Lea Korsgaard (Zetland, top left), Dmitry Shishkin (Ringer Media International, top right), Mark Frankel (Full Fact, bottom left), Sophia Smith Galer (Viralect, bottom right) all speaking at our Newsrewired conference over the years

Jonathan Paterson, contributing editor, The News Movement said the best part of the annual Reuters Institute's Digital News Report is the post-match analysis. And we couldn't agree more.

So, we trawled through the LinkedIn posts and consolidated all the best tidbits for you. Want to share your two cents? Get in touch with me.

Sticking with Paterson, he identified a puzzling trend in YouTube's relationship with news consumption. Despite large strides made in social video consumption, the video platform has taken a small dip itself for news. Full post

Key stat: YouTube is down one percentage point as a weekly news source (21 per cent), while social video news consumption overall has grown to nearly two thirds of users (up 13 percentage points) and video for any purpose reaches three quarters (up 8 percentage points) over five years.

The insight: The disconnect stems from how we define 'news' - breaking news and short video moments that set the agenda don't always fit YouTube's longer-form 16:9 format. Figuring this out could unlock YouTube's superior monetisation potential, compared to other social platforms.

The action point: Experiment with the established YouTube formats like explainers, gamified challenges, and creator-led news content.

Sophia Smith Galer is many things; a journalist, author, media consultant. She is also someone who just gets the new social media platforms like TikTok, where she has garnered more than half a million followers and nearly 18m likes. It's little surprise she spotted that newsrooms are missing a trick by not being more engaged in their social media comment sections. Full post

Key stat: 22 per cent of 18-34s look at user comments to verify information, compared with 17 per cent over over 35s. This trend is more stark with using social media and video networks themselves as a fact-checking resource.

The insight: Comment sections are becoming fact-checking spaces where audiences look for information and guidance, yet journalists rarely engage there to rebut misinformation, clarify points, or maintain conversations around their reporting. This represents a fundamental failure to meet audiences where they're seeking verification.

The action point: Newsrooms must equip journalists with editorial freedom, safety training, and counter-misinformation strategies to actively engage in comment sections, treating them as essential spaces for trust-building rather than territories to be abandoned.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) has, at last count, 30 different TikTok accounts each serving different languages. Erika Marzano, audience development manager at DW, highlighted the rapid growth and potential of the platform that traditional newsrooms are missing out on. Full post

Key stat: TikTok is the fastest-growing social platform for news, with 17 per cent using it for news globally ( 3 percentage points year-on-year). Thailand (49 per cent) tops the list for weekly news consumption on TikTok, while the UK languishes at the bottom (6 per cent).

The insight: While news organisations ruminate over the platform, creators dominate the space. The platform's informal style, lack of referral traffic, and creator-first algorithm make it difficult for legacy newsrooms to adapt to and monetise. And yet, it's become a major news access point, especially in the Global South.

The action point: Develop........

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