AI can’t save journalism
The news can't prompt its way to profit
When the internet lowered the bar for information down to almost nothing, journalism became an endangered industry. Now that artificial intelligence has entered the arena, the industry is in critical condition. Unlike past technological disruptions—radio, television, and even the internet—AI threatens not just the distribution of news but its creation itself.
The news industry is unraveling at the bindings. Layoffs, distrust, and reader apathy have hollowed out mastheads. Legacy newsrooms fear AI but adopt it anyway, mistaking automation for strategy. Meanwhile, audiences migrate to podcasts, newsletters, and creators they actually trust. The old models aren’t coming back. If journalism is to survive, it needs more than smarter tools. It needs a fundamental rethink of how value is created, captured, and sustained.
In other words, we need to rethink the news business model.
The paywall came too late
I didn’t want it to be this way. I started my career as a reporter and remained one for five years. I never expected journalism to be lucrative, but I also didn’t expect the industry’s revenue to shrink this fast.
In my first job at a financial trade publication, our business model revolved around events, research, and bespoke roundtables. In my second job, the revenue came from financial software. In both instances, news existed only to lend credibility to the brand. But we weren’t fooling anyone. The newsroom was a cost center, not a revenue driver.
I blame the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, who posted their content online for free when they first joined the internet. Platforms like Facebook happily gobbled up the value, as people began getting news from user-generated content, including reposted journalism. Readers, used to free access, resisted paying later. By the time publishers introduced paywalls (NYT in 2011, WaPo in 2013, The Guardian still reliant on donations), it was too late. Like trying to sell bottled water to someone who has always had a clean drinking fountain nearby, readers never assigned monetary value to what they once got for nothing.
The news got scooped by the internet
But it wasn’t just the free-access mistake that hurt journalism. News became accessible elsewhere. Governments now gazette policies directly on their websites. Bots tweet earthquake magnitudes live and accurately. Citizen journalists use social media as their megaphone, breaking stories without legacy media.
The value of factual news has been drowned out by the noise of the internet.
AI’s grand entrance in 2022 only pushed journalism closer to the edge. With enough input (think press releases, Nvidia’s Q4 earnings, the list of Oscar winners), ChatGPT and other language models can now generate publishable articles in seconds, further diminishing the perceived value of human journalism. Publishers hoping AI will reduce costs and increase output are missing the real issue: readers simply won't pay for content.
And in a world where information is always available, why should they?
Breaking (up) news
One path forward? Break up the newsroom.
Dividing news organizations into more focused segments, each tied to a clear incentive structure, might be a viable strategy. The most essential part of journalism, wire services like Reuters, AP, and AFP can remain. These agencies provide real-time, factual updates that form the backbone of global news coverage. They can keep doing what they do best, with AI adding rapid contextualization and distribution.
Everything else can be absorbed by other parts of the content ecosystem. Opinion columns? Substack. TV news? TikTok. Live reporting? Instagram and YouTube. The middleman is disappearing.
What about the expensive stuff? Investigative journalism could be absorbed by watchdog organizations, especially now that AI-driven research tools have slashed the time and cost required. Documentaries may continue their drift toward entertainment, where audiences find them on Netflix or Disney+. Political journalism, already deeply polarized, may fracture further, reinforced by AI-personalized feeds and sustained through politically motivated donations.
And yet, most newsrooms remain defiant, resistant to AI, skeptical of tech, and protective of legacy processes. Their concerns about objectivity, accuracy, and confidentiality aren’t misplaced. But the refusal to adapt is costing them more than relevance. It’s costing them survival.
Maybe it’s time to ask: should the news industry, as we know it, dissolve?
No one wants to pay for Watergate
Let’s be real. When did you last read a news article that wasn’t from a journalist you already follow or from an independent creator that you subscribe to?
I’m subscribed to several outlets. In 2024, I’ve read maybe a dozen articles. Most of my news comes from podcasts, newsletters, and Instagram carousel posts—all free. Less than 1 in 4 U.S. adults get their news from news websites. With AI curating hyper-personalized feeds, that number is likely to drop even further, especially among digital natives.
What does this mean to the newsrooms who supposedly hold power to account, an issue that is some sort of Roman Empire for many civilians today? So who funds today’s equivalent of Watergate—a scandal that, by ChatGPT’s estimates, could cost upwards of today’s equivalent of $1 million to uncover?
The answer might lie in reimagining journalism’s funding model entirely. Investigative journalism could be crowdfunded by concerned citizens or supported through blockchain-based mechanisms that reward quality reporting and transparency. Tech companies, feeling the pressure of regulatory scrutiny, might establish independent journalism funds to preserve credibility in the eyes of the public. AI could even power premium, verified, subscription-based news products that cater to those willing to pay for depth and analysis.
There are, of course, many aspects of journalism that we have to give up in this scenario. Local news might die, because there is no profit incentive for anyone to cover small-town politics or school boards. Without local journalism, many national investigations would never get off the ground. As WaPo says, democracy dies in darkness.
Conflict reporting could also decline, not because the need disappears, but because the money will go to aid and PR, not journalism.
The future won’t be bylined
One thing is certain: journalism can’t LLM its way to a revenue stream. AI may be a useful tool, but it is not a business model.
The news industry must reinvent itself or watch its influence erode into irrelevance.
It’s time to begin rethinking journalism’s business models, even if it costs the whole industry.
This essay was first published on Every. Thanks for editing this piece.
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This was a good look at this issue from the perspective of someone who worked in the field! I’m sad journalism seems to be dying because in the US it’s one of the few spaces left that’s legally required to be honest and to do the research behind each article. Social media has made it so any person can get away with saying whatever they want and it moves so quickly we don’t have time to even remember if the person saying it was credible. I think the paywall hurt journalism unfortunately. You’re right that free information is too accessible. I’ve seen very important topics get released but then I’ve been blocked by a pretty pricey paywall.