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🔶 News Alchemists #71: This is not a list of AI capabilities – these are audience needs.

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Hello, and welcome back to the News Alchemists newsletter!

I know, I said there was going to be no newsletter this week, and yet here I am. Not the first time this happens either — that’s how much I like to write these emails.

The thing is that last week I told you about the three data points I was looking out for in the new Digital News Report (DNR): trust in news, news avoidance, and people paying for news. 

Well, if you’ve read the report, you know what happened: all three got worse compared to the year before 🤦

  • After stalling at 40% for three years, trust in news went down to 37%.
  • So-called 'news avoidance' keeps growing: from 40% last year to 42%.
  • And with trust going down and avoidance going up, fewer people are paying for news: from 18% to 17%.

Am I surprised? Not really.

But I felt like shit anyways: on one side because this newsletter is supposed to bring you hope; on the other because focusing only on those three data points misses more nuanced — and sometimes even positive! — trends in the report.

So here’s a collection of analyses of the Digital News Report that go deeper into some of the findings, offering a less bleak and more useful outlook. 

See you next week, when I can’t wait to bring back the regular seven links. I have loads of hope-filled nuggets waiting for you. 👋

🧞Dmitry Shishkin messaged me after receiving the newsletter last week to answer my question on what he thought was the most interesting chart in the report. His answer is in this post: on the surface, the chart is about people’s main motivations for using AI chatbots; but look deeper and you’ll recognise audience needs: Explain complex stories. Summarise. Compare sources. Translate. Answer follow-up questions.

Dmitry: “For years, we've measured where people consume journalism. This chart is a reminder that the more important question is why. AI isn't creating new behaviours. It's revealing existing ones. […] The organisations that win won't produce the most content. They'll be the ones that understand audience intent - and build systems capable of serving it consistently.”

“Audiences are not giving up on journalism. They are giving up on journalism that does not earn their attention: that updates without explaining, that publishes without considering what the reader actually needs, and that chases platform algorithms instead of reader loyalty. The data in the Digital News Report consistently points toward the same set of values: depth, clarity, trustworthiness, and relevance to daily life. Those are hardly new journalistic virtues. The difference now is that audiences have more alternatives if you fail to deliver them.”

And other useful takeaways in this piece by 🧞Marcela Kunova.

...asks 🧞Tom Trewinnard: "I suspect for older audiences familiar with watching The News or reading The Newspaper, [the answer is] clearer – but as the DNR points out, many younger audience members have never done either of those things. [...] Younger audiences clearly do value feeling informed – maybe they just don’t internalize that as “news use”."

🧞Freddie Martyn: “For fifteen years, a huge chunk of editorial/audience strategy was not-so-quietly optimised for search: headlines written for keywords, formats designed for featured snippets and in line ads, volume justified by page views. […] This report tells me that era is ending and honestly good riddance to the parts of it that hollowed out editorial identity.” Hear hear!

Let’s close with this from the launch event of the DNR itself. The headline, along with the opening question, tells you everything about what we should do with the findings of the DNR: “How can news organisations best understand, relate to and serve audiences in a changing news environment?”

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Published by:

Mattia Peretti

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