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Blocking the bots is step one. People Inc.'s Jonathan Roberts on what comes next: the companies reselling publisher content, who sets the price, and why AI is spending its money in the wrong place. Pete Pachal talks with Jonathan Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc. (People, InStyle, Investopedia), about blocking every bot by default and allowing 38 through, the disguises blocked bots wear, why robots.txt is a chocolate teapot, the "picks and shovels" companies taking content for free and selling it for money, the 18 Napsters of content with no Spotify, serving AI companies Markdown instead of HTML, who gets to set the price, per crawl versus per use, why models without reference are fiction writers, why inputs now matter more than the model, TIME and Mobian's ads for bots, and why automating the chore should never mean automating the choice. Chapters0:00 Why the demand for information moved upstream2:30 Jonathan Roberts, welcome back to the Media Copilot2:36 Can smaller publishers really block bots?4:29 Yes, and the future is hungrier for content than ever6:47 Why robots.txt is a chocolate teapot8:17 The CDNs are the new front line9:48 Block everything, allow 3810:30 Blocked bots put on disguises12:11 Botnets, hijacked smart TVs and the FBI13:38 What a smaller publisher can do today17:02 Chips, power and information19:21 18 Napsters and no Spotify22:14 A better product for bots than HTML25:45 Who gets to set the price?28:40 Per use or per crawl?32:05 Information is a supply chain, not a mine34:54 Training, inference and fiction writers39:41 TIME, Mobian and ads for bots42:49 Automate the chore, not the choice43:24 Search is humble, chatbots are arrogant47:03 People Inc.'s LLM visibility program48:12 Two futures for publishers50:39 Outro GuestJonathan Roberts, Chief Innovation Officer, People Inc.People Inc. MentionedPublishers are fighting the wrong battle against AI (Pete's column)Publishers finally have AI buyers but no say in the priceWhat TIME learned from a month of selling ads to bots, with Mark HowardJonathan's first episode, April 2025 Watch on YouTube | Full post and transcript | Subscribe on Substack Produced by The Media Copilot.Music: "Favorite" by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0

When AI answers the question, publishers lose more than the click. Bombora's Jaime Schultheis on why AI referrals convert, why Google is a shaky foundation, and what AI companies should give publishers besides a check. Pete Pachal talks with Jaime Schultheis, head of global data partnerships at Bombora, about what Bombora's publisher data shows (steeper referral declines, more bots, niche B2B titles holding up), why AI referral traffic is small but converts far better than search, Google's new option to opt out of AI features, events and communities as "AI proof" experiences, measuring the halo effect for sponsors, sorting good bots from bad, TIME and Mobian's ads-for-bots model and Perplexity's pushback, and why she's optimistic that publishers will come out of this with more leverage. Chapters0:00 What a website visit is really worth1:59 Jaime Schultheis, welcome to the Media Copilot2:04 From newspapers to Bombora3:39 "I probably was not worried enough"4:53 What Bombora's publisher data is showing6:17 Why specialty publishers are holding up9:42 What's the reward for GEO?12:10 Charging more for AI referral traffic14:11 Don't build your business on Google15:25 Google's new AI opt-out16:59 Events, communities and "AI proof" experiences20:37 The first step for a small publisher23:13 Measuring the halo effect for sponsors26:09 Getting into events without the pitfalls28:58 Good bots, bad bots32:35 What a fair AI deal should give back37:05 TIME, Mobian and Perplexity's pushback41:34 What worries her, and why she's optimistic43:52 Outro GuestJaime Schultheis, Head of Global Data Partnerships, BomboraLinkedIn | Bombora MentionedThe Atlantic's AI Gamble with Nicholas ThompsonWhat TIME learned selling ads to bots, with Mark Howard Watch on YouTube | Full post and transcript | Subscribe on Substack Produced by The Media Copilot.Music: "Favorite" by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Rob Kelly tracks 99 AI licensing deals. What publishers are really selling now, and why OpenAI may settle with the Times. Kelly, the creator and host of Media & the Machine, keeps a spreadsheet of 99 AI content licensing deals, from The New York Times' little-discussed $100 million Google arrangement to Yelp's new deal with OpenAI. He ran the content licensing business at CMP Media, so he knows how profitable a licensing feed can be. Pete Pachal and Kelly cover the two early playbooks (the Times sues OpenAI, News Corp signs with it), why training is fading from the deals as inference and retrieval catch up, what Kelly calls licensing content to commerce, the squeeze on mid-tier publishers, and his prediction that OpenAI settles with the Times before its IPO. In this episode Kelly's path from Wall Street and tech journalism to running content licensing at CMP MediaThe two early playbooks: the Times sues OpenAI, News Corp signs a $250 million dealThe Times' little-discussed $100 million licensing deal with GoogleWhy licensing revenue is close to pure profit for publishersHow deals have shifted from training toward inference and RAG, and why the models haven't run out of training dataWhether AI companies pay mainly to avoid lawsuitsLicensing content to commerce: Yelp's request-a-quote button and a subscribe button inside the answerGoogle Zero and taking a beginner's mind to AI trafficHow the AI answer is being renegotiated, from ads for bots to brand linksThe mid-tier squeeze, ProRata, and the RSL collective licensing protocolWhether Google or Apple could import the YouTube revenue-share modelThe backlash against AI among younger people, and an 8.7x productivity gain measured in a spreadsheetTwo futures for media, and why Kelly expects OpenAI to settle with the Times before its IPOGuest: Rob Kelly, Creator and Host, Media & the Machine: LinkedIn | Media & the Machine Watch the video version: YouTubeFull post and transcript: mediacopilot.ai About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what's new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You'll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Like and subscribe: youtube.com/@themediacopilot Produced by The Media Copilot.Music: "Favorite" by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

Bot traffic has already passed human traffic on the web. Oasy co-founder Choy Travers thinks publishers should stop blocking the bots and start selling them ads. Pete Pachal talks with Choy Travers, co-founder of Amsterdam-based Oasy, about a new kind of advertising: sponsored content served to AI crawlers on a publisher's site, on the bet that the AI will use it when answering a user's question. They cover why blocking bots backfires, how Oasy's free-for-publishers, CPM-for-advertisers model works, disclosure that has to survive a crawl and a summary, Perplexity's cloaking objection, why licensing deals leave most publishers behind, and the billboard problem in AI attribution. This is part two of a two-part look at ads for bots; part one is Mark Howard, COO of TIME. Disclosure: Pete has been running Oasy on mediacopilot.ai for several months. In this episode Why blocking AI crawlers means removing yourself from the fastest-growing search channelHow Oasy's model works: free for publishers, CPM for advertisers, one placement per pageWhat an advertiser is actually buying when there's no guaranteed placementDisclosure that has to survive a crawl, a chunk, and a summaryPerplexity's cloaking objection, and what it gets right and wrongWhy licensing deals will pay the top players and leave the rest scrapedWho is responsible when an AI platform strips the labelPay-per-crawl versus pay-per-use, and the billboard problem in attributionThe utopian and dystopian versions of the ads-for-bots futureGuest: Choy Travers, Co-Founder, Oasy: LinkedIn | oasy.ai Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU43Zhz3esAFull post and transcript: mediacopilot.ai About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what's new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You'll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Like and subscribe: youtube.com/@themediacopilot Produced by The Media Copilot.Music: "Favorite" by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

Bot traffic passed human traffic on the web this year. TIME decided to sell the bots ads. One month in, COO Mark Howard explains what advertisers are buying, why the AI seems to remember what it scrapes, and what Perplexity got wrong. Pete Pachal talks with Mark Howard, chief operating officer of TIME, about agent ads: brand-verified facts, labeled as sponsored, placed on the machine-readable versions of TIME pages for the AI crawlers it allows in. They cover the infrastructure TIME built first (TollBit, ScalePost, a 70-agent allow list), the Mobian brand-gap method behind each campaign, the two measurement studies, the referrals-versus-citations puzzle, what an advertiser actually buys, whether the models can read the disclosure, the Perplexity dispute, what counts as a legitimate crawler, and why pay-per-crawl is both Howard's biggest worry and biggest hope. This is part one of a two-part look at ads for bots; part two is Oasy co-founder Choy Travers. In this episode Why TIME chose to learn by doing instead of waiting for the market to settleThe infrastructure underneath agent ads: TollBit, ScalePost, and a 70-agent allow listThe markdown page built for machines, and what an agent ad actually isWhich bots show up, and what they're there forThe TIME100 Creators moment that made the case for the productMobian's method: visibility, favorability, and accuracy across the major modelsWhy TIME believes the agents remember what they scrapeOne month of data: causal lift and model impact over timeWhat the advertiser is buying when there's no guaranteed placementWhether the models can read the sponsored label, and what they do with itThe Perplexity dispute, and what OpenAI thinksWhat counts as a legitimate crawlerPay-per-crawl as both the biggest worry and the biggest hopeGuest: Mark Howard, Chief Operating Officer, TIME: LinkedIn | time.com Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjz-GEaibbIFull post and transcript: mediacopilot.ai About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what's new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You'll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Like and subscribe: youtube.com/@themediacopilot Produced by The Media Copilot.Music: "Favorite" by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

On this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal sits down with Onix co-founders David Bennahum and Nicholas Nadeau to explore a very different model for AI: one where experts own specialized AI systems built around their knowledge, voice, judgment and point of view. They discuss why smaller, domain-specific models may sometimes outperform general-purpose AI, how Onix incorporates knowledge that has never appeared online, and why authorship, privacy and data sovereignty could become increasingly important as AI evolves. The conversation also tackles the business side of expert-owned AI:  Can creators turn their expertise into an AI product? Can journalists do it?  What happens when an AI becomes an authorized extension of a person’s knowledge? And can experts actually participate economically in the value AI creates? Plus, Pete challenges the Onix founders on hallucinations, model accuracy, scalability and what happens when expert-owned AI moves beyond health and wellness. Key topics include: AI and intellectual property Expert-owned AI Small language models vs. frontier models Data privacy and sovereignty AI hallucinations Creator monetization The future of journalism and knowledge work The emerging “author economy” Try Onix: Onix.life    |  Media Copilot early-access code: COPILOT 🔗 About the 👤 Guests David S. Bennahum | Co-Founder & CEO, Onix. | https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbennahum  Nicholas Nadeau, Ph.D., P.Eng. |  Co-Founder & CTO, Onix.| https://ca.linkedin.com/in/engnadeau  _____ About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

As AI reshapes the internet, the future of journalism may depend on how publishers license, distribute, and protect their content. On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Michael Ellis, President of Newstex, to explore one of the most important and least understood battlegrounds in artificial intelligence: content licensing. As AI companies race to build smarter models and answer engines, publishers are grappling with a fundamental question: How should their work be used, and how should they be compensated? For more than two decades, Newstex has helped publishers distribute licensed content to research platforms, financial information services, and now AI-powered products. Ellis explains why licensing is no longer simply about granting access to content. Instead, it's about defining purpose, preserving context, and ensuring publishers retain both value and visibility in an AI-driven ecosystem. The conversation explores why high-quality, licensed content is becoming increasingly valuable as AI systems struggle with misinformation and low-quality "AI slop." Ellis discusses the growing importance of attribution, provenance, machine-readable metadata, and usage-based compensation models that reward publishers based on how their content is actually used. Pete and Michael also examine how smaller and independent publishers can compete in a marketplace increasingly dominated by large technology companies, why collective licensing models may offer a path forward, and how platforms like ProRata and AskNews are building new approaches to attribution and publisher compensation. Finally, Ellis shares both his optimism and his concerns for the future of journalism in the AI era, explaining why the industry must move quickly to build sustainable business models before the economics of publishing are permanently reshaped. Why This Matters The battle over AI and journalism isn't just about copyright. It's about who gets rewarded for creating trusted information. As AI becomes the primary interface for discovering knowledge, publishers face a defining moment. This conversation explores how licensing, attribution, and new business models could determine whether quality journalism thrives or struggles in the age of generative AI. Key Topics Why AI content licensing is about purpose, not simply permissionHow Newstex connects publishers with AI platforms and research servicesWhy provenance and context matter as much as content itselfThe economics of usage-based compensation for publishersHow smaller publishers can compete in an AI-first information economyThe role of metadata, attribution, and machine-readable contentAI-generated content versus trusted editorial contentThe future of paywalls and premium journalismHow companies like ProRata and AskNews are changing content licensingWhat publishers must do now to prepare for an AI-mediated future🔗 About the 👤 Guest Michael Ellis  -  President, Newstex 🌐 Author Page: https://www.newstex.com/author/michael-ellis 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msellis/ About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode?Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

What if the future of AI in media isn't replacing storytellers, but giving them better tools to tell better stories? This episode is sponsored by Descript.com  In this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping media production without sacrificing creativity, editorial judgment, or human storytelling. Laura explains why Descript's vision has never been about replacing editors, but about eliminating the repetitive, time consuming tasks that slow production. From text based video editing and AI assisted collaboration to intelligent clipping and personalized workflows, she shares how AI is becoming a creative partner rather than an automated replacement. The conversation also examines why memory, personalization, and collaboration may become AI's greatest strengths, how media organizations are adapting to an increasingly creator driven landscape, and why the next generation of production tools will focus less on software features and more on helping teams create great content. Finally, Laura offers a refreshing perspective on the future of AI, arguing that the industry has spent too much time selling fear instead of showing creators how these tools can unlock more original storytelling, more creative freedom, and entirely new ways of producing media. The conversation explores: Why AI should replace repetitive labor, not human creativityHow Descript evolved from a text based editor into an AI powered production platformWhy collaboration remains the most valuable feature in modern media workflowsHow AI memory is creating more personalized creative assistantsWhy editorial judgment, taste, and storytelling still belong to humansHow newsrooms and media companies are producing more content with smaller teamsWhy the future of media production is conversational, collaborative, and AI assistedHow creators can use AI to spend less time on tools and more time telling better stories Why this matters Artificial intelligence is transforming every stage of media production, but the biggest opportunity isn't replacing creative professionals. It's removing the friction that keeps them from creating. As newsrooms, marketing teams, and independent creators face growing pressure to produce more content across more platforms, AI has the potential to become an intelligent collaborator that accelerates production while preserving human judgment, creativity, and authenticity. This conversation offers valuable insight for journalists, marketers, content creators, media executives, and anyone navigating the future of AI powered storytelling. 🔗 About the 👤 Guest Laura Burkhauser is the CEO of Descript, the AI powered audio and video editing platform used by creators, media organizations, podcasters, and enterprise teams around the world. Under her leadership, Descript continues to pioneer AI assisted media production, helping storytellers simplify complex workflows while keeping human creativity at the center of the creative process. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burkhauser/ Descript: https://www.descript.com This episode is brought to you by Descript. Descript makes editing podcasts and video as easy as editing a document. Record, transcribe, clean up audio, remove filler words, create clips, and more with powerful AI tools built right into your workflow. Spend less time editing and more time creating with Descript. Visit Descript to learn more. — About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

Bots now make up about half of all web traffic. Are they a threat to block or an audience to win?  For most of the web's history, the deal was simple. Search engines pointed people to websites, and those visits paid for the content through advertising and subscriptions. AI is rewriting that arrangement, and the clearest place to see it is in who, or what, is showing up at the door. Akamai says it now handles more than 150 billion bot requests a day, with AI bot traffic climbing more than 300% year over year. Bots account for roughly half of all internet traffic. On this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, Pete Pachal talks with two Akamai executives who sit on opposite sides of that shift: Kim Salem-Jackson, the company's chief marketing officer, and Patrick Sullivan, its CTO of security strategy. Their jobs once had little to do with each other. Now they are working the same problem from two directions. For Sullivan, bots have been a security headache for more than a decade. What changed is that the most valuable visitor to a site is now also a bot: the retrieval and training crawlers that feed large language models. "The VIP visitor to the website are the various bots that really make LLMs go," he says. Detection and blocking are no longer the point. Akamai keeps dozens of categories of bots and a menu of responses for each. For Salem-Jackson, the reframe is sharper. She treats LLMs as a new audience, each with its own personality, the way a marketer treats different buyers. "The bots are my new customer," she says. She monitors bot volume by the hour, rolls out a welcome mat, and watches whether her team's work on AI visibility pulls more crawlers in. The catch is that the same bot looks like an opportunity to one business and a threat to another. A training crawler can compress a publisher's entire site, hand it to a model, and never send a reader back. Sullivan puts the ratio of training visits to human visits at tens of thousands to one. For a company like Akamai that wants to show up in AI answers, that crawler gets cookies and milk. For a publisher whose business runs on traffic, the same crawler is something to block or charge for. That’s where the conversation gets useful for media people. Akamai offers pay-per-click tools, but Sullivan is candid that those models are early and that content licensing deals remain more common. The technology is the easy part. The hard part is the business and legal call about what to allow, and who can enforce it. Unlike Cloudflare, which has taken a loud public stance on publisher control, Akamai casts itself as "Switzerland," a technology enabler that leaves the decision to the publisher. Then there’s the part every publisher can act on now. Salem-Jackson says an average webpage runs about 200,000 tokens, but a model reads only around 10,000. Roughly 1% of your site actually gets consumed. Anything important that sits below that budget is invisible. Her fix was a separate "bot site" that serves crawlers stripped-down, high-value content, which she credits for an 85% lift in citations. Great content is not enough if the machine cannot read it. Key Takeaways • AI bot traffic is up more than 300% a year, and bots now make up about half of all web traffic • For some sites, the most valuable visitor may now a bot, not a person • The difference between training bots, retrieval bots, and malicious bots • Marketers are starting to treat LLMs as an audience to court, each with its own personality • The same crawler can be an asset or a threat depending on whether your business runs on visibility or on traffic • Pay-per-click for bots exists, but licensing deals are still the more common path, and enforcement rests with publishers rather than the CDN • A model reads only about 1% of a webpage, so anything below the token budget is invisible to AI • A separate bot-optimized site can raise AI citations sharply, which Akamai puts at 85% • Wikipedia, LinkedIn, YouTube and Reddit carry outsized weight in what LLMs cite 🔗 About the 👤 Guests Kim Salem Jackson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimsalemjackson/ Patrick Sullivan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricksully  Akamai Technologies https://www.akamai.com About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode?Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

Local journalism has spent the last two decades fighting for survival. First came the internet. Then Craigslist. Then Google and social media. Advertising disappeared, newsrooms shrank, and communities across the country became news deserts. Now comes AI. For many journalists and publishers, artificial intelligence feels like the next existential threat...a technology capable of flooding the internet with cheap content, eroding trust, disrupting search, and making it even harder for real journalism to survive.But what if AI could also be part of the solution? On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Paul Gewuerz, host of Small Press, Big Ideas and founder of LocalPod, to explore what is actually happening on the front lines of local media. After more than 120 conversations with publishers, editors, entrepreneurs, and local news operators, Paul has seen firsthand how deeply challenged the industry remains. But he has also discovered something that rarely makes the headlines: new ideas are taking root. From local newspapers transforming themselves into cafés and community gathering spaces to publishers building new revenue streams, launching podcasts, embracing events, and using AI to accomplish work that once required entire teams, local journalism is being reinvented in unexpected ways. Pete and Paul discuss why trust may become even more valuable in an internet overwhelmed by AI-generated content, how small newsrooms are already using tools like ChatGPT and Otter.ai, and why AI could give independent publishers the ability to launch products and businesses that simply weren't possible before. They also confront the darker side of this transformation, including AI slop, fake local news sites, politically funded "pink slime" operations, and the growing challenge of knowing what information...and which sources...can actually be trusted. In this episode: Why local journalism remains vital to healthy communities and democracyHow innovative publishers are reinventing the local news business modelWhy trust could become journalism's greatest advantage in the age of AIHow small newsrooms are actually using AI todayThe opportunities AI creates for new products, revenue streams, and branded contentWhy AI-generated local news and "pink slime" sites pose a growing threatHow podcasts can help local publishers grow audiences and deepen community relationshipsWhy Paul believes AI represents a new industrial revolutionThe uncomfortable reality of building with AI: if you can create something faster, so can everyone else Why This MattersFor Paul, the promise of AI is personal. After spending more than two years building a software platform with limited progress, he used AI-assisted coding tools to complete it in just two months. “I’ve been working on a software platform for my company for two and a half years, had about 10% done. I have finished it in the last two months. It is operational. People are on the platform.” His experience raises one of the biggest questions facing media today: What happens when suddenly anyone can build almost anything? About the 👤 GuestPaul Gewuerz on LinkedIn: Paul Gewuerz LinkedIn profileLocalPod website: LocalPod.coSmall Press, Big Ideas on LinkedIn: Small Press, Big Ideas LinkedIn page About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode?Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai.Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

As AI transforms the way news is created and consumed, The Wall Street Journal is reimagining storytelling around trust, personalization, and audience experience. This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat This week on The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal sits down with Taneth Evans, Head of Digital at The Wall Street Journal, to explore how one of the world's leading news organizations is navigating the AI revolution. Rather than chasing every new AI trend, Evans shares how the Journal evaluates emerging technology through a simple lens: Does it genuinely help journalists do better work or help readers better understand the world? From AI-powered investigative tools and newsroom workflows to personalized storytelling and adaptive content, Evans offers a thoughtful look at how AI can strengthen journalism without compromising trust. "So many times in the past few years, I've said to people, what would you do with a building full of journalists at your disposal? No newsroom feels like it has enough resources... How can we use AI to help us get closer to the answers to that question?" — Taneth Evans The conversation explores why journalism is evolving beyond a single article format into flexible experiences tailored to how each reader prefers to consume information, while keeping facts, reporting, and editorial standards at the center. Sponsor: The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat. With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences. Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat What we cover • How The Wall Street Journal evaluates new AI technologies • Why audience needs come before AI innovation • The rise of personalized and adaptive journalism • AI tools transforming investigations and newsroom workflows • How AI can create entirely new reader experiences • Why trust, attribution, and media literacy matter more than ever • The future of publisher owned experiences in an AI driven world • Why great reporting becomes even more valuable in the age of AI As AI changes how information is distributed, the challenge isn't simply adopting new technology. It's preserving trust while creating better ways for people to engage with journalism. Evans argues that the future belongs to news organizations that use AI to deepen their relationship with readers, not replace it. Why This Matters News consumption is changing rapidly. Readers increasingly expect personalized, accessible experiences while publishers face growing competition from AI powered search, chatbots, and automated summaries. The organizations that succeed will be those that combine trusted reporting with innovative experiences that make journalism more useful, more engaging, and more relevant. This conversation offers an inside look at how one of the world's leading newsrooms is preparing for that future. About the 👤 Guest Taneth Evans Head of Digital, The Wall Street Journal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taneth-evans-b35877162  The Wall Street Journal:https://www.wsj.com About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat This week on The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal sits down with veteran AI journalist and former Fortune reporter Sharon Goldman to discuss the growing disconnect between AI's promise and public perception. As Sharon launches her new Substack, Ground Level AI, she shares why she's shifting her focus away from model releases and Silicon Valley headlines to examine how AI is impacting communities, businesses, governments, and everyday people. "To say you're covering AI today is like boiling the ocean." — Sharon Goldman From AI data centers and cybersecurity risks to job displacement fears, media disruption, and public trust, Sharon offers a grounded perspective on where the AI conversation is headed next. What we cover  • Why AI companies are struggling to win public trust • The growing backlash against AI and what's driving it • How data centers, infrastructure, and policy are becoming major AI stories • Whether AI's impact on jobs is being overstated • The future of journalism in an AI-powered information ecosystem • Why independent voices matter more than ever in technology reporting • How Sharon uses AI as a reporting partner, editor, and research assistant • The biggest AI stories to watch heading into 2027 If AI is reshaping society, who gets to tell that story? Sharon Goldman believes the most important AI stories are not found in the latest model release or product announcement. They are happening in communities, workplaces, governments, and everyday life, where technology is creating real-world impact. Sponsor: The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat. With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences. Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat Why This Matters AI is no longer just a technology story. It is influencing how businesses operate, how information is distributed, how governments make decisions, and how communities adapt to rapid change. Understanding AI's real-world impact is becoming just as important as understanding the technology itself. As adoption accelerates and public skepticism grows, the conversation is shifting from what AI can do to how it affects people, jobs, infrastructure, and society as a whole. About the 👤 Guest   Sharon Goldman on LinkedIn  Ground Level AI   About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

As AI transforms how people discover information, the relationship between technology, media, and audience trust is evolving rapidly. This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat What happens when technology companies stop advertising in media and start owning it? In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, host Pete Pachal speaks with Jonathan Hunt, VP of Media & Content at HubSpot and Head of The Hustle, about the growing convergence of technology, media, and audience ownership. As AI transforms how people discover information, search for answers, and build trust online, companies are rethinking their relationship with media. HubSpot has quietly assembled one of the most ambitious media portfolios in business, spanning newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, creator partnerships, and acquisitions including The Hustle, Mindstream, Starter Story, and Futurepedia. Their conversation explores why audience ownership has become increasingly valuable in an AI-driven world, how brands are adapting to changing discovery patterns, and why trusted human voices may be more important than ever as generative AI floods the internet with content. Sponsor: The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat. With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences. Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat Why this mattersThe rise of AI is changing how audiences find information. Traditional search is giving way to AI-powered discovery, and companies are increasingly looking beyond advertising to build direct relationships with audiences. As content becomes easier to produce, trust becomes more valuable. Organizations that own audiences, cultivate expertise, and build authentic relationships may be better positioned to compete in an environment where AI-generated content is abundant but human credibility remains scarce. The discussion highlights a broader shift taking place across media and marketing: the growing realization that audience ownership may be just as important as product ownership. What we cover • Why AI may increase the value of human-created content rather than diminish it • How HubSpot built a media network through acquisitions, launches, and creator partnerships • The strategic thinking behind acquiring brands like The Hustle, Mindstream, and Starter Story • Why audience ownership matters more than ever in a fragmented media environment • How AI-powered discovery is changing traffic, engagement, and customer acquisition • What Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) means for publishers and marketers • Why visitors arriving from ChatGPT and other AI tools often convert at higher rates • The growing influence of YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and creator-driven media on AI search results • OpenAI's acquisition of TBPN and what it could signal about the future of technology-owned media • How HubSpot balances editorial independence with corporate ownership • The role of AI in content creation, production workflows, and operational efficiency • Whether concerns about a "SaaS apocalypse" are reality or industry hype • Why authentic creator partnerships outperform traditional influencer marketing About the 👤 Guest   LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanwhunt  HubSpot Author Profile: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/jonathan-hunt  About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai.Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

How veteran editor Rick Hirsch sees AI helping journalists do more with less, while protecting the trust that investigative reporting depends on.This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat What happens when artificial intelligence meets one of journalism's most important missions: holding power accountable? In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, host Pete Pachal speaks with Rick Hirsch, director of the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability at the University of Florida and former Managing Editor of the Miami Herald. After more than four decades in journalism, Hirsch has witnessed nearly every major transformation in the media industry, from the rise of the internet and social media to today's AI revolution. Their conversation explores how AI is changing investigative and accountability journalism, not as a replacement for reporters, but as a powerful tool for uncovering stories, analyzing massive datasets, and helping newsrooms stretch increasingly limited resources."I think that's what motivates most people who do this work. We have the ability to highlight wrongs and give people the information to try to right them." — Rick Hirsch Hirsch shares insights from a recent survey of journalists, discusses emerging AI-driven accountability tools being used by organizations like CalMatters, and explains why local government reporting may be one of the areas where AI can make the biggest positive impact. At the same time, the conversation tackles difficult questions about trust, misinformation, newsroom economics, audience fragmentation, and whether journalism can sustain itself in an AI-mediated information ecosystem. Why this matters While much of the AI conversation in media focuses on content generation, traffic disruption, and business models, accountability journalism presents a different challenge. Investigative reporting relies on verification, judgment, sourcing, and public trust. AI can accelerate research and surface patterns that humans might miss, but it cannot replace the reporting instincts, ethical decision-making, and community engagement that make journalism valuable. As local newsrooms continue to shrink and public trust remains under pressure, the future of accountability reporting may depend on how effectively journalists learn to use AI without sacrificing the standards that define their work. Sponsor: The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat. With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences. Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat Key takeaways AI is a reporting assistant, not a replacement For accountability journalism, AI's greatest value lies in helping reporters process information faster, identify patterns, and uncover potential leads. Human verification and editorial judgment remain essential. Local journalism may benefit the most As newsroom resources continue to decline, AI tools can help journalists monitor government meetings, legislative activity, and public records that would otherwise go uncovered. Trust remains journalism's biggest challengeTechnology alone cannot solve declining public trust. Transparency, documentation, and showing audiences how reporting is done may become even more important in the AI era. The business model remains uncertainThe industry continues to grapple with how journalism will be funded as AI increasingly becomes an intermediary between audiences and information. Accountability reporting still mattersDespite economic pressures and technological disruption, journalists remain motivated by the ability to expose wrongdoing, inform communities, and create meaningful change through their reporting. About the 👤 Guest  Rick Hirsch is Director of the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability at the University of Florida and former Managing Editor of the Miami Herald, where he spent more than four decades as a reporter, editor, and newsroom leader. LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-hirsch-miami/  University of Florida Profile  https://www.jou.ufl.edu/staff/rick-hirsch/Collier Prize for State Government Accountability https://www.collierprize.org/  About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026

As AI systems increasingly rely on publisher content to answer questions, a new marketplace for information has quietly emerged. The problem? Publishers are barely part of it. This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat On this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, host Pete Pachal sits down with Jonathan Woahn to zero in on a part of the AI content ecosystem that’s just out of sight. The conversation explores the fast-growing “scraper economy,” where data brokers, indexing companies, and AI infrastructure providers are quietly monetizing access to the web at massive scale while traditional publishers struggle to establish sustainable licensing models. With this gray market of internet data growing, how can publishers both protect their content and take advantage of the now billion-dollar demand for it? Pete and Jonathan also explore: • Why the social contract between Google and publishers has fundamentally changed • The rise of ethically sourced data and whether AI companies will eventually care where content comes from • Why inference markets may become far more valuable than model training • How publishers should think about MCPs, AI infrastructure, and product strategy • Whether a legitimate marketplace for AI content licensing can actually emerge before scraper economics dominate the ecosystem Along the way, Jonathan shares how his company, Cashmere, is helping publishers structure, license, and deploy content for AI systems while quietly brokering relationships between content owners and companies looking for legal, high quality access to trusted information. Why this matters: As generative AI continues reshaping how audiences consume information, the future of publishing may depend on whether media companies can establish sustainable economic models around their content before gray-market scraping ecosystems become the default infrastructure layer of the internet. This conversation goes beyond AI hype and digs into the economics, legal gray areas, and technical realities quietly redefining the relationship between publishers, platforms, and information itself. About the 👤 Guest   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanwoahn/  Website: https://cashmere.io/  Company Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/cashmereio  Manifesto:  https://cashmere.io/manifesto  Sponsor: The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat. With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences. Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat About the show: To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started. Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026