Policy & Rights
Editor’s Pick
Revenue
News Corp’s newspaper squeeze tests the subscription story
Digital subscriber growth at The Times sits alongside falling earnings in its wider division. The figures demand a closer look at what customers pay and what it costs to keep them.
Cartoon · AI-generated
Inside the Editor’s Pick
News Corp has added digital subscribers at The Times and The Sunday Times, yet earnings have fallen at their wider division. The contrast is a warning against treating subscription totals as proof of a healthy business. Useful paid products can fund journalism; businesses still carrying declining print income face a harder bill. The investment decision is which customers can be served profitably over time.
For the quarter to 30 September, News Media reported $18 million of segment EBITDA, News Corp’s adjusted operating earnings measure, down 40%. The Times titles, including the Times Literary Supplement, ended September with 686,000 digital subscribers, against 640,000 a year earlier. The division also contains Australian and US operations and broadcasting, so its results do not establish that Times profit fell.
That distinction matters to newsroom budgets. A growing paid audience can support investment without yet offsetting the cost of the wider business. Publishers need evidence of what customers pay, renew and use.
The big thinking Every Editor’s Pick →
Previous Editor’s Picks & selected reading.
Products & Formats
Sky News has a platform deal. The audience is the harder part
Revenue
DMG’s social shows have buyers. The margin matters more
Revenue
The Times wants to sell the answer
Revenue
Black Ballad turns a beauty panel into repeat business
Revenue
Mail Metro Media makes fewer competing ads a product worth selling
The newswire All the latest →
What’s moving in publishing.
Reporting from Noah Wire-
Scholarly publishers race to govern AI as use outpaces readiness
A survey of 563 people in scholarly communication found AI use is widespread, but publishers still face gaps in expertise, privacy safeguards and governance.
Artificial intelligence is now embedded in parts of scholarly publishing, but many organisations have yet to establish the controls needed to use it with confidence. The Society for Scholarly Publishing’s 2026 AI Pulse Check, based on responses from 563 people across scholarly communication, found that use was widespread while preparedness remained limited. Respondents identified ethical and legal questions, data…
Read the full story → -
Radio presenters put AI to work — but insist every script needs a human edit
More from the wire
- AI & Technology AI can write about buildings it has never seen
- Local & Specialist Publishing Academic publishers face the harder task of making legacy archives accessible
- Products & Formats Kent newsletter network uses AI to scale without handing over editorial judgement
- Policy & Rights Publishers turn to image provenance to show how AI handles newsroom pictures
Advertisement · Noah
The changing business
Strategy
Tamedia cuts culture desk as AI push deepens newsroom revolt
Staff at Swiss publisher Tamedia are protesting a new round of redundancies and warning that the drive to cut costs and expand AI use is hollowing out editorial ambition.
Audiences
Young voters swing to Democrats, but online right’s decline is harder to prove
About seven in ten voters under 30 backed Democratic House candidates, while economic anxiety and dissatisfaction with the administration shaped the wider result. The polling points to a Republican setback among younger voters, but cannot s
Revenue
DMG’s social shows have buyers. The margin matters more
Standalone social campaigns are bringing in money. Publishers copying the model should look past viewing figures to production costs, spare capacity and repeat orders.
Explore the sections
The publishing agenda.
A few stories to start with.
Follow a section for the full picture.
Strategy
Future shows why publishers need more than a place in an AI answer
Future already sells AI visibility services. New research on ChatGPT’s partner summaries shows why publishers also need reliable measures of what their expertise earns—and reasons for readers to return.
- Strategy Publishers must share the cost of catching fake research
- Strategy Why AI-assisted style guides are becoming the control layer for consistent publishing
Audiences
Frammer AI to turn BBC India newsroom footage into digital video
- Audiences AI moderation gives My Edmonds News a way to reopen comments — with humans still in the loop
- Audiences Authors accuse publishers of feeding both sides of the AI fight
Revenue
The Times wants to sell the answer
- Revenue Black Ballad turns a beauty panel into repeat business
- Revenue Mail Metro Media makes fewer competing ads a product worth selling
AI & Technology
AI can write about buildings it has never seen
- AI & Technology Two of three AI paper explainers made claims unsupported by their sources
- AI & Technology NYT Cooking’s optional AI chef sparks backlash over control
Platforms & Discovery
Why AI images are breaking the single-field rights model
- Platforms & Discovery Who’s laughing now? Google loses half a trillion dollars as its AI answers earn less
- Platforms & Discovery AI-made game wikis are flooding search results and squeezing out fan communities
Policy & Rights
Meta’s hold on publishers runs deeper than clicks
- Policy & Rights Publishers turn to image provenance to show how AI handles newsroom pictures
- Policy & Rights NYT Cooking’s AI sous-chef leaves subscribers cold
Products & Formats
Kent newsletter network uses AI to scale without handing over editorial judgement
- Products & Formats Sky News has a platform deal. The audience is the harder part
- Products & Formats Maritime journalists urged to use AI without surrendering editorial judgement
People & Skills
Nordic editors draw new lines as AI rewrites opinion pages
- People & Skills Ohio journalists withhold bylines over AI chatbot’s election-year errors
- People & Skills Denmark’s Projekt Y launches with AI-assisted newsroom and unanswered authorship questions
Local & Specialist Publishing
Academic publishers face the harder task of making legacy archives accessible
- Local & Specialist Publishing People Inc. builds AI-ready feeds to put publishers in control
- Local & Specialist Publishing Argentine newsrooms draw a line between AI support and editorial judgement
Advertisement · Noah
Advertisement · Noah
Advertisement · Noah
Make sense of what's next.
A weekly briefing for people shaping the future of publishing.
Free. Email requests are handled by our team.