Off-platform acceleration meets reader revenue focus
Thoughts from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism 2026 survey, BBC Charter Review + latest journalism leadership cohort confirmed
Good afternoon,
A happy Wednesday to you all. Writing this after two fun-filled days as we’re half-way through the Blog Preston pop-up newsroom at the University of Lancashire, where we see a dozen or so bright-eyed future journalists getting drilled on local news reporting.
They’ve been chasing down stories, ringing up MPs, seeking right to reply, taking pictures, video and plenty more to tell stories about the city - and get themselves published too on Blog Preston. We go again on Thursday and Friday with the second-year cohort. Well done to all of them, the biggest part is often showing up! I’ll share in a future newsletter edition some of the stories they have managed to get over the line.
And now to some interesting things which have crossed my feed in the past week or so…
Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026 - Reuters Institute for Journalism report - Nic Newman is one of the most trusted sages when it comes to making sense of the world of media and journalism. Nearly 300 media leaders responded from 51 countries and it’s one of a number of state of the nation type reports which come out around this time of year.
My takeaways from it are how solid the effort going into YouTube is, perhaps not surprising given its solid position not just as a video platform but as a social media platform in its own right and increasingly a place where short-form, long-form video and podcasts have all begun to converge.
And that supports a clear monetisation opportunity, both in terms of advertising and reader-revenues depending on the focus. It feels like 2026 may be YouTube’s moment in the same way we’ve had an explosion in email newsletter focused publications for journalism in recent years.
While that may be the off-platform focus, back on platform and there’s two clear trends. The first is one I’ve spoken about when quizzed about AI-usage, accentuating the person behind the journalism (and that there is one!) will be crucial so original investigations, on the ground reporting, analysis, explainers, community building, fact-checking, human/real life stories and opinion are all huge areas of focus. Why? Because they’ll have the ‘as told The News’ somewhere in the story, video or socials showing the reader or viewer some shoe-leather, elbow grease, went into this rather than ChatGPT assisting.
Coupled to this is a focus on subscription and membership revenue. To me the above and this go hand in hand, payment for a product which is providing service and surface level journalism will be limited but supporting individual journalists and brands who are going above and beyond goes hand in hand.
BBC Charter Review - gov.uk consultation - the government has shared its green paper about the future of the BBC. I’ll be filling it in at some stage to give my perspective, predominantly with a Blog Preston hat on about how we see the BBC in relation to an independent local news title. I’ve written before on my proposals for how I think the Beeb could lean into the digital local news eco-system in a more productive manner than what appears predominantly at the moment to be a crude volume play. The BehindLocalNews dig into the recent Ofcom data about BBC local news audience data makes for interesting reading.
Global cohort joins Journalism Innovation and Leadership Programme in milestone year at the University of Lancashire - LinkedIn & Uni of Lancs site - well done to everyone accepted onto the programme which I’m proud to be involved in, and undertook myself in 2022, they’ve got a great and mind-busting year ahead of them. It’s great to see real diversity in journalists, editors, publishers, countries and specialisms represented too. There’s more details on the individuals taking part in this post from the Media Innovation Studio. Good luck to them all and I look forward to the journalism innovation element later in 2026 and working with them.
That’s all for this week’s What I’ve Been Reading digest, I hope it’s proved useful and if there’s anything you think I should be including then tips, links and posts are always welcome to ed@almaonline.co.uk
All the best for the rest of the week ahead.
Keep going.
Ed