“You should be an influencer,” my assigned career coach declared.
With 200% confidence. Proud of his breakthrough. After a grand total of 20 minutes of conversation.
“Your journalism background is great for it.”
This was a year ago, deep in the furtive throes of my career transition, when I — in a spur of optimism, or some might say desperation 😅 — signed up for one of those free, government-subsidised career coaching sessions.
I scoffed internally.
Sir, I did not survive crushing deadlines, toxic newsrooms, and tyrannical editors for my media career to climax in discount codes and selfies in front of a ring light.
And yet — somewhere between the eye-rolling and the existential questioning, I faced my uncomfortable truth.
I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. I still really, really do.
But the problem is not the calling.
It’s that the version of the media industry I fell wildly in love with at 19 no longer exists.
That realisation sharpened recently when I read Nieman Lab’s Predictions for Journalism 2026.
Every year, Harvard University’s Nieman Lab convenes some of the sharpest minds in the media to reflect on what the year ahead might hold for journalism. It has become required reading for media folks, comms professionals, and anyone harbouring ambitions of being a better storyteller.
This year’s collection felt less like foresight and more like confirmation — clarifying, quietly devastating confirmation — like finally hearing the death knell for old-school journalism that I’d been trying to drown out.
Break my heart, just break it, Tom.
A few themes from the report stood out most strongly to me:
1. Trust is shifting from institutions to individuals.
Credibility is no longer inherited from a masthead or title; it’s earned slowly, visibly, and in public.
2. Distribution is now part of the craft.
If your ideas don’t travel, they don’t land. Storytellers need to understand channels, audiences, and the psychology of attention, not just producing quality content.
3. Journalism skills are leadership skills.
Asking better questions, cutting through spin, and explaining complexity with clarity and fairness are no longer “media skills”. They’re human skills.
The future of journalism, it thusly seems, goes beyond platforms or formats.
It is about building trust and community.
And that shift is not just for journalists to make.
It affects everyone across every industry, from founders, leaders to creators — and anyone whose work depends on being understood, believed, and remembered.
In the age of AI, many of the institutions that taught us the craft are unfortunately struggling to teach us how to stay relevant to what comes next.
💡 How do we make sense of all this then?
If you’re in the middle of a career pivot, feeling uncertain about how to move forward without losing who you used to be, consider this reframe that I’ve found helpful:
🔶 You’re not leaving your craft behind.
🔶 You’re just learning to bend it into a shape you were never trained for.
That’s not betrayal or abandonment. That’s evolution.
Because things that don’t evolve? Well, they go extinct.
So the question we should be asking ourselves is not: “What role should I take next?”
It is: What human skills do I bring that AI can’t replicate — and how willing am I to make my humanity visible?
Even if that visibility feels awkward.
Even if it involves… selfies in front of a ring light.
Or, in my case, a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and softbox lighting — because if I’m going to experiment publicly as whatever a “creator-journalist” is in 2026, I refuse to do it half-arsed, darling.
I know. We do what we have to.
Fine. You win, Mr Career Coach. 🙄
PS: Video content with said softbox lighting drops on my LinkedIn later this month. Stick around to see how I fare. AND PLEASE HIT LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE. (Did I say that right?)