Not that long ago, using the social web as a news distribution platform was a relatively straightforward process: all you had to do was grab the headline and maybe a photo and then post it to Twitter and Facebook — where most news publishers and journalists already had verified accounts with thousands or even tens of thousands of followers — and then watch the pageviews and clicks roll in. Over the past year or so, however, changes to both Twitter and Facebook have made the social-web approach less and less useful; in many ways, both services have gone from being either neutral or somewhat useful as a distribution mechanism to being actively hostile environments.
In the case of Twitter, now known as X, the acquisition by Elon Musk has changed the nature of the service in a number of ways. For one thing, the algorithm that determines who sees what has been altered, based on unknown criteria. So, many publishers and journalists now say they get less engagement from the platform than they were used to in the past. There also seems to be a lot more content that is racist, sexist, or is otherwise disturbing and/or uncomfortable — as a result of what Musk claims is a commitment to freedom of speech. All of this makes the platform seem like a much less hospitable environment for traditional news and journalistic content.
Facebook, meanwhile, has backtracked on some or all of the commitments it made in the past to journalism and the media, by canceling or downsizing funding it used to provide through a variety of programs under the former Facebook Journalism Project. Most of the staff associated with those programs have left or been reassigned, and the platform has made it clear that the newsfeed algorithm will not be promoting or recommending news content in general. Facebook and its parent Meta have removed news from the Canadian version of the service as a protest over a new law designed to force digital platforms to pay publishers for the news content they carry.
What is the fediverse?
Some see the emerging “fediverse” as a potential solution to these issues, or at the very least a workaround. As Rande Price recently wrote for DCN recently, the word fediverse is an umbrella term that covers dozens of different social platforms, from Mastodon (a Twitter alternative) to Lemmy, one of the fediverse’s would-be replacements for Reddit.
Each of these services has different features and a different design, but they all have a few things in common: they are all open source, meaning the source code that powers them is freely available for anyone to download and modify. They are also all “federated,” meaning they can interoperate with each other — posts or content from one service can be easily cross-posted to another platform, or at the very least they can be exported and then imported. This is all powered by an open-source programming system called ActivityPub.
That may not sound like a big deal, but when you think about the way that content is siloed in the current environment, it definitely sounds like an improvement. Twitter or X allows you to download all of your posts and other data in bulk — something that the previous management regime put in place — but it doesn’t make it easy to import it anywhere or do anything with it. Crossposting of tweets or posts can be automated with third-party tools such as Buffer or dlvr.it, but the process inevitably fails at certain points because Twitter and Facebook don’t really want you to crosspost things. Each of them wants your content to live on their platform and nowhere else.
One recent exception to this rule is Threads, the new-ish service from Meta. Launched in July of 2023 as a spin-off from Instagram, Threads grew rapidly — so rapidly that it was one of the fastest-growing social services in history, gaining 100 million users in a matter of days. In another first, Threads also said from the beginning that it wanted to join the fediverse by allowing Threads posts to be federated, so that people using a fediverse client could follow a user on Threads without having to set up their own Threads account. Others are also working on fediverse integration, including Tumblr, Flipboard, and Medium, and so are some individual publishers, including 404 Media and The Verge. While it’s difficult to say exactly how many people are part of the fediverse, one estimate puts the number at almost 12 million.
Meta has kept its Threads promise
It’s probably fair to say that there was a massive amount of skepticism about Meta’s pledge to join the fediverse, since the company is not exactly known for being open to other services. In fact, Facebook is notorious for down-ranking posts that contain external links, and Instagram won’t even let users post links with their content. Instead, they have to use a third-party service to add links to their bio, and then point users there, something that is so user-hostile it’s hard to believe that it still exists. Therefore, it seemed hard to believe that Meta’s hostility to external links would suddenly change.
As difficult as it might have been to believe, however, Meta actually followed through on its promise. In March, the Threads accounts belonging to Threads manager Adam Mosseri and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined the fediverse, when the company implemented a sharing or federation mechanism that allowed anyone with a Mastodon account to follow them from the Mastodon app without having to have a Threads account. Meta has said that it is now rolling out this feature across the service.
Why would Threads do this? One possible answer is that, since Threads is the underdog compared to Twitter, Meta is hoping to use integration with the fediverse as a lever to quickly expand its user base. One internet rule of thumb has been that platforms and services that see themselves as the underdog are alway much more interested in interoperability than incumbents or monopolies are. Whether smaller incumbents are willing to look favorably on this behavior is very much an open question. A number of servers have blocked Threads integration because they believe it is going to overwhelm their services, or because they view Facebook and its ilk as a negative element.
The upside of fediverse distribution
That’s one possible downside. However, for publishers and others interested in reaching the broadest cross-section of users, Threads joining the fediverse provides a potential positive solution. One of the problems with the fediverse from an institutional standpoint is that it consists of so many services — Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Friendica to name a few — with so many different terms of service and behavior rules and other criteria that it can be hard to navigate the landscape as a publisher or news outlet interested in distributing content in the most efficient way possible.
If Threads continues its push into the fediverse, that problem could be mitigated. In this case, all a publisher would have to do is post to Threads, and have that content distributed through all of the other services that Threads is federated to. While that may solve one problem, however, doing so could create two new potential problems. One is that posting content indiscriminately to multiple social networks can be seen by users as spam-like activity, and therefore might not be received well. A second problem is that doing this would mean ceding a lot of control over a publisher’s social strategy to Threads, and therefore to Meta, which some might see as a step backwards.
In some senses, it’s a Catch-22: publishers who try to make use of all of these different platforms individually could wind up stretching themselves too thin, producing little return from a social strategy. But those who outsource their distribution to Threads and the fediverse could also wind up getting hit by a backlash, which would blunt the effectiveness of the strategy. The only possible upside is that since the fediverse is still relatively new, it’s not totally clear how it is going to evolve. But those who spend a little time experimenting with it could find themselves ahead of the curve, and wind up learning a lot about social interaction along the way.
As more and more media companies and brands hop into the podcasting space, they’re turning to tried-and-true tactics to launch new shows. But podcasts live within a unique ecosystem, and podcast listeners themselves have distinct habits when it comes to consuming audio content.
If you’re planning to launch a podcast, there are five key marketing and audience development strategies you need to be thinking of, according to Christy Mirabal, an independent podcast marketing executive. She’s spent more than a decade building audiences for audio power players like Sirius XM, Sony’s Global Podcast Division, Stitcher, and HarperAudio. Here, she shares her five tips for success in podcast marketing.
1. Get to know your listener
“You can’t really build a marketing strategy without first knowing who you are building your podcast for,” says Mirabal. “If I had a nickel for every time somebody was like, ‘Well, this podcast is for everybody,’ I’d be rich. Because that’s not true – you know, no movie is for everybody – and that’s true for podcasts, too.”
Many podcasts are hyper-focused on a topic, so they attract specific, niche audiences. And people who market audio content need to think about how to specifically connect with that niche.
“For example, if you’re making a music podcast that’s trying to reach someone in their mid-to-late ‘30s, you’re not gonna reach them on TikTok, But you might reach them at a music festival, right?” she says.
Connecting with your target audience way before launching — whether in person or through online surveys – will help a media company find out if the people they’d like to target would actually want to listen to the program they’re cooking up. Knowing why the listener wants to consume a podcast will then inform how it’s marketed when it comes time to launch.
2. Ask: What is your podcast’s end goal?
When setting key performance indicators (KPIs) for a podcast marketing plan, Mirabal recommends backing up and asking a key question: What is your company’s end goal with a podcast? That will “help establish your north star metrics,” she says.
A media company may launch a podcast with the hopes of monetizing a series through paid advertising. If that’s the case, the end goal is likely clear cut: Grow a scalable audience that’s attractive to advertisers.
“But for a lot of brands, that’s not necessarily the end goal,” Mirabal says. “Maybe they’re looking to extend their brand and get it in front of a different audience. Maybe it’s just somebody’s passion project — like someone in the c-suite really believes in something and they want to do a podcast to get the word out there. And so the KPIs that you develop, if you are making a passion project, that’s gonna be a completely different path and a different set of KPIs than if you’re trying to monetize your work.”
Setting clear goals as a team from the jump will help determine the answers to key questions: Should we have a paid marketing and audience acquisition budget? Should our strategy be focused on organic growth? Do we need to set an audience bar to sell to advertisers?
3. Bring your entire company on board
As you begin to plan your podcast’s launch date, it’s crucial to make sure there’s cross department collaboration within your organization to make sure the show’s roll out is a success.
“Map out all of your own channels where you might promote the podcast to your audience,” Mirabal says. “With bigger media companies, sometimes these channels can be very matrixed.”
Coordinate with the team who owns newsletters, those who run a site’s content operation, and the groups who steer social.
“Somebody who owns a newsletter channel might need completely different assets and different collateral than someone managing a homepage,” Mirabal says.
Bringing in the art department to work with each vertical is also key. Even though podcasting is often an audiomedium, launching and promoting a show requires engaging visual imagery.
When a potential listener is searching for a podcast to listen to, they’ll come across your show’s visual identity first.
“If you’re making a show about shoes, there are probably a decent number of podcasts that also have shoe content,” Mirabal says. “So if people search ‘shoe podcast,’ and your art is not jumping off the page, people are just not ‘gonna click on it, and you’re never going to get the chance for that listen to happen.”
4. Establish a multi-channel storytelling plan
When bringing on a podcast editorial team, it’s important to communicate early on that part of their role will be to capture content that will go beyond the podcast product itself.
If the creative team shepherding the podcast is not thinking about promotional assets while they’re conducting interviews or recordings, a marketing team may be at a loss months down the line when it comes time to launch.
“A producer would tell me about this amazing interview that they had six months ago,” Mirabal says. “And I’m like, ‘Did you get anything from it — did you get any images or did you get any video?’ And they’re like, ‘No.’ And I always ask why, because I could totally do something with that. If you’re not thinking about the promotional assets while you’re actually making the podcast, it’s such a missed opportunity for fun things that your marketing team can really utilize.”
Have your podcast production team meet with your marketing and social departments when they begin to create a new show. Ahead of interviews, reporting trips, or in-studio recordings, have the creative team share their editorial plans, and discuss what assets can be created for engaging behind-the-scenes content.
5. Work with platform partners
The vast majority of podcast listeners don’t consume content on a media company or brand’s website, They’re doing it through audio apps like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or video-based social media platforms, like YouTube.
“So digital service providers — like the Apples and Spotifys of the world — it’s important to work with them because you are getting in front of an audience that’s already listening to podcasting,” Mirabal says. “They’re looking for something to listen to. You’ve got a captive audience and more importantly, you’re preaching to the choir — they’re already listening to podcasting. You don’t even have to talk ’em into the medium.”
Mirabal says it’s important to coordinate with audio platforms on your launch strategy because they can prominently feature your podcast to hungry listeners.
“It’s a very useful way to get in front of an audience that’s literally searching for what to listen to,” she says.
Coordinating with a platform should be done months before launch – they may require special visual assets to feature your show.
“Apple Podcasts, for example, they’re looking for something that is like on par with [the type of marketing] you would find on like the movies or TV side of the Apple ecosystem — they want it cinematic, they want it lush, they want it to really stand out on the page so it can call people to listen,” Mirabal says. “You can’t just have one asset like the show art to try and tell that story.”
Despite the challenges thrown at publishers by obfuscating metrics or deliverability changes, newsletters continue to grow in importance. Media companies increasingly use email newsletters as a key tool for maintaining relationships with audiences away from social media, finding new readers, building habits, and opening new revenue streams.
At The Publisher Newsletter Summit, publishers came together to share strategies, advice and case studies on everything from newsletter monetization to audience growth.
Here are some of the strategies that they shared:
1. Don’t be afraid to center personalities
The role of journalists with followings has grown more complicated than ever in recent years. One theme that emerged at the Summit from a number of the sessions was that – if managed right – individual members of your team can serve as an incredible audience-building tool.
Women’s membership and community publisher Black Ballad started a newsletter from founder Tobi Oredein as a way to create a bond with the reader, because people build connections with humans, not brands. “Social media is very noisy,” Oredein outlined. Given that Black Ballad has paywall, she finds that “there is a barrier with people who can’t afford a membership. The newsletter is free, so everyone that’s signed up with their email gets that newsletter every week. So it’s a way to create that personal relationship.”
Leaning into this has also opened up revenue opportunities, although Oredein said that she chooses partner organizations very carefully. A recent campaign with the Founder’s Letter newsletter saw Black Ballad work with Maltesers around maternal mental health as Oredein was about to give birth to her second child.
“I wrote this newsletter on letting go of the Superwoman complex as a mum, second time around,” she explained. “It all came together and the newsletter opened the partnership; we had an editorial video that went alongside the essay, and it just went nuts. People loved the partnership. We realized that my personal newsletter opens up partnerships. Now the newsletter stands alone as the most requested advertising channel and is the most popular source of revenue for Black Ballad.”
There are risks with building newsletter audiences around individual journalists, but these can be managed. It’s an issue UK news brand The Telegraph faced when a big-name writer for their political newsletter left, and the team had to decide what to do next.
“We’ve grown [the newsletter] substantially since then,” Head of Newsletters Maire Bonheim said, explaining that they gave another political journalist a chance to fully front the newsletter. “He’s in your inbox at exactly 1pm every day. He’s really passionate about it, and he gives it his own edge. People have built up a habit and a relationship with him.”
2. Prioritize newsletters for retention and conversion
Special interest publisher Immediate Media monetizes many of its brands like Good Food and Gardeners’ World through subscriptions. Head of CRM and Customer Retention Matt Nash sees newsletters as playing a vital role in their subscription strategy, especially for long-term relationships.
“One of the big reasons why we’re so focused on newsletters from a subscription capacity is that 25% of our app subscribers received or read a newsletter before going on to subscribe,” he said. “So on average, there’s about 18 months between someone registering on Good Food and then converting to an app subscriber.”
“We also find that conversion from trials – mainly we run free trials going into paid subscriptions on the app – is around 10 percentage points higher for people that have previously been on our newsletter base before converting to a subscription.”
Nash shared that they have a two-part email strategy for pre- and post-subscription. The first half is focused around getting eyes on the website, showcasing the product and the subscription offers. “Every newsletter we send is an opportunity for us to try and convert someone if they look like they’re likely to subscribe,” he explained.
Once someone has converted, the focus switches to the “core readership phase,” where newsletters are part of a multi-channel tech stack optimized to try and get existing users to continue their subscription. The publisher uses a range of personalization options, from content type to send frequency and time to hit the readers at just the right frequency for them.
3. Consider repackaging content for educational courses
A number of publishers offer newsletter “courses” with a clear start and end point as an alternative way of engaging audiences. As part of its newsletter strategy, Pew Research Center launched an email course, which allowed them to leverage their reports and blog posts on U.S. Immigration. More recently The Guardian released a five-week email coaching plan called Reclaim Your Brain, which has attracted over 140,000 sign-ups.
Seeing examples like these, Ruth Hardy-Mullings, Head of Content at Community Care, a publication for social workers, wondered if newsletter courses could help solve some of their challenges. Their biggest driver of traffic was their weekly newsletter. She was also aware of the friction readers faced finding time to log onto the website and proactively seek out training content. A course delivered straight to their inbox would be a good way to prove value.
They launched some test courses in March 2021, delivering six emails a week over a three week period. “We took the content from longer guides and hosted it within the body of the email itself, so it solved that problem of having to go and log in on the site,” Hardy-Mullings explained. “Someone was able to open up their email, read the content and get that learning wherever they are, whether they’re in a car before they go and do a home visit, on their commute home, making use of those small amounts of time that people do have.”
Each email had a recap section at the beginning, a progress bar to keep people motivated, further reading links, and a reflective exercise at the end. Hardy-Mullings noted that signing up for a finite period of time was helpful for professionals who get thousands of emails. “The general feedback was that people really loved the convenience of the course and that format of learning, a good way that could genuinely fit into their working week,” she said.
Email courses may not suit every publisher. However, they can be a strong way of repurposing evergreen content, reducing friction points for membership organizations, or giving samples of journalism for paywalled publications, to name a few use cases.
4. Prioritize list-cleaning for a healthy newsletter strategy
One of the most revealing sessions at the Summit was Maire Bonheim and David Alexander, Head and Deputy Head of Newsletters respectively at The Telegraph. They talked about how to turn around an underperforming newsletter, and noted that they often have to use different tactics across almost 40 newsletters in their portfolio.
Alexander was keen to emphasize that although metrics have a place in your newsletter strategy, they need to be the right ones. “If you put all your effort into getting a massive list, and you trick people into signing up to your newsletter, they’ll get it. But no one will care because they didn’t mean to get it in the first place,” he explained. “You’ll have a massive list, and over time, your email provider will think it’s spam, and they’ll just put it in everybody’s junk. Pursuing vanity stats is a fool’s game. Massive lists are not the aim. You want people to read your stuff.”
Clearing lists and pursuing slower, more genuine engagement is a braver path to take, especially with other commercial and business pressures publishers face. Bonheim said that they have different time periods for list cleaning different newsletters. “If a newsletter is a daily send, then we wait a shorter amount of time before we list cleanse, whereas if something’s weekly or even monthly, we wait longer,” she explained.
The Telegraph was also facing an issue where when some marketing emails were sent to editorial newsletter segments, readers were getting confused and newsletters were ending up in the promotions tab.
“As a whole at The Telegraph… the volume of emails had gone up hugely, and we needed to get smarter about our overall email strategy and cleverer about who we segment and target,” Bonheim said, explaining that they send warnings about removing readers from lists if they don’t ‘Click to stay’. “So to combat that, we became much more stringent with our list cleanse emails, and that seems to be having a positive impact.”
The takeaway
These strategies may not work for every publisher, and one theme which emerged strongly from the Publisher Newsletter Summit is that newsletters can be used for a wide range of different purposes. The key is to be very clear for each newsletter what its purpose is, and how that will be measured.
“[Key metrics] are so different across all our titles,” said Alexander of his work on The Telegraph’s newsletters. “I’ve worked on newsletters that have had almost 1,000 words in them, and people want to read them more than anything. I’ve also looked after newsletters where it’s all about getting people through to the site. You have to be really clear on what’s important.”
Whether it’s exploring the potential of short email ‘courses’ or letting editors take a personal lead, there are plenty of ways to freshen up a newsletter strategy. But whether this is through iterative changes, pivots or launches, keep the newsletter’s purpose front and center.
For media companies investigating how to incorporate AI into their operations, open chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Bard are often a natural starting point. Thanks to OpenAI’s game-changing launch of ChatGPT for public use in 2022, AI has essentially become synonymous with chatbots in the public mind, so it’s unsurprising that’s where many media companies turn first when experimenting with AI.
Open chatbots certainly have useful applications, but they also have some serious limitations. The user experience for these chatbots varies widely. They place a burden on the user to know how to engineer prompts that will generate good results, which can lead to significant user fatigue. Media companies will get more value from AI by going beyond basic chatbots to build capabilities that will deliver better results and a better experience for users.
Creating a better chatbot
The success of any AI-powered chatbot comes down to what’s underneath. The Washington Post has launched an excellent climate chatbot, which works well because they invested in building the underlying functionality from the ground up. They also emphasized providing trustworthy responses because the underlying large-language model synthesizes information from Washington Post articles published since 2016 in their Climate & Environment and Weather sections. The chatbot is also highly controlled and tightly framed to focus on climate coverage, which delivers a better experience than open chatbots.
Building a good chatbot requires many different technologies. First, a chatbot needs to have a solid system prompt behind it that defines what it is and is not supposed to do. Second, the chatbot needs to be based on a fast, performant model, which could include OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s BERT, or other large-language models. The platform needs to be quick in order to deliver answers in real time. And finally, the chatbot model needs to be trained to ensure it does what you want it to do.
It’s also important to remember that AI doesn’t have to be synonymous with a chat- or prompt-based interface. Based on the use case, a button, an automated feature, or a call to another application might be more appropriate.
Leveling up with fine tuning and vectors
To truly deliver meaningful applications of AI with significant business value, media organizations should look to fine tuning and vector databases. These advanced capabilities allow chatbots and other AI applications to be customized to meet an organization’s specific needs and operate with a deep understanding of its content base.
Fine tuning trains an AI model to deliver results that are tailored to your requirements. It essentially tells the model to read all of your content and learn exactly what you want it to do and what the results should be. For example, with fine tuning, an AI model can learn to generate headlines in a specific length or style. This can be done even down to the author level, with the model learning how to detect who the content creator is and return a headline or summary in their tone of voice.
Vector databases go a step further by building a knowledge map of all of your content— you could even think of a vector database as a miniature brain that serves as the “memory” for your AI applications. At a basic level, a vector database stores data or content in various formats (a single word, a story, a photo, a video, etc.) and creates a numerical representation of that content. The numbers assigned to each piece of content are used to calculate its distance from other content in terms of relevance. Mapping content relationships in this way enables powerful search and recommendation applications.
To understand fine tuning and vector databases in practical terms, we can look at the example of using AI for content tagging. A general-purpose AI model like GPT can look at a story and identify keywords or topics that could be used for tagging, but it doesn’t understand your specific tagging requirements.
Fine tuning the model will incorporate your tagging requirements. For example, if you have a specific set of approved tags, it will return a result that’s tailored to those needs. A vector database will not only know your whole tag library but will also understand the relationships between tags and identify overlaps that will help with powering search and content recommendations.
It’s an exciting time for AI in the media industry, with new developments emerging every month. Building your own AI capabilities can be daunting, and software vendor offerings for AI vary widely. If you spend some time learning about the possibilities for AI, including chatbots and beyond, you’ll be well positioned to create your AI strategy and identify the technologies and vendors that can help you achieve your goals.
Creativity fuels innovation and expression across various media disciplines. With the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs), many question how these technologies will influence human creativity. While generative AI may effectively enhance productivity across sectors, its impact on creative processes remains questioned. New research, Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content, investigates AI’s effect on the creative output of short (or micro) fiction. While the research focuses on short stories, the study examines how generative AI influences the production of creative expression, which has larger implications.
Creative assessment
The study evaluates creativity based on two main dimensions: novelty and usefulness. Novelty refers to the story’s originality and uniqueness. Usefulness relates to its potential to develop into a publishable piece. The study randomly assigns participants to one of three experimental conditions for writing a short story: Human-only, Human with one Generative AI idea, and Human with five Generative AI ideas.
The AI-assisted conditions include three-sentence story ideas to inspire creative narratives. This design allows the researchers to assess how AI-generated prompts affect the creativity, quality, and enjoyment of the stories produced. Both writers and 600 independent evaluators assessed these dimensions, providing a comprehensive view of the stories’ creative merit across different conditions.
Usage and creativity
In the two generative AI conditions, 88.4% of participants used AI to generate an initial story idea. In the “Human with one Gen AI idea” group, 82 out of 100 writers did this, while in the “Human with five Gen AI ideas” group, 93 out of 98 writers did the same. When given the option to use AI multiple times in the “Human with five GenAI ideas” group, participants averaged 2.55 requests, with 24.5% asking for a maximum of five ideas.
The findings from the independent evaluators show that access to generative AI significantly enhances the creativity and quality of short stories. Writers who use AI-generated ideas to produce stories consistently rate higher in creativity and writing quality than those written without AI assistance. This effect was particularly noticeable in the Human with five GenAI ideas condition, suggesting that increasing exposure to AI-generated prompts leads to greater creative output.
However, the study also uncovers notable similarities among stories generated with AI assistance. This suggests that while AI can enhance individual creativity, it also homogenizes creative outputs, diminishing the diversity of innovative elements and perspectives. The benefits of generative AI for individual writers may come at the cost of reduced collective novelty in creative outputs.
Implications for stakeholders
Despite several limitations, the research highlights the complex interplay between AI and creativity across different artistic domains. These limitations restrict the creative task by length (eight sentences), medium (writing), and type of output (short story). Additionally, there is no interaction with the LLM or variation in prompts. Future studies should explore longer and more varied creative tasks, different AI models, and the ethical considerations surrounding AI’s role in creative text and video production. Examining the cultural and economic implications in creative media sectors and balancing innovation with preserving artistic diversity is essential.
Generative AI can enhance human creativity by providing novel ideas and streamlining the creative processes. However, its integration into creative media processes must be thoughtful to safeguard the richness and diversity of artistic expression. This study sets the stage for further exploration into generative AI’s evolving capabilities and ethical implications in fostering creativity across diverse artistic domains. As AI technologies evolve, understanding their impact on human creativity is crucial for harnessing their full potential while preserving the essence of human innovation and expression.
To stand out in the “AI-age,” media companies are emphasizing direct relationships with the audience. We’re also seeing the resurgence of the homepage, the emergence of AI-powered editorial workflows, and an increased need for strong data management. As we wrote last month, this is being driven by the fact that quality is of utmost importance as generative AI drives the cost to produce generic content down to zero and Google search shifts to focus on offering “answers” instead of driving traffic.
Now, we’ll walk through trends we’re seeing in media product management, and how teams are aligning to drive results in this new paradigm.
The ascendancy of product management
As media organizations refocus on delivering content of the highest quality, combined with an excellent user experience (that people want to pay for), the role of the product manager is changing somewhat as various teams try to institute changes on the digital experience.
These changes might be editorial teams creating new workflows, revenue teams adding more ads and popups, engineering teams building fancy bespoke front ends—normal stuff that has been part of media forever. What’s changed somewhat is product management’s share of voice. Do product managers just take orders and make it happen, or can they say no? Who is speaking for the user? Who is advocating for a clean content experience? What makes your subscription stand out?
As direct relationships and the homepage get more important, product management is finding itself in a more strategic position. The challenge is in balancing the needs of discrete teams with the needs of their audience—and the needs of everyone with the needs of the business.
Focus on innovation and fundamentals
Organizations are taking an extremely hard look at where they spend their engineering dollars. These organizations are assessing how much of their team’s work is dedicated to maintenance versus creating new revenue-generating features.
For example, the ability to handle traffic spikes. If they’re doing all the maintenance of keeping the site up for traffic spikes and similar occurrences, leadership are thinking about whether that can be outsourced to a managed platform that specializes in that work and can thus do it more cost-effectively.
This focus on innovation introduces the drive towards open-source. With open source, you can let the community maintain the software, for free. You just customize on top of it.
Those not using open source are burning money and missing out
If the engineering team is celebrating introducing something like Authors and Permissions to the tech stack, it’s time to ask critical questions. These features have been available in open-source CMSes for more than a decade. Why is anyone reinventing the wheel? “We’ll make it ourselves and it’ll be better” is a common trap. Couldn’t something more productive have been done with those engineering hours?
Besides embracing open source, we’re also seeing more consolidation in tech stacks—a broad organization with many distinct properties might be moving from having four CMSes down to just one. This reduces friction from new feature releases and enhances learnings across publications or business units.
The most interesting thing we are seeing in this area is a major spike in contribution back to the open source community in terms of code, best practices, and more. This is perhaps a tacit acknowledgement that content, not technology, is the real differentiator for media organizations.
Headless architecture is losing steam
Headless was all the hotness in engineering for a while. Now we’re seeing media organizations choose monolithic (or “full stack”) implementations. Simply put, the bet on headless hasn’t paid off for many media use cases.
Frequently, the needs of these sites are pretty simple—serving written content to the end user. Most open-source CMSes can power both the front end and the back end. Choosing to develop their own headless front end is choosing to create costly tech debt—and most media engineering teams don’t have money to spare. This change opens up all the time they spent creating and maintaining basic front-end technology for reprioritization towards revenue-generating engineering.
The “desire line” we’re walking
A desire line is an “unplanned route or path (such as one worn into a grassy surface by repeated foot traffic) that is used by pedestrians in preference to or in the absence of a designated alternative (such as a paved pathway).” Frequently it’s because this path is simply the most efficient path between points A and B.
With media products, the desire line is straightforward: the platforms are unreliable sources of traffic, and there isn’t enough money to fund anything but the most efficient paths forward. This is why we are seeing organizations across the industry align on direct, subscriber-based relationships. And, to support these efforts, media organizations are focused on the efficient use of engineering resources via open-source technology. The most exciting part here is that—because we are not all just producers but also consumers of news and media—the reader experience itself is getting better. It has to be better, in order to justify a subscription.
In the fast-paced world of digital publishing, the latest wave of developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a welcome solution to the organized chaos of ad operations. Yet, despite its transformative potential, many media companies struggle with the adoption of AI technology. Costly implementation, complex integrations, and a shortage of AI-savvy professionals are hurdles slowing adoption to a snail’s pace.
For media executives looking to move faster, the answer is simple: purpose-built AI solutions. Forget everything you know about generic AI technology. The real magic happens with AI solutions specifically built – for a very specific purpose. By embracing a tailored approach, media executives can accelerate AI adoption with purpose-built solutions that deliver immediate value and growth.
But to harness AI’s power, understanding the strategic advantage of purpose-built AI solutions is crucial. These specialized tools can help media companies reduce implementation issues and offer tangible benefits. Let’s explore the common challenges in media operations that custom AI tools can address.
Unpacking the challenges in digital media operations
Operationally, digital publishers have their work cut out for them in today’s digital media ecosystem. Fragmented data, inefficient, manual workflows, and complexity management in ad operations create significant challenges. These issues slow down processes and hinder the ability to quickly adapt to market changes.
This is where a purpose-built AI solution can deliver a strategic advantage over a generic AI tool. Think of a generic AI tool as a Swiss Army knife – versatile but not specialized for any one task. In contrast, a purpose-built AI solution is like a precision scalpel, expertly designed for a specific function, ensuring optimal performance and efficiency in that area. Now, let’s explore how these tailored solutions can specifically address implementation challenges.
Finding and implementing AI solutions involves extensive testing and high costs. However, purpose-built AI sidesteps these challenges with pre-designed functionalities that can be implemented quickly and efficiently. Here’s how these tailored solutions address common implementation hurdles.
Lower implementation costs
The initial investment in AI technology, including hardware, software, and skilled personnel, can be prohibitively expensive. However, purpose-built AI solutions are pre-designed for specific tasks, reducing the need for extensive custom development. This lowers both initial investment and ongoing costs.
Simplified integrations
Integrating AI systems with existing workflows often proves difficult, requiring significant time and resources. But purpose-built solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with existing workflows and technologies, minimizing the complexity and time required for setup. They offer specific capabilities that streamline the integration process.
Unified data management
Disparate data sources and poor data quality hinder AI performance. According to Theorem’s research, 33% of ad professionals cite a lack of centralized tools as a major pain point. Purpose-built AI solutions consolidate data sources, improving quality and consistency. This unified approach enables more accurate insights, better decision-making, and more effective ad targeting.
User-friendly
There is often a shortage of professionals with the expertise needed to develop, implement, and maintain AI systems. With user-friendly interfaces and automated features, purpose-built AI solutions reduce the dependency on specialized AI talent. This makes it easier for existing staff to utilize and manage the AI system.
Faster deployment
These solutions are designed for specific workflows and processes, which reduces the development cycle, while accelerating deployment, and team training. Organizations can rapidly implement the solution and hit the ground running.
With implementation challenges out of the way, more on the tangible benefits and rapid results purpose-built AI solutions have to offer.
Benefits and strategic growth opportunities
Purpose-built, custom AI solutions offer a number of benefits and opportunities for growth, including:
Immediate value
With an AI solution specifically designed to automate ad operations, implementation and adoption shift from labor-intensive to quick and easy. This allows media companies to quickly realize productivity gains by tapping into ready-to-launch solutions almost instantly.
Scalability
These solutions are built to scale seamlessly with the company’s growth. As your business expands and evolves, purpose-built AI solutions can adapt to new requirements and increased workloads. This flexibility ensures sustained performance and supports long-term success without the need for constant reinvestment in new technologies.
Cost-effectiveness
Purpose-built AI solutions offer significant cost benefits. Processes are streamlined, makegoods and errors decrease. And, as a result, implementation and operational costs are reduced.
New revenue generation
Purpose-built AI solutions can identify new revenue streams and optimize existing ones. For example, an AI solution built specifically to increase engagement through more targeted, personalized advertising can generate more ad revenue. Or consider the impact of a solution designed to predict what type of content will be popular in the future. This solution would allow publishers to focus on creating content that is more likely to attract and retain users, driving more revenue.
Maintaining a competitive edge in digital media’s turbulent ecosystem today requires the ability to act swiftly and strategically. Understanding the benefits is just the beginning, now it’s time to take action.
Practical steps to drive quick adoption of purpose-built AI solutions
Implementing purpose-built AI solutions can be streamlined with the right approach. By following these steps, your organization can swiftly integrate AI technology and start reaping the benefits.
Start by identifying key areas where AI can have the most impact with a thorough assessment of current processes.
Prioritize those that promise the quickest wins and greatest value. Next, research and select AI solutions with capabilities that align with your business goals and workflow challenges.
Measure the potential impact on data, infrastructure and governance to ensure smoother AI adoption.
Identify training needs and assess any ethical considerations.
Carefully evaluate vendors based on functionality, ease of integration, and proven success.
Begin with a pilot implementation, test the solution in a controlled environment, gather feedback, and make necessary adjustments before a full rollout.
Investing in a purpose-built AI solution is a long-term strategy that yields ongoing benefits as the technology evolves. Much like choosing a tailored suit that fits perfectly vs a suit off the rack, it offers the precise fit and functionality needed to drive strategic growth. Those who embrace it now stand to reap immediate productivity gains, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
The data is clear: a chasm exists between what traditional news offers and what younger audiences crave. Decades of research haven’t bridged this gap, and proposed solutions often fall short. Blumler and McQuail’s (1970) Need for Gratification Theory suggests people use media to fulfill specific desires. You do have to wonder if the problem a mismatch in needs. Perhaps traditional news fails to satisfy younger generations’ hunger for in-depth analysis or a more positive outlook, driving them to seek information elsewhere. This disconnect demands a fresh approach – one that bridges the gap and fosters genuine connection.
A Spring 2023 Harvard Youth Poll reveals that young Americans prioritize economic concerns like inflation, healthcare, housing, and job availability, alongside social justice and environmental issues like reproductive rights, climate change, and immigration. This focus mirrors global trends. However, traditional media coverage often falls short on these topics. The rise of “alternative platforms” and the demand for short, relatable, and authentic content signals a broader shift in news consumption. Furthermore, Gen X’s declining interest and the perception of traditional media content as distant, pedantic, and delivered on outdated platforms underscore the need to completely rethink how we deliver news.
Despite the challenges, a bright future awaits news media built on growth and audience engagement. The key lies in a shift towards hyper-local coverage. This doesn’t mean abandoning national and global news. Rather, it means prioritizing content that resonates with the local audience. Imagine relatable journalists delivering stories on local issues through engaging formats like social media posts, listicles, explainers, and high-quality video content. This focus has demonstrably built loyal readership and increased audience size for news organizations around the country.
A decline in news interest among Gen X and Millennials, as reported by the Pew Research Center, and a growing preference for authenticity in news presenters, according to Reuters 2022 Digital News Report, paint a clear picture of the current news consumption landscape. Addressing these audience preferences and tailoring content to local issues can foster greater trust and engagement with news media.
The solution seems straightforward: connect the dots between state or regional events and their impact on local communities. However doing this effectively is harder than it seems. News outlets must transition from high-level reporting to a more responsible and objective approach. This means translating complex issues into clear, concise explanations that highlight the specific impact on people’s daily lives. For example, a national story on rising gas prices might be tailored locally to show how much transportation costs have increased in your city and how residents are coping.
Take, for instance, the Miami Herald’s recent spring climate change article on sea levels rising. This article uses multimedia storytelling to explore the rising sea level’s impact on Miami, a city particularly vulnerable to coastal flooding. The article features data insights from local scientists and researchers and explains how climate change is affecting the city’s infrastructure and communities. By connecting the global threat of climate change to the specific challenges faced by Miami, this article highlights the urgency of addressing sea level rise. This focus on local impacts can potentially empower younger audiences to engage with the issue in their city, and “actionability” is something that is particularly resonant with this group.
As we navigate the evolving media landscape and changing news consumption habits, traditional media must redefine its role. It should not only inform, but also serve as a vital resource for today’s and tomorrow’s generations. This shift is crucial for both local and national news outlets as they strive to bridge the generational gap and earn trust.
Younger audiences increasingly seek news that offers practical and useful information for their daily lives. This demand highlights the need for journalism to evolve beyond reporting. News organizations must provide guidance and resources on various topics, offering actionable insights that empower readers.
The challenge lies in transforming news into actionable resources that not only inform but also empower and engage audiences. Organizations like NPR have shown the way by expanding their coverage to include comprehensive guides and interactive tools on topics like financial planning and mental health resources. These resources equip readers to make informed decisions and take meaningful action based on factual reporting.
By providing practical resources alongside factual reporting, news organizations can empower readers with deeper understanding and the tools they need to take action. This ensures content remains informative while upholding journalistic integrity. In an era where accessible knowledge and meaningful impact are highly valued, this approach fosters informed decision-making and strengthens audience engagement.
Embracing hyper-local coverage and authentic storytelling will enable news organizations to bridge the chasm that separates them from Gen X and Millennials. Focusing on issues that directly impact these audiences’ daily lives fosters a sense of relevance and connection. Authentic voices, relatable formats, and clear explanations that empower readers with actionable insights will cultivate trust and engagement. This also translates to a more valuable audience for advertisers, potentially leading to increased revenue streams.
In essence, a focus on local issues and a commitment to genuine storytelling that makes issues personally relevant represents a strategic investment in the future of news. By prioritizing content that resonates with younger generations, news organizations can not only ensure their long-term sustainability but also cultivate a more engaged and informed citizenry. A future where news is relevant, sustainable, and fosters meaningful connections between audiences and journalists is entirely within reach.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics heralded the digital transformation of Games coverage. Fans no longer need to stay glued to the TV to see what they want. Nor do they have to or solely rely on news titles to keep them up to speed on the big picture. Younger audiences in particular consumed highlight clips rather than watching linear coverage and followed their favorite athletes on social media to gain a more in-depth, behind-the-scenes insights. In fact, the IOC clocked6.1 billion digital engagements on Olympic social media channels during the competition.
Four years later, as we approach the Paris event, these trends are again set to influence international consumption of Olympic content. News and sports organizations have already learned from these new social media-inspired audience dynamics, with live blogs offering a valuable means of competing with social channels for mainstream media share of voice. The delivery of real-time, snackable content that enables interactivity will continue to be essential in 2024 Olympics coverage. Still, there are also new, broader issues to address to capture audience share – particularly among Gen Z, or ‘the purpose generation‘.
Beyond the sport
Olympics coverage is no longer simply about sport. Athletes and governments have always used the Games to spotlightpertinent social and political issues, from Black Power and anti-apartheid to LGBTQI. Now, younger generations increasingly see the potential for activism from the sidelines. Environmental sustainability and the participation of transgender athletes have emerged as important topics for Paris 2024. There’s also likely to be an impact from the substantial political tension caused by the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts on the event. Newsrooms will need to have one eye on the sport, and one eye on the bigger picture to ensure audience engagement.
News providers covering the Olympics must, therefore, up their game (pun intended), adopting audience-first strategies that cater to theneeds of Gen Z and beyond to ensure they compete in the race against social media for audience share. They must deliver authentic, personalized, and interactive content that addresses both the event and the wider issues surrounding it.
Incorporating multiple, intertwined storylines to provide greater depth and insight and encourage engagement will be vital. By doing so, they can boost traffic, dwell time or subscription conversions and encourage brands keen for Olympics association to spend money on advertising.
Prepare for the marathon, not the sprint
However, with the Games lasting two weeks and spanning 320 different competitions across 32 sports, it’s no easy feat to keep audiences up to date on the sports that interest them, provide athlete and behind-the-scenes insights and tune into the wider news stories that intersect with the Olympics. Newsrooms must, therefore, box clever when it comes to delivering on audience expectations.
Live blogs offer an important starting block to help reach this goal. They allow newsrooms to create an engaging and responsive experience tailored to the audience’s preferences by offering real-time updates, encouraging active participation, and enabling a multimedia-rich format. But live blogs can also go beyond real-time news to deliver much more.
Curated content to meet multiple audience needs
The beauty of the live blog format for long events such as the Olympics is that it allows content to be curated, drawing on a range of mixed media to tell the wider story and showcasing numerous perspectives in easily digestible snippets. From integrating Q&As with athletes and coaches for greater depth of insight to fans’ social media posts, multimedia clips of key moments or retrospective and contextual news bits relating to the environmental, political and social issues surrounding the games, live blogs can effectively serve a wide range of audience expectations.
The 2022 European Championships ably demonstrated how live blogs can communicate complex event information in simple terms for spectators, volunteers and employees. From rain delays and available transportation to coverage of medal winners, funny anecdotes and heart-wrenching athlete stories, reporters delivered both range and depth of coverage, harnessing the live blog’s visual storytelling power to share close to 600 photos of what made the event so unique. Custom tags allowed each post to be categorized so that users could easily search for and access the information they wanted.
User-generated content (UGC) creates a more engaging and inclusive narrative beyond just text. Surveys, polls, unique social media hashtags, and live comment blocks all enable a two-way flow of information. Stufffrequently uses this to good effect in their live blog coverage, giving its passionate sports community the chance to engage on topics such as the All Blacks World Cup Squad Announcement, and the team’s return home. This involves audiences in the reporting process and establishes a sense of community to strengthen the media-audience relationship.
Live blogs also allow individual journalist and editorial styles to shine through, creating further audience bonds. We see many young journalists creating social-style videos to tell stories, with their personalities influencing how viewers consume content. DER SPIEGEL’s reporters demonstrated the power of personality intheir coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, expressing personal opinions, cracking jokes and reacting with emojis in a lively dialogue. This gives the audience a deeper understanding of the people behind the content, injecting personality and making it more relatable and authentic.
On your mark, get set, go!
The evolution of Olympics coverage reflects the changing preferences of audiences, particularly younger generations. As we look forward to the Paris 2024 Olympics, it’s clear that news and sports organizations must continue to adapt to digital and social media consumption to compete. In order to capture and maintain audience engagement, a focus on delivering real-time, interactive, and curated content that addresses both the sporting events and the broader social, political, and environmental issues surrounding the Games is crucial.
Live blogs have emerged as a valuable tool for providing both real-time and in-depth coverage while catering to diverse audience needs and preferences. As newsrooms prepare for the marathon-like coverage of the two-week event, prioritizing audience-first strategies will be essential to ensure a meaningful and immersive Olympic experience for all. Leveraging live blogs during the Games enables publishers to inform, educate, engage, and connect with audiences on a new level.
Last month, I co-led a week-long journalism program during which we visited 16 newsrooms, media outlets and tech companies in New York. This study tour provided an in-depth snapshot of the biggest issues facing the media today and offered insights into some of the potential solutions publishers are exploring to address them.
We met with everyone from traditional media players – like The New York Times, Associated Press, CBS and Hearst – to digital providers such as Complex Media and ProPublica, as well as conversations with academics and policy experts. Based upon these visits and conversations, here are four key takeaways about the state of media and content publishing today.
1. Hands-on AI experience matters
Not surprisingly, AI dominated many conversations. Although recent research shows the American public is both skeptical and surprisingly unaware of these tools, the emergence of Generative AI – and the discussions around it – are impossible to ignore.
One mantra oft repeated throughout the week was that everyone in the media will need to be conversant with AI. Despite this, research has shown that many newsrooms are hesitant about adopting these technologies. Others, however, are taking a more proactive approach. “I like playing offense, not defense, Aimee Rinehart, Senior Product Manager AI Strategy at the Associated Press, told us. “Figure out how the tools work and your limits.”
With many media companies having to do more with less, AI can help improve workflows, support labor-intensive work like investigative journalism, as well as streamline and diversify content creation and distribution. By harnessing these AI-powered functions, smaller outlets may benefit the most, given the efficiencies these resource-strapped players may be able to unlock.
Reporting on AI is also an emerging journalistic beat. This is an area more newsrooms are likely to invest in, given AI’s potential to radically reshape our lives. As Hilke Schellmann, an Emmy‑award winning investigative reporter and journalism professor at NYU, told us “we used to hold powerful people to account, now we have to add holding AI accountable.”
Echoing Schellmann’s sentiments, “every journalist should be experimenting with AI,” one ProPublica journalist said. “We owe it to our audience to know what this is capable of.”
2. Demonstrating distinctiveness and value is imperative
One fear of an AI-driven world is that traffic to publishers will tank as Generative Search, and tools like ChatGPT, remove the need for users to visit the sites of creators and information providers. In that environment, distinctiveness, trustworthy and fresh content becomes more valuable than ever. “You need to produce journalism that gives people a reason to show up,” says Ryan Knutson, co-host of The Wall Street Journal’s daily news podcast, The Journal.
In response, publishers will need to demonstrate their expertise and unique voice. That means leaning more into service journalism, exclusives, and formats like explainers, analysis, newsletters, and podcasts.
Bloomberg’s John Authers, exemplifies this in his daily Points of Return newsletter. With more than three decades of experience covering markets and investments, he brings a longitudinal and distinctive human perspective to his reporting. Alongside this, scoops still matter, Authers suggests. After all, “journalism is about finding out something other people don’t know,” he says.
Media players also need to make a more effective case as to why original content needs to be supported and paid for. As Gaetane Michelle Lewis, SEO leader at the Associated Press, put it, “part of our job is communicating to the audience what we have and that you need it.”
For a non-profit like ProPublica that means demonstrating impact. They publish three impact reports a year, and their Annual Report highlights how their work has led to change at a time when “many newsrooms can no longer afford to take on this kind of deep-dive reporting.”
“Our North Star is the potential to make a positive change through impact,” Communications Director, Alexis Stephens, said. And she emphasized how “this form of journalism is critical to democracy.”
The New York Times’ business model is very different but its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, has similarly advocated for the need for independent journalism. As he put it, “a fully informed society not only makes better decisions but operates with more trust, more empathy, and greater care.”
Given the competition from AI, streaming services, and other sources of attention, media outlets will increasingly need to advocate more forcefully for support through subscriptions, donations, sponsorships, and advertising. In doing this, they’ll need to address what sets them apart from the competition, and why this matters on a wider societal level.
“This is a perilous time for the free press,” Sulzberger told The New Yorker last year. “That reality should animate anyone who understands its central importance in a healthy democracy.”
3. Analytics and accessibility go hand in hand
Against this backdrop, finding and retaining audiences is more important than ever. However, keeping their attention is a major challenge. Data from Chartbeat revealed that half the audiences visiting outlets in their network stay on a site for fewer than 15 seconds.
This has multiple implications. From a revenue perspective, this may mean users aren’t on a page long enough for ad impressions to count. It also challenges outlets to look at how content is produced and presented.
In a world where media providers continue to emphasize growing reader revenues, getting audiences to dig deeper and stay for longer, is essential. “The longer someone reads, the more likely they are to return,” explained Chartbeat’s CMO Jill Nicolson.
There isn’t a magic wand to fix this. Tools for publishers to explore include compelling headlines, effective formats, layout, and linking strategies. Sometimes, Nicolson said, even small modifications can make all the difference.
These efforts don’t just apply to your website. They apply to every medium you use. Brendan Dunne of Complex Media referred to the need for “spicy titles” for episodes of their podcasts and YouTube videos. Julia D’Apolito, Associate Social Editor at Hearst Magazines, shared how their approach to content might be reversed. “We’ve been starting to do social-first projects… and then turning them into an article,” she said, rather than the other way round.
Staff at The New York Times also spoke about the potential for counter-programing. One way to combat news fatigue and avoidance is to shine a light on your non-news content. The success of NYT verticals such as Cooking, Wirecutter, and Games shows how diversifying content can create a more compelling and immersive proposition, making audiences return more often.
Lastly, language and tone matters. As one ProPublica journalist put it, “My editor always says pretend like you’re writing for Sesame Steet. Make things accurate, but simple.” Reflecting on their podcasts, Dunne also stresses the need for accessibility. “People want to feel like they’re part of a group chat, not a lecture,” he said.
Fundamentally, this also means being more audience-centric in the way that stories are approached and told. “Is the angle that’s interesting to us as editors the same as our audiences?” Nicolson asked us. Too often, the data would suggest, it is not.
4. Continued concern about the state of local news
Finally, the challenges faced by local news media, particularly newspapers, emerged in several discussions. Steven Waldman, the Founder and CEO of Rebuild Local News, reminded us that advertising revenue at local newspapers had dropped 82% in two decades. The issue is not “that the readers left the papers,” he said, “it’s that the advertisers did.”
For Waldman, the current crisis is an opportunity not just to “revive local news,” but also to “make better local news.” This means creating a more equitable landscape with content serving a wider range of audiences and making newsrooms more diverse. “Local news is a service profession,” he noted. “You’re serving the community, not the newsroom.”
According to new analysis, the number of partisan-funded outlets designed to appear like impartial news sources (so-called “pink slime” sites) now surpasses the number of genuine local daily newspapers in the USA. This significantly impacts the news and information communities receive, shaping their worldviews and decision-making.
Into this mix, AI is also rearing its ugly head. While it can be hugely beneficial for some media companies—“AI is the assistant I prayed for,” saysParis Brown, associate editor of The Baltimore Times. However, it can also be used to fuel misinformation, accelerating pink slime efforts.
“AI is supercharging lies,” one journalist at ProPublica told us, pointing to the emergence of “cheap fakes” alongside “deep fakes,” as content which can confirm existing biases. The absence of boots on the ground makes it harder for these efforts to be countered. Yet, as Hilke Schellmann, reminded us “in a world where we are going to be swimming in generative text, fact-checking is more important [than ever].”
This emerging battleground makes it all the more important for increased funding for local news. Legislative efforts, increased support from philanthropy, and other mechanisms can all play a role in helping grow and diversify this sector. Steven Waldman puts it plainly: “We have to solve the business model and the trust model at the same time,” he said.
All eyes on the future
The future of media is being written today, and our visit to New York provided a detailed insight into the principles and mindsets that will shape these next few chapters.
From the transformative potential of AI, to the urgent need to demonstrate distinctiveness and value, it is clear that sustainability has to be rooted in adaptability and innovation.
Using tools like AI and Analytics to inform decisions, while balancing this with a commitment to quality and community engagement is crucial. Media companies who fail to harness these technologies are likely to get left behind.
In an AI-driven world, more than ever, publishers need to stand out or risk fading away. Original content, unique voices, counter-programming, being “audience first,” and other strategies can all play a role in this. Simultaneously, media players must also actively advocate for why their original content needs to be funded and paid for.
Our week-long journey through the heart of New York’s media landscape challenged the narrative that news media and journalism are dying. It isn’t. It’s just evolving. And fast.
The fediverse buzz continues to grow, with articles highlighting the potential to revolutionize the digital landscape. Proponents say it’s similar to the Internet’s early days, before Big Tech platforms built their algorithmic fiefdoms. Instead, the fediverse is about interoperability and flexibility.
Media companies are always on the lookout for ways to attract new audiences and engage more meaningfully with their readers. And – given Google’s experimentation with AI answers and social sites “distancing themselves from news” – finding new routes to audience development has become an increasing imperative.
The decentralized nature of the fediverse offers a compelling alternative to traditional search and social. Importantly, this approach allows media companies to retain their direct relationship with audiences, which removes the dependency on social and big-tech platforms for reaching new people.
Unlike traditional social media platforms that operate within closed ecosystems, fediverse represents a decentralized network of interconnected servers and platforms. It comprises a federation of independent servers, each hosting its social media platform.
These platforms, which range from microblogging to image sharing to video hosting, communicate using standard protocols. Their interoperability allows people on different servers to interact seamlessly. The fediverse decentralizes media companies by enabling them to distribute their content across interconnected servers and platforms rather than relying on a single, centralized platform.
Emphasis on choice and control
Unlike centralized platforms, where a single server owned by the platform provider stores user data and content, fediverse lets people choose their server. This server is selected based on individual preferences regarding privacy, content moderation, and community guidelines. This decentralized approach empowers audiences by putting them in charge of their online experience. It also mitigates concerns about data ownership and platform censorship. For media companies, this translates into an environment where people are more likely to engage with content they trust and have control over.
Encouraging diversity and inclusivity
The fediverse enables people to connect across different platforms and communities within the federation. For example, a user on a microblogging platform can follow and interact with users on a video hosting platform. This functionality breaks down the barriers that typically separate content and conversations on traditional social media platforms. This cross-platform interaction fosters a rich tapestry of ideas, perspectives, and content, creating a more vibrant and dynamic online ecosystem. Media companies can leverage this aspect of fediverse to reach diverse audiences actively seeking varied content.
Organic and community-driven engagement
In contrast to the centralized model, where platform algorithms often dictate content visibility and user interactions, fediverse promotes a more organic and community-driven approach. Users have greater control over their timelines and content visibility, allowing for a more personalized and authentic online experience.
This user-centric design aligns with evolving expectations of digital privacy and autonomy, resonating with individuals seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Media companies can benefit from this by creating content that naturally finds its way to interested audiences without algorithmic interference.
Media companies test the fediverse
At least two digital media companies are exploring the fediverse to gain more control over their referral traffic and onsite audience engagement. The Verge and 404 Media are building new functions that allow them to simultaneously distribute posts on their sites and federated platforms like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Replies to those posts on those platforms become comments on their sites.
This functionality means people from different platforms can interact with the content without creating individual accounts for each platform. For media companies, this interoperability can significantly enhance audience reach and engagement.
Advantages for media companies using the fediverse
Usability and interoperability are ideal for enhancing user experience. This approach enables seamless communication between platforms, ensuring autonomy, and providing robust content control.
Interoperability ensures that different platforms can communicate using common protocols like ActivityPub. This allows people to interact with content across various platforms seamlessly, thus creating a unified and interconnected ecosystem.
User autonomy empowers people to select their servers (instances) based on their preferences for privacy, moderation, and community guidelines, offering greater freedom and reducing the dominance of any single platform.
Content control enables media companies to host their servers or collaborate with trusted ones, giving them direct control over content distribution and audience engagement. Therefore, it mitigates risks associated with algorithm changes or policy shifts on major social media platforms.
Cross-platform interaction allows content like a media company’s article shared on one platform to receive comments, likes, and shares from users on other platforms, broadening reach and engagement without being confined to a single platform.
Community-driven moderation decentralizes content moderation, allowing it to occur at the community or server level. Media companies can set moderation policies to ensure their content meets their standards and audience expectations.
Enhanced privacy through decentralization gives media companies more control over their data and privacy settings, protecting user data from being exploited by large platforms.
Although federated platforms have smaller user bases than the larger walled gardens like Facebook and X, they offer significant audiences for media companies. Federating sites allow media companies to tap into the growing demand for decentralized, user-centric platforms, attracting new audiences and fostering a more loyal and engaged user base.
Federated platforms offers the potential for a fundamental shift in how media companies interact with their audiences. Media companies that experiment with the fediverse can initiate engagement and have an opportunity to build stronger, more direct connections with their audiences.
These days, digital media companies are all trying to figure out how to best incorporate AI into their products, services and capabilities, via partnerships or by building their own. The goal is to gain a competitive edge as they tailor AI capabilities to their audiences, subscribers and clients’ specific needs.
By leveraging proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs) digital media companies have a new tool in their toolboxes. These offerings offer differentiation and added value, enhanced audience engagement and user experience. These proprietary LLMs also set them apart from companies that are opting for licensing partnerships with other LLMs, which offer more generalized knowledge bases and draw from a wide range of sources in terms of subject matter and quality.
A growing number of digital media companies are rolling out their own LLM-based generative AI features for search and data-based purposes to enhance user experience and create fine-tuned solutions. In addition to looking at several of the offerings media companies are bringing to market, we spoke to Dow Jones, Financial Times and Outside Inc. about the generative AI tools they’ve built and explore the strategies behind them.
Media companies fuel generative AI for better solutions
Digital media companies are harnessing the power of generative AI to unlock the full potential of their own – sometimes vast amounts – of proprietary information. These new products allow them to offer valuable, personalized, and accessible content to their audiences, subscribers, customers and clients.
Take for example, Bloomberg, which released a research paper in March detailing the development of its new large-scale generative AI model called BloombergGPT. The LLM was trained on a wide range of financial data to assist Bloomberg in improving existing financial natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, news classification, and question answering, among others. In addition, the tool will help Bloomberg customers organize the vast quantities of data available on the Bloomberg Terminal in ways that suit their specific needs.
Launched in beta June 4, Fortune partnered with Accenture to create a generative AI product called Fortune Analytics. The tool delivers ChatGPT-style responses based on 20 years of financial data from the Fortune 500 and Global 500 lists, as well as related articles, and helps customers build graphic visualizations.
Generative AI helps customers speed up processes
A deeper discussion of how digital media companies are using AI provides insights to help others understand the potential to leverage the technology for their own needs. Dow Jones, for example uses Generative AI for a platform that helps customers meet compliance requirements.
Dow Jones Risk Compliance is a global provider of risk and compliance solutions across banks and corporations which helps organizations perform checks on their counterparties. They do that from the perspective of complying with anti-money laundering regulation, anti-corruption regulation, looking to also mitigate supply chain risk and reputational issues. Dow Jones Risk Compliance provides tools that allow customers to search data sets and help manage regulatory and reputational risk.
In April, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance launched an AI-powered research platform for clients that enables organizations to build an investigative due diligence report covering multiple sources in as little as five minutes. Called Dow Jones Integrity Check, the research platform is a fully automated solution that goes beyond screening to identify risks and red flags from thousands of data sources.
The planning for Dow Jones Integrity Check goes back a few years, as the company sought to provide its customers with a quicker way to do due diligence on their counterparties, Joel Lange, executive Vice President and General Manager, Risk and Research at Dow Jones explained.
Lange said that Dow Jones effectively built a platform which automatically creates a report for customers on a person or company, using technology from AI firm Xapien. It brings together Dow Jones’ data that is plugged into other data sets, corporate registrar information, and wider web content. It then leverages the platform’s Generative AI capability to produce a piece of analysis or a report.
Dow Jones Risk & Compliance customers use their technology to make critical, often complex, business decisions. Often the data collection process can be incredibly time consuming, taking days if not weeks.
The new tool “provides investigations, teams, banks and corporations with initial due diligence. Essentially it’s a starting point for them to conduct their due diligence, effectively automating a lot of that data collection process,” according to Lange.
Lange points out that the compliance field is always in need of increased efficiency. However, it carries with it great risk to reputation. Dow Jones Integrity Check was designed to reshape compliance workflows, creating an additional layer of investigation that can be deployed at scale. “What we’re doing here is enabling them to more rapidly and efficiently aggregate, consolidate, and bring information to the fore, which they can then analyze and then take that investigation further to finalize an outcome,” Lange said.
Regardless of the quality of the generated results, most experts believe that it is important to have a human in the loop in order to maintain content accuracy, mitigate bias, and enhance the credibility of the content. Lange also said that it’s critical to have “that human in the loop to evaluate the information and then to make a decision in relation to the action that the customer wants to take.”
In recent months, digital media companies have been launching their own generative AI tools that allow users to ask questions in natural language and receive accurate and relevant results.
The Associated Press created Merlin, an AI-generated search tool that makes searching the AP archive more accurate. “Merlin pinpoints key moments in our videos to exact second and can be used for older archive material that lacks modern keywords or metadata,” explained AP Editor in Chief Julie Pace at The International Journalism Festival in Perugia in April.
Outside’s Scout: AI search with useful results
Chatbots have become a popular form of search. Originally pre-programmed and only able to answer select questions included in their programming, chatbots have evolved and increased engagement by providing a conversational interface. Used for everything from organizing schedules and news updates to customer service inquiries, Generative AI-based chatbots assist users in finding information more efficiently across a wide range of industries.
Much like The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other digital media organizations that blocked OpenAI from using their content to power artificial intelligence, Outside CEO Robin Thurston explained that Outside Inc. wasn’t going to let third parties scrape their platforms to train LLM models.
Instead, they looked at leveraging their own content and data. “We had a lot of proprietary content that we felt was not easily accessible. It’s almost what I’d call the front page problem, which is you put something on the front page and then it kind of disappears into the ether,” Thurston said.
“We asked ourselves: How do we create something leveraging all this proprietary data? How do we leverage that in a way that really brings value to our user?” Thurston said. The answer was Scout, Outside Inc.’s AI search assistant. Scout is a custom-developed chatbot.
The company could see that generative AI offered a way to make that content accessible and even more useful to its readers. Outside had a lot of evergreen content that wasn’t adding value once it left the front page. Their brands inspire and inform audiences about outdoor adventures, new destinations and gear – a lot of which is evergreen and proprietary content that still had value if it could easily be surfaced by its audience. The chat interface allows their content to continue to be accessible to readers after it is no longer front and center on the website.
Scout gives users a summary answer to their question, leveraging Outside Inc’s proprietary data, and surfaces articles that it references. “It’s just a much more advanced search mechanism than our old tool was. Not only does it summarize, but it then returns the things that are most relevant,” he explained.
Additionally, Outside Inc’s old search function worked by each individual brand. Scout searches across the 20+ properties owned by the parent company which include Backpacker, Climbing, SKI Magazine, and Yoga Journal, among others. Scout brings all of the results together, from the 20+ different Outside brands, from the best camping destinations, to the best trails, outdoor activities for the family, gear, equipment and food all in one result.
One aspect that sets Outside Inc.’s model apart is their customer base, which differs from general news media customers. Outside’s customers engage in a different type of interaction, not just a quick transactional skim of a news story. “We have a bit of a different relationship in that they’re not only getting inspiration from us, which trip should I take? What gear should I buy? But then because of our portfolio, they’re kind of looking at what’s next,” Thurston said.
It was important to Thurston to use the LLM in a number of different ways, so Outside Inc launched a local newsletter initiative with the help of AI. “On Monday mornings we do a local running, cycling and outdoor newsletter that goes to people that sign up for it, and it uses that same LLM to pick what types of routes and content for that local newsletter that we’re now delivering in 64,000 ZIP codes in the U.S.”
Thurston said they had a team working on Scout and it took about six months. “Luckily, we had already built a lot of infrastructure in preparation for this in terms of how we were going to leverage our data. Even for something like traditional search, we were building a backend so that we could do that across the board. But this is obviously a much more complicated model that allows us to do it in a completely new way,” he said.
Connecting AI search to a real subscriber need
In late March, The Financial Times released its first generative AI feature for subscribers called Ask FT. Like Scout, the chat-based search tool allows users to ask any question and receive a response using FT content published over the last two decades. The feature is currently available to approximately 500 FT Professional subscribers. It is powered by the FT’s own internal search capabilities, combined with a third-party LLM.
The tool is designed to help users understand complicated issues or topics, like Ireland’s offshore energy policy, rather than just searching for specific information. Ask FT searches through Financial Times (FT) content, generates a summary and cites the sources.
“It works particularly well for people who are trying to understand quite complex issues that might have been going on over time or have lots of different elements,” explained Lindsey Jayne, the chief product officer of the Financial Times.
Jayne explained that they spend a lot of time understanding why people choose the FT and how they use it. People read the FT to understand the world around them, to have a deep background knowledge of emerging events and affairs. “With any kind of technology, it’s always important to look at how technology is evolving to see what it can do. But I think it’s really important to connect that back to a real need that your customers have, something they’re trying to get done. Otherwise it’s just tech for the sake of tech and people might play with it, but not stick with it,” she said.
Trusted sources and GenAI attribution
Solutions like those from Dow Jones, FT and Outside Inc. highlight the power of a brand with a trusted audience relationship to create deep, authentic relationships built on reliability and credibility. Trusted media brands are considered authoritative because their content is based on credible sources and facts, which ensures accuracy.
Currently, generative AI has demonstrated low accuracy and poses challenges to sourcing and attribution. Attribution is a central feature for digital media companies who roll out their own generative AI solutions. For Dow Jones compliance customers, attribution is critical to customers, to know if they’re going to make a decision based on information that is available in the media, according to Lange.
“They need to have that attributed to within the solution so that if it’s flowing into their audit trails or they have to present that in a court of law, or if they would need to present it to our internal audit, the attribution is really key. (Attribution) is going to be critical for a lot of the solutions that will come to market,” he said. “The attribution has to be there in order to rely on it for a compliance use case or really any other use case. You really need to know where that fact or that piece of information or data actually came from and be able to source it back to the underlying article.”
The Financial Times’ generative AI tool also offers attribution to FT articles in all of its answers. Ask FT pulls together lots of different source material, generates an answer, and attributes it to various FT articles. “What we ask the large language model to do is to read those segments of the articles and to turn them into a summary that explains the things you need to know and then to also cite them so that you have the opportunity to check it,” Jayne said.
They also ask the FT model to infer from people’s questions when it should be searching from. “Maybe you’re really interested in what’s happened in the last year or so, and we also get the model to reread the answer, reread all of the segments and check that, as kind of a guard against hallucination. You can never get rid of hallucination totally, but you can do lots to mitigate it.”
The Financial Times is also asking for feedback from the subscribers using the tool. “We’re literally reading all of the feedback to help understand what kinds of questions work, where it falls down, where it doesn’t, and who’s using it, why and when.”
Leaning into media strengths and adding a superpower
Generative AI seems to have created unlimited opportunities and also considerable challenges, questions and concerns. However it is clear that an asset many media companies possess is a deep reservoir of quality content and it is good for business to extract the most value from the investment in its creation. Leveraging their own content to train and program generative AI tools that serve readers seems like a very promising application.
In fact, generative AI can give trustworthy sources a bit of a super power. Jayne from the FT offered the example of scientists using the technology to read through hundreds of thousands of research papers and find patterns in a process that would otherwise take years to read in an effort to make important connections.
While scraped-content LLMs pose risks to authenticity, accuracy and attribution, proprietary learning models offer a promising alternative.
As Jayne put it, “The media has “an opportunity to harness what AI could mean for the user experience, what it could mean for journalism, in a way that’s very thoughtful, very clear and in line with our values and principles.” At the same time, she cautions that we shouldn’t be “getting overly excited because it’s not the answer to everything – even though we can’t escape the buzz at the moment.”
We are seeing many efforts bump up against the limits of what generative AI is able to do right now. However, media companies can avoid some of generative AI’s current pitfalls by employing the technology’s powerful language prediction, data processing and summarization capabilities while leaning into their own strengths of authenticity and accuracy.
