In 2026, two forces that have been reshaping media will reach critical mass: the creator-driven information ecosystem and cognitive personalization.

News creators

Audiences increasingly evaluate individual pieces of information and contributors rather than trusting institutional brands wholesale. They assemble their understanding of the world as a patchwork: a podcast recap, a TikTok debunk, a Reddit thread, a traditional news article.

Pew finds that about one in five U.S. adults now regularly get news from influencers on social platforms, often citing helping them to understand the issues and perceived authenticity. The numbers are higher for younger generations.

The organizations that thrive in 2026 will be the ones that recognize that these new formats aren’t competitors, but an evolution of how people make sense of their world and the news. They will help users understand how different voices and sources connect, conflict, or complement each other.

Personalization beyond discovery

For the most part, personalization in the news has meant, “Here are more articles like the ones you clicked.” In 2026, it will mean, “Here’s the version of this information that matches how your brain works.”

Some major newsrooms are experimenting with AI powered products, like the Washington Post’s “Ask the post” feature or Yahoo’s AI chat feature. Other newsrooms are publishing stories in multiple formats such as text, audio, and video. Advances in AI now make it possible to go beyond this. Cognitive personalization such as adapting nuances in presentation, the tone of information — never the facts — to the user’s preferred mode of comprehension is now possible. The same reporting could arrive as:

• A “just the key facts” version that synthesizes across three sources, for someone overwhelmed but wanting to stay informed.
• A version with solutions-oriented framing, for someone overwhelmed by negativity but wanting to stay informed.
• Contextual bridges that connect breaking news to a user’s existing interests or professional domain.

This may feel like capitulation to many newsroom leaders. It’s not. It’s recognizing that creating an informed public requires adapting to that public’s way of gathering and processing information. It’s also not new. EdTech platforms have spent years solving this exact problem: matching learning material to students’ cognitive states, adjusting explanation density, visual aids, and pacing based on how a student processes information.

Furthermore, this isn’t just cosmetic. When a news organization recognizes you’re cognitively depleted and serves you digestible audio instead of demanding you parse 1,500 words, that’s institutional empathy at scale.

Infrastructure, not influencers

The creator economy doesn’t necessarily mean newsrooms should try to become influencers. It means becoming essential infrastructure within the evolving ecosystem of news.

When creator culture meets cognitive personalization, audiences will get news that arrives in their preferred format, connects to a variety of sources, and still anchors back to verified, transparent reporting. An organization that says “Creator X gave you the breaking news, here’s the institutional deep-dive that fact-checks and adds context, with examples and impact tailored for your specific background” is valuable in a way neither source alone can be.

More tangibly, a climate story could arrive as a locally grounded guide to resources, policy responses, and influential voices for one reader and as a technically detailed explainer with temperature baselines and global historical context for another.

Both forces demand similar infrastructural changes from newsrooms:

• Modular content architectures: Structuring journalism as building blocks (facts, context, narrative, visual) that can be organized in different ways. Every block should carry universal, persistent source-stamps to ensure ethical attribution and financial traceability.
• Transparent labeling: AI-driven delivery must clearly distinguish between reporting synthesis, and analysis. Users need to know what they’re consuming and human-in-the-loop remains fundamental.
• Feedback loops that learn delivery preferences: Tracking not just what people click, but what they actually finish, understand, and return to in order to inform deeper personalization based on behaviors.
• Iterative experimentation: Embracing partnerships with creators and AI models to test interaction formats.

Why now?

The need is urgent: 42% of people in the U.S. “sometimes” or “often” avoid the news, citing things like impact to mood and information overload. Meanwhile, trust in traditional news has hit a new low: Just 28% of Americans trust newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.

The organizations that endure won’t be trying to reclaim gatekeeping power. They’ll build a responsible, interoperable infrastructure for a multi-source, format-flexible world. By doing so, they will create a more informed public and greater news engagement. Those making these investments now won’t just survive the format fragmentation — they’ll own the infrastructure layer that makes the ecosystem trustworthy.

Alyssa Zeisler is a media executive building consumer platforms across news and entertainment.