When Ingrid Verschuren began working at Dow Jones more than 25 years ago, she didn’t plan to be on the cutting edge of automation: “I started my career manually indexing news articles,” she told INMA members during a recent Webinar presented by the INMA Product & Tech Initiative. Her job involved reading the news and then indexing it by topic, such as industry, region, company, etc.

“After a while, we realised there was no way we could keep up with the volume. There was just so much news coming at us that we had to think about automation.”

That automation laid the foundation for how the company would later use AI.  Fast-forward to today, and Factiva now allows access to global news sources including newspapers, journals, magazines, television and radio transcripts, and more. And while Verschuren’s old job is gone, she now serves as Dow Jones’ EVP of data intelligence and AI governance.

“[Factivia] is a business intelligence platform,” Verschuren explained. “But what really makes it stand out is that everything on it is trusted, licenced, and compensated.”

Factiva is in a unique position in that it serves three different roles: “First and foremost, we act as a publisher. We really want to make sure that we protect our content, but we also want to make sure that we get fairly compensated for that,” Verschuren said, noting that producing high-quality, trusted journalism requires a lot of investment. “So we need to make sure that we get compensated as a logical conclusion to that.”

The second role is that of an arbiter for publishers, ensuring they receive compensation for their content as well.

“And lastly, we want to make sure that we use technology to make it as easy as possible for our customers … to find content as quickly and as easily as possible.”

A partner for publishers

The Factiva platform now licenses content from around 5,000 sources, including local outlets, niche publications, and major global brands. A key part of its success is transparency: Publishers know exactly how their stories are being used, where they’re showing up, and what they’re earning.

“Factiva has been around for over 25 years, and one of the things that we’ve always stressed is we want to make sure we are transparent in how content is being used, where it’s being used, and as a publisher, how you’re being compensated for that,” she explained.

To work with publishers, Dow Jones takes a “do unto others” approach to business: “We’d never put forth a deal we wouldn’t want to sign ourselves,” Verschuren said. In addition to the platform offering transparency and fair compensation, there’s no favouritism; Factiva is “source neutral,” so every outlet, regardless of size, is treated equally in search rankings.

“Ultimately, we want to make sure that all publishers have access to the opportunity of monetisation and distribution,” she explained.

Navigating the GenAI wave

The rise of generative AI has changed everything for news media organisations, and Verschuren said that Dow Jones wasted no time in ensuring it had the proper agreements in place.

“We went back to all of the sources or publishers we already had licensing deals with and asked for GenAI rights, with the understanding that GenAI is so much more disruptive than some of the other AI technologies that are out there right now,” she said.

Those conversations weren’t always easy, she said, because Dow Jones wanted to make sure it listened carefully to every publisher and understood their concerns: “As a result of that, we had to sometimes pivot in what we can agree to and what we can’t agree to.”

Creating a secure environment

Another significant concern regarding AI usage is content leakage. Factiva makes sure that doesn’t happen by providing a safe environment. The company protects the content of others as fiercely as it safeguards its own.

“We want to make sure there is transparency. We want to make sure there is a private and secure environment,” said Verschuren.  It’s also critical to understand how content is being used, and she said the company is “fairly descriptive” in how content can be used.

“If we license our content, there’s no leakage anywhere else,” she emphasised.

“And then ultimately we want to make sure there is fair compensation.” 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .