So far, much of the industry’s focus on AI in newsrooms has been on operational efficiency, automating transcription, accelerating data analysis, streamlining workflows. These tools have proven their value, helping lean teams do more with less.

But efficiency alone won’t solve publishers’ biggest challenge: how to drive growth and revenue in a world where search traffic is shrinking and generative AI is reshaping how audiences discover information.

Nothing is free — especially your journalism

Generative AI systems train on massive amounts of published work, often scraped without permission. This risks turning your investment into a raw input for someone else’s product without credit or compensation. That’s not a fair exchange.

The first step is protecting your content. Know which bots are visiting your channels, and restrict access to prevent unauthorised use of your content.

If you are negotiating terms with an AI provider, secure clear attribution, fair compensation, and visibility. The precedent matters: The relationship between platforms and publishers is already strained, with debates over licensing, value, and control playing out in industry reports.

From efficiency to growth

The next frontier is about how expansively and profitably you can distribute, reuse, and monetise your journalism in new ecosystems.

That begins with treating your content as a liquid asset that can flow across formats, platforms, and channels.

The power of presence

AI is enabling content to become truly “liquid” — able to adapt across formats, platforms, and channels. A single investigative article can be repurposed into an interactive Q&A, an audio briefing, or a video explainer optimised for short-form platforms.

This matters because audiences are no longer tethered to a single destination. They expect information to find them, whether in a search engine result, a podcast feed, a social scroll, or an AI-powered answer box.

With traffic from search declining, meeting your audience where they are is increasingly important. While these tools are powerful accelerators to aid discovery, publishers need to ensure systems are in place to ensure consistent high-quality outputs.

Use AI to supercharge the traffic source driving 40% of pageviews

Roughly 40% of your traffic comes from your own site. This internal traffic is a powerful signal of your relationship with your audience; these people are likely to be your most loyal and thus engaged users, with the highest pageviews.

Furthermore, readers who visit two site pages are 2.75x likelier to return than those visiting one. Combined, this information highlights the importance of keeping your audience engaged by creating low-friction recirculation paths.

That’s why creating low-friction recirculation paths is critical. AI can help. Search boxes, answer engines, and support bots can keep audiences engaged and deepen their relationship with your brand.

When evaluating these solutions ask:

1. Implementation: How easy is it to test, learn, and roll back if needed?
2. Customisation: Can it match your brand voice and user experience?
3. Content strategy: Will it surface only your journalism or blend in outside sources that address a broader range of queries with richer context? If the latter, are usage rights secured?

A path forward

AI is often framed as an existential risk to journalism raising risks of disintermediation, loss of control, and diminished revenue. But there is also opportunity.

By treating AI not just as a cost-cutting tool but as a growth engine, publishers can reclaim their position in the evolving information ecosystem. To set your company up for success:

• Protect your content from unauthorised scraping.
• Meet your audience where they are by reimagining journalism as liquid content.
• Engage them on your own channels with AI-powered tools that build loyalty and trust. Choose a solution that fits your needs for implementation, customisation, and content sources.

It’s time for the next evolution. Publishers who leverage AI strategically, with the right safeguards, can strengthen their business while maintaining the quality and trust their audiences rely on.

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