Why breaking news still wins in the age of AI

AI is reshaping search, but it hasn’t erased the value of reporting. The real opportunity may lie in what publishers do after the story breaks.

[Photo: Terovesalainen/Adobe Stock]

Pete Pachal is a journalist and the creator of Media Copilot, a newsletter and podcast that examines how AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

There’s a lot of fear these days in the media world over the “zero-click” future. AI chatbots and search engines ingest content, interpret it, and then summarize it for users, with the inevitable consequence being that people no longer visit your site. This is not theoretical. Data from Chartbeat, an analytics company that serves media sites, shows global publisher traffic from Google dropped by one-third last year, with smaller publications hit hardest.

So yes, AI substitutes content, but it........

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