Journalists are resisting the adoption of artificial intelligence and lack the skills or expertise to use it, creating barriers to AI’s wider adoption in the newsroom, according to a major new survey of newsrooms worldwide.
More than half (52%) of those surveyed for the Future Newsrooms Study 2026 said “cultural resistance or scepticism” was the biggest barrier to wider AI adoption in the newsroom, with six in ten (61%) claiming a lack of internal technical skills or AI expertise was to blame.
Nearly half (45%) said “unclear use cases or strategic direction” was also hampering take-up.
The inaugural annual study, from FT Strategies and WAN-IFRA, reported: “Too often AI vision setting is done outside the newsroom, with few having dedicated AI editorial roles. Bringing journalists into the technology fold can alleviate messaging problems and resistance.”
Involving journalists in tech to overcome AI resistance
The report revealed 61% of newsrooms offer no formal training for developing new skills among staff. It recommended specialised AI training for newsrooms to combat a lack of technical skills which are the result of “generic” training “not specific to journalistic needs”.
The Future Newsrooms Study 2026 is intended to serve as an annual “global benchmark of how newsrooms are changing, what they are prioritising and where they are going next”.
Responses were collected from 448 respondents in newsrooms across 86 countries (of which 43% were in Europe). Most respondents held either an editorial leadership, e.g. editor-in-chief, role or an executive leadership position, e.g. chief executive officer.
FT Strategies is the specialist media consultancy arm of the Financial Times.
Lisa MacLeod, director of FT Strategies, said: “As media business models have imploded and content has become ever more ubiquitous and abundant, it is becoming clear that any newsroom operating on the old playbook of optimising purely for reach and reactive, breaking news, is actively managing its own decline.
“The data in this report — which will be the first of an annual research effort — confirms this, and provides a stark wake-up call: the truth is that our newsrooms are not well prepared for a disrupted future.”
‘Put experts in newsroom to boost AI adoption’
The study found that, four years after the launch of ChatGPT, newsrooms were still struggling with adapting to the pace and scale of technological change.
Just 14% of newsroom leaders said they were “very” or “extremely confident” that their current tech stack was fit for purpose and would meet future needs, while one in five (20%) said they were “not confident at all”. However, in newsrooms where journalists were closer to technology decisions, there was a notable boost in confidence among respondents.
Having someone who is an AI authority embedded within editorial also boosts AI literacy and usage within the newsroom, although more than half (57%) had no AI experts in the newsroom.
“Having a structure that places someone directly within the newsroom to advocate for AI in the editorial context matters to adoption rates,” the study reported. It recommended: “Newsrooms that want to make the most of AI would benefit from incorporating these roles into the newsroom environment and iterating on them.”
Among its capabilities, FT Strategies helps media companies define and deliver an AI strategy that aligns with their organisational goals. AI is also used to provide advanced data insights and intelligence, improving efficiency and unlocking new revenue opportunities.
Majority agree newsroom staffing cuts will follow advances in AI
Of those surveyed, a majority (43%) agreed that advances in AI would result in staff numbers being cut in the newsroom over the next three years, even while 39% said they believed their newsroom’s average daily output would increase over the next year.
“Newsrooms appear to be defaulting toward time savings as the main indicator of AI success, and this risks orienting newsrooms toward doing the same work, just faster and with fewer people,” the study warned.
It said newsrooms should instead look to measure AI’s ability “to enable journalism that wasn’t previously achievable”, perhaps looking at how it allowed them to carry out more original journalism, rather than focusing on time saved as the only metric of success.
Even if staffing cuts do follow AI adoption, more than three-quarters (78%) of newsrooms agree that prominent journalists on the payroll, whose profile builds trust with audiences and an engaged community, should be rewarded with new pay incentives.
Options proposed to reward this aspect of the new creator economy include a share in revenues, hybrid contracts with special perks, higher base pay, and bigger or more frequent bonus payouts, of which revenue sharing was the least popular choice.
‘In-depth text’, i.e. articles, is still a priority for newsrooms, the 2026 survey found, with 72% of respondents saying it was a format they were planning to focus on over the next year in maintaining a distinctive editorial voice. Short videos topped the priority list with nearly eight in ten (79%) of respondents saying they would focus on it.
Overall, text still dominates, with 97% of newsrooms saying it was a focus, across articles, newsletters, short articles and liveblogs. Video is close behind at 91% and audio at 78%.
Agentic AI uptake still low in newsrooms
In the newsroom, AI is still most commonly used for transcription and translation services (78% of respondents), but even here its use is largely limited to that of an assistant, with only one in ten (10%) respondents saying they used agentic, or autonomous, AI to handle this work – still the highest level of agentic AI adoption across the newsroom.
Stig Orskov, CEO of WAN-IFRA, said: “In today’s AI-driven era, editorial tools, audience needs, and the competitive landscape are shifting at a pace that few of us anticipated even two or three years ago. The questions facing editorial leaders are no longer abstract.
“How do you reshape a newsroom culture built for one era to deliver distinctive, relevant journalism in another? How do you invest wisely when the ground keeps moving? And how do you bring your people with you?”
The Future Newsrooms Study 2026, produced by FT Strategies and WAN-IFRA and sponsored by ArcXP, is free to access and download.
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