Insights from the Q5 Media Team
From the rise of news influencers to the evolving definition of ‘digital first,’ the Q5 media team shares key insights into the challenges shaping the publishing and broadcasting landscape. Drawing on industry experience and client work, these thought pieces explore how newsrooms can adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing media environment.
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Recently, the Q5 media team has taken to LinkedIn to share their insights on the challenges facing publishers and broadcasters today, based on our experience, our work with clients, and the forces we see influencing the industry. Here are our top three insights for this month:
1. The unstoppable rise of the news influencer
The creator economy, specifically ‘news influencers’, are rapidly becoming a core source of news for many people.
While established newsrooms invest in fact checking, re-organise to deliver for audiences and/or platforms and work hard for every subscriber or ad impression, the platform-agnostic influencers have free rein to provide often poorly/ lightly researched, highly partisan content to their followers for high returns.
This latest threat to the established news ecosystem is much more immediate and potentially damaging than AI. Newsrooms need to react now if they are to continue to fulfil their purpose of delivering quality journalism.
The start of the year has brought several excellent prediction podcasts (Media Confidential, BBC Media Show, Press Gazette) and reports such as the must-read Reuters Institute Trends & Predictions – across them all the rise of the News Influencers struck us as the least spoken about but with the biggest impact.
Watch this space – or listen to a few if you have time!
2. Should how the news is made be making the news?
The fundamentals of great news journalism – accuracy, objectivity, timeliness, depth of storytelling – have not changed for centuries, but since c.2010, the news value chain has been disrupted and re-disrupted as broadcasters and publishers navigate the ever-changing media landscape.
- Digital first
- Audience first
- Advertiser first
- Platform first
- Customer/ Subscriber/ Member first
All perspectives point to leaders trying to bring clarity to their newsroom while at the same time needing their operating model to constantly adapt.
At times evolution, at times revolution, newsrooms continue to push forward on multiple fronts: story commissioning, formats, journalist skills and capabilities, technology, sub-editing and production, graphics and visual journalism, newsroom meeting cadence and rituals, KPIs, organisation structures/ leadership roles, links with commercial teams (esp. subs, ecommerce, sponsorship), drives for efficiency and the use of AI.
Across the globe, Q5 are working with newsrooms to stay ahead of the curve while keeping the fundamentals intact. Get in touch to see how we can help your newsroom navigate change, here.
3. What do we actually mean by ‘digital first’?
The last few weeks have seen a fresh flurry of publishers and broadcasters talking about becoming ‘digital first’. Once the preserve of publishing newsrooms, it is now a mantra you can hear across media. But what does it actually mean?
For some, digital first is about platforms – publishing online before print or broadcast. For others, it’s about workflows – rethinking commissioning, production, and audience engagement. And in some cases, it’s shorthand for total transformation – business models, culture, skills – and breaking the mould for how stories are told.
When digital-first strategies made their debut, they were about shifting away from legacy print workflows, prioritising online audiences, and adapting to new audience consumption habits. But in 2025, is ‘digital first’ specific enough or even the right focus?
Some organisations are choosing to be ‘audience first’, ‘impact first’, or ‘journalism first’ in response to an increasingly fragmented content environment. Others say digital first remains critical, especially in regions where legacy habits still dominate newsrooms. The challenge is that digital first means different things in different markets – sometimes it’s about formats, sometimes workflows, and sometimes entire operating models.
If you are wrestling with the notion of ‘being’ digital first, you first need to ask yourself “Why?”. What are you looking to achieve? What audience or commercial need are you ultimately trying to satisfy? Oft-repeated mantras are all well and good, but aren’t worth the hot air they are muttered with if they lack the vision, rationale and design to deliver sustainable success.
Meet Sheila and Archie, two of our Media team:
Sheila Fitzsimons – Director
For most of her career Sheila worked as an Executive Editor and Director of Transformation. She ran the editorial budget, printing sites, and the Enterprise Technology department. In addition, she designed and led the cross-company culture change plan moving a traditional paper-first UK newspaper to an award-winning global digital organisation.
Today Sheila ensures our Q5 media engagements blend the best of Q5 offering expertise with a depth a natural sensitivity to the nuances of a media business.
Archie Sale – Media Lead
As a Q5 media specialist Archie has worked on Org design and strategy for broadcasters, publishers and agencies in the UK and Australia.
Passionate about how media businesses are rethinking their business and operating models to meet the industry headwinds head on he loves to help design an organisation for the future.
We are all about organisational health, which separates good organisations from the great. Whether our clients are at the top of their game (and want to remain there) or are in ‘turnaround’ mode, we all need to work on our organisational health.
Whatever the situation, be it a strategic conundrum, a market opportunity, or an operational gripe, we combine the art and science of organisational health to help our clients improve and excel.
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