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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Mediahuis joins ‘NATO for news’ group SPUR | Who What Wear's affiliate lessons
And latest global and US website data shows huge traffic losses
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 11 May.
Press Gazette’s awards for the best digital journalism products (newsletters, podcasts, websites, etc.) are now open for entries. Find out more here.
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💣 I’m not one for doom and gloom but I suspect the commercial news industry has 18 months left to save itself from AI Armageddon.
Online media is changing from a world of links to one populated by directly-written answers that remove the need ever to click through to source articles.
The economic incentives that underpin expensive, original human-powered reporting are evaporating.
The multi-billion dollar AI answer industry desperately needs that reporting to continue answering user questions effectively, but so far we have yet to figure out a mechanism by which publishers can get paid for the important service they provide.
So it is great news that European news publishing heavyweight Mediahuis has joined the SPUR “NATO for news” initiative, which aims to create a shared licensing framework to protect and monetise journalism in the AI era.
Other publishers in SPUR are the FT, The Guardian, BBC, Sky News and The Telegraph. It will be interesting to see if The Telegraph stays in SPUR post takeover and whether new owners Axel Springer (no slouches in the AI department) join the crusade.
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📉 The latest global and US readership data for news websites tracked by Press Gazette underline the urgency of the challenge.
Some 34 out of the top 50 websites in the US were down 10% or more year on year. The BBC fell 10% year on year, Associated Press fell 25% and Reuters fell 30%.
There are news organisations which employ thousands of journalists whose work is being stolen by AI answer engines (chief amongst them Google).
The global top 50 news websites ranking for April (also out today) tells a similar story.
A reminder: rolling out AI Mode and AI Overviews helped Google increase its advertising revenue in the UK to £21.5bn last year (according to Press Gazette’s estimate) compared to £1.6bn spent by marketers with the entire commercial news and magazine industry (in print and online).
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