Journalism outlets have always had to carve their own niche on many continuums — between business and service, content generators and technology platforms, entertainment providers and information mongers, bite-sized content and long-form experiences, ephemeral productions and evergreen products, and so on. In the rapidly evolving landscape, the only constant for media companies is an identity crisis, either one bestowed upon them or of their own making.

In 2024, media’s identity crises will intensify, leading outlets to pivot strategy and positioning, seeking resonance with the extremes of the continuum before things settle down.

In the past, media outlets had command over not only the content but also its discovery and medium of consumption. The first to go was control over how people found them. Then the distribution channels slipped out of their grasp into the hands of tech companies such as Meta and X.

In response, the media companies jousted for prominence and supremacy on the distribution channels they no longer controlled. What resulted were many ill-fated attempts at being the leader inside social media’s walled gardens (remember the pivot-to-video and AMP readiness?). Some donned a technology platform identity, beefed up their engineering teams, and got into the SaaS business, exacerbating the identity struggle between being a content creator or a technology company. It didn’t help that venture capital and private equity had a strong preference for one of these identities.

With generative AI becoming commonplace, the final bastion, content, is also on shaky grounds. In 2024, the identity crisis will intensify. To compound things, content shops will increasingly become the front end for businesses in industries as varied as fintech and education.

From this chaos will rise order.

Developing nations will lead the way in building sustainable business models. Data will become more sellable and will eventually be considered journalism and not an aside. And venture capital and private equity will find confidence in the new identity asserted by journalism outlets.

Developing nations will lead the way.

Even tried-and-tested media models of the West have faced abysmal results in India, forcing rethinking and innovation beyond just slashing prices.

While a country like India might be a very different beast compared to the West, it’s imperative not to be seduced by the easy reductivist narratives that focus only on the differences. India is not snake charmers, BPOs, and mystics conjuring ashes out of thin air. It is one of the largest economies in the world, grappling with its own challenges — some unique and some shared. If you can make it in India — a multilingual country of a billion where a large section of the population has significant disposable income relative to their earnings — you can transfer the learnings in localization, personalization, and customization to make it elsewhere.

While the West is lamenting handing over the reins of control of major systems of society to the whims of a few billionaires, countries like India are establishing digital public infrastructure that works at its enormous population scale. With proven models like UPI and the likes of Beckn gaining traction, it is foreseeable that there will be a scalable decentralized solution that gives agency over content, discovery, distribution, and monetization back to newsrooms.

Data is journalism

Data and infographics, once relegated to mere service desks that often had to justify their existence, will gain independence and prominence. Data analysis and information design as standalone businesses will continue to attract talent from the journalism industry and investments from private capital. Despite being offshoots and by-products of the media ecosystem, they will eventually be subsumed into the definition of journalism as an industry.

Private capital flows into journalism

Venture capitalists were for the most part wary of content as businesses and newsrooms were wary of the strings attached to venture capital. Once the identity crisis subsides and a new identity is asserted by the media outlets, venture capital, especially impact capital, will find its way into journalism.

VCs will become more realistic with their expectation of financial returns and more optimistic about the impact potential of media. New organizational structures that allow for ethics, purpose, and profit to coexist will emerge.