Monday 11th September: Ten major trends in news consumption

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

As AI advances continue to disrupt the way we work, there are many questions from news and media organisations: What will be the impact of AI on audience expectations? How can we maintain trust in our news content in the AI era?

Reuters sheds light on these questions in an exclusive report: Powering Trusted News with AI: Navigating the present and shaping the future.

The report explores the role of AI in news and journalism and offers practical advice on how AI can help streamline your processes.

Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute drew on 12 years’ worth of data from the Digital News Report to highlight the most important trends impacting UK media. Speaking at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference, he worked through 10 of the key issues that publishers should be paying attention to.

For me it is no surprise that print is in decline for news, but the drop in TV viewing did catch me unaware: over the 10 years from 2013 to 2023, TV reach is down almost 30%. Of course, that might be because I’m over 55 and apparently old people still watch TV news while the younglings get their news from social media.

Other developments to watch include the demise of Facebook, the rise of video platforms, increasing worries about algorithms and decreasing trust and attention for news, full stop. There aren’t many things the UK still leads the world in, but at least we’re the best at news avoidance. Snark aside, this is a great insight into what the Reuters team is focused on.

I don’t know exactly how many newsletters we’ve published since we started the Media Roundup, but our platform Beehiiv is saying more than 850 so I’m guessing we make the top 5%. It’s interesting to read though, that of the 1.7m newsletters on Substack and LinkedIn, only 12% have published fresh content in the last 45 days. I’m sure the activity rate holds up better among media organisations, but that’s quite the number.

International media network FIPP has joined with organisations worldwide, from the news, entertainment, magazine, book and academic publishing, to release The Global Principles for Artificial Intelligence. The Principles provide guidance for the development, deployment and regulation of AI systems and applications to ensure business opportunities and innovation can thrive within an ethical and accountable framework.

Here’s a nice practical and relatively risk-free use case for generative AI in the newsroom: Verdens Gang (VG) in Norway is using the technology to create story summaries. INMA’s Ariane Bernard explained, “The big reason it is less risky and more advanced and more mature is that summaries, by definition, work from a very specific content base. They’re not just building something from nothing.”

More from Media Voices