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2026 is the year when publishers need to fully embrace AI

Happy new year! And what a year it is going to be for journalism.

First, it is undeniable that we are blessed – equally, you might say cursed – to live in interesting times. If the first week of January is anything to go by, the next year will be a rollercoaster of non-stop news. Maybe bad for the world, but certainly good for news publishers.

Second, I read through a lot of the predictions for 2026 towards the end of last year and it’s pretty clear that for the business of news this year is going to be all about AI. The debates about attribution and compensation for publishers will continue, but mostly it feels as if we are moving rapidly towards the implementation phase.

My sense is that AI will enable at the very least new formats and new workflows, and probably new kinds of journalism and new competitors, to emerge in the next 12 months.

There is no time to waste. I spent perhaps too much time this festive period playing with the latest models and they are incredibly impressive, a quantum leap from what was available this time last year. People are conceiving, building and launching new news offerings from start to finish in a matter of weeks.

Where are you on the AI journey? To find out, we are offering you the opportunity to complete a short AI Readiness Survey, which will allow you to gauge how your business compares with its peers.

Follow this link to launch the survey. It will take about five minutes to complete. We will use it to benchmark the industry and produce a white paper on our findings, which we will send to everyone who completes the survey.

It is also the basis of the new AI Growth Roadmap programme for publishers, for which we have partnered with ClarityAI, part of the US-based Cholerton-Brown Consulting.

Our thinking was that in 2025 we saw a lot of publishers experimenting with AI: working out use cases, testing tools, launching pilots, educating their newsrooms. In 2026, we want to help them turn those experiments into real ROI with bespoke plans that recognise their individual circumstances.

We think this is all rather exciting and a good way to approach this year of AI implementation.