---
title: How to escape the media pack
description: The one-person newsroom is a coming idea
---

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# How to escape the media pack

[Alan Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/author/alan-hunter)  12 December 2025

 5 min read

**The one-person newsroom is a coming idea**

The hardest way to win a day’s racing at the Tour de France is to do it on your own. A solo stage victory is always the most celebrated and remembered because it is just so hard to do.

First there is the physical aspect. Riding in a pack of riders is not only psychologically but physically easier. The slipstreaming effect means that those protected from the wind in the peloton use around 30% less energy than those riding on their own.

Then there is the competitive aspect. There are 21 stages in the men’s Tour de France each year and for most riders in the race to win just one would be the highlight of a season and often a career. This is equally true for each team and their sponsors. So every day the competition for the win is fierce.

A solo rider can heroically lead for 199km of a 200km stage and be swept up by the pack right at the end and nobody will feel a pang of remorse. That’s professional bike racing. But if he or she does manage to succeed, the plaudits rightly come their way.

I thought about this the other day when I heard about the launch of [Velora Cycling](https://veloracycling.com/), a new website launched by [Peter Stuart](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterstuartcreative/), the former editor of Cycling Weekly, and [Danny Bellion](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-bellion-94039744/), his business partner.

This is very much a solo breakaway in that Peter is operating as a one-person newsroom – with the help of AI.

Velora has built an automated workflow that sources news from around the internet, generates article outlines, does fact-checking, picks images and adds tags, alt-text and the rest. It also automatically produces social media posts for each article.

Peter is keen to stress that there is a human journalistic layer on top of all this. “Every article is edited and signed off by me,” he says.

Velora also see their cycling model as one that can be extended to other sports. And quickly: they launched the site in just five weeks start to finish.

The one-person newsroom is an idea that is gaining traction. I should add at this point that you don’t have to have just one person; you can have as many journalists as you like. The main point is a complete rethinking of how a newsroom should operate given the technology that is now available to us. Inevitably, this means some traditional roles are automated.

To declare an interest, it is, of course, the operating principle behind [Tomorrow’s Publisher](https://tomorrowspublisher.today/). But I know of at least three other groups who are thinking along the same lines as Velora and us.

The main reason a solo rider succeeds in the Tour de France is if the teams in the bunch don’t organise themselves to chase him or her down. They get complacent about how far ahead the breakaway rider is, or assume that some other team will take the initiative to reel them in. It has even been known for the chasers to forget there is someone further up the road. Before they know it, it’s too late and the soloist succeeds.

This is a metaphor to which the news industry would do well to take heed.

## Next blog post

<https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/we-have-the-ideas-show-us-some-action>

## [We have the ideas – show us some action](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/we-have-the-ideas-show-us-some-action)

[Read more](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/we-have-the-ideas-show-us-some-action)

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