Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism 2026

[Nieman Lab]

The annual Nieman Journalism Lab Predictions for Journalism is always interesting. They’re often not so much predictions as either warnings or wishcasting; a finger on the pulse of what people are actually thinking inside newsrooms. It’s well-curated, and even the design of the site is always interesting year-on-year.

Here are some pieces that caught my eye, although you should go check out the full set.

In my piece about personalization, I already highlighted a segment from Gina Chua, who I think is one of the sharpest thinkers in news:

“Chatbots are coming to news — strike that; they’re here already — and we’re going to have to find a way to work in that world, despite all their well-documented limitations. This isn’t an argument that chatbots are a good source of news, but it’s a prediction that more and more people will turn to them because they provide something legacy newsrooms don’t: personalized information that’s more useful for each user.”

The Pivot Fund CEO Tracie Powell has a strong point to make that is ostensibly about the current obsession with using influencers in news, but is far bigger and deeper than that:

“The Prediction: In 2026, the collapse of “big social” and mass youth abandonment of mainstream platforms will force journalism and philanthropy to rebuild civic information systems around something social media no longer provides: trust, safety, and community control.

Influencers won’t save journalism. Algorithms won’t save journalism. Corporate platforms won’t save journalism.

Communities will. But only if we pivot — fast.”

Tedium’s Ernie Smith points out the inevitability of building walls around our content to keep it safe from AI vendors:

“Memetic metaphors aside — I didn’t expect the leopards to eat my face — I think it highlights the challenges that small or niche publishers face in this new environment. Old-school new media folks might prefer to avoid paywalling everything to within an inch of its life. (Some may even do crazy things like offer full-fat RSS feeds, heaven forbid.) But it’s becoming increasingly clear that if you don’t gate at least some of your content, you may be putting yourself at risk of just letting a tool like Grok or Perplexity eat your lunch.”

The Continent publisher Sipho Kings has some bleak words about the future of local news:

“But we’re not learning from the past. Instead, we’re approaching this new era of generative AI much like we did platforms. Big Western newsrooms are signing secret deals to make some money. Our luminaries talk of the opportunities that come with becoming a feedstock to genAI companies (no doubt prompted by media events being sponsored by AI companies). The rest, notable exceptions noted, are already on the verge of collapse, and are using AI to replace journalists, then hoping the algorithms can get gamed.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. PRX CEO Kerri Hoffman published a call to action that I strongly agree with:

“Right now, many of those underlying systems are controlled by a small number of commercial platforms, ad tech companies, or vendors whose incentives don’t always align with public service. The risk is that public media becomes just another content supplier in someone else’s ecosystem, subject to someone else’s rules.

Building shared, mission-driven infrastructure is a way of clearing the path.”

And Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation Damon Kiesow thinks there’s a big opportunity for us to build our own, discrete small language models that are potentially more useful than the LLMs provided by big tech companies:

“If publishers embrace small language models and open standards, they may regain some control over how local knowledge is collected, delivered, and valued. For decades, news organizations have tried to win while playing by Big Tech’s rules, but MCP and SLMs give them something new in the digital era: a home field advantage. The platforms own the pipes, but publishers can own the intelligence that matters most to our communities.”

Question Everything host Brian Reed thinks the news industry will re-examine its relationship with the tech industry and understand how abusive it has been:

“I think 2026 is the year journalists will widely reframe our understanding of tech platforms: to see them as more akin to cars than to newspapers. We will realize that tech companies have exploited journalists’ greatest weakness: our love of the First Amendment. And that will finally free us to push for serious accountability from some of the biggest companies the world has ever seen.”

And that brings me to my own prediction, where I call for the news industry to collaborate together to build new technology that genuinely serves the news ecosystem:

“The solution isn’t to retreat from technology. Journalism needs better tools, built for their needs and values. But they also shouldn’t be in the business of building it themselves. The main business of a newsroom is producing journalism; rightly, their cultures, incentives, and goals are centered around the work of telling the truth about the world.

Software built inside newsrooms often fails, not because the teams aren’t talented, but because the incentives, culture, and resources of journalism simply don’t match the operational demands of running products sustainably. But after years of extraction, journalism’s relationship with the tech industry has become abusive. Something else is needed.”

Again: the complete set is worth reading. What stood out to you?

[Link]