Rethinking the news experience

Audiences following the news closely are disappearing and news avoidance keeps rising, but when I try to be optimistic, I think maybe 2026 will be the year the industry turns things around by taking seriously what digital technologies make it easy to forget. News is not merely the business of producing and distributing journalism; it is about the experience of staying informed.

In recent decades, many in the industry have operated as though they merely sell individual bits of information — headlines, listicles, scoops, deep dives — in exchange for audience attention. More clicks, more eyeballs, more time spent consuming more content meant more revenue. Users consumed whatever assemblage of bits they happened to encounter in whatever order they happened to encounter them. Every bit competed with every other bit. Yes, there has been a shift toward reader revenue, but the fundamental model has remained the same: Increase engagement with your most loyal audiences in the hopes that they will be more willing to pay for it.

This model never really worked, but it has begun breaking down entirely. Incidental arrivals through search or social media once powered seemingly exponential growth. Now shifting tech company priorities and AI summaries have led to increasingly obstructed pathways if not blocked ones entirely. Meanwhile, it turns out that even news lovers have limits. Most aren’t looking to spend more of their lives following the news. They care about the quality of how they spend that time. A steady stream of outrage and catastrophe may engorge metrics in the short term, but it is exhausting. The world is awash in upsetting news. Still, most people can only stomach so much.

No, what the industry actually sells are experiences — all-inclusive packages that promise to leave you feeling informed, empowered, and more capable of going about the rest of your day. Long before the internet made it possible to devour news 24/7 on multiple devices and for media outlets to bombard the unsuspecting public with a barrage of pop-ups, alerts, and clickbait, paying attention to news was confined to a once- or twice- daily routine — a relaxing ritual that many more people took solace in, enjoyed even. They trusted professionals to guide and shape these experiences, to sift through the most important information of the day and help them make sense of it, to offer just enough (but not too much) context so they could feel like they had an understanding of the most important events in the world and move on with their lives.

Let’s not be sentimental; the heyday of the news business was also highly exclusionary, even harmful to many communities — and there have always been large segments of the public indifferent to news — but at the same time, the dwindling few who continue to hold fast to these old ways of consuming journalism do so not because the quality of the information they receive this way is necessarily better but because they find it comforting. There is a meditative quality to the experience of taking regular time out from other worldly commitments to absorb what is happening locally and globally while recharging capacity to engage.

This experience doesn’t happen on platforms. That doesn’t mean news outlets can abandon these spaces entirely. Building awareness about the existence of relevant journalism, much less its value, requires meeting the next generation where they are. But the mistake has been hoping that audiences would follow for the quality of the content when the experience on offer was so often subpar. Inundating passersby with free samples may get a few customers in the door, but then what? A website that screams at them with 10,000 links? A dense newsletter in an already cluttered inbox?

If the restaurant business is any guide, taking seriously the experience of news won’t mean just one thing. Appetites and tastes vary. News can’t only be a fine dining experience or an all-you-can-eat buffet of junk food. For every person who wants a quick, healthy, on-the-go meal, there are others who want a decadent feast they can enjoy in a group. Bottom line: There are many more hungering to understand their world than there are currently seeking out news organizations to help them do so.

If the industry is to survive, news can’t merely be a thing that finds people when they aren’t seeking it out; it has to be an experience that people want to engage in, not as a chore but as a practice they intrinsically value.