I was asked to reflect on the big media stories of the part year. So here are five major happenings from 2025 that are worth further comment. Big Thing 1: AI is reshaping us There might be a debate about whether or not this is a bubble moment, but there is no doubt that AI products, and chatbots in particular, are now mainstream, entrenched, and reshaping how people get information. More time in chatbots means less time on traditional search, less time seeking out news sites, and more personalized information. But! It also increases the importance of person-to-person relationships, where each participant has real skin in the game. Even as we get more media from robots, we want more connection with humans. We want, and need, to share stories with each other. That’s an opportunity. Big Thing 2: YouTube is king Everyone within spitting distance of the New York Media Industrial Complex is obsessed with what’s happening at the TV stations, newspapers, and magazine empires, but they all are just mites in a bed that is built, made, and slept in by YouTube, which dominates news, commentary, and entertainment, and is well on the way to taking over not just our personal devices but also the living room. This was the year that Neal Mohan became the big, sexy boss that everyone wants to press flesh with. Next year could be the backlash—and if it happens, expect it to come from the conflict between the company’s “creator-first” messaging and the increasing abundance of AI-produced content (which is friendly to YouTube’s business model). Big Thing 3: Paramount Skydance acquired The Free Press When David Ellison’s company acquired Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, it was big news for obvious political and cultural reasons—and insider media gossip—but to me the most significant story was that a new text-focused news and opinion publication had started from scratch, grown to significant revenue based on direct subscriptions, and then sold for a major sum after just three years. The media was supposed to be dying! Turns out that there is room for new entrants. There is room for reinvention. Big Thing 4: Traditional media is washed out There are a few traditional media institutions left standing—the New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and a handful of others—but the year 2025 confirmed that almost every other traditional media institution has completely lost influence. Worse: their businesses may not be recoverable. This reality is not the same thing as saying the media business is dead—it’s just not going to look like it has looked for the last 100 years. Even some of the biggest titans of that era won’t make the leap to the new era. This year has confirmed that we’re firmly in rebuilding territory now, even if the chaos of social media obfuscates the progress. Big Thing 5: Direct relationships are the way forward The traditional media system once thrived on direct relationships, with the big brands having built trust with their audiences over decades. That all fell to pieces in the social media era, when tech companies figured out how to best take advantage of the internet to monopolize attention and therefore ad dollars. The social media companies aren’t going to give up their riches any time soon, so the people who care about trustworthy media will have to build direct relationships with audiences all over again, except this time without relying on programmatic advertising and without letting the big platforms dictate what they can and can’t do with those audiences. In 2025, it has become clear that—because of platforms like Substack—publishers can benefit from network effects that a platform brings without having to sacrifice the control of their audience relationships.

I am going to CES for the first time ever in Jan. Is it a good place to meet people? Should I try to meet people there?

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