A recent longitudinal study of consumption habits led by the Pew Research Center showed how relatively little time Millennials spent investing in news gathering. When compared with the older generations of the baby boom, the Pew Center found that they spent as little as half of the time daily (44 vs. 88 minutes) following the news on average.

The demand for media has varied significantly over the last decades, first moving from analog to digital, and on to interactive and multi-screen experiences. Beyond the one-way, one-to-many transmission of media – which still remains essential as the central artefact around which richer experiences are constructed – audiences are increasingly expecting to be able to "augment" their relationship with the content via their involvement in ephemeral, interest-based communities. The crucial term, here, is content. Not media. 

For news organizations attempting to secure their footing in the market, the variable geometry of these ever-changing target groups increases the level of complexity. Poynter reports that, at the latest NewsCred conference in New York, the president of Buzzfeed Jon Steinberg described this feeling of inadequacy as stemming from a growing and apparently unavoidable decoupling of content and distribution. 

Such an argument is antithetical to that of editors such as Monocle's Tyler Brûlé, whose incessant rants are consistent with his choice of a medium that supports the content and vice versa. Brûlé even goes as far as integrating native ads to his editorial line, a posture that undoubtedly raises questions from conformist do-gooders. Interestingly, both Buzzfeed and Monocle are successful in their respective niches, expanding both their business and their models into ever broader aspects of media production. They grow alongside their expanding communities, creating new channels where one may access their editorial universes. 

On its own, this levelling of the playing field entailed by communities does not signify the end of journalism per se; but from the perspective of media entities, these changes in demand call for a move away from self-referential and captive platforms towards a recognition for the need to connect, link and depend on an ecosystem far vaster than each player's own channels and means. Every media does not need to build its own app store, but to plug-and-play with one. Marmalades' augmented reading experience is one such magnifying glass that grafts onto any content and algorithmically looks for informational depth stemming from any written content. 

The creation of dedicated viewing apps needs to recognize that pieces and posts that do not adequately point outwards to other sources will most likely be deemed unfit to fulfil the promise of multi-source navigation, and be met with relative indifference by the audiences it hopes to conquer. Buzzfeed's Steinberg recognizes the deeper trend, where brand marketers "will literally be on the same footing as anyone creating television programming, anyone creating video programming, anyone creating content programming of any kind". With that in mind, any attempt made at imprisoning media consumers in one given environment is a recipe for failure.  

To a certain extent, from the point of view of most individual consumers, content is content, whether it sits on a large platform, an individual blog as a quote or an embedment. Though Monocle mostly serves as a counter-example of this, even Brûlé has large chunks of his content made available online, or presented in other formats such as its online radio venture, Monocle 24. To capture the attention and retain readers and viewers, media entities need to open up and turn themselves into more than unique channels. They are to become places where readers and viewers go, real spaces where they may comment, discuss, bond and bridge the gap between the knowledge that results from investigation and the general world of opinion. 

One size does not fit all, and the hope that sitting at the bottom of the funnel will be sufficient to drag a significant number of interested parties is fading with every passing day. Some like the Financial Times have chosen a "digital first" strategy, deriving the print product from the web offering, and reducing to a minimum the geographic adaptations that once made it a truly multi-cultural product. It is a choice, and not a bad one. But beyond the words and the hype, the book will be judged by both its cover and the stories it tells. This is what is being demanded by readers, and though some pretend to have found truth on the nature of investigative knowledge and the future of journalism, they are just bluffing. 

One thing is certain, the field is not getting any simpler: it is configured as it evolves, incessantly changed by the micro-events that define this structural transformation. There is no fighting the heterogeneity and complexification of demands. Better embrace this change, and tailor content and media in a way that can be constantly adapted.