Take 5 — Media trends to watch in 2025

Here's to kicking off the year ... and relaunching this Substack.

Hi everyone, here’s my first prediction of 2025: This is the year my Substack wakes up. The last few years have been interesting in media, and I’ve got perspectives to share on its evolution, especially as AI becomes more embedded into our workflows. If you have ideas or thoughts on topics you’d like explored, shoot me a note.

Let’s start with trends I expect to follow in 2025.

1. Email Disrupted

This year saw the release of Apple Intelligence, Apple's response to the AI rush. While its features go beyond email, Apple Intelligence brought big changes to Apple Mail:

• Apple is joining other inboxes like Gmail by automatically sorting mails into priority, updates, and promotional inboxes.

• AI will write summaries at the top of emails and preview text in the message list.

For starters, it’s going to be harder to get our emails in front of Apple Mail users, much like in Gmail. But summarization adds a new challenge. Writers may hate losing control over the language of their messages. Isn’t voice important to building an audience? If audiences want to get straight to the point, we might have to accept that our clever phrases or unique CTAs aren’t the differentiators we thought.

There’s a bigger issue at play. Email has been one of the last reliable direct channels for journalists, marketers, writers, newsletter producers, and media brands. Unlike firing content into the unknown, algorithmic voids of search and social, email gives us a clear path to engage a known audience who wants to hear from us. Unfortunately, what made it unique has also made it unmanageable for users. Inboxes are overflowing and users seek new ways to manage the deluge.

• Apps like Superhuman and Spark Mail (which I use) are giving users more filtering and grouping options.

• Upcoming platforms like Cora, from Every.to, and Notion Mail are launching in 2025.

What should we do?

1. In your writing, get to the point. Consider how your content might be processed in a summarizer.

2. Send fewer emails if possible. That can be tough, especially if your brand does a lot of lead generation. But inboxes will filter, organize, and summarize. Improve targeting and personalization to reach more receptive audiences.

2. In-person events strengthen

With email becoming more disrupted, in-person events are one of the last areas to deliver content without an algorithm between you and the audience.

In-person events are resurging post-pandemic, driven by reasons beyond people’s desire to convene after years of lockdown. The content experience benefits both sides:

• Your audience is present and engaged.

• Content is deeply humanized as audiences can engage directly with the creators. That’s peak authenticity.

• The shared experience goes beyond networking. Peer-to-peer discussions help audiences internalize your content, and relationships formed accrue to the convener.

Events are filling a gap left by social media, which today focuses on algorithmically delivering content rather than connecting audiences.

Expect more media brands to embrace in-person events. While not all can afford huge conferences, smaller shows and meetups offer lower-cost opportunities to connect with true fans in real life.

3. AI goes mainstream in media orgs

We’ve seen some famous AI content mishaps. CNET tried to be an early adopter, but its AI-written articles were a disaster. Even AI-generated search results, now mainstream, had issues (Glue on pizza?). But with improving models, 2025 will see more public content generation use cases by prominent media organizations.

I still believe AI shouldn’t create content from scratch. At best, that replicates AI search platforms that simply retrieve and recreate from other sources. But AI can speed up original content creation based on original research, journalism, and analysis, helping creators deliver it in various formats for multiple mediums. I’ll share my workflows for using AI in content creation in later newsletters.

This year, we’ll see plenty of media brand chatbots, but more AI summaries, AI-generated podcasts, personalized newsletters, and other AI features will emerge. Every.to recently launched a feature where users can query the interview transcripts and materials used to create an article. With declining public trust in media, this is a fantastic way to enhance transparency by making source material available.

4. The content barbell takes hold

This year, I see two types of content dominating. The first is short, informative pieces meant to quickly deliver information with the biggest impact. These can outshine AI-driven summaries — Axios is the best example — since they pack a lot of voice and personality into short delivery.

And on the other end? Deeply reported, personality-driven, longform content.

We're seeing this in the podcast space with the audience's affinity for long interviews and detailed series. Most Substacks are longform, and longer YouTube videos are doing well.

Users want utility info like spot news, data journalism, how-tos, and recipes to be short and digestible, with bonus points for punch and voice.

They have more patience for info that serves their curiosities — think want-to-have vs. need-to-have. They’ll make the time for those pieces (through active or passive engagement). Here, voice and personality aren’t bonuses. They’re everything.

Regarding the middling space on the barbell? That’s the worst place to position your content.

5. Podcast complications

Podcasts are hot. 2024 saw “the podcast election,” but the medium was surging before that for elevating non-mainstream voices and creating large, growing communities. It’s likely that brands will invest more in podcasting this year.

But the rise of AI tools like Google's NotebookLM that can create podcast-type audio content will muddy the space.

If you view podcasts as simply a content delivery type, AI tools lower the entry barrier. No need to invest in studios or personalities. Just create original content and let machines turn it into a podcast. I’ve started pasting longform pieces from other sites into NotebookLM because the AI podcast is a more engaging experience than having a story read to you. Here’s one I asked NotebookLM to make based on this newsletter (and hearing the AI hosts talk about authenticity at the 5-minute mark is wild!)

Even though they aren’t perfect, brands will share more AI-generated podcasts on audio/video platforms, causing friction for users. Even if these AI creations are engaging, podcasts have risen because of their authenticity. People choose podcasts not just for info, but for the personalities behind them.

I expect platforms like Spotify and Apple to implement labeling or filtering so audiences will know clearly if a podcast is human or AI-generated.

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We’re in for another big year of change in media (it’s been constant change since the pandemic!). I’ll be focused on looking for ways to leverage new technologies to improve what is at the core of content creation: giving people information that helps or delights them that they can confidently act on.

Music notes (and more)

Keeping with the theme, here are five things I enjoyed this past year.

Best Album: “Where We've Been, Where We Go from Here,” by Friko. Songs from it dominated my Discover Weekly until I checked out the full album. It’s a gem, with notes of early Arcade Fire mixed with a 2025 indie-rock edge. I wasn’t the only one to notice this band, as it earned high spots on several top albums lists (#4 here).

Best Book I Read: The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune. I wasn’t expecting this book about a small orphanage for magical children to be so heartwarming. The sequel just came out, so I’ll read it this year.

Best TV Show: Shrinking. I just finished the second season. Wow. There aren’t many shows so committed to watching their characters grow through their challenges. The world needs shows like this today.

Best Thing I Ate: This year I discovered Sichuan Stir Fried Potatoes. The julienned, soaked (and sometimes blanched) potatoes are wok-fried quickly with red chiles. At Sichuan Kitchen in Portland,Maine, they add black vinegar to the dish. The potatoes are crunchy, like noodles. Heaven.

Best Xmas Album: I forgot there’s no cooler Christmas Album than Jimmy Smith’s Christmas Cookin’. None. Happy Holidays!