Every December, journalists and commentators roll out their predictions for the year ahead. By February, most of those predictions look ridiculous. By December, everyone’s quietly hoping nobody remembers what they said twelve months earlier.

I’m going to do the same thing, but at least I’m upfront about the odds. These are educated guesses at best, wishful thinking at worst. But hey, it’s tradition.

Prediction 1: At least one major Australian news outlet will introduce a “slow news” product

The breaking news treadmill is exhausting readers and burning out journalists. I think we’ll see at least one significant publisher experiment with a deliberately slower news product—weekly digests, in-depth analysis, stories that take time to develop. Think more like The Monthly, less like news.com.au.

This won’t replace their fast news operations, but it’ll be a recognition that different readers want different things. Some want instant updates. Others want to actually understand what’s happening. You can serve both, but not with the same product.

The business model is the tricky bit. Slow news is expensive to produce and harder to monetise than fast news. But subscription audiences seem willing to pay for quality, and advertisers are starting to value engaged readers over raw pageviews.

Prediction 2: Australian media will finally get serious about regional coverage

The decline of regional journalism has been one of the great losses of the last decade. But I’m seeing signs that might be reversing. Several outlets have started hiring regional correspondents again. Community radio is experiencing a quiet renaissance. Even some digital-first operations are recognising that not everything happens in Sydney and Melbourne.

This isn’t altruism—it’s business strategy. There’s a huge underserved market in regional Australia, and the outlets that figure out how to reach it effectively will build loyal audiences. We might not return to the glory days of regional newspapers, but we could see new models emerge.

Prediction 3: Podcast bubbles will start bursting

Everyone has a podcast now. Most of them shouldn’t. The market is oversaturated with shows that have tiny audiences and no clear reason to exist beyond “we should probably have a podcast.”

In 2026, I think we’ll see a shakeout. Shows that don’t have sustainable audiences or business models will quietly disappear. What’s left will be the professionally produced shows from established media organisations, plus a handful of indie operations that’ve found genuine niches.

This is healthy. The podcast boom has produced some great work, but it’s also produced a lot of mediocrity. Quality will win out over quantity, eventually.

Prediction 4: AI will get serious use in Australian newsrooms, but not in the ways people expect

The AI hype in media has mostly focused on robots writing articles. That’s not happening, despite what some executives might want. What is happening is AI tools helping with research, transcription, fact-checking, and workflow management.

I expect this to accelerate in 2026. Journalists will use AI to process documents faster, find patterns in data, transcribe interviews instantly. The actual writing and editorial judgment will still be human, but the grunt work will increasingly be automated.

This raises obvious questions about job losses, and those concerns are valid. But I think the bigger impact will be on what kinds of stories become feasible. Investigations that required teams of researchers might become possible for individual journalists. Data analysis that was too time-consuming might become routine.

Prediction 5: Trust in media will get worse before it gets better

This is the depressing one. Despite all the innovation and investment in quality journalism, I think trust in Australian media will continue declining in 2026. The structural factors driving distrust—polarisation, social media echo chambers, the conflation of news and opinion—aren’t going away.

What might change is how the industry responds. I think we’ll see more transparency about editorial processes, more correction policies, more willingness to admit mistakes. Not because publishers suddenly became more ethical, but because it’s becoming a competitive necessity.

The outlets that can credibly claim to be trustworthy will have an advantage. The ones that keep treating readers like idiots who’ll believe anything will keep losing audience.

The wild card: something nobody’s predicting

The most important media story of 2026 will probably be something none of us saw coming. Maybe a platform collapses. Maybe a new technology emerges. Maybe a scandal reshapes the industry overnight.

That’s the thing about predictions—they’re based on trends we can already see. The stuff that actually changes things tends to come out of nowhere.

So take all of this with appropriate scepticism. Check back in December 2026 and we’ll see how spectacularly wrong I was. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll get one or two right.

Either way, it’ll be an interesting year for Australian media. They always are.

The industry is in the middle of its biggest transformation since the internet arrived, and we’re all figuring this out as we go. Some experiments will work. Most won’t. But the outlets willing to try new things, admit when they’re wrong, and actually listen to what audiences want will be the ones still standing in a few years.

And honestly? That’s probably good for everyone.