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........

© The Guardian