The landscape for news companies gets more complicated by the minute. Readers are still news- and subscription-fatigued. Millions of social and search referrals have evaporated due to strategic changes at the platforms. The ad market has just been through one of its cyclical downswings. The specter of AI is looming at the gate.

And yet…the path forward for this business has never been simpler.

Know your users. Understand what unique value you can give them. Deliver it every day. In 2024, that looks like distinctive journalism in every beat you choose to cover. It means embracing the authentic, relatable voices of our journalists across text, video, and audio. We must create digital experiences that prioritize reader experience, speed, and utility, and orchestrate events that foster community beyond the content.

Sure, changes in search and social traffic mean we’ll have less use for some of the tactics of the 2010s. But we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the Web 2.0 era. Look around, friends. We have collectively been through a transformative time in digital media. We learned to approach our craft while embracing experimentation, iteration and transparency. It’s hard to imagine it now, but this way of working was once new. Now it’s built into our daily work. What we do will certainly change in 2024, but this approach to how we work should not. We must:

• Experiment boldly:: Web 2.0 taught us the value of trying new ways to reach and engage audiences. We embraced new platforms and tried new formats tailored to the users we met there. In this era, smart publishers will use these experimental chops to dramatically improve their own user experiences — embracing bold change over incremental improvements.
• Redefine engagement: In the search-and-social era, we expanded beyond simple pageviews toward robust social engagement analytics and rich metrics like dwell time. In this era, we need new measures to more appropriately capture true user loyalty and trust.
• Lean into new technologies — in ways that are authentic to our brands: Those who shied away from new technologies in the Web 2.0 era were left behind. As we look ahead to what AI might mean for the industry, now is the time to embrace how this technology might help us. Can it deliver better experiences for our users, aid journalists in their craft, or streamline our internal processes?
• Build trust in new ways: Our brands stood for authority in the search and social landscapes; we must continue that tradition in the AI era. Our brands can help our readers navigate: How can they use this technology to help them? When should they be skeptical? How can they sort out fact and fiction in an increasingly complicated world?
• Continue learning from our audiences: Web 2.0 ushered in the wide adoption of analytics in newsrooms to help inform our coverage. In this era, let’s add texture to our analytics data with surveys and in-depth interviews to get a more full picture of what our users need.

The digital landscape may be changing quickly. But the last 15 years have taught us how to navigate change. Let’s use the skills we honed in the last era to help us navigate the next.