It doesn’t really matter what noun you use, but it is clear the conglomerate, the corporation, is on its last legs (truly, this time?). It’s time for the small or solo act.
Over the course of 2025, more acts have gone solo. Reporters, columnists, etc, have all made the jump into Substacks, Beehiivs, any form of newsletter or other direct communication. Add to this the knowledge that influencers are becoming more trusted (as other media brands hit rock bottom trust).
There are a lot of amazing people working on the creator phenomena, but that isn’t what this prediction is about. It’s the small act, the small organization that actually doesn’t have goals of becoming huge who will come to the forefront in 2026.
Funders and journalism culture in general has shifted over time to the idea of “bigger is better.” Add audiences and you’ll have success. Expand from your neighborhood, to your town, to your metropolitan, to your state. The success metric is measured in “how many” (whether that’s viewers, clicks or elsewise).
But what if we stop trying to get bigger?
Over the course of the last year and change as a consultant, I’ve worked with news organizations that are launching, or struggling to redefine what “growth” means to them. My own news habits have changed, also, shifting away from “mainstream” media.
There was a moment when hyperlocal was it. That was the future of journalism. What that missed (and why ultimately it became a rarely used strategy) was because it defined communities by geography alone. There was the era of the “niche” where Ebola or Syria was the single focus of a large organization. That defined community shared interest.
In truth, communities are defined in multiple ways, geography being one. There’s also identity, shared experience, history.
I now rely on these small acts, as a consumer. It might be a single Instagram account that just tries to answer “What is going on over there?” Or the Asian American arts organization that collates and showcases small AAPI brands. Or the newsletter writer who covers a rural area I care about. Or the TikTok account that explains things in a digestible way. Many of these don’t have goals to get bigger, in the sense of breadth of coverage and clicks. Growth to them means more depth, more involvement in their community, more buy-in only from the audiences they want.
These are single projects, maybe not even big enough to be full organizations, that seek to serve a single audience in a single way. But if they do a good enough job, then attention means more support and more prominence. If you are a single newsletter writer in rural Virginia or New Mexico, why would you turn down a major grant from a national organization who has decided your topic/region is worth supporting, even if you don’t know what to do with that money?
This isn’t to argue against pushing for sustainability. That is more important than ever. But the solo, small acts are realizing they’re at their best when they’re working for the audiences they target, not the audiences someone thinks they should grow to. This goes directly to the loss of faith in journalists the community believes are more corporate, capitalistic.
Staying focused also lessens the blow of the algorithms changing and SEO fading as a tactic. For so long publishers resorted to lower quality content (listicles), less relevant news (republishing from the next county over) to fill the space and to use the keywords. Not anymore.
Sometimes, all you need is what is just enough to make a fair wage and to support the work. This means, perhaps, the small acts whose ambitions are targeted are going to learn to have to say no. Or, even better, funders and service organizations learn to respect journalists for what their ambition is, not our collective ambition for them. Let’s find ways to have them grow at the pace they dictate.
