5 Things News Leaders Should Start Doing (if they haven’t already) in 2025

As if your to-do list isn’t long enough, I’m about to add a few more.

As my colleague Marisa DeCandido has already written – 2024 was tumultuous. Newsroom leaders were dealing with cuts, growing vacancies, difficulties recruiting, declining and distrustful audiences, and an industry beset by change. 

Managing all this, while also taking care of the people in a newsroom, is a lot. Many news leaders are juggling competing — sometimes conflicting — priorities. It’s easy to get lost in the busy-ness but there are five things I believe every news leader must focus on.  These five things will enhance your products, improve staff morale, and help your newsroom navigate rough waters. 

Number one: 
You must not only prepare for change in our industry – you need to embrace it.

Many news leaders are anxious about change but the best way for you to protect and support journalism, your people and your community is to help forge the path forward. Sitting still will only lead to further decline. Help your people see your vision and act upon it. The jobs are changing, the content is changing, the platforms are changing. How will you help your team adapt and win?

Number two: 
Hire for the horizon.

The focus of every hire must be on what you’ll need in 18 months, not filling a gap that you have today. Many newsrooms have difficulty recruiting (often for out-of-date jobs), difficulty retaining staff (because they’re not focused on growth), or are making bad hires (too busy to do due-diligence). If you focus on who you’re going to need in the next 18-24 months, many of these issues immediately fade. Those potential employees will recognize that you’re forward-thinking and progressive. You’ll hire knowing you have to train and create an onboarding plan from the start. You’ll be focused on the ability of the candidate to learn versus the check-box on a list, and that requires more due diligence. We need to stop hiring to get a person in a place and start focusing on the mission of your newsroom and how a candidate is going to help you achieve that. 

Number three:
Make AI your secret weapon. 

AI can help you and your people, and you need to create that strategy. Even if the tools and implementation decisions are made by corporate, you need to understand, use and advocate for AI.

When digital began disrupting our business a lot of journalistic leaders acted like it wasn’t a big deal, that digital wasn’t going to make a huge difference. Many hired a few digital experts, put them in the corner and hoped for the best.

Let’s not make the same mistake this time. 

AI will change everything. You can’t pretend it isn’t going to impact our business. Frankly, let’s hope it does, because our business isn’t in great shape.  And how positive AI’s impact is depends on how much you embrace it. 

Number four:
Be certain that your team is focused on the issues important to your community.

You’ll see from this slide the U.S. audience’s priorities. If you look at the bottom of the list, and consider how much coverage those issues got, it’s clear there’s a disconnect between newsrooms and their community. 

Pocket-book issues were by far the most important topics for American audiences, but they did not receive that level of coverage. We cannot rely on gut instinct to understand what a community wants – it is a fundamental reason people turn to news and we’ve missed the mark as an industry. How we help the community navigate their lives and the issues they believe are the most important is a fundamental job and we haven’t been getting good grades from the audience. Focusing on data to understand our community builds trust in us. 

Number five: 
Focus on the people, not the content.

Most leaders became leaders because they were good journalists. But leading is a very different skillset and training journalistic leaders in our industry is hit-and-miss. If you’re a leader here’s my message: focus on the people and it’s a two-for-one deal. You’ll get the content you want and the people you want in your newsroom. Given the state of revenue and corresponding salaries, the need for solid people leaders has never been higher. It’s one of the few ways we’ll stem the exodus of people from journalism. We need to help people grow, learn, evolve. Your job is people.

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