Beyond the report: Answering your questions on the future of newsrooms

Earlier this month, we hosted a webinar on the Future Newsrooms Study 2026 with some of the leading voices in the news industry. Lisa MacLeod, Director at FT Strategies, was joined by:

• Gina Chua Executive Director, Tow-Knight Center CUNY & Executive Editor-at-Large, Semafor
• Gard Steiro Editor-in-Chief and CEO, Verdens Gang
• Phoebe Connelly Organisational & Social Psychology, LSE & former Director of Next Gen Audiences, The Washington Post

If you missed the live discussion, you can watch the webinar on demand here. The conversations covered a variety of themes, honing in on where newsrooms are headed in the era of AI, specifically focusing on what they need to protect and what to change. We were thrilled to see so many questions in our live chat, many of which the panellists didn’t have time to get to. Below are some answers from the FT Strategies to a myriad of those, themed in 4 main topic areas:

• What does it take to embed a community mindset in a newsroom?
• How should newsrooms rethink trust?
• What are the risks of ‘creator-ifying’ your newsroom?
• How should we measure AI success beyond simply tracking time saved?

What does it take to embed a community mindset in a newsroom?

QUESTION: Where do you see the community functions living in the newsrooms of the future? Do they interface directly with editorial? Or are they more interacting with the brand component? Do you have dedicated community teams or even micro-community teams within your newsroom? If so, which roles are typically part of those teams? Editors, reporters, channel managers?

ANSWER: There is one universal structure, but community cannot remain a small team operating at the newsroom’s periphery – moderating comments, running polls and organising occasional Q&As after publication. Our report found that journalists currently spend only around 11% of their time on post-publication activities, which shows how disconnected community-building remains from the core editorial workflow. In the newsroom of the future, community might operate through a hybrid model: a central audience or community function that provides strategy, technology, moderation standards, insights combined with smaller community teams (sometimes just one person) embedded within particular desks, verticals or audience niches. The precise composition would depend on the audience being served and the product being built, but roles such as community or engagement editors, audience and channel managers are likely to pop up more. The most important point, however, is not just where community sits organisationally, but whether community as an outcome is cared for at all. If desks and reporters are not expected themselves to strengthen their audience relationships, moving an audience team closer to the editor-in-chief will achieve very little.

QUESTION: I like the idea that editorial brands are working towards niche-ification in order to superserve the audience/community. What sacrifices are made in terms of reach, there? Can you have editorial niche-ification and brand reach simultaneously? In other words, how do you restructure for 'audience-first' or multi-platform?

ANSWER: It depends on the type of newsroom. The mistake is assuming every piece of journalism needs to maximise both reach and loyalty. For many publishers, the future lies in building deeper relationships with specific audiences, because those relationships are more likely to drive engagement, subscriptions and long-term sustainability. As Gina Chua put it, "the future is anti-scale".

That said, reach still matters, particularly for national and public-interest news organisations. As Gard Steiro argued, broad reach remains essential if your mission is to inform society at scale. The challenge is not choosing one over the other, but recognising that they require different editorial strategies, products and measures of success.

We can expect more newsrooms to organise around audience outcomes rather than solely on traditional desks as a way to deal with this. Grupo RBS is a great example from our report: instead of structuring teams by subject, it split the newsroom into Massivo – focused on reach through breaking news and social distribution – and Fidelização – focused on loyalty through deeper reporting, investigations and signature journalism. The idea is that this structure can help teams feel like they ‘own’ a platform and feel authentic within it, rather than trying to shoehorn the same content to multiple destinations.

QUESTION: What functions in highly successful modern newsrooms tend to drive the most profound cultural change? Not optimisation, but real change.

ANSWER: The functions driving the cultural change are those that bring audience thinking into editorial decision-making, not simply optimise production. Our research found that newsrooms involving Heads of Audience, Audience Engagement leaders and Platform Editors in strategy-setting are significantly more likely to align daily coverage with long-term goals. Alongside them, product managers, community editors and increasingly AI leads are reshaping how journalism is commissioned, produced and measured. From an editorial perspective, deep investigative teams who use computational journalism (OSINT, data mining, satellite imagery, data visualisation) can have a very strong impact on pushing newsrooms to the next level. Check out our blog in which we interview Sam Joiner (FT former Visual Stories & Investigations Editor, and now Editorial Creative Director) to hear about how the FT does it.

QUESTION: You mention that community is becoming the real competitive advantage. Could you share one example of a publisher that is doing this particularly well, and why?

ANSWER: One example I would point to is Will Media in Italy. What is interesting about them is that even though they are a digital-native, social-first news publisher, they have understood the importance of live events that have a very strong community feel, as one of the key differentiating factors. NewPress, a creator-led journalism platform, is also a great example. They’ve created their own Reddit-style Q&A community platform, which goes beyond some of the shallow comments under articles to in-depth discussions.

QUESTION: You argue that audience engagement is becoming more important than audience reach. What are the most useful KPIs you've seen publishers adopt to measure engagement in a way that actually predicts subscription growth and retention?

ANSWER: The most useful engagement KPIs are those that predict habit, not just consumption. RFV – recency, frequency and volume – is particularly useful because it captures three core signals: whether the relationship is still active, whether the reader is building a routine, and whether they are finding enough value to keep consuming.

I would combine RFV with breadth and depth: how many verticals/products someone uses, and how meaningfully they engage when they arrive. The key is to validate these against commercial outcomes: conversion, renewal, churn and lifetime value. Does high RFV correlate with these commercial outcomes? If yes, it is working. Of course it doesn't have to be RFV, but something that relates back to time spent and routine.

How should newsrooms rethink trust?

QUESTION: Could you elaborate on how you see the future of local and hyperlocal journalism? In particular, where do you see the practical limits of geographic granularity?

ANSWER: The Reuters Institute's research from last year shows that people continue to rely on local news organisations for the kinds of information that matter most – local politics, accountability and important local news stories. Where local publishers have struggled is that platforms have become the preferred destination for more commoditised information like events, transport or buying and selling. The opportunity is to focus on what only journalists can do: distinctive reporting that communities genuinely value.

The challenge, then, is economics rather than audience interest. That's why lean models are propping up especially in the local news space. London Centric is a great example: Jim Waterson has shown that a lean newsroom, focused on one community and producing original reporting, can persuade thousands of people to pay. We're also seeing larger publishers move in this direction. Axios Local has expanded city-by-city with newsletter-first local journalism, while The New York Times has recently launched a local newsletter in the Twin Cities – both signals that direct, local audience relationships remain strategically valuable. I don't think there's a fixed limit to geographic granularity. The limit is whether you can build a community with shared needs and produce journalism valuable enough that people keep coming back – and are ultimately willing to support it.

QUESTION: User need - it seems like a term that has not moved much since the BBC-defined. Give concrete examples on how great, independent journalism is giving solutions on needs, so we are not moving too far away from our core mission? + is local news facing a renaissance?

ANSWER: As you might have seen, the Sports User Needs has just recently launched, which points to the idea that User Needs must be adapted to each organisation's characteristics or at a topic level.

In the report, there is an example from Stuff New Zealand (a leading digital news publisher) that is leaning deeply into ‘service journalism’ that is trying to combine this idea of user needs, especially at a local level.

QUESTION: In markets like Bangladesh, where print still carries institutional trust and advertising revenue, is the real risk print itself — or is it newsrooms clinging to reach-based, institution-only trust models while audience trust globally shifts toward individual journalists and community? How should legacy newsrooms in ad-dependent markets rethink their trust and engagement strategy before declining circulation forces the issue?

ANSWER: I don't think there's a single answer because trust looks different in different markets. If print still commands institutional trust and advertising revenue, that's an asset to build on – not something to abandon.

The important thing is to keep evolving the product around changing audience behaviours. Print certainly isn't dead. One of the most surprising recent examples is TLDR News, a YouTube-native publisher that now generates a significant share of its revenue from a printed magazine. The lesson isn't that every market should go digital-only, but that every market needs to understand which products create trust and value for its audience while gradually building stronger direct relationships through journalists and communities.

What are the risks of ‘creator-ifying’ your newsroom?

QUESTION: Any suggestions to incentivise the content creators within the newsroom?

ANSWER: I think incentives start with empowerment rather than rewards. Training is essential, but it has to be paired with the freedom to experiment. Give journalists the opportunity to learn new formats – video, podcasts, newsletters, live events – and then create space for them to test ideas they genuinely care about.

One question I like asking is: How do you consume news yourself? Is there a YouTube channel you admire? A podcast you've always wanted to make? A video format you've always thought your newsroom should try? Those personal interests often lead to the most authentic and successful ideas.

It's also important not to expect every journalist to become a creator overnight. The strongest models are collaborative, where reporters work alongside video producers, editors, audience specialists and designers, each bringing different strengths. Over time, those skills spread naturally across the newsroom.

QUESTION: I'd be curious about the *real* business model around creator work. Is there any evidence creator-partnerships are driving subs? And how about upskilling our journalists to be creator-like? Are vertical video views and engagement driving subs? How do we measure brand value and what it does for newsrooms if the answer is no to the other questions? (By the way, I am not saying we shouldn't do it, I love creators and we need to reach audiences where they are, just want to dive in on the $$$)

ANSWER: It's a great question, and the honest answer is that there isn't much public evidence yet showing a direct subscription ROI from creator partnerships in traditional newsrooms. Most publishers are still experimenting, and very few have released robust commercial data.

That said, there are encouraging signals. Through our Next Gen News research, we repeatedly heard that younger audiences were drawn to news brands because of distinctive creator-style products – whether that's Ros Atkins' explainers at the BBC or Ezra Klein's podcast at The New York Times. These products often become entry points into a much broader relationship with the brand.

More broadly, this year's Reuters Institute Digital News Report shows that people are increasingly willing to pay for individual journalists alongside traditional news brands. Of the respondents paying for news, 15% pay for an individual journalist or personality, compared with 22% who pay for a digital-only news subscription.

QUESTION: If an organization invests years in developing a journalist and building their professional reputation until they become well known, and that journalist later decides to launch their own independent media venture, should this be considered a success because the organization helped create a talented media professional, or a loss because it lost one of its most valuable assets? And how should media organizations deal with this challenge? What happens when reporters become bigger than the brand, leave to pursue independent careers, after the organisation has invested significant time and money in building their personal brand?

ANSWER: I don't see it as either a success or a failure – it's the reality of modern journalism. Audiences increasingly trust both institutions and individuals, so the goal should be to make those reinforce each other rather than compete. As Gina Chua argued during our discussion, the future is built on "trusted relationships" between specific journalists and their audiences, while Gard Steiro reminded us that institutions still provide something not replicable when going solo: scale, resources and public impact.

Of course, some journalists will leave. But the bigger mistake would be not investing in their development because of that risk. Publishers should create an environment where journalists can build their profile while benefiting from the reporting resources, editorial standards and collaborative culture that only a newsroom can provide.

How should we measure AI success beyond simply tracking time saved?

QUESTION: It’s striking that 42% of newsrooms measure AI success by 'time saved', yet 43% expect headcount reductions. This exposes a race to the bottom: treating AI as a cost-cutting scalpel rather than a capability-expansion tool. For independent publishers reliant on donor funding and hard-earned trust, 'time saved' must yield a tangible ROI in high-value journalism. Are we witnessing an industry that is structurally incapable of reinvesting its AI dividends into actual editorial quality?