Weekly Digest Issue #161, 7 Feb 2026
This week's earnings reports from the US show that with the right focus, the Post can return to growth, and it's actually a pretty good time to be a premium news publisher.
This week's earnings reports from the US show that with the right focus, the Post can return to growth, and it's actually a pretty good time to be a premium news publisher.
The traditional economic bargain of the open web, where publishers provided content to search engines in exchange for traffic, is fundamentally broken. It needs a new economic model with collective licensing as a new economic layer for publishers and content creators.
As tokenization moves into a critical financial market infrastructure, it can signal a similar shift for decentralised content provenance. Platforms and publishers would move from using it as an optional add-on to making it the default plumbing they quietly rely on.
Traditional decision cycles that rely on reports, news coverage, or analyst opinions often result in a delayed response to significant change. The future sends warnings. Those who notice first get ahead.
The digital world is evolving in unpredictable and challenging ways, where visibility is achieved through uncomfortable strategies, trust is a paradox, brand perception is a technical signal, and the very foundation of our shared digital history is crumbling.
If you're a publisher or digital professional, the last year has been a whirlwind of anxiety and confusion, as every available data point shows that they generate almost no click-through traffic to cited websites. What does this mean for our traffic and our SEO strategy?
A coalition of 1,500 publishers, web infrastructure providers, and standards bodies has launched the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) 1.0 standard. It represents a massive, collaborative effort to rebalance the relationship between content creators and the automated systems that consume their work.
The marginalisation of professionally reported narratives demands a new architecture for trust, one that enhances the legibility of the information supply chain without resorting to censorship or a state-controlled “Ministry of Truth.”
In an AI-driven news ecosystem, creating value will not stem from producing content more efficiently or increasing the volume of content. Instead, real value will emerge from developing entirely new products, discovering innovative distribution models, or broadening the total addressable market.
Ad spend in the creator ecosystem in 2025 is expected to rise 26% YoY to $37B, or four times faster than ad spend in media overall, set to grow 5.7% YoY, a new report from IAB found.
The Tinius Trust «AI in Journalism Futures 2025» report explores plausible scenarios for journalism over the next 5 to 15 years within an emerging ecosystem in which AI will predominantly mediate.
The world’s news industry invites you to join FACTS IN : FACTS OUT. Looking for a new architecture for content in the age of AI.