What we learned from Digital News Report 2025 – three insights that stand out

The Reuters Institute just published this year’s Digital News Report (DNR), the most comprehensive study of online media. It’s a detailed look at digital news markets in 48 countries based on nationwide surveys that span almost 100,000 respondents.

There’s no shortage of the report’s high-level summaries, including from the authors. So, for this article I traditionally picked a subjective list of three particularly interesting findings.

AI chatbots are actually becoming a source of news, especially for young people 

ChatGPT is almost three years old and one of the most popular tech products in the world. Other companies like Google, Microsoft and Anthropic are trying to catch up. Tech companies have been striking deals with major news companies to use reporting in AI products – from Le Monde’s cooperation with OpenAI to The New York Times’ recent agreement with Amazon. 

That’s all to say – we’ve long understood that AI chatbots are becoming a source of news for mass audiences. This year’s Digital News Report, though, offers hard data for the first time.

“We find AI chatbots and interfaces emerging as a source of news as search engines and other platforms integrate real-time news. The numbers are still relatively small overall (7% use for news each week) but much higher with under-25s (15%)”, the authors write.

As traditional search traffic declines, publishers need to think about their ChatGPT SEO strategy. 

Consumers’ interest in AI features is real but limited (although that might not tell the whole story)

The researchers asked news consumers about their interest in AI features that help personalise story selection (e.g. a customised home page) and story formats (e.g. quickly summarising or translating an article).

The finding: consumers are more interested in personalised news formats than in personalised story selection. Overall, though, enthusiasm remains modest. For example, 27% respondents are interested in AI summarisation and around 15% want text-to-audio and text-to-video features.

Take this finding with a grain of salt, though. A sociological survey can only tell us so much about consumer appetite for features that many people have never actually experienced – it's hard to express enthusiasm for something you can’t fully visualise.

Mobile alerts and newsletters are an important tool of connection with readers – but at the end of the day they are still controlled by powerful big tech platforms 

A section of the report examines mobile news notifications – a powerful tool for publishers. Some 21% of respondents regularly use mobile alerts as a news gateway, ranking below search (45%) and social media (43%) but above email (15%). Major media organisations like the BBC reach millions of people with their notifications every day.

Mobile alerts and email newsletters are both tools that offer direct connection with existing users, as opposed to relying on the mercy of search and social media algorithms.

Well, relatively direct. Apple and Google still control the mobile notification infrastructure, while email giants like Gmail shape what actually reaches inboxes.

The report notes that “the companies behind mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android have started to summarise and prioritise notifications – often using AI – but this in turn threatens to reduce the direct link between news publishers and audiences”.

The authors don’t discuss email’s dependence on tech platforms, so Brian Morrissey’s conversation with Workweek’s CEO Adam Ryan is a good place to learn more.

Source of the cover photo: Shubham Dhage via Unsplash

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