For years, we’ve talked about the death of parachute journalism. In 2026, the story won’t just be its demise, but the rise of local journalism, reimagined for a global stage. I’m not talking about small-town reports in community newsletters. I mean ambitious, nuanced reporting from suppressed or overlooked perspectives across the world.
We will see more outlets emerge that amplify these voices — not constrained by national borders, editorial gatekeepers, or the familiar hierarchies of a major newspaper’s front page. For too long, Western-dominated foreign reporting has explained the world to its readers back home, using distancing language and colonial assumptions. It is no longer enough to say group A is suffering in country B, as if this existed in a vacuum. This approach has gon…
For years, we’ve talked about the death of parachute journalism. In 2026, the story won’t just be its demise, but the rise of local journalism, reimagined for a global stage. I’m not talking about small-town reports in community newsletters. I mean ambitious, nuanced reporting from suppressed or overlooked perspectives across the world.
We will see more outlets emerge that amplify these voices — not constrained by national borders, editorial gatekeepers, or the familiar hierarchies of a major newspaper’s front page. For too long, Western-dominated foreign reporting has explained the world to its readers back home, using distancing language and colonial assumptions. It is no longer enough to say group A is suffering in country B, as if this existed in a vacuum. This approach has gone stale. Journalism now is about seeing the world as it truly is, from angles we never thought to look. It’s about a plurality of voices.
From the peripheries of place, people, or history, these outlets will publish long-form reporting that provides the context and depth readers need — and deserve — in order to understand a rapidly shifting world. First-person accounts will illuminate new fault lines in the way a novel can. Books, films, and culture won’t just be reviewed, but analyzed as guides to global trends and tools to decipher the chaos around us. Essays that once never crossed borders will be translated. Writers will explain their own countries to their own people in surprising, revelatory ways. History will be leveraged to make sense of today’s social upheaval.
Audiences are turning away from the never-ending cascade of grim headlines: wars, climate disasters, the rollback of women’s rights, the erosion of democratic norms. Combine this with historically low trust in the news media, and journalism is in the throes of a profound crisis. Viewership numbers are dropping across the planet, mirroring wider fractures in other institutions of knowledge, from medicine to academia. In the United States, a Gallup poll found that trust in media is at an all-time low of just 28% of adults.
But this doesn’t mean people have stopped caring. Quite the opposite: Audiences are still hungry for knowledge and eager to make new connections. The status quo is breaking down, and with it comes opportunity. In 2026, despair about the state of the world is out. Developing hidden and new voices is in.