Ten must-read digital media industry news stories you may have missed during the holiday break, curated by DCN, the only trade association that exclusively serves media companies.

• The Financial Times | The relentless rise of YouTube (13 min read)
• Politico | How budget bickering and Dolly Parton politics warped California’s Google news deal (13 min read)
• AP | A rough year for journalists in 2025, with a little hope for things to turn around (5 min read)
• Wall Street | The Year the Newsletter Business Reached a Fever Pitch (4 min read)
• The New York Times | They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship. (4 min read)
• The Guardian | More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds (5 min read)
• The Deadline | Streamer Report Card: Streaming Reached A Profit Turning Point In 2025, But Major Players Still Wonder How To Measure Success (14 min read)
• ProPublica | Our Reporters Reached Out for Comment. They Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation. (7 min read)
• Semafor | What media leaders got wrong in 2025 (21 min read)
• Digiday | A timeline of the major deals between publishers and AI tech companies in 2025 (5 min read)