With digital platforms and technological advancements evolving the way audiences receive and digest information, you’d be forgiven for wondering if traditional media was losing its relevance in shaping reputations.
However, its role has never been more central – what has changed is the way that influence travels through the information food chain.
A major profile or story in a national newspaper no longer sits in one place. It appears in print and online, is shared by the publication and the journalist, picked up by readers and commentators, discussed across LinkedIn, X and Bluesky, and increasingly is then repackaged into video for Instagram and TikTok.
Social media has become the main distribution engine for a lot of news and commentary. It determines how quickly a story moves, who sees it, and how it is discussed. But the authority behind many of those conversations still comes from established journalism.
From front page to search engine
LLMs further muddy the picture, with AI-generated summaries and search results drawing eyes away from newspapers’ websites. While this poses a challenge to newspapers’ business models, it hasn’t made them less relevant to reputation management; it has merely altered their sphere of influence.
These summaries increasingly draw on information from newspapers meaning that legacy media continues to shape how corporations and individuals are understood by their stakeholders, although increasingly through the (not always helpful) mediation of LLMs.
The return of personality
Perhaps counterintuitively, as trust and depth become a rare and highly sought currency, there is renewed focus on long-form, personality-led media distinct from the ‘click bait’ content on social platforms. This is a consequence of AI-generated content, as LinkedIn fills with formulaic posts and the journalists we speak to are increasingly frustrated with the “AI slop” being passed as original content from thought leaders.
Originality and writing style have become scarce – and therefore – more valuable.
Readers can spot generic copy remarkably quickly, and increasingly reward writing which carries a recognisable voice, a clear point of view, and genuine expertise. That creates an advantage for publications that invest in talented journalists rather than interchangeable content. Newspapers have always competed on reporting, but increasingly they compete on personality too.
The columnists and specialist reporters whose styles are unmistakable are becoming more popular in an internet awash with competent, forgettable prose. The rise of Substack and podcasts seem to prove this reverse trend, demonstrating that audiences increasingly reward sources perceived as authentic, human, and expert.
Credibility > visibility
In this environment, distinctive writing is becoming a competitive asset as well as an editorial one. Social media has become indispensable for shaping reputation because it determines the speed, reach and tone of public conversation, helping to increase visibility.
For H/Advisors, this means helping clients think about reputation across the full information ecosystem, rather than treating earned media, social media, search and executive profiling as separate channels. Our role is to help shape the stories, viewpoints and proof points that will travel well across each of them: building credibility through trusted journalism, extending reach through digital channels, and ensuring clients have a strong body of authoritative content that can influence how they are understood by stakeholders wherever they encounter them.
The media landscape may have grown more complicated, but the influence of traditional media should be underestimated at clients’ peril. Instead, the information pitched to and published by newspapers can now travel through an extraordinary number of channels. Their influence has transcended the pages to feed search, AI, social discussion and wider public discourse… whether the audience knows it or not.