One of the questions I'm asked most often by senior communications and corporate affairs leaders might seem surprisingly simple – and perhaps even worryingly tactical – amidst broader conversations about earning trust and building and protecting their organisations' reputations:
"Who should be on our media list in 2026 and beyond?"
Twenty years ago, that had a relatively straightforward answer. It meant a select group of journalists at established publications and broadcasters. Build strong relationships, understand who covered your sector, and you were well on your way.
Today, I think it's the wrong question.
Ideas are no longer shaped by journalists alone. They are discovered through platforms, interpreted by creators, debated in communities, validated by peers, surfaced by AI, and often only then reinforced by traditional media.
Communicators don't need a longer media list. They need a smarter media map.
That was the thread running through Edelman's UK launch of the 2026 Reuters Digital News Report, hosted in partnership with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Although our speakers represented very different parts of today's media ecosystem, they all pointed towards the same conclusion: understanding how information travels is becoming just as important as understanding where it starts.
The media list has become a media map
As Jim Egan, lead author of this year's Digital News Report, outlined, the structural shifts in news consumption continue to accelerate. For the first time globally, social media and video platforms are the most widely used route to online news, overtaking publishers' own websites and apps. If AI chatbots are included, most online news discovery is now intermediated through third-party platforms rather than direct relationships with publishers.
For communicators, that changes the challenge.
Reputation is no longer built through a single channel or a handful of influential journalists. It is shaped across a far more complex journey of discovery, interpretation, validation and amplification.
As Reuters Institute Director, Mitali Mukherjee, observed during our discussion, while the syntax of news, the gateways to information, and the way people consume it have all changed, what audiences expect has not. People still want information that is credible, useful, impartial, and helps them make sense of an increasingly complex world.
The challenge is that they are now seeking those qualities across a much more interconnected media ecosystem.
Trust no longer begins where attention begins
Perhaps the most striking paradox in this year's research is that audiences are increasingly discovering information in environments they trust less.
Global trust in news has fallen to 37% – the lowest level recorded since Reuters began measuring it in 2015 – while concern about misinformation has risen to 62%. Yet people continue to migrate towards social platforms, video networks and increasingly AI interfaces because they are convenient, embedded within everyday life and increasingly where information is encountered rather than actively sought. I described this during our discussion as a "convenience-trust gap.”
That tension was echoed throughout the morning; however, one of the most interesting themes was that these channels are no longer competing with one another in the way we often assume.
As Dan Thomas at the FT argued, the challenge for traditional publishers is no longer deciding whether to be on platforms. It's how to be present where audiences spend their time while continuing to bring them back to trusted journalism. For example, the BBC has embraced YouTube as a destination, while Semafor curates a weekly Best of Substack newsletter – recognising that audiences increasingly move fluidly between established publishers and independent voices.
The distinction between traditional journalism and the creator economy is also becoming less clear-cut. Publishers are increasingly developing journalists who can do more than break news – explaining complex issues on podcasts, engaging audiences on social platforms and building trusted personal brands alongside their reporting. At the Financial Times, journalists are expected to build audiences across multiple formats; at Semafor, journalists are placed front and centre, recognising that readers increasingly form relationships with individual experts as much as institutional brands.
The future is not institutional brands or individual voices. Increasingly, it is institutional brands amplified through trusted individuals.
The implication for communicators is equally significant.
Reach remains important – but reach alone is no longer enough. As audiences frictionlessly travel across publishers, platforms, creators, and AI-generated summaries, credibility becomes the factor that determines whether an idea continues to travel.
Communities are becoming the new validation layer
If trusted publishers increasingly compete for attention on platforms, communities are becoming where many people validate what they have already discovered.
Our fireside conversation with Robert Turnbull, Head of Insights, EMEA and Australia, at Reddit explored exactly this shift.
Reddit may be more than two decades old, but its relevance is growing because it offers something increasingly scarce online: authentic human conversation. As AI-generated content proliferates, people are looking for lived experience, recommendations and discussion from other people before making decisions.
Communities are no longer simply another distribution channel. They have become a valuable source of reputation intelligence, audience insight and behavioural signals. They reveal what people are genuinely asking, debating, and trying to understand before those conversations reach mainstream media.
Robert's advice to communicators was refreshingly simple: Listen before you participate.
Brands that arrive simply to broadcast messages – or worse, attempt to manipulate conversations to improve AI visibility – risk quickly losing credibility. Communities reward organisations that understand the culture, contribute authentically and add genuine value.
Interestingly, that same principle emerged during our discussion with political commentator and creator Marina Purkiss.
Creators build trust differently from institutions. Audiences increasingly value voices they perceive as authentic, relatable and independent. Marina described the role creators can play in interpreting, simplifying, and reacting to the news for their audiences. Yet that trust depends precisely on that independence. When brand involvement feels overly scripted or transactional, audiences notice.
Neither communities nor creators replace journalism. Instead, they increasingly help audiences interpret, validate and contextualise it.
What communications leaders should do differently
The role of communicators is to understand the part each contributor plays within the information journey – and how each increasingly amplifies the others. For communications leaders, four practical implications stand out.
First, think in journeys rather than channels.
Ask not simply where your story will appear, but where audiences will first discover it, where they will validate it, which voices will give it credibility, and how it may ultimately be encountered and interpreted through AI. Understanding your media map through these questions is more useful than simply asking who should be on it.
Second, listen before you speak.
Communities provide one of the richest sources of audience insight available today. Understanding emerging conversations before participating in them is increasingly a competitive advantage.
Third, build ideas that are designed to travel.
The question is no longer simply, "How do we amplify this?" It is:
"Is this idea credible enough, useful enough and relevant enough to travel through the voices, platforms and communities people actually trust?"
That means stronger evidence. Better proof points. More useful stories. Content that works across multiple environments rather than relying on one announcement.
Finally, evolve your media mix – not abandon it.
The future belongs to organisations that understand how these different influences reinforce one another. The strongest communications strategies will combine trusted journalism, creator partnerships, community insight, platform-native storytelling and earned visibility in ways that reflect how audiences actually consume information today.
The media ecosystem has changed – and continues to change – rapidly. Navigating it well will require communicators to listen more carefully, participate more thoughtfully, and earn attention more credibly.