scenario
So what is my dream scenario? I am anything but certain about what the future will bring, but I do have one hope: that the core mission of journalism survives. My dream is that some, if not all, news organizations emerge stronger from this transformation, that we manage to preserve our role as providers of verified, fact-checked information, and that audiences continue to see the value in someone travelling out into the world, observing it and documenting it on their behalf.
The interfaces will be different. Much of what we spend time doing today will be automated. And I am fairly certain that agents will visit us at least as often as humans do.
If we look beyond the immediate challenges,, there is reason for hope. The next technological shift could leave people better informed than they are today. They could gain access to the information they need, in the form they are best able to consume it. There is something profoundly democratising about AIe — if we use it properly.
We in the media cannot complain that technological change makes it harder to maintain the business models that once funded traditional journalism. Our job is to provide a valuable service to people, and help the craft we value so highly remains relevant in the future.
I do not know exactly how we will do that, but I do know one thing: when the hull is leaking, the stupidest thing you can do is sit still. That is how you go down with the ship. We have to do something, and right now, almost anything is better than doing nothing.
As Wallace Hartley might have put it: Keep on playing. But find a new tune.