Today I saw someone in my network mention "fluid content" as the hot topic in the media industry. Not gonna lie, I’ve never heard of “fluid content.”
So I went and looked it up. And what I found was way more interesting, and honestly a little alarming, than I expected.
Here's what I learned.
🧩 It starts with a framework
Now, I know frameworks can scare people off. But stick with me.
AI expert Ezra Eeman, Director of Strategy & Innovation at NPO in the Netherlands and a strategic advisor for WAN-IFRA's AI in Media initiative, breaks content down into three states.
Flow: real-time, single format, happening live. Think your 24/7 livestream. A live blog on a developing, breaking news event. It's content that exists in the moment and moves with events as they unfold.
File: static, channel-specific, finished. Your website article. Your newsletter. Your archived broadcast segment. It lives in one place, in one form, and it stays there.
Fluid: This is the new one! Content that can adapt flexibly across platforms, formats, and audiences, flowing with users' habits rather than forcing users to come find it. AI is what makes this possible at scale.
Now map that to your own newsroom for a second.
You produce Flow every day via your livestream or breaking news coverage. You produce File constantly with web stories, newsletters and archived broadcast segments. But Fluid? Most local news orgs aren't there yet. That gap is about to matter a lot.
🤖 Why this isn't just an abstract AI concept
AI agents can now open a browser, find a news story, and summarize it for a user without that user ever visiting the publisher's site. No ads served. No recirculation. No brand touchpoint. Just the information, extracted and delivered elsewhere.
Yikes.
The story your team reported, wrote, and published? AI can now intercept it before your audience ever sees your name on it. That breaks the economic model most local news orgs are still built on.
And it's not coming. AI search is predicted to overtake traditional search as a web traffic driver by 2028. AI-generated content is expected to soon outnumber human-generated content online.
⚡️So what does fluid content actually look like in practice?
Stories can evolve in real-time as new data is fed into them…dynamic content that updates automatically as events develop. Platforms are already beginning to build personalized (FYP-style) feeds based on individual user interests and behaviors. And AI is enabling interactive experiences where audiences don't just consume content, they engage with it in real time.
A few real examples already in the wild:
Dataminer uses AI to update story descriptions automatically as events unfold
Facebook's "Imagined for You" prototype builds a personalized news feed around individual interests
Hume AI has built an interactive news podcast where listeners can engage with content in real time…not just listen, but have a conversation with it
These aren't experiments at giant tech companies only. They're signals of where audience expectations are heading including your audience.
📺 The part that should hit different for local TV
Local TV stations are actually sitting on enormous assets in this new landscape.
Flow: You have a 24/7 livestream most likely already running.
File: You have archives of trusted, community-specific reporting already built.
Trust: You have anchors, meteorologists and reporters your community already knows and trusts.
Publishers currently hold strong positions at both ends of the value chain: vast archives of quality content, original voices, powerful brands and direct relationships with their communities.
The question isn't whether you have what it takes to compete in a fluid content world. The question is whether you start thinking about how to deploy what you already have before AI agents start doing it for you, on their terms, without you in the room.
🤔 What I'm still figuring out
I'm not standing here as a fluid content expert. I'm someone who saw a term, went looking for the definition, and came back with more questions than answers. And my instinct is that this is worth paying attention to.
Maybe you can’t build for it today, but I encourage you to be curious enough to ponder…maybe even with coworkers or other colleagues. Ask, “how might we?” over a cup of coffee instead of commenting on the weather.
The newsrooms that will come out ahead aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest AI budgets. They're the ones paying attention now, asking the right questions, connecting the dots with what they have and making intentional choices about where they want to stand when the landscape shifts.
That second part, the intentional choices, is something I think a lot about separately. That's a whole other post.
Would love to learn more from you! What’s your take on fluid content?
If this kind of thinking is useful to you, there's more where it came from.
Practical strategy for journalists, editors, and media leaders navigating what's next. No fluff. No jargon. Just what I’m curious about!