Insights from important journalism figures on the state of news in 2025, as shared by the Nieman Journalism Lab.
This article was originally published by Nieman Journalism Lab and is hereby reproduced by iMEdD with permission. Any reprint permissions are subject to the original publisher. Read the original article here.
For someone who has built my entire career out of Audience-focused work in great newsrooms, it’s painful to bury my own. But here we are: The standalone Audience team/department/function, as we know it, is dead.
If the initial purpose of capital-A “Audience” teams was to transition newsrooms to the future, we always knew we were putting ourselves out of a job. And boy, were we successful!
I’ve felt such joy of seeing great audience-first thinkers rise in our industry to become CEOs, founders, executive and managing editors, department heads, chief officers, etc. From Allison Rockey’s appointment to executive editor at Vox.com way back in 2017 to Ashley Alvardo taking the reins as CEO at Texas Public Radio this December, the momentum has been unstoppable.
These leaders’ careers passed through audience-y teams. They lead with the lessons of community listening, platforms, partnerships, metrics, and more to infuse audience DNA in every department and team of their organizations. So everyone in your organization is now your audience team. Reporters think about social heds, newsletter decks and SEO targets as they craft their stories. Editors are strategists and trainers. Designers are responsible for visuals on-platform AND off-platform.
The corollary: If your audience team is still siloed away, powerless to impact your colleagues or readers, your organization’s chances of survival in these transformative times is slim. Correct course and appoint a chief audience officer to jumpstart the silo-breaking.
Where does this transition leave the hundreds of journalists still employed in Audience?
The best audiencers are busy running head first into what’s next: creator journalists, or what Pew calls news influencers. And while the spotlight on these journalists who transcend, or even actively work outside, brand-name media is helpful, it’s not just the change in consumption trends you may have read about in various post-election reflections.
It’s also about production: Journalists are more willing to depart their long-time employers to be independent and build their audiences alone (a more lucrative and maybe more sustainable deal for people like Taylor Lorenz, Oliver Darcy, and the like). Publishers are countering by awkwardly trying to triangulate a creator strategy that makes sense for their business and that still foregrounds their brand over the individual.
The early signal in the noise for me: I co-created a workshop at the Online News Association conference about how to leave your traditional media role to “go solo” that was oversubscribed by 50%. My workshop co-creator Liz Kelly Nelson has another stat from her Project C newsletter, where she chronicles the transition to our creator journalism future: More than 8,000 attendees joined the recent launch of an online creator course funded by the Knight Foundation.
No matter if you’re thinking about newer, independent creator journalists or from inside a legacy media brand, it’s clear how few creators can actually make it alone, despite this idealized picture of the self-reliant Substacker or the lone YouTuber “telling it like it is” in their basement. Nearly all will need help, formally with teams and colleagues that build out their business. Informally, they will also need consultants and “friends of the pod” that enable sustainable growth.
This gap is where Audience experts will thrive as the economies and structure of media re-organize themselves. Some will, no doubt, also peel off to be creators themselves.
What will this look like? Think about the social media editor who can seamlessly go from ghost writing tweets “on main” to ghostwriting for a creator? Think of the newsroom training expert who can design a creator’s online course. The newsletter strategist who can upgrade the calls-to-action for a Substacker to optimize how and when they increase their top-of-funnel audience while also increasing subs. The engagement editor who can manage a Patreon or merch store and ‘cinematic universe’ around a journalist-creator’s brand.
Each of these roles can move fully independent themselves as well. These are flexible, worthy careers for talented humans who want to work outside the corporate hierarchy. Adriana Lacy has been growing her own social media business for years. Lex Roman has recently launched a consultancy for optimizing subscriber revenue.
The superpower of Audience thinkers is seeing around the corner to what’s coming next (say, digital circa 2008, mobile in 2012, social in 2016, AI in…). If you can ride the wave of technology and catch the winds of attention, your organization (or just you!) can chart the narrow path, escaping what will crush others and stand tall before the next wave comes through.
Audience is dead, long live Audience!
Ryan Kellett is a Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow for Journalism Innovation.
Find a selection of Nieman Journalism Lab’s predictions for journalism in 2025 here.
