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-audience enjoying news podcast, which builds trust-
Audiences | Featured Post | Research

News podcasts offer a surprising path to rebuilding trust

Publishers are accustomed to hearing bad news about trust in journalism. But Gallup’s latest findings offer a glimmer of improvement: 33% of Americans now express confidence in the news media, up from a record-low 28% last year. Still, two-thirds have little or no confidence in the news. What if some of that distrust could be overcome simply by introducing skeptical news audiences to high-quality, trustworthy journalism?

New research suggests that news podcasts may offer one way to do just that. A new study, Does Listening to Trustworthy News Affect Political Attitudes and Trust? found that listening to NPR’s “Up First” podcast for five days not only increased participants’ knowledge about news events, it changed the way they think about news from podcasts: “Trust specifically in news from podcasts …increased (d = 0.09), but not in mainstream news more generally.”

Andrew M. Guess, Associate Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University—and one of the study’s researchers—says it was predictable that listening to news would increase accuracy of participants’ knowledge about news events, but the downstream effects were less predictable. In retrospect, Guess says that “crystallized attitudes” about mainstream news media and politics explain why they did not see spillover effects for other mainstream media—but that does not mean there aren’t lessons to be learned for news organizations.

The “Up First” effect

-Logo for NPR's "Up First" news of the day podcast, which the study shows built trust-

For those who may not be familiar, “Up First” is a daily podcast that moves quickly through the day’s biggest stories, with a revolving set of familiar hosts—Leila Fadel, Steve Inskeep, Michel Martin, A Martinez, Ayesha Rascoe and Scott Simon—engaging directly with the journalists who reported the story. In many ways, it’s a lot like the old school, “just the facts ma’am” news that so many say they long for. “Up First” isn’t the podcast for policy wonks who want to dive deep into the issues of the day, it’s a place for people to learn what they need to know to stay reasonably informed. For these reasons and more, the researchers chose it to be the podcast for their study.

Interestingly, Guess says the study had stronger effects among people who regularly listened to “manoshphere,” hang-out style podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

“It’s hard for us to pinpoint any particular mechanism,” says Guess. “It’s worth pointing to the format. Three stories told in an authoritative way, often with a reporter who is on the scene who speaks with authority and confidence about the issues. The journalistic value comes through very clearly.”

He notes that NPR produces its news programming to studiously emphasize balance and fairness. “Even if you’re inclined to be skeptical—if NPR connotes liberal bias to you—if you’re listening for the first time, you might actually be pleasantly surprised,” he says. The real people behind the reporting come through, and Guess also notes the personality-driven nature of podcasts “makes it difficult to fall back on partisan stereotypes.”

Given that spillover effects to “mainstream news” are virtually non-existent, Guess says more research into exactly how much exposure would have an effect is worth exploring.

Trust building exercises for news

It would be easy to over-interpret this news. However, Guess hopes publishers will see that they should not write-off skeptical audiences and maybe even invest in their own research to take these findings to the next level. Publishers could start by experimenting with ways to introduce their journalism to skeptical audiences through podcasts and other formats those audiences already enjoy. Promoting existing news podcasts on popular conversational shows could be one approach. These experiments could help publishers understand whether greater familiarity with their news reporting can build trust and, over time, stronger audience relationships.

For organizations worried audiences might build trust with a person rather than the larger brand, Guess says, “I have no strong reason to believe the effects we were finding were driven by a single strong personality,” he notes. “What matters is what people think is the source.” That could be a person, the outlet, or even the show. “Up First’s” rotating cast of hosts and journalists may help prevent audiences from over-identifying with any one person.

“News consumption is habitual,” Guess says. His research offers an encouraging possibility: distrust of news may be deeply rooted, but it isn’t necessarily permanent. Figuring out how to create a habit among audiences who publishers may have given up on could be the key to finding, and keeping, new audiences.

Perspectives

DCN’s media industry must reads: week of October 15, 2026

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

-person choosing lower priced subscription as habits shift-
DCN-Research | Research | Video

Higher prices lift spending as subscription habits shift

DCN’s Q3 2026 Digital Subscription Tracking Report finds that household subscription spending continues to rise, largely because of higher prices. Estimated average monthly spending reached $176.44, up 14.5% year over year, while the number of services households maintain increased modestly. Consumers’ subscription mix continues to shift, with ad-supported streaming becoming more popular and digital publishing categories following different paths. 

Ad-supported options gain ground 

Ad-supported subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) now reaches 80.5% of online U.S. households. Its growth contrasts with declining ad-free streaming penetration and fewer ad-free services per subscribing household. Free streaming services also maintain broad reach, with more frequent viewing than a year earlier. 

The appeal of lower-cost options extends to live TV. Internet-delivered services continue gaining households as traditional cable and satellite TV penetration declines. A widening price difference accompanies this shift: traditional pay TV prices rose sharply year over year, while internet-delivered live TV pricing remained relatively stable. 

Subscription growth takes different forms 

Digital newspaper subscriptions increased even as the category reached fewer households. Those who subscribe hold more newspaper services on average, concentrating subscription growth within a slightly smaller household audience. Digital magazine penetration remained relatively stable, while digital audio gained households. 

Understanding who is subscribing and what encourages them to keep a service remains central to pricing, packaging and retention decisions. As higher prices account for much of the increase in spending, maintaining the value consumers see in their subscriptions becomes increasingly important to sustaining those relationships. 

Spending estimates use published full retail prices and exclude promotional offers and discounts. 

DCN members can access the full Digital Subscription Tracking Report for Q3 2026 after logging in or registering an account (top right corner). Once logged in, a download button will appear below the text of this article.

-publishers must still diversify revenue even with audience growth concept art-
Audiences | Industry-Research | Research | Revenue

Why growing an audience isn’t enough to sustain a publisher

Early audience growth provides a starting point for evaluating a new editorial product. For media executives, the next question is whether that interest can generate dependable revenue and support the resources needed to grow. A newsletter, specialist vertical or subscription offering needs a credible path from initial readership to supporting a financially sustainable operation. A promising newsletter, specialist vertical, or specific subscription offering may attract readers without generating enough revenue to cover the full cost of operating and expanding it. 

Independent local news organizations offer a revealing view of this challenge because the costs and capacity constraints of growth are often more visible than they are within larger media companies. Many attract readers, secure advertisers and deliver journalism that their communities value, yet remain heavily dependent on their founders’ labor and financial circumstances after years of publishing. 

A Hard Reality: Independent Local Journalism in the United States, by Merrill Brown and Jacob Spudich at Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, examines that gap. Their survey of 112 independent local news operators across 37 states and Washington, D.C., explores how these businesses build audiences, generate revenue and support their operations. Some 61.6% have published independently for five years or more. 

The study draws on a self-selected sample of independent local news organizations still operating. For leaders of larger media businesses, it offers a useful perspective on product investment. Its findings raise three practical questions: Which revenue streams justify the resources required to maintain them? When does audience growth demand additional operating capacity? And can a product cover its full costs, including work absorbed by existing teams? 

Establishing the initial subscriber base 

Independent local publishers most often built their initial subscriber base through organic growth and personal connections. Some 75.7% cited organic growth, while 67.6% used word of mouth or personal networks. An existing social media following also helped 39.6% get started. 

Paid advertising and bringing an audience from a previous media job were less common, each cited by 19.8%. Respondents could select more than one method for building their initial subscriber base, so the percentages reflect overlapping approaches and do not total 100%. While personal networks and existing followings can provide a low-cost starting point, they do not necessarily establish a scalable acquisition strategy. 

Evaluating the contribution of each revenue stream 

Advertising and sponsorships remain central to independent local news businesses. Some 82% of respondents use them, while 53.2% report accessing grants or fellowships. Only 6.3% rely exclusively on subscriptions. 

Multiple revenue streams are common among established publishers, but diversification does not steadily increase with years in operation. Revenue diversification is most common among publishers operating for three to five years: 76.2% report three or more revenue streams, compared with 40.9% of those publishing for less than three years and 54.4% of those publishing for five years or more.   

Adding revenue streams can strengthen a publishing business when the income they generate justifies the work and expense involved. Sponsorships require sales and account management; subscriptions require marketing, billing, and customer support. When deciding where to invest, executives need to think about how much each source is likely to earn, what it will cost to develop and maintain, and whether the team has the capacity to deliver it. 

Matching growth with operating capacity 

Burnout and sustainability are the most commonly cited challenge, selected by 55.7% of respondents and reaching 77.3% among publishers with 100–500 paying subscribers. Balancing journalism with business operations follows at 51.9%. Separately, 21.8% name scaling beyond a one-person operation as their biggest financial challenge. 

The strain also relates to publishing frequency. Among publishers producing content multiple times a day, 61% report burnout; a higher share than among those publishing less frequently. Publishing multiple times daily is also more common among established operators: 47.8% of those operating for five years or more do so, compared with 30% of those operating for one to two years. Planning for growth therefore needs to account for the staffing and operating costs of maintaining a more demanding publishing schedule. 

Nearly 89% have some paid or volunteer support, most commonly freelancers. This help may increase editorial output, but it may not provide sufficient capacity across the business. 

Within a larger company, a new product may similarly draw on existing teams whose additional work is not fully reflected in its budget. Decisions about expansion need to account for the sales, customer service, technology and management demands that accompany audience growth. 

Accounting for the full cost of publishing 

Only 38.7% of respondents receive all their personal income from their publication; 20.7% receive less than a quarter. Among those publishing for five years or more, 42.6% receive all their personal income from their publication. 

These figures measure personal income sources, rather than profitability. Years in operation do not necessarily correspond to financial independence for the founder. Within a larger media company, the related question is whether a product generates enough revenue to cover the staff and shared services needed to sustain it. Work absorbed by existing teams still consumes resources and affects their capacity elsewhere. 

Building an audience provides a foundation for growth. Further investment requires a clear view of revenue potential, operating costs, and the resources needed to serve that audience reliably. Accounting for those demands from the outset gives an organization a stronger basis for deciding whether to invest further, adjust the business model or allocate resources elsewhere. 

-business person pulling the switch to turn on AI light to show authority, responsibility and accountability-
AI | Featured Post

The AI problem nobody in publishing wants to own

In 1982, General Motors closed its assembly plant in Fremont, California. The workforce there had a reputation that the man who ran the UAW’s western region later called “well earned”: chronic absenteeism, sabotage on the line, cars leaving the factory with defects built in.

Two years later the plant reopened as NUMMI, a joint venture with Toyota. More than 85% of the workers were the same people. However, one rule shows the difference. At GM, you never stopped the line. At NUMMI, any worker could pull a cord strung along the line, and if the problem could not be fixed in time, the line stopped. Within three months, according to auto analyst Maryann Keller, the cars coming off it were earning near-perfect quality ratings.

It took GM years, a failed attempt at one plant, and a massive loss in 1992, to take NUMMI’s system company-wide. When it finally installed cords in other plants, some workers who pulled one got yelled at. A few plants cut the cords down. Everyone NPR’s Frank Langfitt interviewed said it took about 15 years after NUMMI “for change to even begin to take hold at GM.”

What made the cord work at NUMMI was having the permission to pull it.

Publishers are hanging cords all over the building right now, approving AI tools for newsroom, commercial and operations teams. Inside the organizations I work with, who is allowed to act on what those tools produce, and who answers when the output is wrong, have barely moved. Michelle Manafy wrote here in April that the leadership test is now “where, how and to what end.” Those questions should be answered by the person who has the authority to make the call, the one who will be accountable for the result. That authority should be established in advance, rather than requiring approval each time.

Trained, and still unsure

Tess Jeffers, the Wall Street Journal’s director of newsroom data and AI, described the problem here last October. After an enterprise rollout and company-wide training, “many reporters remained unsure how to use these tools effectively.” The Journal’s answer was a summer series of lunch-and-learn sessions where colleagues showed how they already used the tools. Jeffers writes that “with the editor in chief in attendance, the sessions delivered a clear endorsement that the newsroom can and should be using these tools.”

That last part is permission, and it came from the top. Training covers how. On its own, it says nothing about whether you are allowed. Until someone with authority says so, people wait.

What stays human

I ask teams building AI tools one question. When your CEO sees this working, what reason do they have to keep you? A senior analyst at a professional services firm went quiet, then said the only part she would never hand over was the call she makes when the numbers look right but the client doesn’t.

I call that the Human Remainder. It is the part of the job that matters more once the machine has taken the rest. In a newsroom it is the call that depends on knowing a source, the decision about whether a story is fair, and the name on the byline. That is where human authority and accountability belong. Most of the rest can move without anyone asking.

The name on the byline

In September, as Futurism reported, Cleveland.com government reporter Kaitlin Durbin posted that a story had run under her byline while she was on her honeymoon. “I did not write or review a word of it and it does not pull info from past reporting,” she wrote. “Does Cleveland.com think they just own my name now?” The story now carries only an Express Desk credit, a desk the paper says uses AI tools to assist in producing content that is reviewed and edited by staff. Editor Chris Quinn called it “a simple mistake, the result of a miscommunication between a couple of editors,” and said it was corrected as soon as the paper learned of it from her post.

The paper fixed it within hours of her post. But until then, the name on the story was hers.

This is one reason adoption stalls. The organization keeps the speed and the savings, and the person whose name is on the work keeps the mistake.

Who decides

If management does not decide who owns these calls, a union or an arbitrator will. Beginning in August 2024, Politico’s union filed grievances over two AI tools launched without the advance notice and human oversight its contract required. In November 2025 an arbitrator ruled against the company, and in May 2026 the union announced that Politico had agreed to shut down one tool and not revive the other. At ProPublica, unionized staff walked out for a day in April, in what Nieman Lab called the first strike at a major U.S. newsroom fought at least in part over AI protections. Their first contract, ratified in July, creates an AI committee where, in the union’s words, bargaining unit members “will have a say in issues related to technology.”

At The New York Times, Semafor reported in August that the paper is testing AI search summaries with a small subset of visitors, calling it “the news arm’s first test of AI-generated text that is unmediated by a Times journalist or editor.” The Guild, which protested outside the paper’s 175th anniversary gala in September, is pressing to get AI guardrails, including the paper’s existing policies, into its contract. Managing editor Marc Lacey told the Guild by email in March that management believes “it’s imprudent to focus on adding restrictions into a contract given the rapid and constantly changing nature of this technology and its use cases.”

A few publishers are working this out themselves. The Guardian’s editorial code says significant use of generative AI in journalism “must be explicitly approved by the relevant senior duty editor.” At the BBC, Responsible AI Lead James Fletcher points to how editorial decisions already work: “thousands of people make editorial decisions every day about reasonably significant risks,” by and large on their own, turning to a central team when they need support. That, he says, is the model the BBC wants to extend to AI.

To give people a cord they will actually pull, start with four moves:

  • Put the sign-offs on the Human Remainder, and document the uses that do not need one.
  • Name, by role, who owns each call that remains.
  • Move accountability with permission, so the organization owns the first good-faith mistake with a tool it approved.
  • For every new tool you approve, remove one existing approval step, so permission gets simpler as tools multiply.

The fight inside the building

High-stakes work will still need an editor. NUMMI’s lesson holds all the same. A cord nobody is allowed to pull is decoration. Publishers have spent nearly three years fighting over who gets to use their journalism. The next fight is inside the building. It may seem smaller, but it has enormous consequences: Who owns each decision the machine touches? The publishers that answer it first will be the ones whose tools get used.

About the author

Ramy Nassar is a futurist, speaker, and strategic advisor who works inside organizations on how AI gets adopted, across financial services, life sciences, retail, and professional services. He was previously Head of Innovation at Mattel. He is also the father of three boys, so the question of what AI does to work and agency is one he brings home every night. His new book, The World After AI: Why the Future Is Still Ours to Shape, will be published in April 2027.

More about Ramy at ramynassar.com

Perspectives

DCN’s media industry must reads: week of October 8, 2026

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

-Content flooding from a phone to show the issue of publishers competing with AI content flood-
AI | Industry-Research

How media brands can compete as AI floods the content market

Generative AI can reduce production costs and accelerate creative work across the media industry, but those gains will not be evenly distributed. Smaller creators and studios can expand their output beyond what their resources previously allowed. For larger organizations, the initial benefits are likely to center on efficiency, even as smaller competitors gain capabilities that once required substantial investment. 

Deloitte’s 2026 Media and Entertainment Industry Outlook examines how this shift changes the competition for attention. As production capabilities become more widely available, established content, recognizable brands and audience relationships become central to differentiation. The commercial question is how media companies use these assets to create experiences audiences value and strengthen their reasons to return. 

Creating new experiences around familiar content 

Personalized updates offer an ongoing connection to a favorite show or franchise beyond the original viewing experience. In Deloitte’s separate 2026 Digital Media Trends survey, 27% of fans express interest in a Gen AI digest combining streaming, social, podcast and actor updates. Interest reaches 32% among Gen Z fans and 34% among millennial fans. For news and sports publishers, AI-generated recaps and short-form clips offer ways to extend the usefulness of coverage beyond its initial publication or broadcast. 

Participation goes further by opening parts of the creative experience to audiences. Nearly a quarter of fans, 24%, want the option to cocreate with Gen AI, such as developing alternative endings to shows or movies. Deloitte discusses hosting these activities within brand-owned services, where terms and controls could govern how people generate and share content. Nearly 40% of fans would accept AI-created entertainment content if it is clearly labeled. 

These possibilities bring product development and rights decisions into the same conversation. Cocreation can change how audiences interact with a property and how its owner manages that participation. The outlook raises the prospect of new revenue streams and partnerships around cocreation and production tools. Audience interest provides a starting point for experimentation. Testing repeat use, conversion, and willingness to pay can help companies determine which experiences support sustained engagement and revenue. 

Knowing the audience behind the activity 

An expanded content experience also depends on understanding what people value and how they engage. Audiences move among social feeds, streaming services, podcasts, games and live events, leaving interactions in disconnected systems. A company may know how a title performs within its own service while having limited visibility into the surrounding activity. 

This fragmentation complicates the connection between discovery, engagement, and revenue. Deloitte describes an incomplete view of preferences, interactions, transactions and service histories that make long-term audience value difficult to understand. 

Data infrastructure, metadata, and analytics therefore sit alongside creative capabilities in the outlook. They support content planning, discovery, recommendations, and monetization. The report discusses AI broadly in these areas; Gen AI is one part of a wider effort to connect audience knowledge with content and product decisions. As AI expands the supply of content, discovery becomes a greater competitive challenge. Helping audiences find relevant work within a company’s own services can support engagement and improve the value of existing catalogs. 

Making experimentation part of the business 

Short-form content brings several of these questions together. It offers a setting for testing stories and formats, developing talent and building interest before committing to larger production budgets. Gen AI can accelerate this work, while audience response helps inform which ideas merit further investment. 

Deloitte also describes creators as potential business partners who can extend the life of IP and connect it with new audiences. Their role combines creative output with community relationships and rapid experimentation, capabilities that become more valuable as content supply grows. 

Moving these activities into recurring business processes involves more than giving individual teams access to tools. The outlook connects Gen AI adoption with creative workflows, production pipelines, audience analytics and operations, supported by governance, privacy and IP protections. These protections also shape audience trust. Clear labeling, editorial oversight, and transparency about data use can help companies introduce AI-enabled experiences while maintaining confidence in their brands. 

As Gen AI expands production capabilities across the industry, established media companies face greater pressure to translate their content, brands and expertise into sustained audience value. That requires connecting creative experimentation with audience-understanding, effective discovery. and clear protections for trust and rights. The opportunity is to use AI to strengthen the experiences and relationships that give audiences a reason to choose their services and return to them. 

-an AI Search bar with the words Ask me anything. No need to click anything else.-
AI | Industry-Research | Research

The evidence is clear: AI search is costing publishers

For publishers, it has long seemed obvious that when AI answers a user’s question directly, there is less reason to click through to the source. Over the past year, research has repeatedly confirmed it: controlled experiments with search users, analyses of millions of search queries, studies of click-through rates, and traffic data from thousands of publisher sites all point in the same direction.

The methodologies and measurements differ. But the evidence is clear: When AI-generated answers appear in search, fewer people click through to the sources behind those answers. And while referrals from standalone AI platforms are rising, they remain far too small to offset the traffic publishers are losing from traditional search.

That conclusion stands in contrast to claims that AI-powered search can create more opportunities for sites to be discovered and send publishers higher-quality traffic. As DCN VP of Research Rande Price recently wrote, experimental evidence finds little support for those claims.

No single study can capture the full impact of a discovery ecosystem changing this quickly. But with researchers approaching the question using different methodologies, datasets and measures, declining referral traffic can no longer be dismissed as anecdotal, or AI’s role in that decline as speculation.

AI answers are reducing clicks

Some of the clearest evidence comes from research designed to isolate the effect of AI answers from everything else happening in search.

In a randomized field experiment, Saharsh Agarwal of the Indian School of Business and Ananya Sen of Carnegie Mellon University studied the browsing behavior of more than 1,000 Google users. When an AI Overview appeared, outbound organic clicks fell 39.8% and zero-click searches increased 34.5%.

Research based on observed search behavior reaches much the same conclusion. Pew Research Center analyzed nearly 69,000 Google searches made by 900 U.S. adults. Users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when one did not. Links within the AI summaries themselves attracted clicks on just 1% of visits. Pew Research Center

And the pattern holds at much larger scale. Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords and estimated that the presence of an AI Overview reduced click-through to the top-ranking organic result by 58%. The effect extended down the results page, with estimated declines of 51% for the second-ranked result and 46% for the third.

It is important to note that these studies differ: a controlled experiment, observed browsing behavior, and search click-through data. However, it is clear that each reaches the same conclusion: When AI answers appear, publishers get fewer clicks.

AI referral traffic is growing, but its not nearly enough

The traffic flowing from AI platforms is growing quickly. It is also nowhere close to replacing the search traffic publishers are losing.

Reuters Institute’s Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 puts the gap in stark terms. Drawing on Chartbeat data from 2,576 publisher sites, the report found that Google Search referrals fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, including a 38% decline in the U.S. However, the researchers caution that AI Overviews cannot account for all of that decline; algorithm changes, publisher strategies and shifts in audience behavior also play a role.

But the scale of AI referrals offers little evidence of a replacement channel. In the same dataset, Google Search accounted for 7.3% of publisher referrals and Google Discover another 13%. ChatGPT accounted for just 0.02% and Perplexity 0.002%. Google Search alone delivered roughly 500 times as much referral traffic as ChatGPT.

Sensor Tower’s State of Web 2026 shows how misleading the growth rates can be. Traffic from AI assistants grew 86% year over year in 2025, while generative AI referrals still accounted for only about 0.7% of overall web traffic.

Similarweb’s research on AI search finds the same disconnect from another angle: use of AI platforms continued to climb while outbound referral traffic plateaued. More people using AI does not necessarily translate into more traffic for the sites supplying the information.

Fewer opportunities to monetize and build relationships

The impact of fewer referrals extends well beyond the lost pageview. Every visit gives a publisher the opportunity to serve advertising, convert a subscriber, register a user, promote a newsletter or app, collect first-party data, and build a direct relationship with that person.

AI search changes that exchange. Publisher content can still contribute to satisfying a user’s query, but the visit that historically followed discovery may never happen. The platform retains the user while the publisher loses the opportunity to monetize the interaction or deepen the audience relationship.

That distinction matters because traffic is not simply a distribution metric. For publishers, it is one of the mechanisms through which investment in original content produces economic value. When AI systems satisfy more demand without sending users to the

AI search is breaking the publisher-platform value exchange

The research now spans controlled experiments, observed user behavior, analyses of hundreds of thousands of keywords, and traffic data from thousands of publisher sites. The measurements vary, but the finding does not: AI-generated answers reduce clicks to publishers, while traffic from AI platforms remains far too small to replace what is being lost.

This changes more than the mechanics of search. For decades, search created an exchange: publishers made their content discoverable, platforms helped users find it, and publishers received traffic in return. AI search is breaking that exchange.

AI systems can increasingly use publisher content to answer a user’s question without delivering that user to the publisher. The content still creates value. What is disappearing is the mechanism that returned some of that value to the companies that invested in creating it.

Perspectives

DCN’s media industry must reads: week of October 1, 2026

Here are some of the best media stories our team has read so far this week:

-Leading podcast network Goalhanger is investing in newsletters for audience data-
Audiences | Featured Post

Why podcast leader Goalhanger is investing in newsletters

Podcast powerhouse Goalhanger attracted more than 1.8 billion views and streams across its audio, video and social content in 2025. More than 250,000 people also pay for membership clubs attached to eight of its shows. It has built an enviable audience, but many listeners and viewers are spread across platforms that offer limited information about who they are.

For a company whose success has been built on voices and video, an investment in newsletters might seem like a surprising shift in strategy. However, Goalhanger sees an opportunity to spend more time with its fans and reach them directly. It appointed former Sunday Times and Daily Mail journalist Emily Kent Smith as editorial director at the start of the year and has since rolled out editorial newsletters for five of its 14 podcasts.

The approach goes beyond recapping episodes. Each newsletter is shaped around its show’s audience, from deeper reporting on political issues to essays and profiles that accompany history episodes. Early growth has been strong, while Goalhanger is still working out how newsletters will support memberships and generate revenue of their own.

The appeal of written content

At the point of Kent Smith joining in January, Goalhanger regularly sent email communications to members. But there was no cohesive strategy for written journalism or editorial newsletters.

“We have this very big and growing audience that wants to spend a lot of time with us. They’re highly engaged,” said Kent Smith, explaining the reasoning behind expanding into written content. “What else can we do for them that gives them more time in ‘The Rest Is’ universe” but not necessarily listening to more podcasts, as people like to consume in different formats?”

Kent Smith pointed out that many people don’t just read or listen or watch; they like a mix. She wants to be able to offer that to people who already enjoy Goalhanger’s content. “They might listen to a podcast on a Tuesday, watch a show on a Wednesday, and read a newsletter on Sunday,” she explained.

“The overall goal for us is how do we get people to spend more time with us and deepen their relationship with the brand, without just producing more and more podcast and video content?”

Choosing newsletters as the priority rather than a web presence crucially helps Goalhanger get to know its audience. Viewers and listeners may currently be large in number, but are fragmented across platforms, with fairly limited data beyond demographics.

Having a direct line of communication to fans in their inboxes gives more control to the publisher in building direct relationships, rather than relying on algorithms.

A tailored content strategy

Despite the somewhat predictable naming conventions behind many of Goalhanger’s The Rest Is… shows, their editorial newsletter strategy is unique to each brand. Kent Smith has rolled out written journalism across five of the 14 podcasts, with the approach tailored depending on the audience.

The Rest Is Politics is one of Goalhanger’s leading shows, hosted by former politicians Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. The podcast publishes twice a week, with a main discussion-based episode, and a listener’s question time episode. 

Kent Smith explained that The Rest Is Politics was an ideal place to start experimenting with written content. The audience were less interested in political gossip, and more in understanding the wider global political situation. “There are so many big picture issues that this audience want to hear more of that we can’t possibly cover on the show,” she said.

Crucially, the newsletter needed to avoid round-ups or trying to cover everything that had happened in politics that week. “We’re at a point now where there’s a lot of saturation of those sorts of newsletters… we don’t have an edge there. Our edge has to be that direct journalism in your inbox: people that you admire and you’re interested in think this is worth your time,” Kent Smith said.

One example Kent Smith highlighted was the number of times Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US was coming up in conversation on the podcast. Isabelle Stanley, Goalhanger’s Commissioning Editor interviewed a number of political figures and commentators, and published a magazine-style feature piece in the newsletter about why Americans think Britain is broken. 

Stanley then went on the podcast to talk about the piece. This in turn drove subscribers to the newsletter who wanted to read further. “The reading experience is an additional element to the podcast, so that you hear about it on the podcast and then you want to go and read it,” Kent Smith outlined.

The team are currently in the early stages of developing a written offering for The Rest Is Politics: US, taking on board learnings so far. For the political brands in particular, they aren’t aiming to be people’s primary read or source of news. Rather, they want to take a slower and more thoughtful approach to issues.

Goalhanger’s other leading series, The Rest Is History, takes a different approach to newsletters. The podcast is planned and structured around different time periods, rather than reacting to political news. Written content is therefore tied in with these, from profiles of key historical figures mentioned in the podcast, or guest essays from historians.

So far, the differentiated approach has paid off. The Rest Is Politics and The Rest Is History have seen 500% and 400% growth respectively since the editorial newsletters launched earlier this year. 

Another recent success for Goalhanger has been the launch of Book Club Notes, a companion to The Book Club podcast. The podcast itself debuted in February, with the accompanying newsletter coming a few months later.  Each week, hosts Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett explore a classic or contemporary book, the historical context, and the story behind the author. The newsletter follows at the weekend, with talking points and reader reviews included.

“The show is [hosted], but the newsletter is our audience’s review of the books,” Kent Smith explained. “The reviews that we get in are incredibly considered and intelligent.”

Despite only being live for four months, Book Club Notes is already the publisher’s fastest-growing newsletter. Kent Smith said they have an incredibly active community receiving hundreds of comments and reviews from audience members each week. The newsletter ranks in the top 5% globally for engagement on their email platform Beehiiv. 

Although Goalhanger relies on strong personalities to build its shows, surprisingly this isn’t a feature of their newsletters. Many of the show hosts don’t have the capacity to write fully every week. Instead, Kent Smith explained that the newsletters expand the universe of each brand.

 “We’re building out our stable with personalities and different characters who…do fit with the ethos of the brand and cover topics that our audience will be interested in,” she said. Contributors need to capture the DNA of each brand, rather than newsletters being anchored by specific individuals.

The next test: membership and revenue

Goalhanger has found an appetite for its newsletters. Kent Smith describes open rates as consistently double the industry average, although she points out that the company starts with audiences already deeply interested in each show’s subject. “But the next challenge for us is what we do with that audience,” she said.

One priority is to strengthen existing memberships. Goalhanger sends different newsletter versions to paying members and free subscribers, with extras for members including discounts and exclusive access to competitions. The team is tracking newsletter engagement and wants to establish whether regular readers are less likely to cancel their paid memberships.

Free newsletters also give Goalhanger a way to attract prospective members. Kent Smith said there would always be a free offering, but the team is experimenting with what encourages those readers to pay. High open rates suggest an engaged audience; how that engagement translates into membership is still being tested.

A commercial offering for the newsletters is also in development. Goalhanger has successfully monetized audio and video, but Kent Smith emphasized that newsletters need their own approach. Some bundling has already been trialed, while the priority so far has been on establishing the journalism readers want.

“My focus initially was, if you don’t do great journalism, people won’t want to read,” Kent Smith said. For her, the rapid growth has been an encouraging sign that the editorial approach is working.

That does not mean every Goalhanger show will get a newsletter. Kent Smith is taking a selective approach to expansion, based on the subject and what each audience wants. “You have to think, will this actually work as a newsletter?” she said.

The newsletters have already persuaded podcast fans to spend time with Goalhanger’s written journalism. The next test is whether that reading habit helps retain paying members, attracts new ones, and creates a business that earns revenue of its own.

-person consuming news through AI chat interface-
AI | Audiences | Industry-Research | Research

As AI becomes a news gateway, publishers face a tradeoff 

News discovery is increasingly moving through intermediaries, and AI is becoming another route. Ofcom’s latest research finds that 21% of UK adults encountered news through an AI app, summary or overview in the past month, adding another layer between the organizations producing news and the audiences consuming it. 

A new report from Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, brings two audience measures into this calculation: reach and trust. Drawing on responses from 5,397 UK adults, Ofcom measures AI as a route to news for the first time. It compares AI’s reach with other services and shows how users rate the news they encounter through each one. 

AI news use peaks among adults aged 25 to 34 

One in five UK adults (21%) encountered news through an AI app, summary or overview in the past month. ChatGPT reached 13% of adults for news, making it the most-used individual AI service. The 21% measure includes AI apps and AI features within search, and people may use both. 

Adults aged 25 to 34 lead in AI news usage at 37%, compared with 30% among 16 to 24-year-olds. Usage was 28% among 35 to 44-year-olds and 19% among adults aged 45 to 54. Interestingly, the strongest AI audience usage was not among the youngest adult group. 

Adults aged 25 to 34 also use more ways to access news than any other age group. They report an average of 17.7, compared with 12.1 across all adults and 6.5 among adults aged 75 and over.  

AI joins a wider distribution mix 

Online intermediaries, as a whole, reached 73% of UK adults with news in the past month. Ofcom includes search engines, social and video platforms, news aggregators, and AI tools in this category. Looking at those routes separately, social and video platforms reached 60% of adults, AI apps, summaries and overviews reached 21%, and news aggregators reached 17%. News publisher websites and apps reached 57%. The figures overlap because people can use more than one route to news. The shift is noteworthy because publishers may supply the journalism audiences encounter without controlling the environment in which they encounter it, or the relationship with the audience. 

Among adults aged 16 to 24, 87% use an online intermediary for news, while 63% use a publisher’s website or app. Across all adults, only 5% rely solely on intermediaries. Most people use them alongside other routes to news. 

Outside platforms can also extend a news brand’s reach. For example, BBC News reached 66% of 16- to 24-year-olds through its own services in the past month. That number rises to 73% when Ofcom includes encounters on selected social and video platforms. 

Users rate news differently across services 

Where audiences encounter news also matters. Ofcom found substantial differences in perceptions of trust and accuracy across distribution channels. Among people who used each service for news, AI services rated below traditional news platforms and news aggregators. The share was about 62% among newspaper app users, 59% among news aggregator users, 44% among AI app and service users, and 39% among social and video platform users.  

Ofcom also asked users about accuracy and impartiality. Among news aggregator users, 66% rated the news they saw as accurate and 61% as impartial. Among AI app and service users, the figures were 44% and 42%. Among social and video platform users, they were 40% and 36%. 

The findings point to a growing tension for publishers. AI is becoming another gateway to news, but reach and audience value are not interchangeable. Ofcom finds substantially lower trust in news encountered through AI than through traditional news platforms. For publishers, the findings raise a familiar but increasingly important question: as more news discovery happens through intermediaries, who controls the audience relationship—and how much of the value created by the journalism flows back to its source? 

-bot traffic among humans concept; what to block?-
AI | Supporter Spotlight

Blocking AI bots is not an AI strategy

Publishers are being pushed to make increasingly consequential decisions about AI. Allow this crawler. Block that one. License another. Update robots.txt. Protect premium content. Negotiate with an AI platform. Yet many commercial teams at media and news companies are being asked to make these decisions without a clear picture of the non-human traffic already consuming their content.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking with publishers and AI companies about content access and licensing. Those conversations quickly get into fair use, grounding vs. training, fair market pricing, and future demand. But rarely does anyone start with the more basic question:

What are these machines actually doing on my site?

We need to stop treating every bot the same

Many publishers already have some of this data. They may receive reports from their CDN or keep a list of their largest sources of bot traffic. The harder question is what to do with it.

“Bot traffic” has become a convenient catch-all for automated activity, but it hides important differences. An AI training crawler, an AI search agent, a traditional search indexer, and a scraper can all request the same article for completely different reasons.

A search crawler might index a story and drive readers back to the publisher. An AI system might retrieve it to answer a user’s question. A training crawler might collect it for model development. An unidentified scraper might repeatedly access an archive. It’s the same article, with very different behavior, and very different value.

Bot classification needs to become as fundamental to publisher analytics as understanding referrals, engagement and subscriptions. Knowing that a request came from a machine isn’t enough. Publishers need to know which agents, crawlers and AI systems are consuming their content, what they access, how frequently they return, and how their behavior changes over time.

Publishers have spent decades getting better at understanding human audiences. We know where readers came from, what they read, whether they came back, and whether they subscribed. 

An AI system doesn’t behave like a reader. It might retrieve a single article, request specific information, or systematically access one section of a site. That consumption may never appear as a conventional session, referral, or subscription conversion, yet it may still have significant value.

Publishers need to start asking different questions. Which AI systems are accessing our content? What are they requesting? Which systems are increasing their activity? What content do they consume most frequently? Without that visibility, publishers are building an AI strategy with only part of the picture.

Blocking is a tool, not a strategy

The first phase of the publisher response to AI understandably focused on control: “Who should we block?” That’s an important question. But blocking bots is not a monetization strategy. In some cases, blocking may absolutely be the right decision, but it should be an informed decision.

A search crawler that generates discovery shouldn’t necessarily be treated like an AI training crawler. An AI company with an existing licensing agreement shouldn’t necessarily be treated like an unidentified scraper. And an AI agent repeatedly retrieving valuable content might represent a commercial opportunity rather than simply unwanted traffic.

Classification turns a blanket bot policy into an informed access strategy. Publishers can decide which systems to allow, which to restrict, which to block, and which might warrant a licensing conversation.

You can’t price what you can’t see

This becomes even more important when the conversation moves from access to AI content licensing. One thing I’ve observed in licensing discussions is how difficult it can be to establish the value of content without understanding how it is actually being consumed.

Knowing an AI company visited your site is one thing. Knowing that it repeatedly retrieves your financial reporting, product reviews, or local news is something else entirely. Now you have commercial intelligence you can bring into a licensing conversation.

Instead of negotiating exclusively around theoretical value, publishers can begin to understand actual machine consumption: what is being requested, by whom, and how often. And different consumption may deserve different economics. Search indexing, AI training and real-time retrieval create different use cases. Publishers should have the information necessary to decide whether those uses deserve different access rules, licensing terms, or pricing.

The machine audience is already here

I don’t think publishers should view every AI system consuming their content as an adversary. I also don’t think they should assume every request deserves free access. The more useful position sits between those extremes. Understand the consumption first. Decide the economics second.

AI systems increasingly consume content one request at a time. That creates an opportunity to move toward consumption-based commerce, where machine consumption can eventually be metered, priced, governed, and settled based on what is actually used. 

But none of that works without visibility. The first step in an AI strategy isn’t deciding what to block. It’s knowing who is consuming your content, what they’re taking, and how that consumption should be treated.

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