Deborah
Turness
There is
a revolution reshaping how people want and get their information. News brands
can and must react, but the time is now
This is
an extract from the Sir David Nicholas memorial lecture that Deborah Turness
delivered in London on Tuesday evening
Tue 12
May 2026 19.29 BST
No one
can dispute that, today, the news industry is once again experiencing a
revolution; a revolution that is reshaping news for a new generation of
consumers. The disruption transcends all news brands. It impacts all
journalists and all journalism, everywhere.
I am an
optimist. I believe there are very good reasons to believe in a bright future
for what I call the established news providers. So I am determined, having
spoken to many people for this dispatch from the frontline, to set out a
positive way forward.
I’ve
spoken to people across the industry in the UK and in the US, because the tidal
wave of disruption that hits us here often begins across the Atlantic. This
moment of disruption is so potent because it goes to the heart of how the
relationship between news provider and consumer is shifting. From institutions
to individuals, from big media brands to personalities, from public service
broadcasters to independent journalists: all with dramatic consequences for
where news consumption is collapsing and where it is growing at speed.
We’re all
familiar with the decline in TV news audiences – with nearly 4 million fewer
people getting their news from television in the past five years, and that
includes streaming. At the same time, we’ve seen a trebling of the number of
people getting their news from YouTube, and a 10-fold increase from TikTok.
I believe
that the established media hasn’t confronted the hard truth – that this
revolution isn’t just about consumers moving to different platforms. It’s that
they are choosing more direct forms of journalism. We’ve seen an explosion of
independent journalists and commentators hosting podcasts, creating their own
YouTube channels and writing their own Substack feeds, where they can monetise
their work directly.
From
Piers Morgan’s Uncensored YouTube channel to Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis
Goodall’s The News Agents podcast. From the hugely successful The Rest is …
brand to Jim Waterson’s fast-growing London Centric on Substack. And in the US,
from Tina Brown’s Fresh Hell to new brands such as Puck and The Ankler. This
creator journalism is not a sideshow. It is fast becoming the show.
Just look
at the audiences the biggest independent journalists in the US have built on
YouTube alone: Joe Rogan, with 20.9m subscribers; Tucker Carlson, 5.6m; Megyn
Kelly, 4.2m; Mehdi Hasan, 1.96m. What we are witnessing is the wholesale shift
from one established information ecosystem to another.
These new
forms of content are driving growth in audiences and revenues. This is a new
gold rush, with private equity investors eager to fund the next big talent who
can turn their brand into an empire. The value of the global podcast market
alone is projected to grow – to quadruple – from $32bn last year to $114bn by
2030.
In this
fragmented universe, news and information content across YouTube, podcasts,
Substack and its competitors, newsletters and more are far bigger in aggregate
than broadcast. The UK is Substack’s second-largest and fastest-growing market
after the US, with more than half a million people now paying subscriptions
direct to writers for their work.
The move
away from mass reach, and its replacement with a fragmented media landscape, is
what defines this revolution. It is a long-term irreversible shift more
profound than we have so far understood. And it is completely reshaping our
industry.
This was
brought home to me recently when I spoke to Sarah, the nurse who treated me
when I found myself in A&E, after my hand became embroiled in a fight
between a cat and a dog. Despite juggling long shifts and a five-year-old, she
never misses an episode of The Rest is Politics or The News Agents. She listens
to Pod Save America and The Rachel Maddow Show. She has just downloaded
Substack. I asked her why – and her answer was very simple: “I trust them. I
feel like I know them.” Not once did she mention a traditional news provider.
We have lost Sarah.
The
reason why this matters transcends the impact of any one organisation. It
matters because this new media diet is, in the main, driven by commentary and
conversation. And because the established media has not yet broken into this
new world at scale, it isn’t yet the home of frontline reporting by courageous
journalists from dark and dangerous places across the globe. Or, with notable
exceptions, the home of risky undercover investigations.
How will
consumers access this kind of vital journalism in the future? And, just as
importantly, how will it be funded?
So, the
challenge is clear: will we wake up to the existential nature of this great
shift in our industry? Or will we be like the proverbial frog in boiling water,
who knew it was getting warm but failed to jump?
I believe
the established news media has everything it needs to succeed, the assets
required to win in this new world. The talented, experienced, expert
journalists who have spent a lifetime carving out a reputation – and consumers
who crave a connection with them. Brands that have meaning for audiences. And a
legacy of trust.
However,
my optimism is conditional on whether the established media is willing to
deploy those assets to win and not be left behind. As I see it, there are three
clear priorities. Restore trust, reconnect through authenticity and reinvent
the newsroom.
Let me
take each of these in turn.
The
social scientist Alfie Spencer argues that the rupture in trust goes back to
the 2008 financial crash, when banks were bailed out but many ordinary people
lost their hard-earned homes and livelihoods, and suffered for years. The
system failed them and they felt they had been lied to.
Trust in
news was a casualty, falling in the UK, according to Reuters, from 51% in 2015
to only 35% last year – a 16-percentage-point decline.
This
downward trajectory was the reality when I walked into BBC News in late 2022.
The BBC was then – and remains – the world’s most-trusted news provider. But on
every metric, in common with many institutions, the long-term trend was down. I
was therefore clear that my number one priority must be to build a plan to
reverse that decline in trust. And we did.
Through
radical interventions, we saw trust begin to grow again – even during the last
UK and US election cycles, when it usually takes a hit – with public views of
the trustworthiness of BBC News increasing in the year to 2024/2025 from 57% to
62%.
So, what
did we do? We started – as I’ve again been doing – by listening to audiences.
They told us to earn their trust, they need: clarity in the chaos – giving them
the facts they need to make decisions about their lives; courage – reporting
from difficult and dangerous places and to uncover wrongdoing; fairness and
respect – fairness in reflecting the true breadth of the broadening political
spectrum, and respect in recognising that licence-fee payers are stakeholders
and should be given a voice. And, finally, transparency – show us your
workings, so we know why we can trust you. That’s how BBC Verify was born.
My second
priority is: reconnect through authenticity.
I believe
this will require established media players to face up to the consequences of
the shift of trust and attention from institutions to individuals; from
programmes and platforms to people. And to respond to the consumer desire for
authentic, independent voices. That is what authenticity looks like to today’s
audience.
News
providers will need to accept that, in future, the connection with their
consumers must flow through a more direct relationship with their talent. One
that feels less controlled, less formal and less corporate. It might mean going
to a news organisation’s website and, instead of finding content organised only
around topics, being able to follow individual correspondents and specialists.
Journalists
will also want to build those relationships in the spaces where people are
increasingly getting their news: YouTube, Spotify, Substack and TikTok. News
providers are going to have to be more prepared to liberate their talent. To
strike a “new deal”, with a compelling offer that outweighs the value of going
it alone in the new “talent economy”.
For too
long, we – the established media – have limited the potential of our talent to
build these kinds of direct relationships, and undervalued the potential for
what I would call the “connected correspondent”.
My third
priority is reinventing the newsroom.
I know
how tough it is to drive transformation and change in a 24/7 business, during a
relentless news agenda. But the brutal truth is that, even with all this
innovation, most large news organisations remain structured around broadcast –
with key decisions being made with a broadcast-first approach.
Yet I
would argue that they need to start from where the consumer is: allocating
people and resources on that basis. That means building a digital and social
production studio that enables them to produce and distribute content in the
formats and on the platforms that consumers want. A greenfield or startup
approach, if you like.
This
studio must be capable of delivering a flywheel of content from visualised
podcasts to short clips, from newsletters to live streams, analysis articles to
long reads, long-form documentaries to live events. The output from this
digital studio becomes the building blocks of the broadcast offer. Turning
today’s newsroom model upside down. This “flywheel newsroom” is what a
genuinely digital-first model looks like. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not
saying we should be killing off the concept of the evening news bulletin. I am
saying we should make it differently.
Let me
leave you with one further, perhaps provocative, thought. Debate and opinion
have always been a critical part of the established news media’s broadcast
offer – from LBC and Radio 5 Live to Question Time – yet replicating this in
the digital world has somehow proved harder. Instead, opinion is the preserve
of online spaces that have increasingly become echo chambers, that keep people
in their own tribes, reinforcing polarisation.
Established
media organisations have an opportunity to become the town square – creating
digital spaces where people are exposed to ideas different from their own.
Spaces that are thought-provoking and even provocative. I am not arguing that
correspondents working for organisations with a duty of impartiality should be
giving their own opinions. But what I am asking is the extent to which freedom
of speech should become a companion to impartiality.
Why
wouldn’t an organisation have a walled op-ed section online, clearly signposted
and thoughtfully curated, commissioning its own range of voices and linking to
articles on other news providers? Why wouldn’t they curate a range of podcasts
from different perspectives?
For
public service broadcasters, this will no doubt throw up some challenges, but I
think it’s time to trust that audiences are well versed in navigating the
difference between news and opinion.
I believe
that we are in a new golden age of journalism. And that the explosion of new
platforms has opened up new routes for journalists to reach consumers with more
original, thoughtful, intelligent writing and storytelling than ever before. In
a world of AI slop and exploitative algorithms, consumers are seeking out this
journalism, and choosing human-to-human connections.
So, this
dispatch is rooted in optimism and confidence in the future of news providers.
Provided the established news media is willing to do what it takes, it will not
just survive, but can thrive – as an essential part of the revolution reshaping
news.
Deborah
Turness is a former head of BBC News, ITN and a former president of the NBC
News division in the US. This is an extract from the Sir David Nicholas
memorial lecture she delivered in London on Tuesday evening
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