Mather Report - David Clinch

Happy Friday and welcome to our curated look at the top #MediaRevenue stories of the week, including lots of updates on the subject of AI and its impact on the news industry.

Are you going to be at ONA in Philadelphia later this Month? Let me know and we can meet there. #ONAConf

We are working on a new set of protocols for news organizations and media technology companies to frame how they use technology, including AI, in ways that support journalism, but never replace it.

We are also developing frameworks to track the impact of local journalism, and to block bots from scraping original journalism into AI and LLM models, UNLESS they are properly licensed to do so.

If you want to know more about these two initiatives, contact me soon or find me at ONA.

If you see articles about #MediaRevenue, AI in newsrooms, or the impact of local journalism, please let me know so I can include them in this roundup.

Here is this week's curated selection of #MediaRevenue news:

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"A group of the world's biggest news media organizations called for revised regulations on the use of copyrighted material by makers of artificial intelligence technology, according to an open letter published on Wednesday."

"The New York Times updated its terms of services Aug. 3 to forbid the scraping of its content to train a machine learning or AI system. The content includes but is not limited to text, photographs, images, illustrations, designs, audio clips, video clips, “look and feel” and metadata, including the party credited as the provider of such content. The updated TOS also prohibits website crawlers, which let pages get indexed for search results, from using content to train LLMs or AI systems."

"In May, Google unveiled the beta version of its Search Generative Experience (SGE) technology—a product that uses artificial intelligence to answer search queries on-page—and the technology has sent publishers scrambling to prepare for a major disruption to their organic search traffic, which typically constitutes their largest source of readership and, ultimately, revenue. When fully incorporated into search, SGE could reduce publishers’ organic search traffic anywhere from 20% to 80%, according to interviews with media executives, SEO consultants and AI technologists."

"People have used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to bypass publishers’ paywalls. So how can publishers protect their subscription businesses against generative AI chatbots siphoning their subscriber-only content? Digiday checked in with publishers, paywall management companies and consultants to find out, and their answers largely boil down to a need for generative AI chatbot makers to signal when they are trying to access publishers’ content so publishers can treat them similarly to search engines’ content crawlers."

"The rise of generative artificial intelligence is top of mind for most CEOs these days, and Robert Thomson, the CEO of Wall Street Journal owner News Corp. is no exception. On his company’s fiscal Q4 earnings call Thursday, Thomson dedicated a section of his opening remarks to generative AI, revealing that his company is in active discussing with AI and tech companies “to establish a value for our unique content sets and IP that will play a crucial role in the future of AI.”"

"OpenAI, the parent company to ChatGPT, will fund a new journalism ethics initiative at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute with a $395,000 grant, executives told Axios. Why it matters: It's part of a broader effort by OpenAI to provide support for quality journalism, which it relies on to train its algorithms."

"Restoring the journalism jobs lost over the past 20 years wouldn’t just be cheap—it would pay for itself."

"The Atlantic has booked $19.5 million in advertising and events revenue so far this year, according to data shown to staff during an internal presentation last week, putting it at 60% of its $32.5 million goal for the year. The company now has 925,000 paid subscribers, per Thompson, a figure that includes print magazines sold across physical newsstands and digital subscriptions sold through The Atlantic's partnership with Apple News."

"New York Times said it increased its digital-subscriber base to 9.19 million in the second quarter and generated more revenue from each of them than it did a year ago, as a wave of introductory discounts expired for some existing users."

"The Women’s Magazines of 2023 Are in a Facebook Group and Your Inbox"

"Puck, the buzzy media startup that covers the intersection of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, has raised over $10 million in a Series B growth round, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told Axios."

"Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson could see two of the wealthiest GOP business megadonors, Rebekah Mercer and Peter Thiel, invest in his new media company, according to people familiar with the matter."

"Blendle has been selling news by the article for nearly a decade, but “very limited” demand and the rise of digital subscriptions have done the idea in."

"PressReader, the leading all-you-can-read platform of newspapers and magazines, has entered into an extended partnership with Gannett Co., a prominent subscription-led and digitally-focused media company."

"Nonprofit Trusts Are Fighting to Save Local News"

"Plant closures and consolidation prompt earlier deadlines, longer drives, higher costs as papers scramble to stay in print"

"Press Gazette ranks the 50 biggest media companies in the UK by revenue."