Interviewer: Nick, in your extensive research on digital journalism, what emerging trends do you believe will have the most significant impact on the media landscape in the next five years?

Nic Newman: I think, on the one hand, there's technical trends and obviously artificial intelligence is the huge one. It's a very big technology, and it's going to impact how we make content, how we distribute content, the amount of content, all of these things are going to be transformed in different ways. So that's kind of technical, but I think there's other sorts of things going on which are about societies themselves and the divisions within societies, and how that's affecting media and what it looks like, and also divisions between ages. So, you know, the new generation that's growing up with social media, the so-called social natives and the way in which they're consuming media and also creating media in different ways, will affect the future of media. So there's basically big disruptions coming, gradually.

From the demographic point of view, there's a big division in society opening up, which is affecting media and affecting media trust. And then, you've got the sort of next technical wave of interactions driven by artificial intelligence, which will also affect new interfaces, new ways of interacting with the internet.

Interviewer: You have introduced some big changes in BBC news, such as podcasting or blogs. What do you think are the next big technological innovations that media companies should be preparing for?

Nic Newman:  They're very good examples because many of those things were introduced 20 years ago. I mean, podcasting started in 2004, almost 20 years ago, but it took like 15 years to really take off. So podcasts really have only taken off in the last five years in terms of mass media. That really is connecting with young people, for example. So often it's very old technologies like email or so on. Sometimes we're very quick to sort of jump on the next thing, whereas in many cases it's trying to make the best of things we already have. So in some ways the next big thing is going to be podcasting, or the next big thing is going to be something we already know.

The other next big thing going to happen is new interfaces and the way in which we interact with those new interfaces. So, you know, we've been trying and failing to do bots and bots that answer your questions or intelligent agents. We've literally been talking about this for 25 years, but suddenly the conditions for the technology and the interactions are all coming into play at the same time. So I think that's obviously ChatGPT being an example of it. But I think there's going to be voice bots and all kinds of other ways in which we're going to interact through our voice or through our gestures.And a lot of these interactions have artificial intelligence in it. 

Interviewer: How do you see artificial intelligence shaping the future of new productions and consumption, particularly in the context of combating disinformation?

Nic Newman: It's very hard to answer that question, because I think on the one hand, artificial intelligence is going to enable this sort of flood of synthetic media. I think today at this conference, we've heard a statistic that 90% of all the media produced is going to be produced synthetically. May or may not be true, but there's certainly going to be a lot of it. And, you know, the big question is we don't really know whether that's going to increase trust or reduce trust, because part of that flood of content is going to be about a flood of misinformation. And another part of it is going to be a flood of stuff that feels more relevant to you, or more timely, or in a format that works for you. So artificial intelligence offers the promise of more relevant media, more personalized media, but it also has the sort of potential nightmare element that it may produce, stuff that pushes people apart, of course. More division.

 Interviewer: And let's go back to your work in the digital news report, which covers consumer behavior around news in 46 countries with key changes. Have you observed how people consume news today compared to a decade ago?

 Nic Newman: Well, the big changes are about the rise of platforms. And really it's the intersection of social media and smartphones, which have been the transformation. So, you know, a decade ago we were primarily still accessing via fixed computers or laptops. Now, these are incredibly powerful devices that sit in your pocket, and are really most people's primary way of accessing the internet. And then the power of search and social media, but particularly the growth of social media has, you know, enabled, again, way more connections to be made. It has really opened up more perspectives on the news, but it's also really dramatically affected the impact of big legacy media companies and undermined that sort of business model.

The combination of social platforms and smartphones really has undermined the business models as well as some of the formats that were important.

 Interviewer: And specifically these changes. How do you think they could evolve in the next future, specifically in consuming news? You were talking about interfaces. 

Nic Newman: I think we're right at the nexus of the next big, big change. We've seen social media becoming incredibly important, but now it's really declining or the traditional models of social media are declining, and we're getting new models of video social networks.

So in terms of consumption of news, that's the big shift around social from this sort of referral model to the consumption model based in networks like TikTok and YouTube and moving into video and audio and kind of, in a way, back to linear storytelling. But then the interface stuff I was talking about is really more about being able to have conversations. So it's a much more natural way of interacting.

So instead of saying, give me a story about Gaza, you say what's happened in Gaza this morning and what's happened since I last checked in, because for the first time, the computer knows what the human knows and so can give you a more relevant answer. So, that's really the revolution in this sense, that for the first time, these interfaces like ChatGPT understand humans. That's the difference.

 Interviewer: Will it be necessary to create a subsidy system for news media to defend its social role?

 Nic Newman: We already have subsidies for media. And this is not not new. Pretty much every country, even the United States, has subsidies for some kind of media. They just work in slightly different ways. So it might be foundations subsidizing media in the United States, or it might be governments contributing rather than paying for the whole of public service media. But I think the current incentives are very much tied to platforms. So you subsidize broadcast, but you don't subsidize online, it makes literally no sense. So clearly, the way in which we need to be clear about what it is we're trying to subsidize and why, and that's very hard, because the media is still sort of very divided into these different platforms. And the reality is that audiences don't think like that. So it's really what do we want to produce more of? What do we want to produce less of? And how can we get the subsidies right for each of these?

Interviewer: In regions with complex language situations such as Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria or Catalonia, what unique media consumption trends have you observed and how should media companies adapt to this? And how is public subsidiaries playing a role? 

Nic Newman: It's partly what you want, right? Do you want to support smaller languages? Do you want to support diversity in all its forms? From language to different aspects of culture and society needs to make a decision on that because the subsidies fundamentally come off the back of that. The United States is also very diverse and there are some parts where the market is working, some parts where the market is not working. They speak multiple languages, increasingly in the United States as well, there’s a very strong Hispanic media. So the difference in many ways is just the size of the market. The US is a massive single market effectively, and that is supporting incredible amounts of entrepreneurism, obviously an entrepreneurial culture as well. But the size of the market enables things like Substack newsletters to be viable in a way that it's very hard to make it viable in a country like Belgium, whereas a small market is then split by language, 2 or 3 times. So I think that's the challenge. 

But, on the other hand, I think small markets can often have a huge advantage because in some senses they're protected by language. So media environments, for instance the Nordic countries, 5 million people in Finland and Norway, the market is protected by languages, and there is a small number of publishers who are broadly doing very well, financially and in terms of audience as well.

If you can really serve the local interests of people in Catalonia, for example, with something that feels relevant to them, even though the market is smaller they will value you more. So it's actually almost like emphasizing the point of difference rather than trying to be like everyone else.

 Interviewer: And what should these markets expect when automatic translation gains power?

 Nic Newman: Again, I think it's very hard to know. I think that artificial intelligence can only go so far. So it can, you know, it can translate. Average stuff averagely. But it can't really do empathy or connection or create amazing media. It might help to do that, but ultimately that's what humans are great at. So I don't think in that sense, you know, it can replace amazing storytelling but can assist with that. I don't see it as a huge threat in that sense.

 Interviewer: With the rise of platforms like TikTok, for example, what strategies should legacy media companies adopt to stay relevant and engage younger audiences?

 Nic Newman: Well, just in general, they need to be aware of where audiences are spending their time and why, and what their expectations are on those platforms. And clearly, you know, younger audiences have moved to TikTok, but not all of them. We find that many younger people hate TikTok and they'll be on YouTube or they'll be on nothing, you know? And so there are many different types of young people who want many different types of things.

I think the trend towards video, short form video storytelling, and vertical video storytelling is going to be important.

Whether it's on TikTok or anything else. It's clearly a trend that's resonating with young people. And so media companies need to get with the program. They need to understand why young audiences are finding that useful and work out how to take their values and their content into those platforms. It's obviously difficult because there's no money in TikTok, and so if you're a commercial company, there's all the calculations of are you just cannibalizing your audience? So there's a lot of complicated trade offs about how much effort you should put into it, but you should definitely learn about vertical storytelling.

 Interviewer: Thinking about news organizations from your point of view, what are the most viable business models? 

 Nic Newman: Again, I think there is no such thing as a single news organization anymore. There are many different types of news organizations. So you have the New York Times appealing to richer educated people. You have public broadcasters appealing to older people. You have a small startup that maybe has a niche and is trying to talk to a very specific group of people, and so each of the cost bases will be different, the business models will be different, but the general trends that we see are away from digital advertising, because broadly, the audiences hate it and the platforms have a very big advantage there because they can target much more effectively than any individual media company and towards some kind of direct relationship. So subscription models, membership donation, a range of approaches. But they also include things like events or a range of different ways in which you can build a connection with an audience. So I think if you're a small organization person, then at least part of or most of your revenue needs to come from those direct connections. If you're a big organization, you're probably going to use a mixture of 3 or 4 different business models to try and get scale both across advertising and subscription and some other models as well.

 Interviewer: Talking about small organizations, considering the challenges faced by local journalism in many countries, what future do you envision for local news outlets and what role can technology play in revitalizing them?

 Nic Newman: I think anyone who tells you they know the answer to local is probably misplaced. How strongly people believe in local journalism varies a lot between countries. In a country like Norway, people have a very strong sense of local connection. Catalonia people have a very strong sense of local connection. In the UK, people don't have very strong connections. So it depends on where you live. But in terms of the business models, I think we're seeing the end of these big sorts of regional, print based regional newspapers. People don't want regional journalism in the same way. They want things that are really relevant to their lives, much more specific to their lives. And they want a mixture of utility and connection. Digital offers lots of possibilities there at a lower cost model probably. So, you know, a great example is in the US like Axios local, where 2 or 3 people in a city are not producing a website 24 hours a day but a newsletter, for example, twice a week. That’s a good way to deliver value locally and continue to fulfill the democratic role of holding local politicians to account. So I think there's lots of possibilities there. There are also possibilities in using local data to turn that into narratives through artificial intelligence and provide more value through AI assisted local. But I think primarily it's about lower cost models and more specific value.