New Year, New Legacies: 2025 Media Trends Outlook

A Report from the Curley Company Media Center of Excellence by Pheniece Jones

Welcome to 2025! Our Curley Media COE team put our heads together to look at key trends in media and journalism that we expect to see in 2025. From Discord to data visualization, these are a few ways that we see media evolving and how communicators can prepare to adapt.

💡 Information Revolution

Particularly in the growing world of “legacy plus” media, i.e., the migration of audiences away from traditional legacy media – such as national newspapers and cable news shows – to podcasts, Substacks, newsletters, social platforms, and other alternative news sources.

• This has taken the shape of newsletter-based journalism and subscription models where the content creator economy and individual journalist brands really shine outside of the traditional newsroom.
• For example, we love Lenny’s Newsletter for the latest on business trends and Oliver Darcy’s Status for trusted insights from a media power player writing about media moguls, tech titans, and other global notables.
• Also, the idea of expanding audio journalism through podcasts and voice-activated news briefings offers opportunities to pitch in a new way (see: Theo Von and his rise from reality TV player to podcaster with huge audience numbers and influence; it may seem like a far-fetched idea but imagine him gaining a spot in the White House Press Corps and how that would shake up “traditional” reporting out of the President’s remarks).

Why it matters: We are driving a legacy plus strategy for our clients as a part of the ecosystem of earned coverage. The traditional media environment is evolving so it’s important to look at your audience to see where they consume news and meet them where they are…which leads us to…

📱 Audience First and Evolving Consumption Demands:

Understanding your audience and where they are most likely to get their news and updates is only the first step. Next, drilling down into what is sticky on these platforms is the key to success.

• A trend we see is the continued rise of short-form vertical video content, building on formats like TikTok and YouTube Shorts. More media companies are extending their written coverage into bite-size digital pieces across devices, as a result for audience demand for interactive and immersive storytelling experiences.
• We’ve seen this come to life in newsrooms like NYT, and Washington Post who announced this year they’re launching a “Third Newsroom” slated to lean more towards videos, graphics, and short sound bites. To be seen is how media leverage augmented reality (AR) in more ways to level up their storytelling.

Why it matters: we are getting more creative when pitching stories to the media and help paint a picture of the kinds of visuals that would stick. Good visuals can either be assets that an organization already owns, or a data set that the outlet can ideate around how a data visualization online piece comes together.

🔐 Navigating a Post-Trust World

Additionally, much has been said about a post-trust world where audiences place less trust in media and government. We see this playing out in newsrooms and across digital media platforms as a part of the Information Revolution.

• It seems that fact-checking has become a de facto dirty word. We see this trend play out where the number of fact-checkers is declining in an attempt for news organizations to not appear biased. This week, Meta announced that it will end its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram and Threads and replace it with community notes where users can add information (or in turn, misinformation).  But there has to be a balance between the ethical side of journalism while regaining the audience’s trust.  
• AI is also impacting our post-trust world. While we see AI being used in smart ways by media to generate AI-powered personalized news experiences and content curation to increase audience loyalty, it’s easy to see how confusion over where this content originates from could lead to mistrust.
• Also, as deepfake technology improves, the issue of authenticity in media will become even more important. Companies and communicators may need to invest in AI solutions for verifying the authenticity of video and audio content to combat misinformation and protect trust in media. We’re already seeing this with C-SPAN, whose new chief executive recently stated that C-SPAN is thinking of ways to leverage its massive digital video library through a partnership with an AI company that would make it easier to search and detect manipulated video by comparing a suspicious video to what is in their video archive.

Why it matters: We are advising our clients to double down on fact-checking and verification tools to combat misinformation in an era where trust in traditional legacy media is dwindling for certain audiences.  As communicators we see it is our duty to correct misinformation, fact check and verify content.

As the media landscape changes every day and world events and innovation change the way we consume information at a larger scale, we’re tracking new developments as they pop up. Stay tuned for the next digest from our team!