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-Puzzling out publishing priorities 2026-

Trends shaping publishing priorities in 2026

January 19, 2026 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

In 2026, media companies are operating in an environment shaped by multiple, overlapping shifts. Audience discovery continues to fragment as search and social become increasingly unreliable traffic tools, while AI is moving rapidly from experimentation into everyday infrastructure. At the same time, advertisers are demanding greater accountability, markets remain volatile, and long-standing assumptions about scale and distribution are being tested.

Together, these forces are changing what competitive advantage looks like. No longer seeking scale for its own sake, publishers are focused on proof, predictability, and performance.

To gain a high-level view of the industry, DCN gathered perspectives from companies that work with publishers every day across measurement, monetization, infrastructure, workflow, and operations. Their proximity to daily decision-making across media companies of all sizes and types provides insight into the competencies publishers are actively strengthening as they adapt to discovery volatility, evolving advertiser expectations, and the operational realities of AI.

Several capabilities stand out as especially relevant for publishing priorities in 2026.

Authenticated audiences anchor revenue growth

The media industry’s shift from quantity to quality has accelerated. Advertisers are increasingly focused on confidence in who they are reaching, how audiences engage, and what outcomes media delivers.

Rich Murphy, CEO, president, and managing director of Alliance for Audited Media, points out that buying continues to move away from pageviews and impressions toward outcomes. In that environment, independent, third-party verification is foundational. Publishers able to demonstrate authenticated reach and engagement across channels are better aligned with how advertising investment decisions are being made this year.

This change is reshaping how growth is defined. Audience scale still matters, but only when it is identifiable, engaged, and repeatable. Audiences must be respected as business assets rather than traffic streams—assets that need to be cultivated, measured, and maintained over time.

That redefinition is already influencing advertiser behavior. Jack Marshall, head of news at DoubleVerify, points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments outperform non-news content. For advertisers prioritizing attention and impact, proof and performance are increasingly intertwined.

Cross-platform adaptation reflects audience discovery

As search and social referrals become less reliable, publishers are rethinking how content travels and how value is captured beyond owned-and-operated environments.

John Nardone, CEO of JWX, says publishers are strengthening their ability to adapt content across platforms rather than rely on a destination-first model. With referral dependency declining, publishers can no longer wait for audiences to arrive. Instead, they need systems that allow high-integrity journalism to meet audiences in the formats each platform favors—whether vertical video, audio, or short-form social expressions—while still reinforcing the core brand.

That shift turns content operations into an adaptive engine. The goal is not simply wider distribution, but more relevant, context-aware presentation of journalism across platforms. This enables audiences to experience content in ways that feel native to where and how they are engaging.

From the demand side, Sean Dean, vice president of media owner development at Criteo, notes that clearer signals around context and engagement make it easier for adapted content to be understood, valued, and discovered as it moves across platforms.

And from an audience perspective, Naomi Owusu, CEO and co-founder of Tickaroo, emphasizes that relevance is built through formats that invite participation and transparency. When audiences feel content is timely, understandable, and connected to their needs, cross-platform presence reinforces trust and habitual return behavior rather than fragmenting it.

In 2026, brand presence across platforms is increasingly tied to audience loyalty and repeat engagement, not just reach.

Modern media infrastructure is about signal quality and orchestration

In 2026, modern media infrastructure is less about adding tools and more about connecting systems that have historically been siloed.

From the demand side, infrastructure quality shows up as signal quality. Dean at Criteo says accurate, complete bidstream and bid-response data allow buyers to understand context, pricing, and performance with greater clarity. When those fundamentals are in place, innovation and premium demand tend to follow.

In premium video and streaming environments, infrastructure also needs to support consistency and accountability across screens. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, emphasizes that modern infrastructure increasingly connects ad exposure to business outcomes such as sales and conversions. As advertisers expect video to behave more like digital channels, infrastructure becomes a growth enabler rather than background plumbing.

From the content side, JWX’s Nardone describes modern infrastructure as an orchestration layer, which collapses the divide between the newsroom and the ad tech stack. When a single piece of content can be automatically optimized for reach, engagement, and yield across platforms, publishers are better positioned to monetize attention wherever it occurs.

Engagement becomes the key to unlock monetization

As reach fragments and acquisition costs rise, sustainable monetization in 2026 depends less on volume and more on depth of engagement. It’s also critical to understand how clearly that engagement translates into advertiser value.

Ginny Hunter, vice president of publisher client development at DoubleVerify, says one persistent inefficiency is treating performance, media quality, and revenue as separate conversations. Publishers that unify these signals can proactively package and price premium opportunities around advertiser-favored KPIs, shortening the path to investment and strengthening trust.

In video environments, engagement is also reshaping how inventory is valued. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, notes that advertisers increasingly look beyond content metadata to signals such as attention and ad interaction. These indicators help distinguish passive viewing from moments when ads are more likely to resonate and perform.

This year, monetization strategies that treat engagement as a secondary outcome face growing pressure. Approaches that design for engagement as a core input to pricing, packaging, and measurement are proving more resilient.

Trust and inclusion support long-term audience value

In a market saturated with automated and commoditized content, differentiation increasingly hinges on whether publishers can deliver journalism that audiences perceive as credible, relevant, and trustworthy.

Tickaroo’s Owusu believes that inclusive, audience-first journalism is closely tied to trust. Audiences no longer grant publishers the benefit of the doubt; they want to see their communities and lived experiences reflected authentically in coverage. That requires more than hiring practices. It depends on editorial, technical, and product systems that allow a broader range of voices to shape storytelling.

Trust also depends on accountability beyond the newsroom. Marshall from DoubleVerify points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments consistently outperform other content categories, reinforcing that credibility is not just a values issue—it is measurable and meaningful for advertisers. When trust is supported by transparent signals and outcomes, it becomes a durable source of audience and revenue value.

Owusu emphasizes that transparency is of particular importance as publishers adopt new tools. In the context of AI, audiences want clarity about what is human-led, what is assisted, and where accountability sits. Trust, once lost, is difficult to regain. And in 2026, it is increasingly visible in retention, engagement, and willingness to pay.

AI becomes operational infrastructure, with limits

This year, AI has moved beyond the experimental phase for many publishers. As media companies increasingly work with AI, it has started to function as infrastructure, shaping how inventory is forecast, priced, packaged, and sold.

Unni Kurup, director of client consulting and strategy at Theorem, describes AI’s real impact as emerging in commercial and operational decision systems—forecasting demand, optimizing yield, planning inventory, and coordinating decisions across teams. In volatile markets, AI can be used to forecast demand more accurately and align decisions across sales, pricing, and operations, reducing costly missteps.

At the same time, leaders are clear that not every application is appropriate. Murphy from Alliance for Audited Media emphasizes that, as AI becomes more deeply embedded in media operations, strong governance is essential. Without transparency, human oversight, and clear data-privacy protections, AI can introduce bias and opacity in the push for efficiency.

In 2026, effective AI adoption is less about speed and more about judgment: applying automation where it sharpens decisions and operational clarity, and restraint where trust and accountability are at stake.

Looking ahead: partnerships, execution, and what matters now

As publishers navigate 2026, decision-making has become more deliberate. An environment defined by uncertainty has sharpened the consequences of choices about audiences, investments, and partnerships. That execution depends not just on internal capabilities, but on the partners publishers choose to work with and the standards those relationships reinforce.

From a business perspective, performance, flexibility, and transparency have become baseline expectations. Tina Pautz, chief business officer at Raptive, says publishers have less tolerance for partners who underdeliver or fail to evolve alongside changing business models. Sustainable growth depends on alignment, clarity around tradeoffs, and a shared focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term gains.

Supply-chain integrity is also receiving greater scrutiny this year. Bill Wheaton, CEO and co-founder of Symitri, believes that complexity and opacity (particularly the spread The of MFA inventory) are diluting value for both publishers and advertisers. Direct connectivity, clearer supply paths, and reduced waste are increasingly part of how publishers demonstrate accountability and rebuild confidence in the digital marketplace.

Taken together, these perspectives point to a broader shift. Publishing partnerships and priorities in 2026 are less about maximizing scale at any cost and more about reducing uncertainty, protecting trust, and enabling consistent performance over time.

The publishers in the strongest position this year aren’t trying to do everything. There’s less appetite for new-for-new’s-sake, and more focus on capabilities that actually move the business forward. That means understanding and authenticating audiences, adapting content strategy to the new rules of discovery, improving signal quality, and tying monetization more directly to engagement.

-2 content creators who partner with media brands for travel coverage-

Audiences | Featured Post | Industry-Research

From skepticism to strategy: media adapts to the creator economy

December 18, 2025 Damian Radcliffe, Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism – University of Oregon

The relationship status between traditional media players and members of the creator economy can best be described as complicated.

Publishers have often viewed influencers with skepticism, dismissing them as “YouTubers” or “TikTokers” in much the same way they once talked about bloggers. At the same time, there is growing recognition that this new wave of creators commands the attention of both audiences and brands. Goldman Sachs estimates it is already worth $250 billion annually, while IAB projects U.S. advertising spend alone will reach $37 billion in 2025. That’s up 26% year-on-year, and a growth rate four times faster than the overall media industry.

Given this, it’s no surprise that media companies are now waking up to the power of this sector and seeking to learn from, and partner with, it. As a result, we are (finally) seeing a shift in how traditional media views this sector, with an emphasis on partnerships, talent development and a mimicking of content styles.

Here’s what media companies need to know:

State of play: five models for collaboration

Publishers are increasingly taking the creator trend seriously, according to Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. “They want to learn from creators but at the same time they need to maintain their editorial control and independence and that is not always an easy line to tread,” he told me.

The approaches vary significantly by vertical. “It is clearly much easier in lifestyle areas such as fashion and sport and much harder to collaborate around hard news and politics,” Newman notes.

George Montagu, Head of Insights at FT Strategies, shared with me a handy typology for understanding how these types of partnerships can work in practice, and examples of what this can look like:

▶ The In-House Creator Model sees news and media organizations nurture internal talent to become quasi-creators. John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times, specializing in data visualization, exemplifies this approach.

▶ The Creator Hire Model brings successful external creators into an organization. ESPN’s signing of Katie Feeney (a former Snapchat star) as their “Sports and Lifestyle Content Creator” demonstrates this strategy.

▶ The Creator Contributor Model engages creators on a per-content basis. Der Spiegel’s work with Tara-Louise Wittwer as a columnist illustrates this selective collaboration approach.

▶ The Creator Roster Model sees publishers building a portfolio of creators who, Montagu says “are given full creative freedom to pursue their own career, while feeding back to the “mother org” by virtue of audience.”

He cites Morning Brew’s hiring of Emma Chieppor (Excel Dictionary), as one such example, noting that Chieppor “is allowed to continue her work on her own channels,” at the same time as helping to enhance the Morning Brew brand.

▶ The Creator Licensing Model sees publishers license specific content from established creators. The Athletic’s licensing deal for Pablo Torre Finds Out, exemplifies this approach. The titular show, named one of TIME’s 100 Best Podcasts of All Time, is hosted by Torre, a Murrow Award winning journalist, and a former staff writer ESPN and Sports Illustrated.

What this looks like in practice

As Montagu notes, “it’s interesting to see all the different types and how they work in practice.” What these, and other examples, demonstrate is a growing convergence between traditional media and the creator economy, showing how they can align around key strategic goals and important points in the content calendar.

NBCUniversal’s strategy for the 2024 Olympics in Paris featured the work—and audiences—of content creators as a cornerstone of its coverage. The company embedded 27 creators into its Olympics output and generated over 300 million views across social platforms during the Games. NBCU has since announced it will adopt a similar approach for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

As Gary Zenkel, President of NBC Olympics, explained at the time, the goal was to “bring a unique perspective to fans of the Olympic Games,” while also reaching younger audiences with “the personalities, content, and voices they consistently engage with in their daily lives.” Capitalizing on established creator brands and giving them access to NBC’s platform helped the company reach new audiences.

Capitalizing on existing creator brands, and giving them access to NBC’s platform, helped NBCU reach new audiences. Moreover, they didn’t try to turn their journalists and broadcasters act like TikTokers or other online creators, instead they partnered with TikTokers and creators and brought them into their digital fold.

In a further sign of the times, in July 2025, Dotdash Meredith rebranded to “People Inc.”, reflecting a strategic emphasis on a “distinctly human legacy.” The move places “people” front and center in its output, aligning with a broader desire for audiences to engage more authentically with brands and creators.

Meanwhile, at the grassroots level, the American Press Institute has documented how local newsrooms can bridge trust gaps with communities through creator partnerships.

Factchequeado, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, partnered with Latino content creators to counter disinformation among Latino and Hispanic communities in the United States. They worked with established creators who already have loyal audiences, enabling those creators to help spot—and push back against—false online narratives.

Alongside this, THE CITY, a non-profit local news outlet covering New York recently collaborated with Gerrie Lim, a comedian and host of “The Pigeon Post,” to create explainer videos for the 2025 New York mayoral primary. Lim posts videos on TikTok and Instagram that use a comedic delivery (think The Daily Show) to unpack local NYC news stories. Videos produced via this collaboration were up 147% on THE CITY’s average reach for this type of content.

What’s prompting the shift in publisher-creator relationships

These examples demonstrate some of the ways that media companies are partnering with creators as part of their broader strategies to reach new audiences, deepen engagement, and stay relevant in a fragmented media landscape.

And it’s not hard to see why they are making this shift. IAB-backed research cited by Axios found full-time equivalent digital creator jobs grew from 200,000 in 2020 to 1.5 million in 2024. In the process the sector has attracted audiences, investment from brands and platforms, as well as interest from traditional media companies.

Moreover, as noted in 2025’s Digital News Report (DNR), “personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates.” Their data found that in France, the news creator Hugo Travers (HugoDécrypte) reaches 22% of under-35s, predominantly across YouTube and TikTok. Closer to home more than one-fifth (22%) of the DNR’s U.S. sample had come across news or commentary from Joe Rogan in the week following Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The Institute explored some of these themes further in a recent report on news creators. They found that mainstream organizations often struggle to compete for attention on visual platforms, with news creators especially dominating on YouTube and TikTok.

As the Indian magazine Creative Brands put it, “the report is the most formal recognition to date by a leading journalism institution that news is being redefined by TikTok explainers, YouTube commentators, Instagram teachers and solo Substack journalists.” “The authority of the news is no longer assured by tradition of reputation.”

Moving forward: from experimentation to intentional strategy

Although there are clear synergies between media companies and creators, this relationship is still constrained by structural, cultural, and editorial obstacles. For those, on both sides, interested in working together more closely, these issues need to be overcome if this potential is to be realized.

Here are three of the most important:

1. Adopt the right model for your organization

Montagu’s typology offers a number of different models that media companies can pursue. Not every approach will work for every organization, and certain verticals – such as sports and lifestyle – will find this easier to embrace than hard news, where editorial norms around impartiality and control are deeply embedded.

As Nic Newman notes, “the issues of editorial control loom large, and impartiality and objectivity are deeply challenged in a creator world where point of view is part of the proposition. That will not sit easily with some publishers,” he observes.

Vox Media’s podcast network offers another model, providing infrastructure and ad sales for creators in exchange for a share of revenues. This model, whereby creators retain control while companies handle the business side, offers another way for media companies to manage their reputation while still dipping their toes into creator economy.

The opportunity for publishers lies not in abandoning standards, but in allowing trusted creators to help stories travel in platform-native ways, and to finding the right way to make this work for your company.

2. Build this into your structure

The American Press Institute stresses that partnerships must hinge on mutual trust, creative freedom, and respect for how audiences connect. Ideally this is built over time, not as a result of one-off collaborations.

Creator collaboration cannot sit on the margins of the newsroom. It must be built into workflows, incentives, and leadership structures, in line with FT Strategies’ argument that newsrooms require “bridge roles” between editorial, audience, product and external talent.

Similarly, more publishers are developing their own staff as creators. Think about the trend to put star journalists front and center in newsletters and podcasts (including in the title), as an example of how this trend has been bubbling away for some time. It’s now accelerating, a recognition that some audiences are drawn more to individual voices than the wider media brand that they work for.

3. Redefine what success looks like

Traditional metrics such as page views and time on site, tell only part of the story in creator-led environments. Engagement, loyalty, and community strength increasingly matter more. As a result, publishers shouldn’t always default to working with creators who have the highest follower count. Niche, deeply engaged, audiences may be more valuable than large passive ones.

Similarly, as Nic Newman notes, “collaboration with creators for distribution—tapping into networks to help promote stories or coverage,” is an underutilized approach. “Communications teams and politicians have done this successfully (Trump/Rogan/Nelk Boys), but journalists have done this much less,” he says.

Final thoughts on publisher creator collaboration

The creator economy is forcing traditional media to adapt and evolve. Publishers that successfully can combine their institutional strengths (e.g. editorial standards, legal safeguards, and production capacity) with dynamics inherent in the creator economy (such as authenticity, platform fluency, and audience engagement) are best set to prosper in the coming years.

Ignoring the lessons from the creator economy, and overlooking opportunities for partnership, means opting out of the spaces where younger and more diverse audiences increasingly encounter news and information. That’s something few media companies can afford to do.

Importantly, this dynamic is not just one way. Research from the Reuters Institute shows that while audiences are increasingly reliant on creators for news, they also recognize these channels can be sources of misinformation. Moreover, many creators depend heavily on original reporting from established outlets, repackaging it with added context or personal perspective. That means there’s still a place for traditional media, both in terms of original reporting, and in the vigorous standards that underpin it. Working together can extend the reach, relevance, and impact of credible journalism.

Greater collaboration can also help address some of the major challenges faced by many creators, including burnout, platform dependency, shifting audience tastes, and relentless competition. Publishers, meanwhile, can potentially benefit from reaching new audiences, revitalizing their brand, and unlocking new commercial models.

This closer alignment will not happen overnight, and both sectors will continue to march to their own beat. But they can potentially be stronger together. For publishers wanting to capture part of the $37 billion creator marketplace, that means treating creators as partners rather than threats, building structured collaborations rather than one-off experiments, and maintaining their standards while at the same time embracing more personality-led content.

A failure to do this effectively means opting to become increasingly irrelevant to a growing number of audiences. And no one wants that.

AI | Featured Post

The renewed relevance of flexible content systems

December 11, 2025 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

A decade ago, the concept of liquid content emerged as a response to the fragmentation of devices, platforms, and audience consumption habits. The idea was that publishers could create modular or atomic stories that could be versioned cheaply for multiple channels, increasing reach.

Except that it did increase workload, and the work was too manual for publishers to sustain. But the idea may have just been a decade ahead of its time.

Liquid content—sometimes called structured content, modular content, or atomic content—is the practice of breaking stories into reusable components that can be reassembled for different formats, audiences, and platforms. The concept first gained traction a decade ago as publishers struggled to meet rising distribution demands across web, mobile, and social channels. Back then, the tools weren’t mature: versioning content for every platform created more work, not less. Today, generative AI, improved personalization, and cross-platform automation are reviving the strategy. With AI now able to help structure, maintain, and re-render content, publishers are revisiting liquid content not only to serve current channels more efficiently, but to future-proof their operations for distribution platforms and channels that don’t yet exist.

For David Cohn, senior director, generative AI innovation for content and the newsroom at Advance Digital, the concept itself isn’t new, just newly practical. From 2021-2014, he ran Circa , which was a mobile news app that restructured news into atomic units like events, statistics, quotes, and images that could be resurfaced and reused. The problem was scale: even with a globally distributed team working 24/7, Circa could barely keep up with the biggest stories of the day because every atom of news had to be created by humans. It wasn’t sustainable.

“Now, we just need more compute,” Cohn says. “And, while compute is expensive, it’s a lot cheaper and a lot more doable.” So, he says, it’s time for media execs to revisit “those ideas around structured content and see if they are more attainable and more worthy of our attention.”

The data layer: from story to query

Cohn’s current work at Advance Digital, while still in the thinking and testing phase, treats liquid content less as format differentiations, and more like infrastructure. Instead of a one‑off story, an article is framed as a query across a structured datastore of atomic units like facts, quotes, statistics, dates, and other fields extracted from reporting.

An article then becomes more like a SQL query that joins pieces of verified information and uses an AI layer to render them as a traditional story, a video script, or another format altogether. In other words: it is rendered whatever way people prefer to have their content delivered .

“But, what we’re in charge of is, I’ll use the word purity, of the data: how well it’s structured, how well it’s maintained, how much we add to it,” Cohn says. “That can be a proprietary data set. It is in our ability to create those proprietary data sets that we all of a sudden have value over large, giant technology corporations.”

Cohn is quick to flag that structured, liquid systems excel when audiences want clarity and up-to-date facts but are a poor fit for narrative non-fiction like the classic Gay Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has a Cold. “This type of structured content would be terrible to apply to that story,” he explains. “It’s about knowing what type of news and information this is great for and what types it is not. There are certain types of stories that are best told as a narrative. It’s challenge to make sure it’s applied in the right way.”

But, the upside, according to Cohn, is creating a massive system of highly adaptable content. “Once you start to do this at scale, you end up where the parts are more valuable,” he says. “There’s a number of ways that we can imagine that that kind of information becomes useful once it becomes a database that you can query.”

Digital media companies’ vast archives may become useful datasets in this framework. At SXSW this year, Lee Enterprises CIO Virginia Fletcher suggested that media outlets get their archives in order, wrote Alex Mahadevan for Poynter. With a structured database of articles, media companies can convert what they have into different mediums.

This sentiment was echoed by Jane Barrett, head of Reuters AI strategy, this year at the Nordic AI in Media Summit, noting their vast archive has inconsistent metadata. “Generative AI gives us the possibility to classify and structure our archive more effectively,” she said in a panel discussion. This moment is pushing us to think about our content as data. As Barrett put it, “it’s kind of giving us a good challenge to think now about our content as data and what needs to be true to turn our content into data that then can flow into these liquid experiences.”

The knowledge layer: encoding journalistic value

While Cohn’s focus on liquid content is its data system, researcher Sannuta Raghu, who heads Scroll’s AI Lab, pushes the idea one layer deeper, to what she calls the knowledge layer of journalism.

During her ICFJ Knight Fellowship in 2024, she mapped the structural layer of journalism, and compiled her findings in what she calls the Directory of Liquid Content. The directory is a scalable and modular taxonomy designed to map, describe and standardize how digital news is structured, styled and surfaced.

“Liquid content is not necessarily moving something from one format to another,” she says. “It’s moving something, or it’s using information such that it can be contained in any container on demand.”

Liquid content can move between various containers – from an article to a podcast, a calculator, or a decision tree, she says. Within these, it can also be formatted in various styles, as an inverted pyramid, an interview or an explainer for short TikTok videos.

“So, it’s making sure that you are able to have information that is dynamic enough that can be adapted to various containers, with high fidelity to the source where it came from,” she says.

Months into that fellowship, she was granted another Fellowship at the Reuters Institute, where she developed the News Atom to codify journalism’s epistemic layer. Raghu explains when AI parses a news article, “what they’re essentially doing is they’re looking for statements which can be converted into causal relations and subject object predicate,” she says.

When a news article is used as raw material to answer questions, AI will remove the intentionality of the signals a journalist has added. These can include the temporal aspect, words that describe when something happened, complex quotes and nested quotes.

“There are many subtle examples,” Raghu says. “Words like likely, reportedly, allegedly, very intuitive to us as journalists, but are considered extra when it comes to form.”

The News Atom provides a way for the news industry to structure, define and embed its own meaning rather than having that meaning imposed by external systems. Raghu believes if publishers don’t define and encode their own values, like trust, attribution, temporal precision, into the data they produce, those values won’t exist for AI models.

Liquid content in 2025 and beyond, then, is about survival in an ecosystem and consumption experience of on-demand form. This on-demand form transformation is already happening around the world, Raghu points out. Take for example, Google’s NotebookLM, which converts PDFs into mindmaps and podcasts.

“For us, it’s about making sure that you are codifying some of the practices that are intuitive to us. Like the inverted pyramid, for example, is a very journalism format. But, it needs to be codified and taught to a model in a very deterministic way so that it can be replicated and converted into multiple formats.”

For publishers, the question is whether to codify their practices and values into these systems, or whether those definitions will be written by others. As Cohn puts it: “We’re in a world where generative AI feels like the beginnings of the internet again, where we can fundamentally rethink assumptions.”

“We want to both understand it and have a solid foothold in it, rather than just be steamrolled by it,” Cohn says. “Has this fundamentally changed everything for Advance? No, but what we’re doing is to prepare if that does become the case, it’s on our terms.”

The shift toward liquid content is not simply a tactical experiment. As AI systems increasingly generate fast, unverified content in every format, publishers’ defensible advantage is the integrity and structure of their own data. Pursuing liquid content at scale may require rethinking stories as more than finished containers and embedding core journalistic values — attribution, verification, temporality, precision — into the underlying layers where content is created, stored, and reused.

This approach also raises the stakes for content architecture. Unstructured archives function as low-value files that can be scraped or summarized by AI. Structured, verified, and queryable archives become high-value assets, built from components that cannot be easily replicated with the same fidelity. Liquid content, in this context, is not a mandate but a strategic shift: a way for publishers to strengthen the foundations of their work and ensure it can adapt to the formats and distribution environments still to come.

Audiences | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Featured Post

The hidden business risks of pulling back on media DEI

December 4, 2025 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Even for publishers who feel fatigued by DEI debates (or see them as politically risky) the industry’s quiet retreat carries consequences far beyond internal culture. Diverse leadership and reporting teams are strongly linked to trust, credibility, and the ability to reach younger and underserved audiences. For publishers already fighting audience stagnation and revenue pressures, stepping back from DEI may seem easier in the moment, but it risks undermining long-term growth, relevance, and sustainability.

Five years ago, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, many major businesses in the US announced their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. It was meant to be a period of reckoning with social inequality, one that would have a long-term impact on culture in general.

That was the case at many news outlets, whose coverage had been blinkered by a lack of minority representation. However, half a decade later, we have seen those initiatives stall–or even backslide.

Dr. Amy Ross Arguedas is a Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, with a particular specialism in trust. She is co-author of the report ‘Race and leadership in the news media 2025: Evidence from five markets’. She describes the situation saying, that “where we saw some improvements during the past five or six years… we just see that things are pretty much back to where they were at the very beginning of all of this.”

Retreat on diversity

The Reuters Institute study found that “in the US, the percentage of top editors of colour also decreased – to 15%, compared with 29% last year”. While causality is difficult to establish, similar trends were also observed in the UK: there are “fewer top editors of colour.” Precisely zero major outlets in the Institute’s sample had a minority editor.

Those trends have been exacerbated by a number of job losses across the industry that disproportionately impact minority journalists. For example, Vibe magazine, a rap and R&B-focused magazine originally co-founded by Quincy Jones, was acquired by Penske Media in October. In the immediate aftermath, many of its journalists were laid off, leading to a fundraiser organized by Vibe reporter Mya Abraham to help the eliminated staffers.

Abraham says: “I’m not sure there’s one or several ways to “ensure” that minorities aren’t disproportionately impacted by layoffs. Several of us have already worked twice as hard to gain half – or less than – a non-minority.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re often the first to be discarded when media companies restructure or fold completely. It would be great if job security was based on actual merit as opposed to someone just blindly making a decision without knowing your true value.”

Similarly, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) called out the dismantling of minority-focused teams at NBC after a number of job cuts in October. At the time, Errin Haines, NABJ president, said: “the decision to eliminate these diversity teams goes beyond a line item on a budget, executed at a time when accurate and inclusive storytelling is needed most.”

Similarly, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has noted the preponderance of job losses among its members. Errin Haines, president of The National Association of Black Journalists, said: “When our industry catches a cold, journalists of color catch the flu, because newsroom cuts always disproportionately impact us. Diversity is too often the casualty of media consolidation, downsizing, or layoffs; we are frequently the last hired and first fired. This is not a new phenomenon, but what is new in this climate is political rhetoric that minimizes the value of diverse perspectives and representation across a range of institutions — including journalism.”

Revenue short-termism

Regardless of the motivations for the job cuts, the question is whether they will deliver any tangible benefit in the long run. As the saying goes, you can’t cut your way to growth.

That calculation becomes even more precarious when the potential audience upside of diverse coverage is considered. Many media organizations are now relying on reaching new audiences and media companies across the board must prepare for generational turnover. Some, including the LA Times, have launched sub-editions dedicated to reaching minority audiences, which are predicated on being able to speak to that community knowledgeably and authentically. Doing so requires representation in terms of journalists.

Jendella Benson is head of editorial for Black Ballad. She explains that “Audiences are not ‘locked in’ to heritage/mainstream media brands as they once were with so many options out there. They will go wherever they feel their values and concerns are reflected. Even in digital media, we are already seeing some of this happening with audience fragmentation. People are moving away from established media brands for various reasons, and moving towards more ‘niche’ or highly specific outlets that either share their interests or political perspectives.”

It’s a position backed up by the Reuters Institute’s research. Where there isn’t representation, there is a lack of an ability to spot the opportunities to speak to new communities. Dr. Arguedas explains: “As we note in the fact sheet there can be an argument made in terms of your ability to speak to certain kinds of audiences, to understand their needs.

As the report states, “Failing to address these disparities… can also potentially erode trust, particularly among marginalized and under-served groups that have for a very long time expressed their discontent and grievances around how their communities are portrayed in the news media.”

That is especially important given that a lack of trust in the news media is frequently cited as one of the main reasons for a lack of financial support for news, particularly among young audiences. Cutting back on diversity, then, leads to a less diverse audience profile in turn, stunting opportunities for audience growth.

Ethical and commercial synergy

A number of the biggest US-based publications declined to share their future DEI plans for this article. In the UK, where the political situation is perhaps less fraught, national publisher Reach plc cited a number of its ongoing initiatives, including its work with The Prince’s Trust to encourage young people from underrepresented backgrounds to get into journalism:

“Through that program we now have 8 young people in our newsrooms on training contracts who might have otherwise found it more difficult to break into the profession. This year we have renewed the program with a focus on regional newsrooms.”

Notably, much of the messaging around the DEI initiatives that do still exist, such as those at Reach plc, is predicated on the idea that it is the right thing to do. Increasing equity is the end in itself for some news organizations, rather than a path to profitability.

However, the two aims are not mutually exclusive. Benson says: “Media platforms who are offloading ‘the diversity’ within their newsrooms and editorial departments are essentially accelerating their decline in my opinion. They might be able to keep treading water for now, but when more of Generation Alpha start to age into media consumption, they will find an audience that will not have the inclination to engage with a brand that doesn’t match their expectations when it comes to basic representation.

“And as we know, advertisers go wherever the audience is.”

It would not be fair to single out the media industry for that backslide. Companies including Amazon, Disney, Google and Meta have abandoned DEI policies, which the Guardian attributes to pressure placed upon them by the Trump administration. It cites research from law firm Freeths, which found that 22% of respondents said profit motivations came into conflict with ethical and moral concerns at their organization “very regularly”. 32% said regularly, and 37% said sometimes.

The difference is that, for an industry that is predominantly based on audience trust, journalism cannot afford to become any less diverse. Abandoning DEI might be more palatable to the powerful right now, but in the long-term it risks making media outlets less appealing to the young and minority audiences that their future depends upon.

-chalkboard showing complex equation in which Google values news and premium content at zero-

AI | Featured Post | Policy | Revenue

What AI reveals about premium content: It was valuable all along

November 20, 2025 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Richard Gingras has been surfacing in my human “feed” far too often these past few weeks.

As many readers will know, Gingras spent nearly two decades as Google’s head of news and still appears to hold an internal quasi-advisory role. Gingras now also serves as Chair of Village Media, a company Google routinely holds up as its model “publisher success story” before parliaments and regulators.

Just last week, I happened to see Gingras across the room at the International Center For Journalists (ICFJ) annual awards dinner. Not insignificantly, Google, and Gingras personally, have generously supported them with tens of thousands of dollars. So I was grateful to see him there; journalism certainly appreciates the financial support.

Later that same night, I listened to a new episode of the Future Media podcast, in which Gingras shared his assessment that serious news has “no value to consumers,” and that “the economic value of a news query” is so negligible that, if rounded, “would be zero.” It was jarring to say the least.

Few people have had more influence over the digital distribution of news and premium content than Richard Gingras. Yet here he was, Google’s longtime news advisor, perpetuating the false narrative that serious journalism has almost no value simply because Google’s preferred metric – its pay-per-click search text advertising monopoly – generates the least revenue from a news query.

An actual journalist holds big tech accountable

Two weeks ago, a different sort of Gingras interview appeared. In the Coda Story, fearless, independent interviewer, Natalia Antelava did something that almost no journalist does when facing a senior big tech executive: she directly challenged him on his role in helping create the mess.

She also pressed him as he repeatedly slipped into a collective “we” when describing Google’s relationship to the news business. The subtext was unmistakable: Google sees itself as the arbiter of news value, even as its public talking points and industry actions deny that value even exists.

Rewriting failure as generosity

When she asked Gingras what he considered his biggest mistake in his nearly two decades with Google, his answer was telling: “I would say the biggest mistake, honestly, was in our work with the industry, the Google News Initiative. We spent over a billion dollars over eight years, a billion and a half dollars trying to drive innovation.”

This is where I am obliged to note Google’s revenues over the last 10 years approximate to $2 TRILLION. So Gingras, Google’s chief evangelist to the news industry, would like us to know his biggest mistake in his 18 years at Google was sharing less than one tenth of one percentage of Google’s revenues with the news industry.

It’s astonishing how casually he rewrites failure as generosity.

The real “mistake” wasn’t spending too much on the Google News Initiative; it was believing that sprinkling what equates to less than 0.1% of Google’s revenues at the industry could offset the damage Google inflicted on the economics of media. Google’s chief evangelist for their news efforts believes serious news has no economic value and his biggest mistake was sharing a pittance of their revenues with the very companies it used to help maintain its adjudicated illegal monopolies in search, ad exchanges and publisher ad servers.

Yet, in their spare time, these same publishers provide one of the few remaining checks on power: scrutinizing leaders, governments, institutions, and abusive companies. But in Google’s calculus, “economic value” is whatever its ad system can monetize, and the civic value of news simply doesn’t register.

But here’s the irony: AI companies are now proving, more clearly than ever, that news and premium content are among the most valuable resources in the world. Not just culturally. Not just civically. Economically.

AI exposes what Google denies about news

Across the AI ecosystem, the most advanced large language models were trained disproportionately on the very materials Silicon Valley once dismissed as “legacy media”: reported information, fact-checked analysis, archives, scientific journals, books, documentaries, and professionally produced entertainment content. Their capabilities come from absorbing narrative, structure, relevance, serendipity, ground truth and cultural cornerstones created by expert journalists, television and film professionals.

This professionally crafted work is not interchangeable with memes, scraped Wikipedia summaries, or social media and user posts.

The value of news, entertainment and vetted information

Laundering professional content through Reddit or Common Crawl (the profile of which is a must-read in The Atlantic) doesn’t strip its economic value; it merely reveals that protections have not yet been duly enforced. High-quality training data is scarce, slow to produce, and expensive. It requires human expertise, legal standards, editorial judgment, and public trust in the sources, whether individuals or the brands that employ them. These are the exact qualities that distinguish premium publishers.

And this isn’t theory.

The law is catching up

A growing list of court cases and disclosures shows the same reality: AI companies rely on publishers’ journalism while avoiding paying for it. In Thomson Reuters v. Ross, a federal court confirmed that training AI requires licensing copyrighted content, recognizing a real market for high-quality data. In the Kadrey v. Meta case, unsealed documents showed Meta employees downloading pirated books and skirting licensing. And in U.S. v. Google, we learned that Meta pays Google for an API into its daily scraping to ground its own AI.

Yes, that means that Meta is apparently paying Google for access to publishers’ work.

Penske Media’s recent lawsuit argues that Google’s AI Overviews scrape and replace news directly in search results; a practice publishers cannot realistically opt out of because Google controls search through an illegal monopoly. When Google ingests news, sports and entertainment and places AI summaries above it, that is not “zero value.” It is extracted value.

Extracted value is an extinction level event

If we find ourselves in a world where AI replaces the need to click through to trusted journalism and premium content by using that same content to train its responses without compensation, the entire economic infrastructure – advertising, subscriptions, licensing – collapses. You cannot build sustainable media when distribution intermediaries extract the full economic value upstream.

DCN’s position is clear: premium content is the most valuable resource on the open web. Not only because of the cost of creating it, but because of the trust signals behind it. It is the core asset that fuels AI’s predictive capabilities and factual grounding on the most recent events. And publishers cannot and should not continue to allow it to be scraped, ingested, repurposed, and monetized without specific and freely given consent – not the kind coerced by a company already found to hold an illegal monopoly.

The future of AI relies on premium content

The future of AI should and will not be defined by who has the best model or the cheapest compute. It will hinge upon access to the highest-quality data, and whether that data is lawful, licensed, accurate, original, and kept current.

Publishers sit on the motherlode. This should be their moment. Unlike synthetic content and scraped user forums, premium content has enduring value because humans create it with standards.

This is why DCN has warned policymakers and the copyright office that improperly scraped training data threatens the economic foundation of news and entertainment. That’s why licensing must be the rule, not the exception.

The industry must align around three principles:

No free training. High-quality content cannot be scraped without permission for search, training, or grounding.
AI cannot substitute for news without fair value. AI Overviews and similar features must not cannibalize traffic using the very journalism they ingest.
Licensing markets must continue to be built. Early negotiating will set the pricing floor; platforms that acknowledge fair value should be the greatest allies.

Gingras may claim that news has no value. But Silicon Valley’s behavior proves the opposite. In the AI era, premium content isn’t just valuable; it’s the most valuable input in the entire system.

Publishers must stop giving it away.

-Gen Z audience enjoying digital and analog media-

Audiences | Featured Post

Reaching Gen Z means mastering authenticity and algorithms

November 13, 2025 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Publishers are rethinking how they show up on social platforms in 2025, places where Gen Z and Gen Y increasingly discover content through algorithms. Recent DCN research reveals that these generational audiences’ media diets are dominated by algorithmically surfaced video. Individual creators now outperform traditional media brands on trust, creativity, and entertainment value. This trend challenges publishers to adapt their approaches while maintaining editorial integrity.

The visibility challenge is fundamental: algorithmic feeds surface content based on engagement rather than quality or brand recognition. Publishers are no longer guaranteed an audience simply because someone follows them. Every post competes equally with creators, memes, and friends’ updates, making traditional media brands just another scroll in the feed.

Media leaders from The Guardian, The Verge, Eater, share how they’re maintaining relationships with younger audiences through platform-native content, personality and experimentation.

The creator connection

Andrew Hare, senior vice president of quantitative research at Magid, and co-author of DCN’s report, “Decoding video content engagement: Gen Z and Gen Y in focus,” points out that creators have fundamentally reset audience expectations. “Creators rewrote the playbook: they win on originality, honesty, and personality,” he says.

Hare notes that the definition of quality has shifted. “At one point it was all about the image, professional appearance; it was basically something you would see on television. Now we realize that when we move into these digital spaces, other factors impact trust. Do you believe the creator or brand? Is it an authentic message? Is it real and unfiltered to some degree?”

The nature of engagement with Gen Z and Gen Y is both reactive and participatory. “I think the remixing, commenting and sharing nature of these platforms has been something that brands have been a bit slower to embrace because it means the conversation might be evolving, and they cede some control,” Hare says. “But, as we are seeing, it is this living conversation that creators have innovated upon and the very thing that provides value on social and YouTube.”

Gen Z trust friends and family most at 88%, followed by individual creators at 79%, with brands at only 61%. Hare says younger generations are suspicious of brands when they see them in their digital spaces. “Brands need to build trust in much the same way creators have in order to prove they can be authentic and real and provide relevant value. Otherwise, they are just noise and in the way of more engaging content.”

Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence at WPP Media, notes this aligns with broader shifts. “We have also seen this shift in terms of ad revenue globally, a majority going to creator platforms and UGC platforms rather than legacy media.”

Tuning tone: platform fluency and authenticity

Publishers emphasized they’re not lowering editorial standards to compete on social platforms, Rather, they’re translating their journalism into formats that work in algorithmically-driven spaces. The challenge they outlined was capturing attention in those critical first seconds while staying true to their standards.

In a world where audiences connect with individuals over brands, developing recognizable voices within their own ranks isn’t just a creative choice, it’s a strategic necessity for publishers. Journalists who embody the brand’s values can humanize it, build trust, and compete with the authenticity that individual creators command.

Success, then, depends on how effectively newsrooms and social teams collaborate, from story development to publication.

At The Guardian, Max Benwell, deputy head of audience for The Guardian US, says encountering content off-platform doesn’t preclude building direct relationships. “Because people are encountering our content off platform and maybe without context about the Guardian, it doesn’t mean they can’t build a direct relationship with us over time,” he says. “But the key is all about looking at the data we have and making sure our off-platform content is as engaging as possible. Then, because of how the algorithms work, we can trust that they’ll start seeing more and more of us.”

Benwell identifies short-form video opportunities during newsroom meetings and reaches out to reporters. “We’re also trying to create a mutual relationship where they, when they’re working on a story, can come to us and flag it way ahead of time.”

Flagging stories early means social teams can plan authentic, substantive videos rather than scrambling to repackage finished articles, creating content that competes with creators on engagement while maintaining journalistic standards.

Guardian social content is held to identical standards as the website, from brief to script to final edit. If you’re hearing from a Guardian journalist on Instagram or TikTok, it should feel like meeting them in person: knowledgeable, personable, expert, occasionally funny.

At Eater, the focus is on making internal talent more comfortable on camera, with editing and creating social-first content, according to Kaitlin Bray, senior director of audience development for Eater, Punch, Thrillist at Vox Media. “The medium of telling the story has shifted, but the desire to get their stories in front of as many readers still stands,” she says. “Even though the method has changed, I think there’s a lot of natural interest from staffers in sharpening skills or learning new skills.”

She says that Eater leverages advantages creators lack: built authority, unique access, and deep expertise. The effort has been adapting their voice to be more casual while delivering rigorous reporting.

Format adaptation and audience engagement strategies

Publishers tailor their approach based on each social platform’s audience and culture.

“We often find that our followers there are looking for an immediate and direct entry point into stories,” Benwell says. “On social, we’ve experimented with a lot of different formats. But what really resonates are those specific moments, where you kind of land in with a very specific person.”

He points to a recent success with original illustrations by one of his social producers for Naomi Beinart’s ‘new chill girl’ op-ed. “We did original illustrations for that, which is quite different from what we usually do. It was one of our biggest posts of this year.”

At The Verge, experimentation on social platforms is constant, according to Denise Cervantes, senior social media manager at The Verge. She describes how a recent conversation in a creative meeting about viral Sora videos led to a new video the same day. “We saw that and we’re like, okay, that is like a really good place for The Verge to show up,” Cervantes explains, adding, “The format of the video is just taking the viral AI video and having our host hop in and be like, ‘Hey, this is AI and this is how you can tell.’”

Eater encourages staff-driven experimentation with formats or ideas they’re passionate about. For example, a Gen Z social producer pitched an idea: she’d never tried steak tartare before and wanted to try four in one day, biking around Manhattan and Brooklyn, Bray explains. “That’s not a video concept that I would’ve come up with. It was rooted her in her experience and she ended up making this super fun video.”

Kate Scott-Dawkins notes that highly polished content still has its place, pointing out that massive audiences tune into premium shows like Wednesday. However, she notes that it feels out of place in spaces that started as social platforms. “It feels less genuine in these spaces that started out as social forms, off the cuff pieces of content,” she says.

Perhaps the most critical shift is treating every piece of content as potentially reaching someone who’s never heard of your brand. “Our philosophy really is to treat every Verge video thinking about an audience that doesn’t know who The Verge is,” Cervantes explains. “We can’t always go into it thinking this video is going to get served to all of our followers because of how the algorithm and discovery feeds work.”

Creating quality content for younger audiences and algorithms

While it’s a shift in strategy and fundamental mindset, the publishers we spoke to offered clear guidance for others working to reach younger audiences on social platforms. It requires leaning into personalities and staying on top of trends and algorithmic changes.

Benwell emphasized the importance of being data-informed rather than data-led.

“We have a saying here at The Guardian that we don’t follow the data blindly. We’re data informed, we’re not data led,” he says. “We make a real effort to be aware of the data and know what your key metric is. For us, it’s shares because that’s the metric where our work is being placed in front of more and more people.”

Authenticity remains critical, Cervantes stresses. “Audiences may not always want to connect with a brand, but there will always be that people-to people connection.”

Bray urged publishers not to be afraid of format experimentation while maintaining journalistic rigor. “We still have editors who used to write 1,000-word articles,” she says. “They’re still applying their journalistic skills, they are just figuring out different ways to communicate the information.”

The new landscape is clear: adapt to algorithmic distribution and creator-style content without abandoning your editorial standards. Newsrooms have found that experimentation and staff personality can coexist with rigorous reporting. Meeting younger audiences where they’re at doesn’t mean compromising good journalism.

For publishers, this means the path forward isn’t choosing between authenticity and polish, or between editorial integrity and platform fluency. It’s finding ways to deliver it all, in formats with voices that feel native to the spaces where Gen Z and Y spend their time.

-image of a blank check being signed in the oval office to show that the administration is considering granting sweeping fair use exemptions for AI -

AI | Featured Post | Policy

Chamber of Progress asks for blank check for big tech

November 6, 2025 Chris Pedigo, SVP Government Affairs – DCN

The Chamber of Progress has asked the Trump Administration to intervene to ensure that all AI training is considered “fair use.” You read that right: They’re asking the White House to declare that every use of copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence systems is lawful, no matter the circumstances.

It’s a radical proposal that would reward the largest technology platforms at the expense, if not demise, of publishers and creators. In the pursuit of unbridled profit, the Chamber is seeking to overturn more than two centuries of copyright law that has served our country well. U.S. copyright protections have long struck a balance between creators’ rights and technological progress, ensuring that those who invest in producing art, journalism, music, film, and literature can be fairly compensated while still allowing for reasonable uses that advance learning and innovation.

Declaring all AI training “fair use” would blow up that balance. It would amount to a government-granted blank check for Silicon Valley’s biggest players to strip-mine the creative economy. And while some of the Chamber’s backers may cheer that result, it’s important to note that not all technology companies share that view. Microsoft, for example, reportedly told publishers just last month, “You deserve to be paid on the quality of your IP.” (Note that Microsoft apparently chooses not to be associated with The Chamber of Progress.)

So, let’s take a moment to refresh our collective memory about what fair use actually is, as well as what it is not.

How fair use works

The concept of fair use is baked into U.S. copyright law. It provides limited exceptions for certain uses of copyrighted works without permission for purposes like criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, or scholarship. But whether a use is “fair” depends on a careful, case-by-case balancing test.

The law identifies four factors:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or nonprofit and whether it’s transformative, which means it adds new meaning, message, or purpose.
The nature of the copyrighted work, which recognizes that creative works enjoy stronger protection than purely factual material.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used, meaning both how much is taken and how significant that material is to the original work.
The effect of the use on the potential market for the original, which is often referred to as the most critical factor and is key for publishers as it looks at whether the new use substitutes for or diminishes the market value of the original work, and whether the new use would hinder emerging markets for the original work (i.e. licensing).

Each factor must be weighed. Fair use was designed to be flexible, not absolute and it should be wielded like a surgical tool, not a sledgehammer.

What the courts are saying

Courts are still working through the major questions of how copyright law should apply. But, in the two most recent cases, judges ruled, for different reasons, that AI models were likely developed unlawfully. In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge Alsup held that training AI systems using lawfully acquired books could be “spectacularly transformative,” comparing it to “training schoolchildren to write.” It’s worth noting that this case concerned books and not content like news articles where the potential for substitution is much greater. But even in that decision, he drew a bright line against using pirated or illegally obtained material, saying that would not qualify as fair use.

In the same district in Kadrey v. Meta, Judge Chhabria took a very different view barely 24 hours later. While he ultimately ruled for Meta, it was only because the plaintiffs couldn’t yet show actual market harm. Importantly, the court rejected Alsup’s “schoolchildren” analogy, calling it “inapt,” and acknowledged that generative AI poses a qualitatively different threat to human authorship, particularly because it can flood the market with AI-generated substitutes for real creative work. His decision suggested that proving tangible market harm is key to overcoming the fair use defense.

Together, these early cases show that the courts are highly skeptical of AI companies’ legal claims and that fair use in the AI era is anything but a settled question.

Stronger cases ahead

The cases now moving through the courts could reshape the entire landscape. The New Y o rk Times v. OpenAI is poised to be the most consequential yet. The Times alleges that OpenAI violated its terms of use, copied and reproduced its journalism without permission, and even regurgitated near-verbatim passages from Times’ stories in its outputs. The judge largely denied a partial motion to dismiss in March 2025.

Similar suits from Disney, NBC U n iversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others allege that AI systems like Midjourney and Minimax have infringed on copyrighted characters and images, using them as raw material to generate new (and often derivative) outputs. These cases go beyond questions of data ingestion and look squarely at what the machines produce. When AI outputs contain or imitate protected creative expression, or produce outputs that can substitute for the original works, the argument that “training” is obviously a fair use becomes untenable.

That’s what makes these lawsuits so strong: they don’t rely on abstract theories about future market harm. They show the receipts by offering specific examples of copyrighted material appearing in AI-generated outputs or showing that outputs are otherwise substitutive, clear evidence that these tools are not merely “learning” but supplanting protected works.

Why the Chamber of Progress is panicking

Which brings us back to the Chamber of Progress and their remarkable plea for a government blank check. If the law were really on their side, they wouldn’t need the President to intervene. The truth is, they’re nervous. And they should be.

The Chamber represents the largest AI and tech firms in America, companies valued in the trillions of dollars, and those companies want to maintain margins and multiples no matter the cost to other historically and highly valuable segments of our economy. If courts continue to recognize that AI training and outputs can infringe on copyrighted works, Big Tech will have to negotiate more licenses and continue paying creators. And, by the way, more licensing agreements could actually prove helpful to AI systems by ensuring their products have reliable access to accurate, fact-checked content. However, no matter how The Chamber tries to spin it, that’s not “anti-innovation.” That’s accountability.

The Chamber’s proposed outcome would obliterate that accountability, retroactively blessing a decade of mass data scraping and granting legal immunity to the industry for whatever it does next. It’s an act of desperation masquerading as policy. It’s impunity masquerading as progress.

A final word

For two centuries, copyright law has powered one of the most dynamic creative economies in the world. It protects authors, journalists, musicians, filmmakers, and artists while still allowing room for innovation. The Chamber of Progress’s proposal would dismantle that legacy overnight, transforming fair use from a balanced doctrine into a blanket permission slip.

As these cases move forward, the courts are doing their job: weighing evidence, applying the law, and adapting old principles to new technology. That’s how progress is supposed to work in a democracy governed by the rule of law.

The Chamber may sense the writing on the wall. The creative industries are organized, the evidence is mounting, and the courts are increasingly skeptical of AI’s “just-learning” defense. That’s why they’re now seeking the Administration’s help to tilt the landscape in their favor.

Throughout history, new technology has tested the limits of copyright, from photocopiers to radio and television and the internet. But the courts have a long track record of determining how emerging tools fit within existing law. Innovation and creativity thrive together only when both are respected. Protecting the rights of those who produce original work ensures that progress benefits everyone. And that’s more than fair enough.

-woman editing digital video to show investment-

Publishers reveal their ROI equation for digital video

October 30, 2025 Chris M. Sutcliffe – Independent Media Reporter

Digital video is the preferred form of media for many audience demographics. Those audiences, highly engaged with video, provide fertile ground for advertising revenue, sponsored video content, and even paywall revenue growth.

However, despite the undisputed appeal for audiences, it presents media businesses wit h a conundrum: produce video content cheaply to maximize ROI, or invest in quality video leveraging the brand, with the risk of a lower return. So how do media businesses choose which topics or subjects are right to build a video strategy around. And when do revenue opportunities like sponsors enter into those discussions?

Commercial viability

For most outlets, video has to pay its way. Documentary-style video is expensive to produce. Therefore, it is often simply not worth the investment for primarily text-based commodity news publishers.

To offset that issue (i.e., the high cost of video production and the risk of spending money on content that doesn’t pay off), The Independent created Independent TV with a clear rule: No video series gets made unless it already has a sponsor or advertiser committed to funding it.

This commissioning bottleneck of sorts serves as a test of whether the subject was of worth to a potential sponsor in video form. The approach does present potential frustration lin that that advertising priorities dictate what gets made, meaning creative or editorially strong concepts could stall if they didn’t appeal to sponsors. However, this approach prevented the paper from spending a significant amount of money on a video project that might never have been commercially viable.

A similar approach is taken by The Sun, which has seen its video share of digital revenue increased to 18% in the latest reported results. Jon Lloyd, Director of Video for the newspaper says that, “Making video in isolation doesn’t make sense at The Sun; when commissioning Sun Originals the commercial considerations are right at the beginning. That was the genesis for Sun Originals: high quality shows which advertisers like to sponsor.

“It must always be editorially driven and work for our audiences. But editorial teams will work with the commercial teams in order to launch the show and build the commercial aspect in, tailoring it to the client. It can’t just be their name on the show anymore.”

As a result of that strategy The Sun is working with clients who “have never used us in a digital capacity before, like M&S and Card Factory”. Recognizing the synergy between its consumer-focused news approach and the commercial opportunity, it has been focused on two specific content verticals for Originals commissioning: sports and Fabulous, which encompasses women’s fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

At the same time, commercial considerations do not factor into discussions around video creation for news organizations whose commercial proposition is more supporter-based.

The Guardian confirms that they do not create videos with sponsors in mind. Those discussions are not part of the overall decision about when and where to launch a video series.

Nevertheless, the company is not ignoring the audience growth opportunities of digital video and is set to invest further in using it for storytelling. As its editor-in-chief recently told Press Gazette, “I mean, at the moment, [when] we get a big story, it usually will have a podcast attached for example. It will usually have a video explainer attached. It will usually have all sorts of stuff attached already, but I think it’s the next stage of that.”

Cost vs return

Some major titles are increasingly looking to video as an audience growth opportunity first. The idea is that audiences attracted by video are likely to convert, even if that form of content does not exactly match the majority of the paper’s content.

Juliet Riddell is head of new formats at the Financial Times, which has been experimenting with news-led short films. Its latest, ‘Recall Me Maybe’, is a short fictional film that examines dementia, AI, and the unreliability of memory and artificial intelligence. That’s quite the departure for the title. However, its position in front of the paywall speaks to its belief that video of this sort is worth investing in as an audience acquisition tool.

Speaking to Media Voices, Riddell explained: “All the films are trying to connect an audience with something that’s happening now and that we feel we need to communicate now.”

We also see a number of publications investing in digital video to diversify the audiences that are exposed to the brand, albeit with a far lower cost base. That is particularly true for those media businesses looking to convert more audiences by creating more touchpoints.

Chris Stone is executive producer of podcasts and video at the New Statesman. He explains: “We’re already producing podcasts, so adding video to that production workflow doubles up on the content that we’re making, so we’re getting more out of a single record. That video then extends our audience reach on YouTube, [and] also on social platforms. And the purpose of that is to grow the top of our funnel.”

He also notes that the ROI of a piece of content – in any form – is based on how widely it can be repurposed: “If I was starting something from scratch, I wouldn’t start with original video. I would start with multimedia content that can be repurposed on lots of different platforms.”

Beyond digital video

Given the scale of investment in video podcasts over the past few years – with a recently announced collaboration between Spotify and Netflix acting as the cherry on top – it is unsurprising that newsbrands recognize the value of delivering its star audio content in another broadly-accessible format. Vox, for instance, has just poached the NYT’s Astead Herndon, appointing him as a host and editorial director with a remit to launch and lead a new multiplatform video podcast.

This approach bears fruit for publishers that have been investing in multimedia content for years: the podcasts have already proven to be commercially successful in audio, and the additional costs of filming and editing them are relatively small. In commissioning these relatively small, these media businesses take advantage of advertisers’ hunger for video content, and video’s ability to open up new audiences.

Whether it is a high-quality audience play like that of the Financial Times, or the more commercial-led commissioning approach, video is increasingly seen as a must-have for news and magazine brands. Finding the sweet spot between commercial growth and audience development is paramount, but dependent on the wider commercial strategy of the title.

Audiences | Featured Post | Innovation

The next media revolution isn’t editorial. It’s product.

October 23, 2025 Richard E. Brown, Media Revenue Consultant

I’m enamored with the growing conversation around media product development this year. It’s an exciting moment that reflects a real shift in how we think about value. We create products and experiences that people connect with, trust, and choose to invest in, that makes the work feel more purposeful and alive! Our industry has moved past channel distribution and now focuses on the human and social reasons people connect with journalism.

Understanding the why: evaluation

I’ve spent a lot of time studying how readers engage with news content, not just as consumers but as participants in a broader cultural ecosystem. In earlier decades, a newspaper or broadcast station was more than a source of information. It was part of daily life that blended local and national updates, insights, and experiences that helped people feel connected. People didn’t just pay for access to facts. They invested in a shared identity that reflected their values, routines, and sense of belonging. That relationship between value and identity continues to shape the future of media and its products. What excites me most is how the media’s current focus on product development gives us the freedom to create new models that honor both the integrity of journalism as a public good and the creativity to build products that people invest in.

To get this right, media leaders need to step back to view content through the lens of “product.” Product thinking brings clarity, focus, and a more objective sense of value. We’re in a hyper-digital consumer era, where every choice, every interaction, and every piece of content lives within an ecosystem of constant evaluation. Certain social and economic forces still support journalism as a public good grounded in truth and trust; However, there’s a growing expectation of transactional value. Audiences assess everything from experience to convenience to relevance. That makes the creation of media as a product both a significant challenge – and opportunity.

Testing assumptions: validation

Media teams now apply a product mindset to evaluate goals with intention and clarity. The process asks clear, purposeful questions:

Is there a real problem or opportunity, and can it be defined?
What is the hypothesis, and how does it align with the organization’s main mission or north star?
What does the current environment reveal, and where might there be room for adaptation or improvement?
How can the idea be tested quickly to bring sharper insight and direction?
What would success look like, and why?
What milestones matter most along the way?

From there, the focus turns to research and practicality.

Does a market already exist for something similar?
What resources would the concept require, and what is the expected return on investment?

This dynamic reveals something timeless about market fit and audience need. At its height, news media succeeded because it offered both utility and identity, a practical product built on trust and relevance. As the industry rebuilds, we’re returning to those roots with a modern sensibility. We rediscover how journalism can serve as a true resource in people’s lives. It reflects renewal, not nostalgia.

This is the time to test as many assumptions as possible, measure real behavior, and make informed adjustments that strengthen product-market fit. Propensity modeling plays a big part here because it helps identify early signals of interest and likelihood of engagement. By studying data patterns and connecting intent to action, organizations understand not only what audiences say they want but what they actually do.

What matters most is that validation gives you proof, not just possibility. It’s how we separate assumptions from evidence and shape news and media experiences that reflect the true behavior and expectations of the people we serve. When done well, it transforms journalism into a living resource that meets audiences where they are while guiding them toward what they need next.

Building for people: amplification

Every interaction, whether through newsletters, video engagement or social participation, offers clues about how people move through the experience. Those insights allow teams to refine quickly and stay adaptive to the needs of the moment. Authenticity remains the constant thread, especially as visual and social storytelling become even more influential. Video, personality, and voice all shape how audiences connect and return.

This process helps organizations build experiences that feel personal, intuitive, and essential. Every insight becomes a chance to fine-tune the relationship between audience behavior, editorial vision, and product design. It reinforces that product work is more than features or clicks. It’s about designing systems that anticipate needs, remove friction, and deepen value with every interaction.

This is why propensity modeling matters. It offers one of the most practical ways to understand how people connect with content and how their actions reveal what truly matters to them. Propensity modeling uses patterns in data to identify the likelihood that someone will take an action, such as subscribing, donating, or returning to engage again. It helps teams recognize not just what people do, but why they do it.

A product-centric approach guides media innovation

When combined with thoughtful product development, propensity modeling can transform how media organizations serve their audiences. It shows how often people engage, what keeps them returning, and what causes them to drift. With that understanding, teams create user journeys that feel natural and affirming, inviting people deeper into the ecosystem.

This approach builds an ongoing feedback loop. Each iteration becomes a chance to learn more, improve relevance and strengthen the experience in meaningful ways. It’s not about volume; it’s about resonance. By pairing data with empathy, organizations design products that feel human, responsive and alive. That’s the kind of innovation that keeps journalism connected to the people it exists to serve.

-concept art showing search with AI imagery to suggest SEO changes -

AI | Audiences | Featured Post

Publishers rethink SEO in the age of AI overviews

October 16, 2025 Esther Kezia Thorpe – Media Reporter

Whether it’s the rise of LLM search queries, AI overviews or the black-box operations of features like Discover, search and SEO is undergoing a fundamental shift.

Publishers have built SEO strategies, audience acquisition teams and substantial revenue streams to capture consumers with search intent. Now, they are faced with referral traffic dropping anything from 5% to more than 25%. Despite Google’s proclamations that AI in search is driving more queries and higher-quality clicks, the reality is that premium publishers are feeling the pain.

With so much uncertainty in how consumers are interacting with AI when it comes to search, it’s hard to formulate strategies to adapt. SEO and audience experts at the Daily Mail and Bauer Media Group spoke to DCN to outline how they’re approaching search changes, and why publishers need to refocus on the fundamentals.

Search is not dead

A number of issues get conflated when talking about AI and search. The biggest culprit of immediate traffic drop-offs is Google AI Overviews, which have been rolling out over the past 18 months. These appear at the top of a search, summarizing key information from a range of sources.

But overall, search is not dying. Consumers aren’t moving away from Google and using other services to find information. Thus far, even the rise in ChatGPT seems to be additive to traditional search. But as publishers know, consumer behavior is far from static. And given the growth in use of these tools, this is bound to change and publishers need to make moves now to keep pace.

-Sparktoro research that shows that AI tools are additive to traffic for SEO-

Bauer Media Group owns more than 600 magazines, 400 digital titles and 50 radio and TV stations across the UK and Europe. Global Audience Director Stuart Forrest sees the most immediate threat not from using LLMs as search engines, but from how Google is reshaping the search experience. “Are there challenges to search traffic from Google? Absolutely,” he said. “But is there a meaningful challenge to Google’s dominance? I don’t see the evidence for that.”

Publishers have long operated on a clear value exchange: search engines index their content, and in return, they receive referral traffic that funds journalism. Carly Steven, Director of SEO & Editorial E-commerce at news publisher the Daily Mail believes that the premise of AI overviews fundamentally disrupts that balance. “They still use our content—but we don’t get the clicks,” she said.

This lack of visibility and control leaves publishers unable to shape strategies or measure impact. “We don’t know where our content is being used or how it’s contributing to AI responses,” Forrester noted. “And that prevents a fair value exchange.”

Barry Adams is an SEO and Audience Growth Consultant working specially with news publishers. He has decades of experience and insight from working with global media companies. Adams pointed out that while AI has accelerated these declines, the shift started earlier—with news avoidance, user fatigue, and diversified consumption habits. “AI just pushed it further.”

The stakes go beyond revenue. Steven underscored the existential risk: “If we can’t sustain the journalism that trains these models, the whole system collapses. AI is only as good as the content it consumes.”

The impact of AI on SEO (so far)

Despite near-universal agreement on these challenges, the impact on publishers is varied – for now, at least. Steven pointed out that it’s tough for the Daily Mail to measure the true impact because Google hasn’t yet separated out that data. “We aren’t able to distinguish between clicks that have come from AI overviews, and clicks that have come from normal search; it’s all bundled in together,” she explained.

However, they can see the impact on click-through rates when an AI overview is present. Steven told Press Gazette that when an AI overview appears in Google, the Daily Mail’s average clickthrough rate was 56.1% lower on desktop, and 48.2% lower on mobile.

Steven was keen to point out that the big double-digit drops that publishers are reporting in click-throughs is not the same as traffic. “For a news site like The Daily Mail, the keywords that we care about change every minute and hour; the news changes so quickly. So even if we can see that when there’s an AI overview present, the click rate drops, that doesn’t mean the traffic aligns with that,” she said.

The Daily Mail also has over 60% of search traffic as “branded” search, where people are searching specifically with the term ‘Daily Mail’. Half of their total traffic is also direct to their website. “That’s very high, and makes us much more resilient [to these changes]” Steven shared.

At the moment, AI overviews rarely appear against breaking news stories. Adams noted that publishers focused on breaking news do appear to be more resilient to AI-driven declines. This is also echoed by DCN member surveys which show non-news brands taking bigger traffic hits than news brands.

But those who also have background stories, explainers or coverage of topics like fashion trends and car reviews are feeling the pain. “There’s a genuine grievance there that Google is ‘stealing’ their traffic because that sort of journalism is still adding value,” Adams said.

These concerns also apply to evergreen content – articles and explainers which can be updated or don’t go out of date. Steven said that the Daily Mail hasn’t ever relied on evergreen content for traffic, and that she sees this as being more vulnerable to AI summarization. This puts publishers in a tough position as many have invested in evergreen content precisely to establish authority within Google search.

-Similarweb chart showing AI referrals by category for impact on SEO-

Bauer is also seeing traffic changes, which Forrest says are having a nuanced impact on their brands. The company publishes global entertainment and lifestyle titles like Grazia and Empire, but also has a large portfolio of specialist titles covering hobbies and interests from golf and angling to motorcycling.

They also publish a number of TV listing titles, from TV choice and Total TV guide in the UK (which sell 4 million print copies a week between them) to TV Movie in Germany. Forrest says the industry has a tendency to underestimate consumer inertia. “The reality is that an awful lot of people still go online and look at EPGs (Electronic Programme Guides) from both us and competitors every day to decide what to watch on TV,” he pointed out.

“That mass market consumer inertia, once you get outside quite a limited cohort of early adopters of change, I don’t see as having a meaningful impact [for these types of query].”

Bauer’s automotive titles have been impacted more with some queries, especially around car specification data. But Forrest emphasized that their work isn’t focusing on providing answers to consumer queries. Rather, they aim to build on unique insights from experts in those areas, adding value to that data.

Forrest sums up the current landscape as an attention challenge, and effective monetization of that attention. “We still see plenty of examples of growth in our business, and plenty of examples of recovery in our business,” he highlighted. “When you look at what’s driving that, it’s coming back to high quality journalism from people who know what they’re talking about. It’s really not any more complex than that.”

Strategies to adapt

With tangible changes happening and solutions to the value exchange some way off, both publishers emphasized the need to diversify reliance on Google search for revenue. Forrest said this was doable, but not if traffic drops off a cliff overnight.

“We want to protect Google traffic as much as possible, continue to evolve our approach, and then continue to diversify into other channels,” he explained.

Bauer’s teams are also focusing on turning those search-acquired audiences into more valuable consumers by encouraging newsletter sign-ups and investing in social and brand awareness. They are seeing some success with audience and revenue growth on Apple News, and have even commissioned some premium content specifically for that channel. Forrest pointed out that none of this was revelatory, but needs to be a priority.

“You clearly can’t rely on Google as being your primary traffic source,” the Daily Mail’s Steven echoed, pointing out that algorithm changes over the years have already proved its unreliability as a channel. “If it’s one way for your audience to reach you, that’s fine, but you wouldn’t want to have all your eggs in that basket now.”

Adams was even more explicit in emphasizing that a mindset shift needs to happen. “If you’re an SEO-mature organization… you’re not going to grow more traffic,” he said. “We’ve reached peak traffic. If you maintain traffic, you’re winning.

Curiously, given publishers’ long and stormy history with social platforms, both publishers have a renewed focus on their platform presence. Google’s indexing of Instagram posts has helped. In his experience, Forrest says that if someone is searching for a topic, recognizing a brand in search (whether that be their site or an indexed social post) can be helpful. “Brand recognition and ranking position are major drives of click-through rate,” he noted.

This is a key difference in the approach to social now. It’s no longer seen as a huge driver of traffic back to websites. But what Forrest describes as “good, old-fashioned investment in brand awareness and reputation” can pay off in other areas.

Steven explained that the threat of traffic drops has provoked evaluation of social strategies, and well-established playbooks are suddenly trendy again. “It has forced us to think really hard about who we are as brands, and where our audiences are, and being where they are, whether that’s on TikTok, or Reddit, or Instagram,” she said.

However the Daily Mail’s priority is to grow its fledgling subscription business. Their Mail+ partial paywall launched in the UK in January 2024, and into the US and Canada earlier this year. Steven described the subscription targets as “punchy,” saying that they are targeting “1 brand, 1 million;” aiming to reach 1 million digital subscribers by October 2028. As of July, they had 325,000 digital subscribers globally, including 50,000 in the US.

Adams recommends going back to basics; talking to customers and finding out why they come to you and what they want from you. Then, focus on tying them into your own ecosystem. “If you have a paywall, make sure it’s as smooth and efficient as possible,” he advised. “Make sure you have a dedicated app that’s very easy to install and great to use. Have newsletters that people can subscribe to and show them what they want to read.”

“If you are a content-focused publisher, news or otherwise, you need to find a way to prove added value that the AI bots can’t replicate. I think a lot of publishers are worried about that, because they can’t.”

Outlook and advice for AI-era SEO

Expectations for the future were mixed between the three experts. The need for a rethink and recalibration of expectations for publishers was a common thread. “We’ve always thought of the platforms as being audience drivers and traffic drivers,” the Daily Mail’s Steven said. “If there’s an acceptance that it’s more about visibility and brand awareness than about driving traffic, then we can calibrate our expectations around that.”

Adams believes that publishers should step away from generic, easily replicable content. “We have to have something worth paying for,” he outlined. “And that means you need to have an identity as a news publisher. You need to have a good grasp of what your readers want from you and make sure you deliver in that space.”

Licensing was highlighted as an option for some publishers, as many have done deals with AI companies. But there are only so many of those deals to go around, and not everyone is in a position to do those. This is unlikely to be a long-term viable strategy, especially for smaller organizations and start-ups.

There was also acknowledgement that the short-term is going to be rocky. “This is a weeding out,” Adams explained bluntly. “We will lose publishers, there will be casualties, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

“Online publishing has been too much of a free-for-all and a race to the bottom by chasing after clicks and throwing ads on everything… There will be a new normal…with stronger news brands who have a clearer idea of what they offer, with loyal audiences bound to them.”

Steven, however, was more concerned about what will happen to the diversity of information in the ecosystem in this scenario. “I worry that if that value exchange question isn’t addressed and resolved, we will end up in a much worse place with less diversity of voices, but because [AI overviews] are so easy and convenient, it’s just accepted,” she said.

Despite a 20+ year career in SEO, Steven said that she’s never witnessed a period as disruptive as this. The shake-up is unquestionably under way. Whether the publishing ecosystem is better or worse off afterwards remains to be seen.

-shopping cart full of boxes with video play button on them to show streaming bundles/ bundling -

Streaming enters its rebundling era

October 9, 2025 Charlotte Henry – Independent Media Reporter

From craft beer to TV shows, it seems there’s a subscription for everything these days. As I explore in my new book Streaming Wars, this explosion of choice has reshaped our culture—fragmenting audiences and changing how we experience media. Yet this isn’t just my take. In conversations with industry analysts, streaming executives, and digital strategists, a clear picture emerges: aside from live sports, we’re no longer gathering around the same screens at the same time.

That fragmentation isn’t going away—but it is driving a new wave of strategy. To combat subscription fatigue and stay relevant, both streaming and publishing companies are experimenting with bundles, sometimes even partnering with longtime competitors. These partnerships are less about bold innovation and more about survival: simplifying a cluttered landscape for consumers, while helping providers hold on to their audiences.

Tom Harrington, Head of Television and Enders Analysis, told DCN: “You had this sort of a decade where the impetus, the direction of travel, was doing things alone.” This let companies take control of their IP and have a direct relationship with customers. However, “that was never going to be sustainable for most businesses in the long run, because most people don’t need 789 different services doing quite similar things.”

Christy Tanner, a digital media veteran who has helped create streaming businesses for CBS and others, and who currently chairs women’s sport focused streamer Swerve, shares a similar view. She believes that “from a consumer perspective, the space is too complicated. It’s a nightmare for consumers to navigate.” As well as the rising costs, “it’s just too hard to find what you’re looking for.” Anyone who has had to jump between three or four services to uncover the show they want will surely agree. Rebundling, if the services are consolidated into a single app, can help with this.

Jaanika Juntson, Research Manager at Ampere Analysis adds: “Rebundling – where streaming platforms, after a period of competing for individual dominance, pool together and form bundled service offerings not vastly different to those found on pay TV – is continuing to play a key role in streaming services’ subscriber growth.” Essentially, these companies need to work together to keep drawing viewers in. Working with rivals can lead to tricky situations though. NBC and YouTube only recently ended a fraught negotiation, with NBC programming now back on the popular platform.

In the end, though, it is a numbers game. “If you are not in the top tier of streaming services in terms of number of subscribers, then there’s not enough money in the world that’s going to propel you into the top tier,” says Tanner. “If subscribers are only going to subscribe to five, let’s say, if you’re number six or seven, you have to bundle.”

Bundling with friends and enemies

As a result of the above, we are seeing various deals done. In the UK, ITV and Disney struck an arrangement whereby some of the other’s content would be available on the rival platform – ITVX and Disney+ respectively. Making the announcement, Kevin Lygo, Managing Director of Media and Entertainment at ITV, described the strategic partnership as a “mutually beneficial alliance,” adding that it “allows us to show our complementary audiences a specially selected collection of titles.” The argument is that strategic rebundling makes everyone – company and customer alike – a winner.

Elsewhere, Netflix is hosting live programming from TF1 in France. More dramatically, Disney’s ESPN bundled with Fox One, a product offering both complimentary sports rights and Fox News.

-Screenshot of one of Disney's big bundles which includes hulu, espn, NFL, to show the bundling trend -

Disney is also at the heart of perhaps the most compelling streaming bundle. It is offering Disney+, Hulu and the new ESPN app for one monthly payment. There are various options. But the most straightforward bundle, which has Disney+ (no ads), Hulu (No ads) and ESPN Select, costs $26.99 (rising to $29.99 later this month.) If you want that bundle with ESPN Unlimited, it’s $35.99 a month. The Unlimited Premium version, which removes ads from Disney+ and Hulu, costs $44.99.

This bundle illustrates a few things. Firstly, The Walt Disney company is in an incredibly powerful position, given the assets it holds. Secondly, it’s lot easier to offer a bundle if the company own all the services within it. Thirdly, rebundling doesn’t totally clear up the landscape for the consumer. I counted five different bundles that include all three services and a further two that include just Disney+ and Hulu. There are also options that replace ESPN with HBO Max. You need to login to all the separate apps too. Are you keeping up at the back?

As we see with the Fox and ESPN tie-up, companies not under the same parent company can also bundle. “The rationale around that is always incremental reach,” says Harrington. For instance, in the UK, customers can buy a package that includes Sky Cinema and Paramount+. The telco’s are part of the picture too. Three is offering access to Paramount+. I got Netflix included in my internet and TV bundle from EE and can get Disney+ for free via an annual Uber One subscription.

Building cross-business relationships is no easy task, especially in the world of live sports. Not only do the parties involved have to agree, but so do the regulators. In January, Venu, a long-discussed streaming product that would have brought fans sports coverage from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, collapsed after legal challenge from Fubo. In the end, Disney ended up pairing its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo.

Bundling the news

It is not only streaming services getting into bundling, however. Written news outlets are getting into bundles too.

Han-Menno Depeweg, Chief Digital Officer at Mediahuis Group outlined how his firm is bundling news outlets that it runs in Holland and Belgium. “We’re trying to bundle national news with regional news and vice versa,” he says. If someone in Holland takes out a subscription to a Dutch national newspaper that Mediahuis runs, they also have the option to bundle that in with a regional outlet. (These bundles cannot be done across borders i.e. you cannot bundle a Dutch publication with a Belgium one.)

Depeweg explains that the company does this so that one of the limited number of subscriptions a user has is with Mediahuis, and “if you can read the regional news from your region within our ecosystem, that means that you will probably stay a subscriber longer.”

The tricky thing here is setting the right price. “Pricing here is it’s mostly about cannibalization,” notes Depeweg. You don’t want to set the price point of a bundle at such a level that it makes paying for your other products unappealing. In the case of Mediahuis, “you need a Plus subscription just to get a higher tier to get into the ecosystem, and that way we leverage the subscription pricing.”

The New York Times has been hugely successful in bundling its products. From combining games, cooking and news, to making The Athletic and Wirecutter part of its subscription offering, The Gray Lady has become expert at leveraging all the assets at its disposal to drive customer and revenue growth.

Bundling won’t reverse fragmentation—but it might just keep audiences from checking out completely. As attention becomes harder to earn, simplicity might be the smartest bet in the streaming wars ahead.

The path forward is clear: make bundling work smarter, not just bigger. For media leaders, this means rethinking siloed business models, pricing strategies, and even long-standing rivalries. It has to be about providing audiences with more value for less hassle. The companies that deliver that will be the ones that remain essential, even in an age of endless choice.

AI | Audiences | Featured Post | Video

Media product executives discuss what’s working now

October 2, 2025 Jessica Patterson – Independent Media Reporter

Media product leaders are navigating uncharted territory in 2025, where generative AI is reshaping audience behavior and attention has become the scarcest commodity. Yet a consensus is emerging that the path forward isn’t about choosing between user needs and commercial success. Instead, it’s about aligning them.

Six senior product executives from Gannett, FOX, People Inc., The Economist, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal share how they’re navigating AI disruption, multi-generational audiences, competing for scarce attention, and aligning user needs with business goals.

Generative AI impacts everything

All of the executives DCN spoke with cited generative AI as the most disruptive technology shaping their product strategy. However, their thoughts and approaches varied.

-The WSJ product development strategy includes the use of AI summaries at the top of its articles -

“From a product perspective, we need to be sure that anything we do is beneficial to the reader,” explained Taneth Evans, head of digital for The Wall Street Journal. “One good example is our AI summaries at the top of articles. We first articulated a hypothesis, then we ran A/B tests and spoke to readers in order to make sure the WSJ audience was always at the heart of our ultimate decision.”

Adam McClean, chief product officer at People Inc. says generative AI is disrupting user behavior and audience acquisition, pushing media companies to diversify how they reach people. However, he points out that “It also opens up new opportunities to improve efficiency inside our organizations. People Inc. is no exception, and we are adjusting our strategy to meet both the challenges and the opportunities this technology creates.”

At The Economist, Chief Product Officer Liz Goulding says that generative AI is influencing both how people consume content and how they create products. “These two forces may look separate, but in reality, they reinforce each other,” she says. “As discovery habits shift, the need for our products to stand out… becomes even more critical. The tools available to product teams — from sharper analytics to generative design aids — are helping us respond to those needs faster and with greater precision.”

Kara Chiles, senior vice president of media products at Gannett | USA TODAY Network, explained the company is experimenting with automation and AI-based systems, anticipating it will have the greatest impact on their product strategy and business. “This isn’t new – we’ve been experimenting with this technology for some time. What is new is awareness across the board that this moment is different,” she says. “It’s opening up some bold thinking about how we create and sustain differently.”

FOX’s product teams are identifying where generative AI can enhance the consumer experience, help to personalize user journeys, and improve operational efficiency, explained John Fiedler, EVP of product & engineering at Fox. “We are being intentional. We’re prioritizing use cases that make our products more intuitive without adding unnecessary complexity. The goal is to integrate these technologies in ways that genuinely elevate the overall experience.”

Put users first

The media product leaders we spoke with consistently emphasized that putting audience needs at the center of product development didn’t compete with commercial goals, rather, it drove them. But how that alignment played out in strategy and practice varied across organizations.

Adam McClean and Liz Goulding emphasized strategic alignment, that user needs drive commercial value.

“If you are building products the right way, commercial objectives should enhance the user experience rather than compete with it,” says McClean. “At People Inc. we think of it less as a balancing act and more as an alignment exercise. When we design features that truly meet user needs, they naturally create value for our business.”

Whereas Goulding explains she’s always viewed user needs and commercial objectives as far more aligned than they’re sometimes portrayed. “Meeting user needs makes a product more desirable and reduces churn — that’s a win commercially. At The Economist, we approach this systematically. We assign tangible value to user needs within our internal prioritization framework.”

Other executives focused on practical execution, explaining how to implement that alignment through research, feedback, and iteration. Great product experience builds audience and brand loyalty, which drives monetization over time.

Gannett incorporates user needs at multiple points through new product creation, Chiles explains. “From identifying the task we are looking to accomplish, understanding the target audience, and validating whether the concepts we’re excited about are reaching the intended user. It’s challenging when you put something fresh and different in front of an existing audience – change is friction.”

Fox starts their product discovery process with the consumer in mind, then brings in commercial considerations to ensure every feature is evaluated for both impact and sustainability, Fiedler says. “Striking the right balance means building thoughtfully, listening to users, analyzing the data, and being ready to adjust if something isn’t delivering for both the audience and the business.”

At The Atlantic, the product team is focused on producing the best, highest quality reporting for their audience and delivering it in the most intuitive and creative way they can, says Gitesh Gohel, chief product officer at The Atlantic. “When we nail that product-market fit with The Atlantic’s values baked into everything we’re thinking about, we end up serving both sides really well,” he says. “We also know what we’re really good at – helping people understand the why behind the stories – and we don’t try to be everything to everyone. That focus is key.”

The biggest challenges in media product strategy

This year, media product leaders are facing complex challenges, from audiences spanning generations, to delivering seamless experiences, all without compromising quality or brand trust.

-Part of The Atlantic's product development strategy is super serving mobile audiences-

The Atlantic’s Gohel says they’re always exploring how they can expand what the publication can do for its readers or what it can help them with. “We’re spending a lot of time right now thinking about our mobile app experiences and building direct relationships with our readers. We’re thinking about moving our audience through all the different experiences and products The Atlantic has,” he says.

At The Wall Street Journal, Evans explains that their audiences and their expectations are shifting significantly. “We now span many generations with different preferences in how they want to consume our journalism, and we have to be there to meet them all. That means thinking about text and text-adjacent formats, as well as video, audio, graphics, conversations and more,” Evans says. “And the great challenge facing us all: how do we integrate all of this into a seamless experience fit for our many differing audience needs?”

Yet, for others, the challenge is about balancing speed, quality, and brand.

“We have to move fast to keep pace with the market, while still protecting the brand equity and product quality our users expect from us,” says McClean.

“For us, the biggest challenge is focus,” says Fiedler. “With so many emerging technologies, platforms, and potential partnerships, the most challenging hardest – and most important – decisions are often choosing what not to pursue. That discipline allows us to concentrate our efforts on what matters most to our audience.”

Another challenge product leaders spoke about was competing for audience attention and time, particularly as they consume news in so many places, says Goulding.

-The Economist recognizes that audience attention is a critical factor in its media product development strategy-

“Attention is scarce, and our audience has endless options at their fingertips,” she says. “For The Economist, the opportunity lies in deepening the connection between our journalism and our readers. [We must ensure] that when people choose to spend time with us, it feels not only rewarding but indispensable.” That means creating products that meet The Economist’s audience where they are, in formats that suit their lives, without compromising on quality.

It also means addressing the challenge of creating useful and meaningful content for audiences that empower audiences. “I can’t think of a time where having accurate and credible information has been more important,” says Chiles. “Our goal is to provide that information through an experience that makes users feel confident they have the tools to be informed, entertained and make better decisions for their lives.”

Design for people, teams, and purpose

For product executives in media in 2025, every decision ripples across audiences, teams, and platforms. Successful product leaders have discovered that true alignment, where great user experience drives revenue, isn’t just better strategy, it’s the only sustainable path forward. As audiences fragment across generations and platforms, and AI reshapes how people discover and consume content, the complexity facing product executives is undeniable.

However, these leaders have found clarity. When user needs drive everything, the challenge shifts from managing trade-offs to orchestrating alignment across strategy and business objectives. In a landscape where attention is currency, this isn’t just good product philosophy, it’s survival.