In 2025, I felt a pressing need to connect with the people who make up my community. To take action, not just talk about it. So I made a big cut to my expenses by canceling a handful of major media subscriptions, and instead used that money to experience storytelling in person.

Don’t get me wrong, Big Media fed me in some ways, but I was still hungry. I might be more knowledgeable about injustices across the world, but I didn’t know how to de-escalate indecisions between my neighbors. I wasn’t sure how to plant a community garden to feed the people around me, even if I could discuss new FDA rules. While I could recite the death toll of a conflict, reading headlines didn’t make life around me any better for anyone.

So I took the money I saved on news subscriptions, and redirected it to clubs and experiences. I visited theme parks where I could experience fairytales in three dimensions. I said yes to in-person events and joined mutual aid communities — different from subscribing to websites that call you “community” without real participation. And I’m not alone.

A June 2025 Pew Research Center report on subscription news noted that 83% of Americans have not paid for news in the past year. According to that report, 32% of polled individuals weren’t interested enough, and 8% said it just wasn’t “good enough to pay for.”

What are people paying for if not news subscriptions?

In a Vogue Business article titled, “Are community event leaders the new influencers?” Amy Francombe writes about research that observed younger users spending more money on hobbies in the last year.

“Of those surveyed, 92% said they spent money on hobbies in the last month, while 37.5% spend $250 or more monthly on hobbies or personal development,” the research said.

The Immersive Experiences Institute Report, the top report in the industry of themed entertainment, provides even more clues:

“33.7% of survey respondents said that the most they have ever paid for a single ticket for an immersive experience was in the range of $100- $199; 26.6% of respondents have paid between $200-$499 at least once for a single experience. 77.7% agreed with the statement, ‘immersive experiences are charging a fair price, and I get the expected value for what I pay’…while 8.3% said they are underpriced.”

While consumers believe the news isn’t “good enough to pay for,” they insist immersive experiences are “underpriced,” even while paying upwards of $100 for a single experience.

Even armed with this knowledge, the news industry dips toes into academic panels akin to sitting through a handful of monologues with a short Q&A segment. And our content still, overwhelmingly, contains a “royal we” of a newsroom talking down to citizens, writing service journalism on one-dimensional articles but not empowering audiences to take action.

When discussing ways we can take information off the page, look to the theatre, or music, or crafting circles, or mutual aid groups, or any place where people gather for enjoyment, to explain differences and cultural needs. In addition to community clubhouses, experiences could be summed up as immersive theatre, like Punchdrunk’s infamous MacBeth retelling, Sleep No More, but could also be a Meow Wolf exhibit or a concert at The Sphere. It could be a Cosm show in L.A., or eating at a themed restaurant at Epic Universe theme park.

“Popular culture has that power in everyday life,” bell hooks said of the ability to explain differences or otherness to a cross-cultural group of people. “Whether you’re talking about race, gender or class, popular culture is where pedagogy is. It’s where the learning is.” Popular culture is where you go to explain and measure the impact on the masses for the politics of difference.

I want the elements that I consume to make me kinder and gentler. I don’t want to hold my intelligence in numbers and recited headlines. I want to expand my understanding of the world and be a bigger part of it myself. I want information that encourages me to be part of a solution, rather than information that creates negativity because it feels out of my control.

So in 2025 I experimented with fully live journalism, inspired by theme park subcultures. No articles or page views. Just ticketed discussions where we each talk about a civic challenge and create to-do’s together. Only six months in, that experiment has created a plan for Narcan training in Old City, Philadelphia, four bags of useful, clean winter clothing donated to a mutual aid partner and four boxes of books for incarcerated folks, to be dispensed through a partner organization. This small live journalism community collected enough donations to supply a local organization with a hot water heater, after a discussion about how to keep people warm. A tiny deescalation workshop has blossomed into a regular training to keep people safe and calm during tense situations with food scarcity. Small solutions, built in-person, that could never have been developed through a commenting platform.

I’m far from alone. Every day small newsrooms develop zines, trivia events, and table in their neighborhoods to create those real connections. In 2026, the media will look to immersive experiences to create live information formats that reshape our brains for hope.