The Media News Trends that Dominated 2024

by Rocky Parker · Published · Updated

It was another busy and hectic year for the media industry, and our team was there to recap the biggest headlines and can’t-miss trends with our weekly and monthly recaps.

The year was dominated by the U.S. presidential election – how the media planned to cover it, how the candidates interacted with the media and what the results mean for the future of the industry. The growth of AI, its use case for newsrooms and publishers’ deals with (and lawsuits against) AI companies were another large topic that popped up regularly in our roundups. And unfortunately, 2024 continued to see widespread layoffs across print, digital and audio.

In this post, we’ll recap the trends and share a few big headlines that you might have missed.

Jump to a trend: Media & the Election | AI in Media | 2024 Layoffs | Social Media Shifts | Looking Ahead

Media & the Election

The story that dominated everyone’s feed this year was undoubtedly the U.S. presidential election. Early in the year, news outlets worried about an election filled with AI-generated misinformation (which ended up not being the case) and how news avoidance would shape media consumption.

In March, Axios broke down the “shards of glass” phenomenon in the media industry which shows that media attention has splintered into more than a dozen news bubbles based on ideology, wealth, jobs, age and location. “All the shards mean it’s much more effort for you, the consumer, to find healthy news that doesn’t waste your time or insult your intelligence. And much harder to make sense of the realities around you,” Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote.

As Nov. 5 approached, publishers focused on the candidates’ changing strategies for media appearances and newspapers’ presidential endorsements (or lack thereof). Once the results were clear on election night, the media began to look at how a second Trump administration could impact the industry, and ways to prepare for it.

Here are just a few of the election-related stories about the media this year:

  • Throughout the election cycle, debates were a big topic as broadcast and cable news networks wondered if they would happen at all. In April, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News issued a joint letter calling on then candidates former President Donald Trump and President Biden to commit to a debate before November. In the end, there were only two debates total.
  • PBS News and PolitiFact partnered through the end of the election, enabling PolitiFact’s fact-checking reporting and research to appear across PBS News programming and digital platforms.
  • When President Biden withdrew from the race in July, media outlets covered the story in various ways, though it was all wall-to-wall coverage and analysis.
  • Ahead of the election, Fox News Media launched a daily Spanish-language news show. “Coupled with recent data that shows the Hispanic population is the fastest growing electorate, it was a natural decision to create ‘Fox Noticias,'” Fox News senior vice president John Sylvester told Axios.
  • Trump selected Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, the federally funded news outlet. In her 2022 campaign for Arizona Governor, Lake referred to journalists as “monsters,” saying she pledged to be reporters’ “worst nightmare” if elected.
  • ABC agreed to pay $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum” in its settlement agreement for a defamation suit filed by President-elect Trump.

Going into 2025, the media industry is asking several questions as Trump again takes office. Will outlets experience a second “Trump bump”? Will Trump and his cabinet nominees (if confirmed) up their attacks on the press by revoking broadcast licenses? Will new legislation make it difficult for reporters to protect their sources? Will media attention continue to shift to non-mainstream sources like podcasts and TikTok? What does his win mean for the credibility of the news media? Will press access to the White House be limited?

When asked what the next four years under the second Trump presidency look like for the media, longtime media reporter Paul Farhi told Poynter, “Buckle up.”

AI in Media

In his predictions for the media and entertainment industry in 2024, chairman of Creative Media Peter Csathy’s top guess was “AI is the headline story, and nothing else comes close.” It turns out to have been a good bet, because AI did indeed make up one of the most frequent topics in media headlines this year.

While some publishers signed content licensing deals with AI companies, others filed lawsuits against the tech organizations for allegedly using their content without permission to train the algorithms. A number of outlets debuted new AI-powered tools for readers and their employees.

Jim VandeHei, the chief executive of Axios, said artificial intelligence will “eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media.” The media industry seems to be embracing the tech, although with extreme caution, as it looks to implement it in ways that make journalists’ jobs easier and help readers without costing jobs or raising ethical concerns.

Here are some of the big AI media headlines from the year:

  • Licensing Deals
  • Newsroom AI Tools
    • Podcast networks, like Acast, iHeartMedia and Spotify, tested ways to utilize AI to increase outreach, translate shows and more.
    • The New York Times built a new team “focused on prototyping uses of generative AI and other machine-learning techniques to help with reporting and how the Times is presented to readers.”
    • The Associated Press announced that 70% of its staff has used AI for tasks like crafting social media posts and headlines, transcribing interviews, and generating story drafts.
    • Coinciding with its annual Person of the Year announcement (spoiler, it was Trump), Time unveiled an AI chatbot that “allows users to ask questions about the story, summarize it into digestible bits of different lengths, translate the text into different languages, or play audio versions of the copy.”
    • Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong hinted at an AI-powered bias meter that would appear next to editorial and opinion articles. “The reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story,” he said.
    • The Washington Post debuted “Ask The Post AI,” a generative AI tool trained on the Post’s journalism that delivers summary answers and curated results directly to users.
    • The Wall Street Journal is testing an AI-generated “Key Points” box with bullets summarizing an article. The feature explains that an “artificial intelligence tool created this summary” and that the summary was checked by an editor.
  • Policy and Legal Issues
    • In April, Congress introduced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would force artificial intelligence companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models.
    • At the end of November, five Canadian news media companies filed a legal action against OpenAI, accusing the company of regularly breaching copyright and online terms of use.
    • A study conducted by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School found “numerous” instances where publishers’ content was inaccurately cited by ChatGPT, raising concerns of reputation risks for publishers as well as commercial risks if readers are pointed somewhere other than the original article.
    • In November, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI that claimed it misused articles from Raw Story and AlterNet to train its large language models.

What do you think the next year will bring for AI in the newsroom? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

2024 Layoffs

The year started on a grim note when layoffs hit across the industry at publishers including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated and more. News deserts also spread at the local level, raising concerns at the start of an election year. “At a time when America arguably needs more solid news coverage than ever, it is very disturbing to see economic forces arrange so powerfully against traditional news sources,” Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president, told The New York Times in January.

In January alone, the media industry announced 836 job cuts, up 11% from the 754 cuts announced in January 2023, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The rest of the year had a steady flow of headlines announcing cuts, furloughs, walkouts and strikes. As of September 27, Press Gazette estimated there had been at least 2,500 jobs cut in the UK and U.S. media so far. Here are just a few of the layoff announcements from the year:

  • New digital news startup The Messenger announced cuts to start the new year, which turned out to be the beginning of the end for Jimmy Finkelstein’s venture.
  • NBC News made cuts in a move to “focus on areas of priority and invest in areas of ongoing growth.”
  • Music publication Pitchfork was merged into men’s magazine GQ, resulting in layoffs.
  • Insider was also part of the wave of layoffs in January when it announced it would be cutting 8% of its staff.
  • CNN shuttered its operations in the Philippines, costing 300 employees their jobs.
  • SiriusXM laid off more than 150 staffers in a move said to make the company “more efficient, agile, and flexible.”
  • The Intercept, a nonprofit investigative news outlet, cut 15 staffers including Editor-in-Chief Roger Hodge.
  • Half of the editorial team of digital news outlet NowThis was laid off in February. More cuts were announced in November.
  • iHeart Media cut around 5% of its 10,000-person workforce just before it announced a 5.8% increase in Q3 revenue.
  • Dotdash Meredith laid off 53 people, or roughly 1.5% of its staff, mostly impacting people in its print business.
  • Just before Christmas, female-focused digital media outlet Refinery29 quietly made cuts, which included its CEO.

In addition to economic factors impacting staffing levels, burnout also continued to be a major concern. A fall survey by Muck Rack found that 56% of journalists thought about quitting this year. Their biggest sources of stress – compounded by shifting resources during an election year – include their workload, salary and the expectation that they always be “on.”

The report suggested newsrooms better support their employees by offering more flexibility in where they do their work (only 11% of respondents said they prefer in-office work) and providing better access to mental health services (nearly 60% said their workplace does not offer any such services).

Social Media Shifts

Pew Research Center found that just over half of U.S. adults (54%) at least sometimes get news from social media, up slightly compared with the last few years. As these platforms become a more common source for news consumers, journalists and publishers are considering how to use them most effectively to reach their audience, drive traffic and find stories.

X and its Alternatives

One of Peter Csathy’s other predictions for 2024 was that “Elon Musk will continue to drive X/Twitter’s downward spiral as advertisers continue their mass exodus and billions are shed from the company’s valuation.” Although we saw this taking shape throughout the year, it was never more accurate than after the election, when the platform saw the largest user exodus since Musk’s takeover.

Many journalists reported making the move to Bluesky, an alternative to X created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. “We want Bluesky to be a great home for journalists, publishers, and creators. Unlike other platforms, we don’t de-promote your links. Post all the links you want — Bluesky is a lobby to the open web,” Rose Wang, Bluesky’s chief operating officer, posted.

Will you be jumping to a new platform in 2025? Before you do, consider these pros and cons.

TikTok

In 2025, we’ll be watching how the potential TikTok ban takes shape. In recent weeks, a federal appellate panel upheld a law that will result in a nationwide block on the app by no later than April, unless it’s sold by parent company ByteDance. In the decision, the panel said that although a ban on the app will affect speech, it’s justified by national security concerns.

President-elect Trump, however, now says he has a “warm spot” in his heart for TikTok and will “take a look” at stopping the ban when he takes office. The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments challenging the law in early January.

Future Shifts

Recently, the Australian government approved the Social Media Minimum Age bill, a social media ban for children under 16 that will take effect in late 2025. We’ll be watching how this and other bans evolve next year and how they impact news consumption.

Looking Ahead

We’ve made a few notes of major stories we’ll be following in 2025, including how the second Trump administration works with (or against) the media, if and how the proposed TikTok ban will take shape, and new ways AI will be used in the newsroom.

Here are some other predictions and stories to watch in the coming months:

  • The incoming administration will likely lead to a friendlier regulatory environment for consolidation and media companies are preparing for a years-long wave of corporate dealmaking. (Semafor)
  • Journalism experts are predicting more unbundling, no second Trump Bump, a renewed focus on reader needs, a growth of visual investigations and more. (NiemanLab)
  • Federal funding for America’s public media is on the chopping block after the “No Propaganda Act” was introduced in Congress. (Inside Radio)

What stories will you be watching in 2025? Let us know in the comments!

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Rocky Parker
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Rocky Parker is the Manager of Audience and Journalist Engagement at Cision PR Newswire. She's been with the company since 2010 and has worked with journalists and bloggers as well as PR and comms professionals. Outside of work, she can be found trying a new recipe, binging a new show, or cuddling with her pitbull, Hudson.

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