[This article is part of a series where I invited media industry leaders to share their thoughts on 2025 and what it means for the future. Ben Kozuch is the President and Co-Founder of Future Media Conferences, and Conference Chair of Post|Production World conference at the NAB Shows. Website: ppw-conference.com. ]
The Editing Industry as We Enter 2026:
A Structural Shift, Not a Tool Problem
As 2026 approaches, it’s increasingly clear that the editing industry is not facing a technological crisis. Tools have never been more powerful, accessible, or affordable. Work that once demanded expensive systems and large teams now lives on the desk of any independent creator with a capable computer and an internet connection. Access to editing, color, audio, and graphics is no longer scarce.
And yet, as the tools have grown more powerful, professional stability for many editors has grown more fragile. Among freelancers, independent creators, and small production houses, uncertainty has become a constant. The widening gap between technological power and professional security defines the current state of the industry.
The challenge facing the industry is not an excess of editors, but a dilution of perceived value. As the ability to edit has become widespread, clients increasingly struggle to distinguish between technical proficiency and professional creative judgment. The result is sustained downward pressure on rates, accelerated timelines, and expectations that editors be fast, inventive, and always available – often without clear recognition of their role.
The industry’s conversation around AI often misses the larger picture. AI has not replaced editing, but it has quietly altered the profession’s center of gravity. Technical and repetitive tasks, along with some baseline creative functions, are now faster, cheaper, and increasingly automated. Editors who define their value primarily through those tasks are finding the ground beneath them steadily shifting.
For others, however, this shift presents a meaningful opportunity. As the technical burden recedes, the editor’s real work comes back into focus: making the message land. Editors who frame their role around storytelling, pacing, audience awareness, platform context, and intent are not becoming obsolete. In many cases, they are becoming more valuable. Editing is no longer an action. It is a sequence of decisions.
Looking ahead, emerging technologies such as immersive media point toward a new category of opportunity. Spatial storytelling – editing picture and sound within three-dimensional environments – opens the door to entirely new services and creative roles for editors. As we move into 2026, announcements expected around CES are likely to make immersive headsets more accessible and affordable, increasing pressure on the industry to produce native immersive media and entertainment content. Vendors such as Apple and Blackmagic Design are already supporting this direction, presenting a more unified vision and collaborating across tools and workflows.
At the same time, a more immediate challenge has emerged: the relentless pace at which AI tools, platforms, and creative “solutions” are introduced. The issue is no longer access, but saturation. Even highly experienced editors struggle to stay current, let alone assess which tools meaningfully enhance creative output and which are simply noise. The constant churn breeds fatigue and makes relevance feel like a perpetually moving target.
This is where training matters most – not as a catalog of features, but as a decision framework. The industry is saturated with tutorials and AI-driven learning tools, yet editors consistently report the same obstacles: poor curation, unclear credibility, and limited capacity to absorb hours of recorded material. As a result, many professionals are increasingly turning to live, instructor-led courses and in-person or hybrid conferences, where structure, accountability, and real-time dialogue help turn information into usable skill.
In my own work at Future Media Conferences – across live online programs and Post|Production World sessions at the NAB Show in Las Vegas and New York City – this shift is unmistakable. Editors are no longer asking to learn every new tool. They are asking how to decide what matters, how to make choices that hold up under real deadlines, and how to expand their scope of services in a rapidly changing market.
Another structural shift, less visible but equally consequential, is the quiet disappearance of apprenticeship and mentorship pathways. With fewer staff positions and fewer large post houses, opportunities to learn alongside experienced editors have steadily diminished. Younger editors increasingly rely on recorded training from social and AI-driven platforms, often in isolation. They may master features and shortcuts, but many struggle to develop the professional judgment that only emerges through context, feedback, and real-world experience.
There is no shortage of knowledge. What’s missing is hierarchy, context, and a visible path of progression.
The market itself is both contracting and sharpening. Traditional editing work is declining, but demand for high-quality editing aligned with business goals and specific audiences has not disappeared. Instead, it has become more selective. Clients are looking less for hands-on-a-keyboard and more for creative partners capable of translating intent into impact.
This is no longer a market for beginners. It is a market for professionals willing to carry broader responsibility.
Looking ahead, the most important shift is not technological, but conceptual. The editor’s role is moving away from execution and toward leadership. Less emphasis on how to edit, and more on why, for whom, and in what context. Those who embrace this transition will remain relevant. Those who continue to chase the next tool may not.
The editing industry isn’t disappearing. It’s maturing.
And maturity, as always, demands discernment — the discipline to choose judgment over tools, and responsibility over speed.
10 Responses to 2025 – Looking Back, Looking Ahead – Ben Kozuch, Future Media Conferences
Wow. Nailed it. I’ve been saying a few of these things quietly to my colleagues in the last year, but the perspective here, I think is what we’re all really needing to hear. The “downward pressure” through to the “not chasing tools” to “industry is maturing”. Thanks for putting this out there!
Bravo! Parallels what I’m reading in Walter Murch’s penetrating tome, “Suddenly Something Clicked.”
Excellent analysis, Ben. Indeed, the training value shift from tool mastery to a decision making framework is critical.
Tools in the hands of a craftsman produce results different than someone inexperienced – this is true. However, what happens with mechanization? Suddenly the craftsman becomes a niche. They are still in demand, but it is because that is what the market supports. Editing is at once an art form and a commodity. There is the division between “art” and “good enough”. AI streamlines the process, and will likely be “good enough” for some editing work. It will come down to making basic decisions, which AI will help guide. The bottom line is that it will not be the same. There will be less work because the tools will take the place of “good enough”. It is definitely true that those that embrace change may come out of it OK. It will be like being a painter in the era of the photograph.
Hal:
I like your analogy of “being a painter in the age of the photograph.” There will be work and money for skilled practitioners, but the larger majority of jobs will just be people pointing cameras.
I agree with Ben’s perspective. Media is undergoing a sea change. But, like many structural changes, there won’t be room for all of us. That job loss, and the inability of people just starting out to find decent paying work to build their skills, it what troubles me the most.
Larry
The two real takeaways:
* the quiet disappearance of apprenticeship and mentorship pathways.
This is a big deal – and it’s across the board. The UGC mentality is a HUGE factor here. It’s the difference between making your own cake and owning a bakery. It’s a *great* amateur vs. a (sometimes) average professional.
* Less emphasis on how to edit, and more on why, for whom, and in what context.
This is the other great call. I saw some professionals shift to becoming “Preditors” (Producer/editors)
It’s essentially being a General Contractor (where one part of the work is your specialty). Sometimes you can buy an off-the-shelf solution. Sometimes you have to do custom work.
Every GC knows how to estimate their time and turn down work that isn’t profitable enough. It might also mean automating some of the work.
Jeff:
I agree that the loss of mentorships and meaningful entry level jobs is a serious issue. While I agree that the emphasis needs to be on compelling story-telling, regardless of the subject of the video, understanding the “How” of editing is still a requirement. My daily email In-box attests to this. You can’t be an effective story-teller if you don’t know how your tools work.
Larry
Amen to that!
This is THE take-a-way right here:
“……..making the message land………….Editors who frame their role around storytelling, pacing, audience awareness, platform context, and intent are not becoming obsolete. In many cases, they are becoming more valuable. Editing is no longer an action. It is a sequence of decisions.”
The level of craft and storytelling is what guarantees editors at this level a career – at that this level of work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGkfByNEcw0&t=355s
But that kind of (non-technical) skill can be deployed on many projects, ones that have a certain level of creative headroom so to speak.
Therein lies the question. How much work is there which can benefit from what Ben talks about?
Example – I would argue, even if all you want is to sell a product to the American market / audience, do you think as a client you are being served well by hiring someone in India for $15/ hr to cut your commercial?
I would assume if Spike Lee wanted to craft a story targeted for The Black experience, he would not hire a Korean to cut that film. On a round table of editors once, someone made the point that she’d had 10 years cutting episodic narrative television, but couldn’t get a job editing a reality TV show because that was a whole different skill set, that they were looking for. The producers were looking for someone that had at least 5 years cutting reality TV.
Sure it comes down to how many jobs there will be. Making up a number — a 100 /10 — editors to paying jobs is not a good outlook.
Clayton