It’s not about innovating; it’s about surviving. With the rise of conversational search, media outlets will have to move on from obsessing over the Google algorithm. Even if the reach provided by Google maintains its pace, the real success needle for media shouldn’t be vanity reach, but cultural relevance.

In the content industry, what will really matter is having people talking about the produced content. Both in physical and digital ways. That was also the key behind the greatest hits in 2023. That is the common element among Barbie, Taylor Swift, and even ChatGPT as the factor that took artificial intelligence to the mainstream scene.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon was the epitome of cultural relevance. It was about people connecting the dots to merge two brands and take them to the next level. It was also proof of how AI will enhance the quality of user-generated content. During the Barbenheimer fever, we were able to find regular meme publications but also big hits like the Barbenheimer movie trailer.

Simultaneously, AI tools will boost the quantity of published content. If we already had a problem with volume, AI will make it even worse.

It might sound paradoxical, but the future will require the media to be like magazines and print newspapers tend to be: with less content, but of better quality. With valuable intellectual property, instead of publishing the same information being produced by their competitors. For years, we’ve been assuming that journalism misses the paper. The reality is that what we’ve been missing for years is the care and the processes behind the content that is published.

The evolution of the media landscape will take some time to be more than isolated experimental cases. We are already seeing a new generation of media outlets that understands cultural relevance and that really appreciates quality over quantity. Puck, Semafor, and Defector are common examples. They understand that it’s better to have a meaningful minimum viable product than trying to succeed on social media. They bet on niches instead of trying to compete with The New York Times and the rest of the legacy media that owns traffic generated through Google. But to be an actual paradigm shift, the whole industry needs to start recognizing and promoting quality over reach, meaningful and insightful content instead of being obsessed with Comscore metrics.

Everything is in place to create a new mindset inside the newsrooms. It’s time to foster the horizontal newsroom — one in which journalists are on the same level as insiders, users, and machines. All of them working together to decide what content needs to be done, how it should be distributed, where the conversation goes, and allowing people to create a universe of related pieces around the one created by the media outlet.

In 2024, newsrooms should be phygital spaces. Increasingly, users will be active even before content is published. That is already happening in Discord, where creators and streamers take into account what people are saying to decide the topics of their streams and to find interesting material from other sources that are being identified and shared by their own communities.

Journalists will remain relevant to create products and to manage the newsrooms. But insiders (people that are not journalists but with specialized knowledge in a niche or industry) will be even more relevant in the years to come. Users won’t be just an audience anymore. They’ll be active promoters and prosumers of communities that they co-own and care for.

On the other hand, AI will increasingly be part of the whole publishing process. Not only inside the traditional newsroom but also as part of how users engage with a brand and community by allowing them to create content that will be highly valuable for the content ecosystem of a media.

It’s time to change our mindset. It’s time to co-create, to share, to talk with the community and to listen to them. 2024 will be the year of the horizontal newsroom.