Everyone else: The trend report has more than 1,000 pages of analysis. It has something for you! Take a look and see what you think.

Journalists: Take a look at the News+Information section and let me know what I missed! And be sure to look at the other chapters, especially the ones on AI and new realities -- those aren't as relevant today, but they describe trends that will absolutely impact our industry.

Full prediction is live here, alongside a humbling collection of other great thinkers: www.niemanlab.org/collection/p...

This kind of analysis will be especially important for publishers who start deploying AI products. To create strategically resonant AI tools, we’ll need innovators willing to leverage fine-tuning or some other investment to build a more valuable solution.

Given the proposals for Trump’s second term, it’s clear that news leaders won’t just need to wrestle with how changing search and social algorithms impact news discovery: They’ll need to make choices about where their data is hosted and what service providers they use for fundamental operations.

Going into next year, I think we need an industry-wide assessment of how our value chain functions because technical and regulatory forces will conspire to make our strategic position less defensible.

But the bottom line from that talk was this:

“AI is not a strategy”

To survive, news organizations need to stay focused on our mission and our audiences.

If we use AI to solve real problems and connect people, we have a future. If we chase tech for its own sake, we'll repeat past mistakes.

The full report is nearly 1,000 pages long with 695 trends—it has something for everyone, regardless of what industry you work in.

Again, you can download the report here: 2024techtrends.com

1. Generative AI is mainstream.
2. Digital traffic dynamics are shifting.
3. Publishers are losing power in the content value chain.
4. Foundations are the new hedge funds, offering an influx of cash to fund journalism.
5. Trust is essential for media businesses, but it is at near-historic lows.

This year there are 19 trends and 3 scenarios covering the future of news, as well as a breakdown of strategic threats and opportunities. The key takeaways from the News+Information chapter are:

The thesis of this year’s report is that we’re entering a “technology supercycle”—a wave of innovation so potent and pervasive that it promises to reshape our very existence. I wrote the News+Information section, which covers the inflection points in our news ecosystem.