Who will “monetize” the truth? That's the question I’m struggling a lot with as I enter our spring fundraising season, because here's what's happening to journalism right now. 

AI Overviews on Google answer your questions before you ever click through to the source. News sites have lost 600 million monthly visits in a single year. Perplexity crawls 700 news site pages for every one reader it sends back. 

The platforms made $21 billion last year on news-related searches. They paid publishers about a nickel on the dollar. None of that went to Canada's National Observer. The biggest media conglomerates have stopped calling themselves journalism companies. News Corp's CEO now describes his as "an input company" — infrastructure for AI, on par with chips and oil.

Meanwhile, the internet is filling up with “Slopaganda.” This is AI-generated content designed to overwhelm the truth with sheer volume. More than half of new English-language........

© National Observer