The Death of the Newsroom (As We Know It)

Our first proper Deadliners dispatch has just been published! To the early paying subscribers: thank you for being the bedrock of this thing.Every parent of a teenager knows the feeling: watching your child hunched over a phone, thumb flicking upward, wondering, What on earth are they actually learning in there? But, it turns out, they’re actually remarkably engaged with the world.They're not engaged via legacy media, though, so what does being engaged with the world via TikTok and Instagram mean for the future of news and for the journalists who produce it? To help me make sense of this, I spoke to Dr. Craig Robertson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.In Craig’s recent paper, Understanding Young News Audiences at the Time of Rapid Change, he explores the “socialization” of news; the shift from the ritual of the morning paper to the chaotic, creator-led ecosystem of TikTok.We discuss why the ‘inverted pyramid’ style of news writing that dinosaurs like me were taught in journalism school is a relic bygone era, and why an old guy in a suit behind a desk feels odd and untrustworthy to a new generation that has grown up online and on their phone.We got into the weeds on a few things that might just be keeping you up at night:* Why 51% of young people now pay more attention to individual creators than to established news brands.* How “both-sidesism” on issues like climate and social justice is actively alienating the next generation of readers.* A look at how young people are using LLMs to simplify and de-code reporting that seems impenetrable.* Why Craig thinks newsrooms should consider killing their opinion sections entirely to salvage what’s left of their reputation for objective facts (and why he hates newspaper ‘live blogs’)Like me, Craig is a glass-half-full guy, but his data is a wake-up call for anyone still trying to sell 1960s formats to a 2026 audience.[Photo is of 1944 CBC newsroom, Montreal. Conrad Poirier / Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and Wikimedia Canada] Get full access to Deadliners at deadliners.substack.com/subscribe