Amazon will pay The New York Times up to $25 million a year under their recently signed multi-year content licensing agreement, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The deal, which was first announced in May without financial terms, allows Amazon to use short excerpts and summaries of Times journalism, including content from NYT Cooking and The Athletic, across its consumer products, including Alexa. The content will also be used to train Amazon’s proprietary AI models. Industry sources confirmed to the WSJ that the full amount will be paid in cash. At $25 million a year, the deal…

The Daily Mail has announced that all of its digital platforms – including MailOnline – will operate under a single masthead: Daily Mail. The move is designed to eliminate reader confusion and unify its global digital output under one of the most recognised names in media. Alongside the rebrand, the company has set a target of reaching one million digital subscribers by October 2028. It currently has more than 325,000 digital subscribers worldwide, including 20,000 in Australia and 50,000 in the United States. The changes follow the launch of Mail+ last year, which the company says is one of the fastest-growing subscription…

Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, is experimenting with AI to expand the limits of podcast production. His company, FlightStory Studio, has launched 100 CEOs with Steven Bartlett, a series that uses AI voices and animation to deliver scripted episodes telling the stories of prominent business figures including Richard Branson and Elon Musk. While Bartlett still writes the scripts, the hosting and production are done using AI tools from companies such as Runway, ElevenLabs and Wondercraft. The show is available on YouTube and Apple Podcasts and makes clear that it is AI-generated. Georgie Holt, FlightStory’s cofounder, told…

Reach plc, the UK’s largest news publisher, has signalled a decisive shift toward building digital subscriptions, reversing its long-standing aversion to reader payment models. The move follows the Daily Mail successful introduction of a subscription model for Mail Online and The Sun deciding to try again with a reader revenue with the establishment of the Sun Club. In its half-year results to 30 June 2025, Reach reported a 1.8% increase in digital revenue to £61.1 million, but overall revenue fell by 3.4% to £256 million due to a 4.8% decline in print income. Despite its traditional reliance on advertising, new…

Dow Jones Newswires has launched an AI-powered French translation service, expanding its multilingual offering for real-time financial news. The new service delivers between 500 and 1,000 translated stories every day, building on previous launches in Korean and Japanese. The rollout is aimed at professionals who want to follow US market news in French, including investors in France, French-speaking clients in New York and London, and Canadian firms affected by US tariffs. It translates English-language content from Dow Jones wires and The Wall Street Journal, with a focus on speed and fluency. “We’re targeting users who prefer to read in their…

Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the US and owner of USA Today, is offering voluntary buyouts to employees as it looks to cut costs and invest more heavily in AI and automation. In a memo to staff, CEO Mike Reed said the company’s revenue had remained “static” in recent years, with sales falling from $3.21 billion in 2021 to $2.51 billion last year. He described the buyouts as part of a broader plan to “support sustainable growth”. Staff have until July 30 to accept the severance offer and must remain in their roles until September 5. Specific terms have…

The Los Angeles Times will go public within the next year, according to its billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. In a surprise announcement on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Soon-Shiong said the move was intended to address concerns over editorial independence and his own business interests. “I would look to take LA Times public, [for it] to be democratised. And allow the public to have ownership of this paper,” he said. Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune in pharmaceuticals, bought the LA Times, San Diego Tribune and other assets for $500 million in 2018. At the time, he described the paper…

Ofcom has warned that the UK’s public service media risks becoming “an endangered species” unless urgent reforms are made to secure its future in a digital-first world. In a new report, the regulator calls for coordinated action from broadcasters, tech platforms and government to safeguard trusted, impartial content that serves the public interest. Central to Ofcom’s six-point plan is a call for greater visibility of public service content on platforms such as YouTube. Traditional TV viewing is falling sharply, particularly among younger audiences – just 48% of 16 to 24-year-olds now watch broadcast TV each week, while 43% of children…

This week I had the pleasure of joining FT Strategies’ AI and the Future of Content event at their central London offices. They brought together leaders from across the publishing industry to debate how AI is reshaping the business of content – and what comes next. The discussion was wide-ranging and, at times, provocative: what does quality look like in an age of generative AI tools? Can AI help make editorial strategies more purposeful, not just more productive? And how do we create value when content has become so abundant and attention so scarce? These are not abstract questions.…

Italy’s communications regulator Agcom has ordered Meta to pay more than €9 million to GEDI, the publisher of La Repubblica and La Stampa, for the use of its news content on Facebook during 2022. The ruling, announced on 10 July, is the first in Italy to compel a major tech platform to compensate a traditional media group for journalism shared online. The decision follows the failure of direct negotiations between Meta and GEDI. The payout, between €9 million and €10 million, is well below GEDI’s original €30 million claim, which included content use on Instagram, but far higher than Meta’s reported…