Welcome to The Publisher Newsletter, by Media Voices: profiling the people and products powering publishing.

2025 highlights from media leaders, and our outlook for 2026

In our end-of-year episode, we talk through a busy year at MediaVoices, outline what our favourite interviews from the year have been and why, and what we think 2026 holds for publishers.

The best of 2025

Peter doesn’t have favourites; instead he thinks that every guest brings something different to this long, rolling conversation about how to survive and thrive in this mad media landscape. His highlights include talking to Rebecca Miskin, CEO of DC Thomson, and Sean Cornwell, CEO of Immediate. They both said very similar things about managing disruption.

“You control what you can control. You experiment as much as you can,” said Rebecca. “You learn from the experiments, and then you place bold bets.” Sean echoed that. We were talking about no-click search, but it applies to AI too: work with the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

It reminded Peter of The Economist’s Luke Bradley-Jones at FIPP, who said to focus on differentiation, direct relationships and discoverability — the bits you can control. A video from TIME shown at the Congress warned: “Don’t let AI happen to you. Let AI happen for you.”

Another highlight for Peter was talking to Simon Freeman from Like the Wind magazine as part of our Print Revival report. He talked about an anti-scale approach — you don’t need millions; you need the truly engaged few.

A final bright spot was interviewing Zakhar Protsiuk from the Kyiv Independent. He was literally sitting in a war zone, but he and Peter didn’t talk about the war. “We talked about being a media operator, planning for a future where they can continue as a normal publisher. That was incredibly powerful.”

Esther really enjoyed pulling together a highlights episode from the recent FIPP Congress. It was tough to condense two full days into an episode but means it’s packed with just the best bits. She also chose a recent interview with Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis. Liesbeth is focused on finding the answers to questions about engaging not just the next generation, but currently disengaged audiences too, which is something more publishers should have as a priority.

Younger audiences will pay for games, entertainment and travel, from the latest Fortnite skin to an Instagrammable holiday. “So how can we make our news so interesting, or so relevant, or so representative for them that they want to pay for it?” Liesbeth asks.

She’s very optimistic, and her research is brilliant. She also co-writes the Youthquake Substack with Danuta Breguła where they share findings and relevant links from outside publishing too. So if you want to know how dating apps can inform your Gen Z engagement strategy, you know where to go!

Our outlook for 2026

Esther struggled to feel positive about 2026. Although she thinks human-led publishing will win out long-term, things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better.

Press Gazette has been doing some fantastic work uncovering AI slop and ‘expert’ fraud in PR, which has caught out a number of major publishers. These stories haven’t really hit national headlines, but it won’t take many doing so to really rock public trust in so-called ‘trusted’ brands.

“I think we’re going to see scandals around established publishers using AI-generated or AI-assisted content without proper transparency,” Esther guessed. “There are already many junk AI sites, so everyone says trusted brands will win out, but trust is fragile. It’ll only take one or two scandals to really damage things.”

Peter agreed that any publisher chasing short-term gain will get burned. At the AI Forum, he talked to Rupert Heseltine, Executive Chairman at Haymarket – they have just become a B Corp. “He’s very focused on the human element,” Peter pointed out. “That’s the kind of capitalism we need, not scorched-earth policies.”

“I’m pessimistic for the bad actors, but optimistic for publishers who genuinely care about audience needs. Small publishers especially.”

There are some big, tough questions for the industry to address. The era of easy traffic is over; Megha Garibaldi, The Atlantic’s Chief Growth Officer said on the podcast a few weeks ago that publishers had been lulled into thinking audience acquisition was a zero-cost exercise. “We’re not going to be thinking any more about easily getting tens of millions of people who just stumble upon us,” she said.

For smaller publishers who may not have the brand pull of The Atlantic, this means being essential to your community, and encouraging the community to grow itself. A bit of old-fashioned brand marketing won’t hurt either.

Listen to the full chat in this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast, available wherever you find podcasts.

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