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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Mediahuis trials AI agents for reporting | Future taps ChatGPT visibility with GEO service
And Press Gazette's latest traffic ranking of the top 50 US news websites
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 17 February.
🤖Excusive #1: Belfast Telegraph publisher Mediahuis is trialling a new system whereby “first-line” reporting is done entirely by AI agents (albeit with human oversight).
The plan is that this would free up the company’s 2,000 journalists to focus on producing “signature journalism”.
Sources feeding into the AI machine would include news agencies, government bodies/parliaments and company announcements.
It’s an intriguing plan and it is certainly true that journalists nowadays need to be mainly focused on doing the things that AI cannot do.
We have the full story here (which relied on a reporter spending a day at an event, writing stuff down and distilling the most newsworthy bits into a report - something AI can’t do yet).
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💷 Exclusive #2: Still in the brave new world of AI, I’ve spoken to the head of SEO at Future PLC about how the specialist publisher is selling generative engine optimisation (GEO) as a service.
Future is one of the most cited publishers in the world on LLMs (especially its consumer tech brands Techradar and Tom’s Guide).
SEO director Simon Glanville told me that visibility, rather than traffic, is the game when it comes to generative AI platforms like ChatGPT. And it has already started delivering successful paid content campaigns aimed at boosting particular products on the AI answer engines.
While some publishers are focused on blocking AI bots to protect their intellectual property, Future wants its brands to be crawled and referenced as much as possible by the major LLMs.
These print-style declines reflect the fact that US titles are on the frontline when it comes to AI disruption. One strong riser is the Minnesota Star Tribune, which led the table in month-on-month growth as it covered the ICE crackdown that saw two residents killed by agents.
Another growing title is The Sun (up 70% year on year).
Approaching three years after the launch of its US news operation, The Mirror has yet to enter the top 50 ranking.
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