Eric Shanfelt and Jez Walters cover the latest news and developments affecting media companies and publishers. This month's topics include:
- AI missteps at major newsrooms — The New York Times, Ars Technica, and one of the Netherlands' most prominent news brands all made headlines recently for AI-related editorial failures. Eric and Jez discuss what went wrong and what practical guardrails publishers should have in place.
- Using AI to research your advertisers — Time magazine built an AI visibility tool to analyze how brands appear across generative AI platforms, then used those insights to sell sponsored content. Eric breaks down how any publisher can do the same with existing tools.
- Shipstead's open-source video tool — The European publishing house open-sourced VideoFi on GitHub, a tool that automatically converts text articles into short-form videos. Jez walks through how it works and why short-form video matters for audience growth.
- Dynamic pricing at the Washington Post — The Post is experimenting with dynamic subscription pricing, and not everyone thinks it's a good idea. Eric shares why industry voices like Sean Griffey and Rafat Ali are pushing back, and how it ties into the broader conversation around reader trust.
- DPG Media's free student subscriptions — The large Dutch publisher opened its entire portfolio of titles to students at no cost, signing up 93,000 subscribers in a week. Jez, who is currently reporting on this story, explains the strategy and what DPG is learning from the data.
- Reddit Pro opens to all publishers — Reddit's pro tools are now free and available to publishers, with features like RSS posting, AI community targeting, and analytics. Eric and Jez discuss how to actually get started and why most publishers don't yet have a Reddit strategy.
All links mentioned in this episode are available at nearviewmedia.com.
