What seemed especially significant was not simply the scale of the change media leaders face. It was the degree to which they recognize what this moment requires. They must move from reacting to disruption to setting terms for it by defending the value of their content, deepening direct audience relationships, investing in unmistakably human differentiation, and applying AI where it creates real business advantage.

This became clear from the four big themes that stood out this year:

1. AI is redrawing the value chain around content

Unsurprisingly, AI was a nearly constant topic across sessions. One idea that cut across the event with unusual clarity, however, was that AI is not just another technology wave. It is forcing a fundamental reset in how media leaders think about the value of content, the economics of publishing, and the terms by which others get to access journalism and other professionally created content.

In his opening remarks, DCN CEO Jason Kint described AI as “the latest and most consequential event of an ongoing story” saying that it is disrupting “the value chain on the Web.”

That sense of responsibility and urgency echoed across many sessions. Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, talked in no uncertain terms about the fact that media leaders must work to shape the model so that publishers “will get the compensation they should,” even as he acknowledged the larger risks around scrapers, declining search, and disintermediation in an “agentic future.” Guardian CEO Anna Bateson emphasized the need to establish “the value of our IP” and protect the investment behind centuries of journalism.

Scott Havens, Chief Growth Officer and Global Head of Consumer of Dow Jones was even more direct about the value media companies bring to LLMs. In describing the way in which agentic AI is reliant on current, quality information, he said, “AI companies need our content and that’s not going to change.” The implication was unmistakable, however. If the industry does not actively assert the value of its work, someone else will define that value.

Perhaps the starkest articulation came from Jon Roberts, Chief Innovation Officer at People Inc. “Index for discovery is fine. Stealing our content is absolutely not.”

2. Audience strategy is replacing reach strategy

For decades, the industry’s growth logic was built around distribution at scale. Reach was the organizing principle. However, AI answers fundamentally change the math. Therefore, search strategies will no longer be reliable or sufficient to drive traffic or revenue.

Axel Springer’s Supervisory Board Chairman Jan Bayer noted that Business Insider has become “more focused on engagement and time spent now, less on reach.” That shift was emblematic of a broader theme. Again and again, leaders returned to the audience as the center of gravity: not traffic, not sheer distribution, but the depth and durability of the audience relationship.

COO Alex MacCallum described CNN as a “consumer first organization” focused on “delivering the most value to their audience.” That language resounded in other conversations about consumption habits, format flexibility, and the need to build around how audiences actually want to consume and engage with information.

At the Guardian, Bateson described a shift from being reader-funded to “audience-funded,” a semantic shift which recognizes that people are consuming journalism in many forms across video, audio, and visual formats. Award winning investigative journalist Julie K. Brown talked about the way her Substack and work for the Miami Herald reach different readers and create a bridge to new audiences. This approach is complementary, she said, rather than competitive. It allows her to use different tones, formats, and distribution models to grow the audience for her reporting.

As discovery is becoming less reliable, the business value of a direct relationship with the audience has risen sharply. This impacts product development and higher-level strategy. Media companies that know the audience, serve focused and meaningful needs, and create value across multiple formats are better positioned than those optimizing for reach. As Ankler CEO and Editor-in-chief Janice Min pointed out, the opportunity is not merely to serve narrow audiences, but to “broaden the total addressable audience” through sharper value and stronger relevance.

3. Human connection, talent, and voice may be the moat

Much of the AI conversation has been understandably dominated by automation, efficiency, and scale. But one of the most interesting through-lines of the event was the opposite idea: that the more abundant and synthetic content becomes, the more valuable human connection, recognizable talent, and editorial voice will be.

That point surfaced when COO Jen Wong described the agentic Reddit search experience as one designed not to replace conversation, but to drive people toward “human communication.” That framing stood out because it runs counter to the grain of so much AI hype. Wong says they must “never disintermediate human communication.” And, as CNN’s MacCallum pointed out: “AI can’t do the human-to-human connection,” which makes it a defensible moat.

That same logic extends to creators and talent. If human connection is becoming more valuable, then the people who embody that connection matter more, not less. In a market flooded with interchangeable output, audiences gravitate toward individuals they recognize, trust, and want to spend time with. That gives journalists, creators, and other distinctive voices a different kind of strategic value: They are not just contributors to the product. They are increasingly central to how media brands build authority, loyalty, and differentiation.

As Christine Cook, Chief Commercial Officer at Bloomberg Media put it: “Aren’t journalists the original creators?” Thus, surfacing their authority, authenticity and lived experience will build loyalty. Carlos King, Founder & CEO, Kingdom Reign Entertainment spoke about the strategic importance of “recognizable talent” and the “creator perspective” in an increasingly fragmented consumption landscape. And Min argued for “the value of voice.”

That connection between humanity and distinctiveness may be one of the most important takeaways from the event. In a noisy world with too much content, what stands out is not generic output but rather trust, perspective, and personality. As others pointed out, what matters is offering information people “can’t get anywhere else” and face-to-face experiences that create “genuine connection.” As King put it, we must harness the power of “human advantage.” Havens talked about the futility of ignoring creators and other talent ecosystems and encouraged his peers to find “ways to work with them.”

For leaders, this means the industry has to stop thinking about talent, journalists, creators, and experiences as nice-to-have complements to the brand. Particularly in an AI-dominated landscape, the people who create our content and human to human connection will define the brand.

4. Operational change is no longer optional

Many of the most grounded comments across the event were not about AI-generated content or media products. They were about AI’s impact behind the scenes to improve workflow, efficiency, product development, emphasizing the practical ways AI can help companies move faster and operate smarter.

Thompson from The Atlantic warned that too many companies are focused on AI in the “front of house” when it is “really useful in the back office.” Min drew a similar line for the deployment of AI in media companies: “On the backend: opportunity. On the front end: not so interesting.”

CNN’s MacCallum categorizes AI as something that can help create “better consumer experiences” and help media companies “be more efficient.” And Bayer from Axel Springer described the need to create experiences that are “personalized and relevant,” while still arguing that content creation itself should remain “a human area.”

These comments point to a meaningful leadership test: It is no longer whether or not to use AI, but rather where, how and to what end. Leaders who approach AI strictly as a shiny consumer-facing feature, or as a way to replace journalists risk missing the deeper opportunity to rethink internal systems, reduce friction, improve decision-making, and better align product, editorial, and business teams. For example, Havens from Dow Jones made a clear case for how AI can help business leaders accelerate the “speed to approval” to enable growth and innovation.

Guiding the future of media

Overall, the tone from the speakers and attendees at this year’s DCN Summit was one of leadership. Of stepping up and owning the challenges they face in order to shape the future.

They recognize that the old search and platform dynamics are weakening, that AI is reshaping the economics of content and that audiences want relevance, flexibility, and value on their terms. They also see that human connection, distinctive voice, and trusted talent are not being diminished by this moment. If anything, they are becoming more valuable.

Media leaders know the value of content and need to set equitable terms around access and compensation. They need to double down on business models that center on audience value rather than reach. A human-differentiated media market requires investing in journalists, creator partnerships, experiences, and products that offer unique value. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the value of AI. Rather, it requires understanding how to use AI where it strengthens the business — behind the scenes, in operations, in product intelligence, in speed and efficiency.

As ever, the future will be neither predictable nor easy. But, as the conversations at the DCN Summit made clear, it can and will be shaped by informed leadership.

The post Four forces shaping digital media and the leadership this moment demands appeared first on Digital Content Next.

But TIME is not just relying on AI companies citing their work. They have also developed and rolled out their own tool, TIMEAI. This is an interactive agent that has been trained on its 103 year archive in order to enrich the user experience on-site.

Time to train

TIMEAI, which appears on the site as a toolbar overlay, was initially tested at the end of 2024 with the annual reveal of TIME’s Person of the Year, Donald Trump. The toolbar was also put live on the three prior Person of the Year honorees; Taylor Swift, Volodymyr Zelensky and Elon Musk.

“There were several hundred articles about all four of them that we trained [the AI] on,” explained Mark Howard, Chief Operating Officer at TIME. “Person of the Year is our single biggest editorial event of the year. So it’s not like we put it on some back catalogue just to see if we could get some basic data. We put it on our most prominent release.”

The tech used was a small language model rather than a large one (LLM), so it was more straightforward to deploy. But it still needed training on TIME’s editorial styles, and guardrails added. TIME’s Editor in Chief Sam Jacobs and some of the newsroom team were brought in to help train TIMEAI in terms of style and tone.

“We had to, given the personalities involved, make some decisions about how it was going to handle questions that had nothing to do with anything we had written about,” Howard said. Even though there is a lot of publicly available information on these public figures, they decided they didn’t want the AI to use content outside of TIME. “It’s not a complete picture when somebody wants to converse, but we made a lot of those trade-offs in a very contained way,” he added.

The version deployed in December 2024 enabled users to translate the article, summarize it in various lengths, chat with it, and even speak to it using voice and audio in 13 different languages. Rather than just having one type of function, Howard said that being able to mix and match requests – for example, to ask for an audio summary then go into detail via text – sets this AI tool apart from many others on the market.

A wider rollout of TIME AI agent

The initial launch was a success. Howard said that the original toolbar was kept live while the team worked on bringing more TIME content into the AI. This wasn’t a straightforward task.

“Because of the way media companies operated over the decades, we had [content] in five different databases going back to the 1920’s, some of them were just PDFs of magazines that needed indexing and digitizing,” he explained. “Now it’s trained on well over three-quarters of a million pieces of content.”

Since November 2025, the TIMEAI agent has been visible on almost every piece of TIME content. Newly published pieces are also indexed in near real-time, ensuring that the answers given are up-to-date.

The team have also been experimenting with ways to get users to interact. The agent has a number of preset prompts to show how sophisticated queries can be. These can range from, ‘Try reading this article out loud’ to ‘Debate AI’s impact on humanity’ using TIME’s reporting and opinion archives.

The results so far have been encouraging. Users who engage with TIMEAI are 139% more likely to return to TIME when compared to those who don’t. Those using the AI agent also double their time spent on the TIME website.

Now, the focus is on encouraging those who may not be as familiar with AI tools to engage. Howard said that this may include putting more instructional overlays in, or feeding more preset prompts into the toolbar. But they are cautious about the extent to which people are routed into the full AI experience, rather than the standard web page. 

For now, Howard sees TIMEAI as an opportunity to increase engagement, rather than a revenue generator. “If we can get people to engage, every surface represents a monetization opportunity,” he added. “But the focus has been on the product itself in the beginning.”

A trusted agentic AI source

Given TIME’s licensing deals with other AI engines, there is a question about why users would come to TIME, rather than ask an AI which pulls in a wider range of sources, including TIME itself.

Howard was emphatic that trust is something the other AI tools don’t yet have, but TIME does. “A lot of people grew up with TIME, knowing and trusting that the red border stood for something, and there was a level of quality that is behind it,” he explained. “We want to carry that forward.”

ChatGPT and other answer engines do cite TIME content, but alongside a wide range of other sources, including sites like Reddit. These answers aren’t always trustworthy, and Howard said that there is a high burden on the consumer to deconstruct what is accurate and what isn’t.

“We think [TIMEAI] can be a trusted source of information to try and help explain the world in a way that TIME can, because of this vast archive,” he said, pointing out that users will only encounter TIMEAI if they’re already on the TIME site. This already signals a level of intent and interest in TIME’s reporting.

“It’s a way for us to pull our archives, our history, our heritage and our brand equity forward in a way that we can present more through an AI-based interface and experience.”

Howard is also clear on the role AI has to play in TIME journalism going forward. “Our journalists get information that only humans could by speaking to their sources and doing the work,” he emphasised. “AI can never do anything like that. It’s not intended to do anything like that. 

“Its purpose is to take the great journalism and then be able to make it accessible to those who want audio briefings, roundups and other formats to be able to better understand everything that we’re publishing.”

Walking the tightrope between using AI tools to help reporting, and letting them take over is something a number of publishers have fallen down on in the past months, with potential long-term implications for audience trust. 

Interactive agents present an opportunity for quality publishers to surface decades of reporting to add context and enrich the user experience. TIME’s approach is cautious, and they are wary of detracting from a carefully-designed web experience. But as similar tools roll out rapidly, readers will become more familiar with what they can do and how to interact with them. TIMEAI’s multi-feature functionality will set it apart as a leader.

The post Inside TIME’s rollout of its TIMEAI interactive agent appeared first on Digital Content Next.

One problem many newsrooms face centers on how they bring new users into content products and what they invite those users to do first. Propensity modeling often uses signals such as repeat visits, time on site or article depth to estimate future action or value and to surface prompts like newsletter sign-ups or subscription offers. These signals work well for timing and targeting. However, they rarely point to actions that help a person express interest, claim a preference or begin personalizing the experience. As a result, first interactions often involve reading a story, scrolling and leaving with no clear path to in shaping what they see next or necessitate a repeat visit.

Why early user choices shape retention

This matters because people naturally look for ways to organize information around their own needs. Across digital products, consumers consistently choose tools that let them save, follow, collect or personalize content in small ways that feel useful and self-directed. When those options are missing or delayed, audiences move through content as passive visitors rather than active participants. They consume what is in front of them, but they do not signal what matters most or establish a reason to return.

Designing the first action that makes news feel personal

Audience retention improves when content products give people an early chance to make a deliberate, personal choice that reflects interest, identity and preference. When a person follows a topic or builds a reading list tied to a personal interest, they have something they want to come back to. A single action turns a visit into a relationship because the product now reflects what the person cares about, not just what they read. When newsrooms design for these moments, something personal begins to live inside the experience.

To better engage and retain audiences, focus on creating a first interaction that feels personal and meaningful. These early, identity-driven choices lead to more return visits and stronger retention. This helps grow a larger and more loyal audience that is more likely to subscribe or become members. Rather than prompting new visitors to read more or subscribe right away, guide them toward a small action that anchors interest, such as saving a story, joining a focused newsletter, or engaging with a local beat or community space.

The New York Times has reported that visitors who sign up for a newsletter are twice as likely to become paid subscribers, and that newsletter readers show higher retention over time. This supports the value of offering a simple and intentional first step that deepens the relationship early. I have previously outlined how content organizations that focus on self-directed engagement tend to create products that are more relevant, easier to return to, and more closely aligned with the daily interests of their audience.

Some publishers already design these first actions into the earliest moments of the experience. Axios developed an “Add Axios on Google,” option as a simple step that lets someone designate the outlet as a preferred source. That one action helps ensure Axios appears more often in Google Discover and search results for that reader, while giving the user a steady stream of stories without having to seek them out. It is a small choice, but it creates continuity, reinforces preference, increases likelihood of repeat exposure and helps turn an anonymous visit into an ongoing relationship. 

Each of these examples invites an early, voluntary action that lets a user claim preference before the product tries to convert them. Other first actions include simple reflection prompts that help users connect a story to their own lives. For example, asking “Why did this story matter to you?” and offering quick, selectable responses such as:

• It affects my community
• It affects my family
• It affects my vote
• I had not seen this reported before

You can also invite small, self-directed steps like selecting a topic tag or choosing areas of interest that reflect how they think about local or national issues. Each of these actions is fast, personal, and intentional, helping users see themselves in the experience from the very beginning.

These fit neatly into existing propensity models as a deeper layer of signal. Rather than relying only on baseline behaviors, the model now incorporates choices users actively make to shape what they see next. That balance between prediction and participation produces stronger signals, supports healthier personalization and contributes to better outcomes over time, including higher retention and more durable long-term engagement.

Where audience retention really comes from

People come back to a news site when they do something that makes it feel like it belongs to them. The encouraging reality is that many organizations already do this well, especially as cookies have faded and familiar personalization tools have lost strength. Retention now grows from the choices people willingly make inside a content product, where identity, personalization and a sense of ownership align with everyday relevance and usefulness.

Across audience development, subscriptions, membership and retention, the same pattern shows up again and again. Products perform better when they invite one clear, personal action early on, rather than relying only on recommendation loops that surface similar stories. Discovery still matters, but relevance deepens when users can signal what they care about and see that choice reflected back to them in practical ways.

This moment matters more than ever. Audiences navigate an endless stream of content across platforms, formats and devices, and attention follows experiences that feel purposeful and personal. The next phase of audience and product development depends on designing for these single-step moments that turn passive visits into active relationships. Over time, this reduces one-and-done visits and increases how often people return within a given week. When teams do this well, they create better experiences, generate clearer signals and build stronger connections without compromising trust.

The post To ensure audiences return, invite one meaningful action early appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Recent research in Canadian newsrooms reveals a cautious reality. Amid the hype, media leaders are not hiring for AI expertise. Instead they’re doubling down on core journalism skills, treating AI as an efficiency tool rather than a replacement for human judgement. It is important to note that this research focused specifically on the editorial use of AI, where the priority is the preservation of audience trust, rather than on use of AI for business growth or commercial purposes.

Terra Tailleur and I conducted interviews with CEOs and editors-in-chief at 12 media organizations, ranging from public broadcasters, national news outlets and wire services, to regional dailies and independent digital startups, over the course of eight months to explore how Canadian newsrooms are using and adopting AI in their editorial practices. Three practical approaches to responsible AI adoption have emerged for media leaders:

Trust-first guardrails

Our findings suggest a growing divide based on the size of outlets. Larger ones, like The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), The Globe and Mail, and the Canadian Press have robust guardrails and policies. Smaller outlets, constrained by time and resources, often rely on informal oversight. This relegates ethical boundaries to individual intuition rather than documented standards.

In a recent HEC Montreal study of over 400 journalists, 36% of those surveyed were unaware if their organization even had an AI policy. Thus, publishers face an operational challenge not in drafting policies, but in driving them clearly and consistently from the executive corner office to reporters’ desks.

Small newsrooms don’t have the budgets of national broadcasters or wire services. So, they are forced to create simpler, more practical models. At Cabin Radio in Yellowknife, for example, editor Ollie Williams says that AI experimentation “happens so far off the side of the desk that it’s like the movie Inception and it’s like the desk has folded back in on itself three times before I get to it.” Therefore, he doesn’t have time to research AI uses and meet with staff to develop formal policy because he’s too busy running day-to-day operations with his editorial team of four.

For resource-strapped newsrooms, a simple governance model can start with a clear approval process, requiring editor sign-off for all AI use. Newsrooms should actively disclose when and how they use AI, prioritize transparency with audiences, and train staff on verification rather than technical skills.

For 2026, the goal for smaller publishers isn’t to draft a 50-page manual. Rather, they should try to establish living documents that provide clear guidance for daily tasks. As DCN outlined, “staff need clarity about when and how to use AI and how to validate its output.”

Upskilling and in-house training

The media organizations we spoke with weren’t hiring engineers with a surface-level interest in news for editorial purposes. Instead, they are conducting in-house training to fill the tech gap. The focus has been on upskilling existing staff who already understand the brand’s voice, ethics and audiences is more effective than bringing in tech-first hires who may lack journalistic DNA.

Tools can be taught in a controlled environment. At the CBC, for example, they aimed to train every employee, from summer hires to 30‑year veterans, with a full‑day AI program adapted from Radio‑Canada. This approach keeps AI adoption grounded in newsroom culture, not vendor experimentation.

Priority on core journalism skills

Across the board, editors-in-chief emphasized that AI expertise comes second to strong reporting fundamentals. More than the ability to write a clever prompt, they were looking for curiosity, critical thinking, strong judgment. They also focused on an ability to interview people, build sources, and find good stories. All of which are fundamental skills that define quality journalism.

Toronto Star editor-in-chief Nicole MacIntyre told us that while the next generation will, “absolutely need to embrace the tools that can help them work smarter and more efficiently… their success will still depend on having the core skills to adapt in a fast-changing media environment: curiosity, critical thinking, strong judgment, and a commitment to truth.” Ultimately, AI fluency matters, but only on top of reporting fundamentals.

Considerations before rolling out ambitious AI products 

The test for managers and boards this year lies in day-to-day governance: Are newsrooms giving editors clear boundaries on generative AI, or leaving it to gut instinct? Before scaling AI deeper into editorial routines, here are pointed questions to ask:

• Do frontline editors know the exact off-limits line for generative AI, or are we relying on vibes?
• Are we allocating time and tools to verify AI-assisted content, or prioritizing speed over trust?
• Do budgets support upskilling current staff on AI literacy, or are we waiting for perfect new hires?
• With a third of the industry unaware of AI policies, what steps turn intranet PDFs into daily habits?

Publishers entering 2026 face practical choices about how AI fits into editorial workflows. The Canadian newsrooms we spoke with are moving cautiously, focusing on guardrails, staff training, and core reporting skills rather than rapid experimentation. Their approach suggests that AI in journalism will be shaped less by hype than by the daily realities of newsroom capacity, oversight, and editorial judgment.

The post What newsroom leaders say matters most in AI adoption appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Customer-facing applications have been slower to emerge. That caution is intentional. When AI moves closer to audiences, the stakes change. Trust is central to publisher value, and audiences remain wary of AI’s role in content and news-making.

Still, some publishers are testing where AI can serve audiences without undermining credibility. These efforts are not about replacing journalism, but about improving access, context, and usability. From conversational tools to article summaries and content repackaging, these experiments point to how AI can deepen engagement when it is clearly constrained and grounded in trusted source material.

AI-powered Q&A as a subscriber benefit

One publisher seeing success with customer-facing AI products is Harvard Business Review. In late 2024, they launched Ask AI, a subscriber-only conversational tool which brings source-linked answers to leadership and management questions directly from HBR’s own archives. It also draws on video and podcast transcripts from the publisher.

When the HBR team first looked to develop this feature, it was in response to some very specific customer challenges. Subscribers sometimes come to the site ready to engage with full articles and in-depth analysis. But other times they are faced with time constraints and don’t have time to read deeply to find out what they need.

“We’re seeing a couple of different use cases for it,” explained Erika Heilman, VP and Deputy Publisher. “Some use it as a coach or mentor, with back-and-forth interaction. Others see it as a more trusted source than just going to a foundational LLM, because it’s got a pure corpus.”

“It has very specific guardrails against it… and we made sure to pressure test it against hallucinations.” Dave Lefort, Managing Director of Digital Product Strategy added.

HBR has been pleased with the take-up so far.  A quarter of HBR subscribers have used Ask AI, and of those, a third have interacted multiple times. 

Now, the team is looking to increase usage and improve onboarding. This includes multimodal search toolbars offering quick AI-generated summaries of articles and the Ask AI tool, as well as showing the option to ‘Ask AI’ within articles. “We’re looking for ways to integrate it more into the subscriber experience more holistically,” Lefort explained. “So while you’re reading, you can query the article about anything, ask it to help me apply this to my situation.”

Heilman noted that Ask AI shows potential as a powerful retention tool. “The key for us going forward is to make sure that we are not trying to compete against ‘good enough’ free answers,” she said, explaining why it’s a subscriber-only benefit. “We are trying to create something of value for senior leaders who are, frankly, making consequential decisions every day, and are unlikely to do that from a chat-based foundational model. A trusted source is really key.”

AI article summaries as a reading companion

Like HBR, the Financial Times is also experimenting with AI conversational search. Ask FT is being used by their B2B brand “FT Professional” to search and summarize FT journalism going back to 2004. But this is not the only place the publication is using AI to engage readers.

The FT has been experimenting with using AI-powered summaries in its articles. Similar to HBR, they acknowledged that sometimes readers come wanting the facts of a story quickly, but other times they settle down for a deeper reading experience.

Bullet point summaries of longer articles aren’t a new idea. Many publishers have tried variants over the years, and AI has enabled faster production of article summaries without involvement in the actual content creation.

On FT content, rather than overviews appearing at the top of an article, readers are offered the option in a separate toolbar to summarize or translate the piece.

At the Definitive AI Forum in London, FT CEO Jon Slade said that these were proving successful, and actually increasing engagement. AI summaries “have led to more people reading more depth of the article,” he explained. “They’ve used it as a means to understand, is this an article I want to spend more time with, rather than replacing their reading of the article.”

AI embedded to improve the product experience

FOX is also integrating AI into their customer-facing products, albeit less explicitly. John Fiedler, FOX’s EVP of Product & Engineering outlined that they look at where AI and generative AI experiences can be built into different levels of products.

A recent example of this is FOX One, a direct-to-consumer streaming service which offers all of FOX’s news, sports and entertainment content. It launched in August 2025, with a price point of $19.99 monthly or $199.99 annually.

FOX One is powered by AI at a number of different levels. Fiedler explained that one of the more obvious touchpoints consumers will be aware of is their generative AI-style customer support tool. “We started using GenAI for customer care under the premise that traditional customer care, whether it’s a phone or email address or old-school chatbot, is antiquated,” he said. “We can likely replicate an agent conversation with GenAI, and have it be a better and more successful user experience.”

Users of FOX One can do more than just access customer support. They can ask the AI what shows are coming up, upgrade or cancel subscriptions, or even handle issues like outages.

Fiedler noted that this feeds into many other functions AI can then help with. “AI is really good at understanding what a video is about, what a live stream is about…certain person’s history and behaviors, and how that should affect things like recommendations within the product,” he outlined. “That’s giving us a much deeper understanding of content through AI than we’ve been able to do in the past.”

Within FOX One, there is also a space for short-form video, much like YouTube Shorts or TikTok. The team uses AI here in multiple ways to help production. Fiedler explained that the technology can ‘watch’ the live stream of their channels, and identify interesting moments, or “spicy takes”. 

“Say in a sports studio, you have a heated debate about what happened in the game last night, that’s a hot moment,” Fiedler outlined. “So you cut out the beginning and the end, and now you have a clip. But it’s still formatted from a 16×9 resolution.

“So we pass that through another layer of [AI] technology that converts it into a vertical video where it overlays the right people, and the right layouts, and makes sure that it’s formatted nicely for vertical consumption. Then it will put words on the screen, and pass it through to the product.”

This kind of streamlining makes the content teams much more efficient at creating and reformatting video. Fiedler was keen to emphasize that it speeds up the workflows, but there are still humans approving every step of the way.

What early audience-facing AI experiments suggest

Taken together, these examples show publishers experimenting carefully with where AI fits into the audience experience. The common thread is not novelty, but restraint. In each case, AI is used to help people find, understand, or repurpose existing journalism and video, rather than to generate new content or make editorial decisions. Human oversight remains explicit, and the underlying value proposition stays rooted in trusted source material.

That approach reflects a broader reality for publishers navigating AI in public view. Audiences may be curious about new tools, but their tolerance is closely tied to clarity and purpose. Where AI is introduced to meet a specific need, such as saving time or reducing friction, it can support engagement. Where it feels unnecessary or opaque, it risks eroding trust. Right now, publishers appear to be setting the terms, introducing audience-facing AI on their own conditions rather than racing to deploy it everywhere.

The post Which audience-facing AI initiatives are publishers seeing success with? appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Understanding the why: evaluation

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

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

Testing assumptions: validation

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

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

From there, the focus turns to research and practicality.

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

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

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

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

Building for people: amplification

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

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

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

A product-centric approach guides media innovation

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

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

The post The next media revolution isn’t editorial. It’s product. appeared first on Digital Content Next.

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

Generative AI impacts everything

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

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

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

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

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

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

Put users first

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The biggest challenges in media product strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Design for people, teams, and purpose

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

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

The post Media product executives discuss what’s working now appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Gamification involves applying interactive game mechanics to non-game environments, such as news platforms, to drive user engagement and loyalty. Gamification can include more complex activities such as crossword puzzles, but also simpler interactive features such as quizzes, point collection systems, leaderboards, badges, hashtags, rankings, “like/dislike” options, and sharing, which may be more feasible for certain settings.

While most gamification studies focus on user experience, this one explores executive-level perspectives from media owners and editors-in-chief. Originally published in Journalism and Media, the study focuses on how Greek news media leaders are exploring and utilizing gamification strategies. The study’s authors conducted and analyzed interviews with a variety of digital media decision makers to uncover key trends and actionable insights.

Opportunities abound

Games are synonymous with fun. But gamification can have serious business benefits for digital media platforms, such as:

• Increased user time-on-site and repeat visits.
• Deeper user interaction, not just as a novelty, but fostering audience retention.
• Generation of analytics on user behavior, which can inform editorial strategy and content personalization.
• Appeal to younger, tech-savvy users- potentially without alienating long-term audiences.

Most of the media owners and editors interviewed perceive gamification as a promising strategic approach for increasing user engagement while enriching the digital news experience.  Leaders emphasized the need to uphold professional ethics while adapting established journalistic practices to accommodate the interactive and participatory nature of today’s digital media environment.

Potential pitfalls of media gamification

As much promise as gamification holds, some media executives express ethical concerns, such as credibility risks, especially among long-term users who value tradition. Some noted that older audiences may perceive gamification as gimmicky or inappropriate for news, possibly alienating core audiences. They stress the importance of maintaining editorial integrity and journalistic standards, especially in hard news contexts. Concerns about aggressive monetization were discussed. Finally, some leaders interviewed expressed concern about potential manipulation: the possibility that gamification could be used to prioritize clicks over informed citizenship.

Practical concerns also surfaced in interviews. Smaller newsrooms may lack technical capacity, design expertise, or budget to implement gamification effectively. Internal pushbacks from staff can occur, especially among those who view gamification as incompatible with traditional journalism values. Some executives question whether gamified features can be maintained over time without becoming stale or losing relevance.

Researchers also point out that while many participants in the study were able to recognize and assess individual gamified elements, they often lacked the training to conceptualize gamification as a planned, strategic approach. This indicates a need for professional development to help media leaders build skills to design, assess, and apply gamification in meaningful ways.

So, is gamification right for your media business?

Research indicates the importance of building internal buy-in before launching gamification innovations. Organizational resistance can hinder results, so ensure that all staff understand the value of proposed changes. Invest in training and be ready to assure stakeholders that ethical and practical issues have been thoughtfully considered to maintain integrity and mitigate potential pitfalls.

One caveat: the study data is drawn from ten in-depth interviews with media executives in Greece, including owners and editors-in-chief of Greek newspapers, radio stations, television channels, and online news platforms. While the interviews were thorough and represented diverse media venues, the research is drawn from a modest quantity of participants within a limited geographic area. 

Nevertheless, this study offers fascinating insight from those with real-world expertise in the field. The perspectives shared highlight the promise and complexity of merging gamification with journalistic practices. Digital media leaders seeking to innovate through gamification while upholding editorial credibility will find this research particularly relevant.

Research framework
The study uses a Normalization Process Theory (NPT) framework to analyze how gamification can be integrated into newsroom culture. The results point to a clear need for intentional design, strong editorial governance, and regular impact evaluation.

Research authors outline how frameworks like Normalization Process Theory (NPT) can guide adoption:
-Coherence: Make the purpose clear.
-Cognitive Participation: Get buy-in from staff.
-Collective Action: Assign roles and resources.
-Reflexive Monitoring: Evaluate and adjust.

The NPT framework can also be used to guide introduction of other emerging technologies.

The post Media leaders weigh in on Gamification in news appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Right now, both for-profit and nonprofit news organizations are pulled in multiple directions, sometimes in ways that feel conflicting. There’s the urgent pressure to meet short-term revenue and development goals. There’s also the equally critical responsibility to build a scalable, high-quality content product that earns long-term trust and engagement. On the surface, separating those efforts can seem logical, even principled. Many media organizations intentionally silo revenue from editorial to protect independence, maintain credibility and avoid the perception of influence.

But here’s the problem: That separation, while well-intentioned, often leads to organizational disconnect, inefficiency, and even burnout. Editorial teams operate without a clear understanding of audience needs or funding realities. Revenue teams chase dollars without being fully connected to the mission or the product value that fuels those relationships. When these efforts are misaligned, the result isn’t integrity. It is inertia.

The most resilient and forward-moving organizations are the ones that challenge that separation. These media companies don’t treat building an audience and driving revenue as separate (or even competing) goals. Instead, they invest in infrastructure and culture that make it possible for product-led and sales-led strategies to operate in sync. They build systems that allow each side to inform and strengthen the other without compromising editorial independence. It is a deliberate tactical shift and a shift in mindset reset that has become essential in today’s climate.

Leading with product or sales

While coaching organizations through infrastructure strategies, I repeatedly run into a familiar question: In an early startup environment, how do you appeal to potential sponsors when your audience is incredibly valuable but statistically small? 

It’s not quite a paradox, but it does expose a frustrating contradiction at the heart of early-stage media revenue and audience growth. It strikes a nerve and speaks directly to the false binary of whether an organization should be focused on building or selling. The truth is, you can–and should–do both. When the entire team is grounded in the heart of your mission and has a clear understanding of who you are and what you offer, it actually becomes easier to move forward confidently on both fronts.

A product-led approach focuses on the quality of the news product, including its content, features and the consistent delivery of value to the audience. It helps media companies drive growth and can convert into revenue through subscriptions, memberships or recurring giving. This strategy emphasizes seamless content design, audience segmentation and member benefits, using clear calls to action to increase engagement and improve retention. Success requires research, surveying, behavioral analysis and continuous assessment. While typically slower and more intentional, product-led growth is essential for long-term sustainability.

What I’ve learned and often emphasize is that sales is not a mad scramble. It is a system. It is an opportunity to design and execute a strategy where effort, decision-making and influence come together to create real value for partners. Strong sales strategies lead to stronger sponsorships, better partnerships and long-term retention. Just like product development, this requires time, intention and strategic alignment. 

Understanding the nuances of both models and how product-led and sales-led growth can operate independently as well as together is critical. A dual-engine model that integrates both allows organizations to be nimble and intentional at the same time while building something sustainable, scalable and mission-aligned.

Leading with product and sales

We see this logic applied in the tech world. Companies known for product-led growth, especially in the startup space, don’t shy away from integrating a sales function. A product-led approach drives user acquisition and early traction, much like how a news organization might use free content or limited-access models to grow engagement. According to McKinsey research from 2023, companies that pair product-led strategies with traditional enterprise sales often outperform peers in both revenue growth and company valuation. That hybrid model, often referred to as product-led sales, allows organizations to serve both individual users and high-value institutional clients at the same time.

This shows something very clear. Building and selling are not competing forces. In reality, they are most effective when aligned through shared infrastructure. They are like marbles in a well-designed marble run. Each follows its own track with different curves, drops and timing. But when the system is aligned, all the marbles arrive at their destination together. That kind of coordination, guided by clarity and discipline, allows organizations, especially in news media, to grow with intention instead of remaining stuck in cycles of reactive decision-making.

When a newsroom builds systems that allow both models to operate in sync, everything becomes more intentional, more measurable and more resilient. A robust CRM connects audience data with donor and sponsor relationships. Strong analytics make it possible to track which content is performing and which audience segments are most engaged. Brand development provides both editorial and revenue teams with a shared language and a clear point of alignment. 

When this kind of integrated infrastructure is in place, product-led strategies such as newsletter personalization and loyalty programs help surface warm leads. At the same time, sales-led efforts like sponsorship pitches and donor stewardship can be guided by real user behavior and remain connected to the overall product experience.

The landing point

Too many for-profit and nonprofit mission-driven media organizations are being forced to choose between building a content product that earns trust or hustling for revenue that keeps the lights on. That false choice is costing more than just money; it is costing momentum. When product-led and sales-led strategies operate in silos, teams burn out, missions stall and infrastructure cracks under the weight of missed expectations.

A hybrid growth strategy, anchored in infrastructure, is sustainable, scalable and adaptive. It helps organizations become more responsive to opportunity and less reactive to disruption. By definition, marble runs help us explore how forces interact to influence motion, momentum and timing. They offer a powerful visual for how systems can be designed to create coordinated outcomes. That is exactly the kind of growth news media needs right now. This is not just about generating revenue or building an audience. It is about creating alignment so that every team, every strategy and every mission-driven decision moves with purpose and arrives exactly where it is meant to, together.

The post Moving the media marbles in the same direction appeared first on Digital Content Next.

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. 

The post From custom to community: the evolution of product management in media appeared first on Digital Content Next.