AI will reinvent local news

In 2026, I sense something unusual is happening: two seemingly unrelated trends are converging in ways that could remake the field from both above and within.

Part 1: AI will try to save local news because it has no other choice

To state the obvious: AI models can only remain accurate if they ingest a steady stream of fresh, verified, human-reported information. But the supply of that information (especially local reporting) remains in disarray, bordering on collapse (despite many bright spots). According to The State of Local News Project, the United States lost on average two local newspapers a week this past year, leaving thousands of communities without original reporting on government, public health, and climate adaptation, let alone a local events calendar to support civic life.

Meanwhile, the open web — that chaotic but once-reliable substrate of reality — is being overtaken by AI-generated slop, bot-made news sites, and SEO spam.

Models trained on that material degrade quickly. And no trillion-dollar AI company can tolerate that risk.

So here’s Prediction No. 1 for 2026:

AI companies are already paying some news organizations to safeguard the information supply their models depend on. But I predict 2026 will be when they start building networks of reporters or straight up buying news outlets.

AI companies cannot afford degraded inputs at the exact moment their valuations hinge on delivering stable, trustworthy outputs. And with the tech industry already jittery about an AI bubble, and investors being uneasy about long-term revenue models, regulators circling and consumers getting burned by hallucinations — this seems somewhat inevitable.

We’re already seeing the early moves of vertical integration — the tech-industry equivalent of buying the farm when the food supply gets unstable:

• OpenAI is funding and expanding Axios Local into new markets.
• Google is bankrolling California local news efforts and offering AI training to newsrooms.
• Microsoft partnered with Semafor to build “Signals,” a wire-service alternative combining human reporting and AI summarization.
• AI companies are striking major licensing deals with AP, Axel Springer, FT, and News Corp.

These aren’t random. They are supply-chain decisions.

AI companies realize that journalism is essential infrastructure — like energy for data centers or chips for training clusters. When a critical input becomes unstable or too expensive, corporations vertically integrate.

It may look like civic-information hubs, newsroom cooperatives, verification centers, or old-school bureaus. But the motive will be the same: protect the model by protecting the reporting inputs.

This brings enormous risk:

• What happens when the largest consumers of journalism are also its funders?
• Who sets editorial ground rules?
• Who ensures independence when the news becomes part of the model-training pipeline?

The future of journalism’s structure and outputs will be shaped by this new era of AI patronage.

Part 2: Journalists will finally shed their allergy to activism

At the same time, I predict that U.S.-based journalists who’ve had the luxury of not having their identity group materially attacked, will have to confront a long-standing professional allergy: the aversion to anything that smells like activism or advocacy.

For decades, so many journalists have contorted themselves to appear neutral, objective, untouched by power or purpose. But in the years leading up to the current mess of 2025, the political environment has turned that stance into a liability.

Simply reporting that votes were counted accurately is labeled activism. Describing extreme weather as climate change-related is accused of being activism. Identifying coordinated disinformation is criticized as activism.

When telling the truth is politicized, neutrality offers no protection.

So here’s Prediction No. 2 for 2026:

Journalists will stop performing neutrality and instead reassert integrity — even when it aligns with activists and civic movements.

This isn’t “taking sides” or campaigning. It’s acknowledging that truth is not neutral, and democratic conditions are not optional.

Journalists who haven’t made the shift yet will start treating organizers, civic coalitions, mutual-aid groups, watchdog networks, and movement researchers as legitimate sources of civic intelligence — not as contaminants to avoid out of fear of being lumped in.

As newsrooms shrink, movements increasingly hold the best ground-truth information. And in 2026, journalists will begin to see that proximity to civic action isn’t bias; it’s responsibility.

The combined prediction: a battle for the soul of the journalism

Put together, these two forces of AI patronage and activism realism create a defining tension:

As AI companies move to secure journalism as an input, journalists move to reclaim journalism as a public act.

One shift is structural, the other is philosophical. Together, I predict they will redefine the profession’s future.

Whether this convergence leads to a renaissance or a reckoning depends on what comes next:

• Will communities, journalists and regulators create the governance scaffolds needed to keep AI-funded news independent? (And will the many philanthropic efforts supporting individual local newsrooms be able to see and support this collective need early enough?)
• At what point does the watchdog become an employee?
• Will the journalism that trains AI remain accountable to the public — or to the platforms? What degree of editorial access or financial fealty will be required to strike these deals?
• And by the way, whose shareholders are being enriched and which stakeholders are getting squeezed in all this deal-making?
• Can pro-democracy movements and newsrooms collaborate in ways that strengthen and safeguard democracy rather than polarize it?
• Will AI models require journalists to cater to calls that the answers it gives are too (fill in the identity blank…liberal, woke, etc.)?

2026 will be the year questions like those go from being theoretical to existential.