SXSW Examines an Evolving News Landscape

It is no secret that trusted media is under threat. The rise of AI deepfakes is diminishing public trust, federal attacks are threatening journalists for doing their jobs, and employee layoffs are reducing outlet credibility. News organizations are, in many ways, at the front lines of the country’s increasing political polarization and technology crisis. 

Speakers at South by Southwest’s The Future of News session said that the industry requires innovation to survive, but it isn’t dead just yet. 

“Our industry is under severe stress and pressure, where the real loser is the audience,” said Jennifer H. Cunningham, editor-in-chief at Newsweek. “It is an emergency we all need to be paying attention to.” 

Cunningham was joined by news leaders from The Guardian and The New York Times on a Monday panel moderated by crisis communications professional Jill Zuckman. The discussion covered the shifting news landscape and how organizations are adapting for the future.  

“We’ve been through a transformation,” said Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, head of strategic partnerships at The New York Times. The company is one of many that has had to expand their offerings in an effort to increase audience subscriptions and engage advertisers at a time when traditional readership isn’t paying the bills. In 2025, 14% of Americans who prefer to be fed news digitally said they often rely on social media, according to Pew Research Center. Today, less than 10% seek their information from print publications. 

Diversifying revenue sources and fostering multi-platform engagement is key to surviving in the modern era where people rely less on single-source news, Grossman-Cohen said. This also helps engage the Gen Z audience.  

“This generation is a complicated one,” said Betsy Reed of The Guardian. She said they are engaged; it just takes different methods to reach them. Many outlets are ramping up their social media presence, as well as incorporating more video and lifestyle content to channels, hoping to meet young people where they are.

However, even with diversified funding, news organizations and journalists are still on the hit list.

“AI is a huge challenge for journalism that all are grappling with,” Reed said. Generative large language models (LLM) push out huge amounts of “AI slop,” that puts fake content online, diminishing public trust in credible sources. 

“We’ve already seen trust in media erode, we cannot see it erode any further,” she said. For Reed, this is one reason why credible journalism is now more valuable than ever.  

Many newsrooms are embracing the opportunity to use principled AI to enhance efficiency and increase output. “We’re not running away from the technology,” still human journalism must remain at the center, Grossman-Cohen said.

Unless big tech companies start compensating news outlets for the content that AI systems now rely on for training, “the products and society are at risk,” she added. 

“The LLMs need media to train them, but we also need to be compensated for that intellectual property,” she said. The Times already has agreements in progress with some tech partners to compensate the outlet for content, but it’s just “a drop in the bucket” of what is needed, and only one of many challenges modern journalists face.

In recent years, Trump has made numerous statements discrediting free press and threatening journalists’ First Amendment rights to share information and serve as a balance of government power with his “fake news” campaign. Most recently, he cited press coverage of the war in Iran as “treason.” Over the past few years, many reporters have lost their jobs, attacks on journalists have increased, with some even having received death threats. 

“It’s appalling and challenging for individual journalists to have to endure that kind of abuse,” Reed said. Her reporters have received “copious insults about journalists and news organizations,” which can have chilling effects. She believes, however, that the media must continue to seek and report the truth, no matter the backlash. “It’s important as a matter of transparency for people to see what we are dealing with.” 

Grossman-Cohen fears that federal statements will “endanger the trust that we’re working so hard as media orgs to build and undermine the work we do every day.” Outlets can no longer let journalism speak for itself, she said – modern newsrooms should provide infrastructure and support for their front-line journalists. 

Many outlets have crumbled under administrative pressure, Reed said, citing recent layoffs at The Washington Post and CBS. For Reed, this demonstrates the importance of independent media ownership and its role in democracy. 

Panelists said that they worry about how the turbulent news landscape will impact aspiring journalists. Without secure job prospects or local newsrooms that provide the training needed to advance to national outlets, new journalists may abandon the field altogether. “That’s a real problem,” Grossman-Cohen said. 

To combat the everyday threats of the industry and survive into the future, many newsrooms are making conscious efforts to uphold accountability, increase transparency, and provide centrist content to enhance public trust. 

Newsweek’s goal is to appeal to “readers and audiences who feel like they are tired of the tribalism and partisanship that can manifest in journalism and be a home for them,” Cunningham said. She said they hope to foster “a platform where people can come together and disagree, civilly, but also be able to digest facts and then form their own opinion.” 

Grossman-Cohen also noted that journalists must own up to mistakes, be transparent about their ethical use of AI, and hold a two-way conversation with the public to regain trust, because it’s the readers and viewers who will determine the future of news. “As long as millions of people are seeking out quality information, there’s going to be a business for that,” she said. 

Despite modern upheaval, these news leaders believe that trusted public media will survive, as long as organizations are proactive and adapt to modern challenges – they said this is an essential task. 

“A world without journalism is a very, very scary one,” Grossman-Cohen said.

Find more of The Austin Chronicle’s continuing coverage of SXSW.

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