The Ghost of Christmas Future appeared to me on a Teams videocall from London.
She was sympathetic but left me fearful of what’s ahead for America’s news industry.
Kate Scott-Dawkins, who tracks ad spending for the advertising giant WPP Media, said 2026 will be rough for newspapers.
In a forecast released this month, WPP expects print advertising in U.S. newspapers to plunge 45.3% next year, to $594 million.
It predicts U.S. newspapers’ digital ad sales will grow 1.5%, to $7.2 billion, and total newspaper advertising to decline 4.7%, to $7.8 billion. That’s after seeing 5.7% growth this year, to $8.2 billion.
“It’s very difficult for local news — it’s very difficult for everyone outside of the biggest, more nationally focused papers,” Scott-Dawkins, WPP president of global business intelligence, said during the interview.
That’s in contrast to growth in advertising in other mediums, including video games, social media and digital billboards, large and small, proliferating outdoors and in commercial settings.
WPP expects global ad revenue will grow 8.8% this year, to $1.14 trillion, and 7.1% in 2026, not counting political ads in the U.S.
More than $1 billion in advertising is expected globally around the World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
The forecast was revised upward because the economy isn’t doing as poorly as expected and the AI boom is expected to drive more ad spending, Scott-Dawkins said.
There are other concerns. Scott-Dawkins noted there’s “bifurcation” with a relatively small number of affluent households accounting for an outsized portion of consumer spending.
Similarly, “a small number of media owner companies represent sort of an outsized portion of total industry ad revenue, as well,” she said.
WPP tries to support traditional media, recognizing its importance, she said, but consumers increasingly get news through things like AI chatbots instead of newspapers and broadcast TV.
“Despite WPP’s ongoing commitment to news and promoting those types of publishers to clients, it is overall an industry in structural decline,” she said.
State support: That helps makes the case for why government should help sustain the local news industry as it works through its disruption and develops new business models.
One approach is to provide tax breaks. Congress has proposals for this in hand, but is unlikely to approve them anytime soon.
A handful of states are trying. The largest program is about to begin in New York, which is finalizing details of $30 million worth of refundable tax credits it’s providing per year over three years.
The money was budgeted in 2024, but the policy had glitches needing to be fixed in the 2025 budget. Now it’s going through a rule-making process and credits, against 2025 taxes, are expected to be available in early 2026.
Newspapers and broadcasters may receive up to $25,000 per employee, with credits capped at $300,000 per news organization. New York has around 1,100 newspapers.
That’s a way to save jobs and papers, but it isn’t a simple template that other states can use, because each has its own budgeting process, noted Zack Richner, part of a Long Island publishing family that advocated for the credits.
What could be replicated is the approach New York publishers used to create a locally based advocacy group with professional lobbyists, he said.
Richner organized a coalition to support local news and get the longstanding request for tax credits approved.
(Richner, by the way, also expects print newspaper advertising to decline but much less than WPP’s forecast.)
New York also benefited from having “a very good governor” who “understands the role of local news,” said Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association.
“Each state’s political dynamics are different so it really depends on who your governor is, who your legislators are, who the leadership is,” she said.
Illinois in 2024 approved a $25 million, five-year-tax credit program offering up to $15,000 per journalist and a maximum of $150,000 per news organization per year.
Washington in 2023 approved a 10-year business tax exemption for publishers, saving them an estimated $10 million altogether. It was championed by Gov. Bob Ferguson, who was then attorney general.
Another proposal, to help news outlets get compensated by tech firms profiting from news content, is being drafted by Washington state Sen. Marko Liias and will also need Ferguson’s support.
News organizations in those states are lucky. Federal budget cuts this year are walloping state budgets, Kennedy noted, so securing tax credits in today’s climate “would be really difficult,” she said.
Longer-term sustainability: Newspapers must also find ways to get fairly compensated directly by tech platforms profiting from their work.
So far this has only been possible for some of the largest news organizations, and for those in countries like Australia and France, where governments forced tech companies to negotiate.
There may be more opportunities in the emerging AI era. Copyright lawsuits brought by The New York Times and others could strengthen publishers’ hand.
Google and Meta are also making more news deals, although that could be to avoid further lawsuits and antitrust sanctions.
The news industry is simultaneously trying to erect stronger fences to protect its material from online poachers.
As part of that effort, the Local Media Consortium last week announced a partnership with TollBit, a startup working to help publishers monitor and monetize AI usage of their work.
Consortium members operate around 5,000 newspapers, radio and TV stations and digital outlets in the U.S. and Canada.
CEO Fran Wills said the partnership will help news organizations install TollBit’s software, giving them a dashboard to see what AI scrapers are accessing their websites and “get more intel on what’s going on with their traffic.”
She acknowledged this is only a first step toward getting paid by AI platforms. The consortium is talking to other tech providers about additional tools and could eventually help negotiate payment on behalf of members.
Wills said exploring and experimenting with these tools will help the news industry better understand its options and “which path we want to collectively go forward with.”
“The other alternative is to do nothing and let the bots just continue to consume our content with no compensation,” she said, “which is not a sustainable model for any of our publishers.”
Wills is optimistic it will work out: “The good news is somehow we have been resilient, for some of our publishers for over 100 years.”
“It’s certainly been a wild ride,” she said. “Disruption with newspapers started with broadcast TV and radio, and then the internet came along, and now AI has come along … we’ve figured out how to weather these storms, albeit not as well as we had hoped.”
Indeed, things may turn out better than expected.
I’m encouraged by these signs of progress, incredible work by so many journalists during 2025 and the support of subscribers and others who value local news.
Happy holidays and best wishes for 2026.
