Digital News Report 2025: legacy publishers bet big on AI, subscriptions and transparency

Left to right: Mitali Mukherjee (Reuters Institute), Jane Barrett (Reuters), David Rhodes (Sky News), Basia Cummings (The Observer), Nic Newman (Reuters Institute)

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Legacy news organisations are pressing ahead to reinvent themselves as the Reuters Institute Digital News Report (DNR) 2025 confirms what they already know: the media landscape is shifting beneath their feet.

From massive AI investments to subscription experiments and radical transparency projects, traditional publishers are sizing up new strategies to survive an increasingly fragmented and volatile media environment.

Reuters on the front foot with AI investment

Reuters is one of the most aggressive investors in generative AI technology among news organisations, committing $200 million annually to AI development after an initial $100 million investment following ChatGPT's launch in 2022.

This massive bet comes as DNR reveals that 7 per cent of global audiences currently use AI chatbots and interfaces for news, though adoption jumps to 15 per cent amongst under-25s who use AI to access news weekly.

Jane Barrett, Reuters' head of AI strategy says the investment reflects a company-wide recognition that AI will fundamentally alter how knowledge exchange works.

"Our position was very much that we're going to lead that and not have it happen to us," Barrett explained during a panel discussion on the launch of the DNR.

Every single Reuters staffer is now using AI tools at least 20 times monthly, in line with public acceptance. The report notes: "Audiences remain broadly sceptical of these automated approaches to news production, with similar scores to last year, but are more accepting of journalists using AI in a supportive role"

However, significant consumer scepticism remains, with many audiences believing AI will make news less transparent (-8), less accurate (-8), and less trustworthy (-18).

Barrett acknowledged the company is rolling out AI features to consumers "very cautiously" due to these accuracy and trust concerns. Regional differences in AI adoption are expected, with text-to-speech and summarisation features potentially performing better in English-speaking markets compared to India, where audio and video consumption dominates.

The Observer's new direction

It was one of the headline stories of last year: a media startup acquires a 230-year-old publication. Under the new ownership and strategic alignment of Tortoise Media, The Observer is pursuing transparency and audience engagement over traditional metrics.

Basia Cummings, leading the transformation as digital editor, says The Observer will continue to position itself as a "second read" destination focused on understanding rather than breaking news volume.

"We can't compete with the Guardian or the BBC. There's no point in us trying to go for volume," Cummings explains. Indeed, many audiences don't even want this.

Cummings has been with Tortoise nearly since the start of its journey when the media company launched a successful crowdfunder back in 2018 with a promise to "slow down and wise up". A more considered approach to news reporting aimed to win over those feeling overwhelmed by, or unable to make sense of, the news.

In 2025, this strategy more than holds up: across markets, four in ten say they sometimes or often avoid the news, consistent with last year's record figure and up from 29 per cent in 2017. Nearly a third (31 per cent) say they are worn out by the amount of news and just under half (46 per cent) of Britons say they avoid the news sometimes or often.

Tortoise's "open newsroom" approach means they regularly hold meetings with their members to inform their reporting and "show their workings" in investigative podcasts, which seems to be a hit with younger and female audiences.

The Observer plans to launch an app and digital subscriptions in autumn, but is considering utility beyond news - following the New York Times model where cooking and puzzles drive significant subscription revenue.

"It might be that people don't want to pay for news but they do want to pay for an organisation that might be providing them with lots of different ways in where news becomes a part of it but not the entirety of the subscription," Cummings says.

Sky News goes premium amid TV news freefall

Sky News is another unlikely news organisation eyeing up premium, paid-for content, after Reuters launched a digital paywall last year on a flat $1/€1/£1 per week charge globally and now reports around 100k subscribers.

The move makes sense: the DNR shows the slump of TV news viewership over the last 12 years in many major markets like the UK (down 31 percentage points) and the US (down 22 percentage points).

Are digital subscriptions the silver bullet? The data suggests the market might be nearing its natural limit. Across 20 countries where publishers are pushing digital subscriptions, less than a fifth (18 per cent) have paid for news in the last year, while in the UK specifically, only 10 per cent pay for news.

The report notes: "Sky News has announced plans to invest in exclusive online video (and audio) programming for which they plan to charge over time. But despite this, our data continue to show that the vast majority of audiences remain unwilling to pay for online news."

Executive chairman David Rhodes acknowledged this challenge but says that his strategy will not take a single direct payment model. For instance, he thinks newsletters provide "an interesting addressable audience" that could be sold additional services.

Payment for news, in his view, is more complex than audiences handing over cash or credit card details. Most people are already paying for news in various indirect ways - classified ads, sponsored content, licence fees - and always have been.

The challenge isn't necessarily getting people to pay - it's finding the right indirect payment model that works in the digital age, rather than expecting everyone to suddenly start paying directly for news subscriptions.

We used Claude AI to help draft the article before it was edited by a human

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