As a communications professional who has watched the media landscape transform, I have one conviction: we need great journalists now, more than ever.
Many of us have probably watched The Devil Wears Prada recently. And if you work in PR or media, you didn't watch it just for the fashion, you watched it for the world it portrayed. In the first movie, print was precious – a cover story could make or break a brand. A magazine's editorial calendar was one of the most powerful documents in the room.
That world still existed when many of us started our careers. Then came digital. Then social media. The landscape that once moved in monthly cycles began moving in minutes.
Millennials, a generation that lived through it
Millennials working in communications today carry a rare perspective: we lived through the shift. We were there at the beginning, physically cutting out press clippings and pasting them into press books. Not metaphorically. With scissors and glue.
Then came the digital transition. Print coverage migrated into URLs. Reporting metrics changed. We adapted. Then came the power of social media and the concept of "influencers" – first dismissed, then embraced, then fully integrated into every PR strategy. Media houses had no choice but to compete on social platforms themselves.
But, here is what that transition quietly cost us: speed became the currency of credibility.
Whoever could post first, a video shot from a phone at a breaking news scene, or a screenshot of a leaked document, won the attention. And in the race to be first, something fundamental started to erode: the competition for attention became about who could cover the story first, not better.
Can we trust what we see now?
AI has changed the equation entirely, and not in the way most people first imagined. The threat is no longer just misinformation written by a human behind a keyboard. It is a photograph that never happened. A video of a world leader saying words they never said. A voice note from a CEO confirming a rumour that is entirely fabricated.
The tools to create these exist today. They are easily accessible, and are improving at a pace none of us can fully track.
We are living through a moment where our most basic instincts: trust what you can see, trust what you can hear, are being systematically undermined. A video call can be faked. A photograph can be generated. A quote can be invented and styled to look like a screenshot. When you can no longer trust the image, what do you trust? The source.
And this is where journalism does not disappear, it becomes the most important thing in the room.
The journalism we need next
In my view, we are approaching a fundamental inversion. For the past decade, the competition between media outlets has been a race for speed. In the very near future, that race will matter far less than the race for credibility. The outlets, reporters and publications that will win the next era are not those who post fastest, they are those who can be absolutely trusted.
We need journalists who verify before they publish. We need independent media organisations that have the editorial integrity and resources to cross-check, confirm and, where necessary, push back. We need reporters who understand that their value is no longer in the volume of content they produce, but in the weight that their byline carries.
The next generation of journalists will not be defined by how fast they can type. They will be defined by something far older: intellectual rigour, editorial independence and the courage to get it right, even when getting it first would have been easier.
That is the journalism worth fighting for.
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