There’s no “Field of Dreams” for local independent publishers, no “if you build it, they will come,” where the “it” is powerful, critical journalism and the “they” is subscribers happy to pay for it because they recognize the quality of the product and the necessity of that work for healthy communities.  Source: What does it take to make...

YouTube says it wants to ‘focus on originality’ in a push to surface better Shorts recommendations for users. Shorts is built on quick and attention-grabbing content, which makes cutting portions of long-form videos one of the easiest ways to put out quick videos with high view potential. Of course, that also means channels can just as easily...

The Washington Sun is creating The Washington Sun Magazine, a monthly print publication featuring some of the most compelling journalism produced by The Sun’s newsroom, with an emphasis on longform storytelling, essays and local news. The magazine will also feature The Sun’s Hill reporting, D.C. sports and culture coverage, and opinion columnists. Source: The Washington Sun launches The...

A coalition of media organizations, including the Guardian and the Financial Times, has released a new standard for tracking how AI tools use publishers’ content. The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights initiative, or SPUR, released the content telemetry standard today and has invited OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft to help shape how the standard is implemented, said...

Facing new competition in the audiobook market from Spotify, Audible is turning to AI and other technology to enhance the listening experience. On Thursday, the Amazon-owned company introduced three new features that will allow listeners to explore a book’s characters, engage in interactive stories, and view additional imagery and bonus information about landmarks or places mentioned in...

Discord has announced tools aimed at expanding the number and types of companies that advertise on the platform. This week, the social media firm announced Discord Ads Manager, an ad campaign management platform that lets companies manage ads shown on Discord in one place. The tool can be used to perform forecasting, build “a campaign with objective-based...

Amid a number of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday, comes bad news for supporters of a more open web: Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds. Reddit says RSS has now become a “common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse,” which is why it’s made the decision to wind down RSS feeds on its...

How publishers are rethinking audience engagement: Five takeaways from the Future of Media Technology Conference “It would be a mistake to try to replicate the creator economy.” By GRETEL KAHN Sept. 30, 2026, 3:31 p.m. Earlier this month, just across from the Tate Modern in central London, journalists and media managers gathered for this year’s Future of...

Google has launched a pilot program that pays publishers for their contributions to its AI-powered search features, according to a report from The Information. The pilot program reportedly includes around 100 publishers and comes as Google faces scrutiny over the impact of its AI features on web traffic. Source: Google reportedly tests paying publishers for AI search results...

Chris Hansen feels ambushed. He is standing outside a Regal movie theater in Times Square. He has just seen Primetime, a new movie about Chris Hansen starring Robert Pattinson. Tourists mill about as a camera crew records the scene. “I’m not objective, because the character is, you know, me. But it was so detached from reality,” he...