Episode 146

How Gannett is adapting for an AI era

In this live podcast, I spoke to Imtiaz Patel, chief consumer officer; Kristin Roberts, chief content officer; Jason Taylor, chief sales officer; and Renn Turiano, chief product officer. We discussed rethinking the article page, the imperative to provide a better user experience, why Google is so frustrating, using AI to drive subscriptions, and how AI answer engines are like Uber.

Transcript
Brian:

Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

Brian:

I am Brian Morrissey.

Brian:

This is the final podcast of the year for me, although we still have at least one more episode of People vs.

Brian:

Algorithms.

Brian:

If you haven't checked out that podcast, please do.

Brian:

I am joined each week by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer to connect the dots in the rapidly changing information space.

Brian:

In this episode of the Rebooting Show, it is a live recording, that we did last week at Gannett's headquarters in New York City.

Brian:

I am joined in this conversation But Kristen Roberts, chief content officer at Gannett, Imtiaz Patel, the chief consumer officer, Jason Taylor, chief sales officer, and Wren Toriano, chief product officer, a lot of chiefs.

Brian:

and we discuss.

Brian:

Basically how Gannett is using AI to grow its business, but it also turned into a far wider ranging discussion around building publishing businesses in this fraught time.

Brian:

I hope you enjoy it.

Brian:

And as always, please send me your feedback at bmorrissey@therebooting.Com.

Brian:

And I hope everyone has a great holiday break.

Brian:

See you in 2025.

Brian:

all right, well, thank you all for joining us.

Brian:

the holidays.

Brian:

I know the holidays are very busy.

Brian:

but when, when Lark and I were talking, I think we started talking about this and can, we talked about doing this and you know, I, my former job, we used to do these, these live podcast events and I really liked them and so I'm so glad.

Brian:

Thank you so much, to.

Brian:

for, for hosting us and we're talking about what we wanted to do.

Brian:

I think it's gotta be around AI because it's, it comes up like everywhere.

Brian:

But I think what's interesting to me about AI is that it's a catalyst for a lot of the changes that I know I've been like charting through my whole career, I've been like, Writing about it and covering it as like an editor, but also sort of living it.

Brian:

I always say, because you know, my first job, the magazine closed nine months later.

Brian:

So I understand this industry and I was just talking with Mike and I was joking that there are much, much easier ways to make money than media.

Brian:

and I think AI is coming at a time, of obviously profound change and how people access information.

Brian:

and if we think about AI to me.

Brian:

what it is really best at, you know, on a technical level, it's really good at summarization.

Brian:

It's really good at versioning and it's really good at optimization.

Brian:

And what I wanted to have a discussion here, a conversation really with all parts of the business, right?

Brian:

About, because this is like a time when every single, Media entity sort of needs to really face some existential questions about how they're going to reorient their businesses Beyond just the regular business pressures that are out there But this what feels like a change it feels like we're moving into a different Sort of era with AI and we can talk about whether that exists but I think to me the You know, media sometimes is made more complicated than it is.

Brian:

there's a lot of complicated parts to it, but where I want to like, sort of have this conversation is around really some basic things about what do you create,

Brian:

how do you, how do you distribute it and then how do you make money off it?

Brian:

Cause that's pretty much, I think the media industry.

Brian:

So, let's just go around.

Brian:

So everyone introduces, I'm Brian, Rand, do you want to start?

Renn:

Sure, I'm Ren.

Renn:

on, I'm, I'm, I'm Ren Turiano.

Renn:

I'm the Chief Product Officer here at Gannett.

Brian:

Okay, Kristen.

Kristin:

I'm Kristen Roberts.

Kristin:

I'm the chief content officer, which means I am responsible for every stitch of content that comes out of this joint from the news through the sports through the entertainment across all of our content types from print to digital to video to podcast and other types of audio.

Brian:

types of audio.

Kristin:

MTS Patel, chief consumer officer, which means I own all the consumer revenue.

Kristin:

Subscriptions, monetization of our consumer based marketing, branding, that kind of stuff.

Jason:

And I'm Jason Taylor.

Jason:

I am, Chief Sales Officer for GADET.

Jason:

And I oversee basically our B2B business, so all of our advertising, B2B type business.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

So Kristen, I want to start with you because it's about what you make, because ultimately, like you have to make that decision.

Brian:

I know that sounds like sort of basic, but you make a lot of different types of content.

Brian:

Give me the breakdown of what you make now.

Brian:

And then I want to talk about how that is going to change

Kristin:

Of what we make now.

Brian:

Yeah.

Kristin:

Well, we make all types of content now.

Kristin:

And there's a, there are a couple different ways to slice that.

Kristin:

You can think about it, the easiest way I would say to think about it is to think about USA Today.

Kristin:

Where we create content in different genres, different subject areas.

Kristin:

So there's news, but there's also other pillars of content.

Kristin:

There is sports, and there's entertainment, and there's life,

Renn:

and there's money, for example.

Kristin:

we also create by creating.

Kristin:

We create a format type.

Kristin:

We create a huge amount of video.

Kristin:

We create a larger amount of text.

Kristin:

We create an enormous amount of audio.

Kristin:

We also create things that are what I would classify as information.

Kristin:

It's not news.

Kristin:

It might not even be new, but it is information people need in the moment, and we will call that things like service journalism.

Kristin:

So for example,

Kristin:

how do I watch Peyton and Eli's?

Kristin:

Show, instead of the regular broadcast on NFL.

Kristin:

And if you type that into Google, we will, we will show up on that.

Kristin:

That's the kind of stuff that is SEO optimized and serves a purpose.

Kristin:

It's in that it recognizes that we serve a sports audience.

Kristin:

So we have information, we have recipes on our Flanker brands like Southern Kitchen, and then we have your news content, your breaking news content on the Arizona Republic, your breaking news content on USA Today.

Kristin:

It runs the gamut.

Kristin:

Did I answer your question or did I miss it?

Brian:

No, I think you answered the question.

Brian:

So how does it need to change?

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

Like, I mean, because I think about, I want to talk about the article page for a little bit.

Kristin:

Oh, I love the

Brian:

let's talk about the article, right?

Brian:

Like, The article

Kristin:

is

Brian:

so old, right?

Brian:

The article, like, if you think about it, the inverted pyramid, the 700 word, I mean, this is coming from, like, typeface era, right?

Brian:

and it needs to be reinvented.

Brian:

I think there's some people that are trying to reinvent it.

Brian:

I don't know if you saw, like, Every has an interesting experiment where you can Where you can, like, query the story.

Brian:

Because as you know, like, as a journalist, you choose what you put in there, you choose what you do not put in there,

Kristin:

An editor said to me today, it didn't say to me, said it to me in a group meeting.

Kristin:

If it isn't a headline, it didn't happen.

Kristin:

Because they were talking about something that was buried within the story.

Kristin:

And there was a real opportunity to pull it out.

Kristin:

And it was part of the, It was part of the murder of the, of the healthcare CEO.

Kristin:

And we had a little tidbit of reporting, but it was in paragraph whatever.

Kristin:

And if we had pulled it out, it would have been an opportunity to reach more audience.

Kristin:

But that speaks to exactly what you're talking about.

Kristin:

The article format is in large part broken.

Kristin:

And so how do you reimagine that article format?

Kristin:

But lots of things have to change beyond just the layout of that.

Kristin:

Lots of things have to change for organizations like ours just in terms of the format.

Kristin:

But also we have to begin to think about what are the implications of all of our content being gobbled up by whoever is out there.

Kristin:

What that means is that we need to actually get back to the beauty of what once was journalism, which is telling people things they don't already know.

Kristin:

Being first and best.

Kristin:

Being exclusive.

Kristin:

Being distinctive.

Kristin:

And I think our industry, in the chase for page views to stay alive, Had to move away from that in part and now we have the wonderful opportunity to embrace AI and automation and serve the information needs of people and then use our real people to go back and get back into the habit of actual journalism.

Brian:

how are you, how are, are you using AI at all within what you create?

Kristin:

Well we use AI in multiple ways and I'm sure that all of my friends up here want to talk about that as well as I do.

Brian:

But I just want to like, how do you use it to make better journalism?

Brian:

No,

Kristin:

I, I, I, in many, many ways, and I think, when I think about AI, and Ren and I talk about this all the time, there are multiple categories here, right?

Kristin:

We talk about AI that is simply

Brian:

automation.

Kristin:

It's not really special, it's just automation.

Kristin:

We think about AI that is actually generating content.

Kristin:

And who is the audience for that content?

Kristin:

Is it an internal audience?

Kristin:

Like, is it giving me or my reporters something to follow up on, or is it, is the audience actually external?

Kristin:

And so we're doing a number of experiments, and our partners in the UK, in NewsQuest, did a lot of work on this for us.

Kristin:

They took a lot of the wonderful, healthy risks to experiment with how we could use a closed, trusted information system, use AI to take information and turn it into articles.

Kristin:

And one of the, one of the things that I, in fact there are a couple things I'm really excited about from their experimentation that we're going to be doing here, but one of them in particular is this idea of

Kristin:

reconnecting with your super local communities and taking those things that our news reporters used to do, like community announcements.

Kristin:

You think about the pancake breakfast at the local church, right?

Kristin:

We used to actually write stories about the pancake breakfast and then we stopped writing stories because our newsrooms got so small.

Kristin:

But what happened then is that our newspapers began to lose their authority in the community because they weren't really covering these hyper local things that were very, very important to actual human beings.

Kristin:

And what NewsQuest has done is gone out to the community and said, we'll take those announcements again.

Kristin:

And they have AI assisted reporters who take those announcements, put it into the system.

Kristin:

It creates a completely accurate.

Kristin:

Frankly, kind of entertaining story from it, it's read by a human because we always have a human in the loop on everything we do in AI, and then we publish it.

Kristin:

But it's allowed us to increase the amount of content that is incredibly relevant at a micro level in our communities.

Kristin:

That's one of the, I don't know, a dozen ways that we're using it inside of our newsrooms.

Brian:

Wren, I, I, I think I've asked you this before, but like, do you really believe people are going to be hitting the back button, after reading like a webpage, an article on a webpage in five years?

Renn:

to, I

Renn:

don't think they're necessarily doing that even now.

Renn:

I think they're finding something on the same page and allowing that to continue their journey on the domain if they don't abandon.

Brian:

So what do you need?

Brian:

Like how do you see AI changing?

Brian:

What you need to make the containers for

Renn:

Making, so if you have a long form piece of content that's well written.

Renn:

That doesn't necessarily mean that you have the maximal audience that wants to read a long form piece of content.

Renn:

So if you can take that content and summarize it, or turn it into different formats to either find consumers in the channels where they already are, or to give them the type of content that they want in terms of format when they're in your domain, then what you can do is also use, AI to promote related stories and other content for them right there in that same context.

Renn:

So it's the same sort of architecture that you have for a traditional web page or a traditional browse experience.

Renn:

It's just that instead of being top to bottom, it's, it's in, it's inside out.

Renn:

So that you can send them in all the different directions that they may want to go right from that core place.

Renn:

How did they get there?

Renn:

Maybe right now they got there from Google.

Renn:

but we also want to make sure that we can, we build all the ways we can to be able to get that traffic in there by other means.

Renn:

And so that we're less dependent on traffic from Google, even though we also want to, of course, maximize the value of Google traffic, like everyone else does.

Renn:

But, I'm, I hope I'm answering your question.

Renn:

It's really about not sending them out, not giving them a default to abandon, but giving them a default to do something else.

Renn:

Yeah,

Brian:

but like, I guess that goes into the distribution question, which is, I mean, this is something every publisher is dealing with.

Brian:

They're dealing with less traffic.

Kristin:

traffic.

Kristin:

No, we're not.

Brian:

I know, but most publishers are, are dealing with,

Kristin:

Well then ask them.

Kristin:

I mean, we have the largest audience in America by a mile.

Kristin:

Do you think

Brian:

you're going to have, more traffic from Google in three years than you

Kristin:

have now?

Kristin:

I think I'll get it from somewhere else.

Kristin:

For more than a year and a half, we've been growing audience by 20%.

Kristin:

Month after month after month and it's not, that's not a mistake, it's not happenstance, it's not a trick.

Kristin:

We have a strategy and we have a set of tactics and they deliver to an audience because we're listening to the audience.

Kristin:

We're watching their behavior on our platforms, all of our platforms, and we're making decisions multiple times in a single day to understand and to give them what they tell us through their behavior that they want and need.

Kristin:

That's how we grow audiences.

Kristin:

So you can say everybody's losing audience, we're not losing audience, and we have no intention of losing audience.

Kristin:

And now we have an incredible track record showing that we won't.

Kristin:

Yeah.

Brian:

So, so explain then like how you're trying to sort of, I mean, cause.

Brian:

I understand that, and that's great.

Brian:

I think a lot of publishers would love to understand the secret to growing audience at a time when Google has become less reliable for a lot of publishers.

Renn:

We have organic traffic, we have search traffic from Google, we have traffic from you know, we have direct traffic from other referrals, we have traffic from aggregators, and we have of course consumers who organically self serve their way right to our domains because it's a branded

Brian:

destination.

Renn:

None of those things are, are going to keep them there necessarily, and none of those, not all of those things are going to be there forever as means by which we get traffic in.

Renn:

So, what we're doing is we're working very, very hard to build direct relationships with our consumers.

Renn:

And we're committed to being able to traffic consumers better once they're on our domains so that they're higher, they have greater engagement and we maximize our benefit to them and their benefit to us within our domain.

Renn:

We become a reliable place to go and solve problems, a diverse range of problems rather than just the problem of what's in the news, which, you know, I'm grateful for consumers that come to us to want to know that.

Renn:

Whether they get to us through a link referral from Google or whether they come to us because they're interested in the USA Today or, more critically, their local paper.

Renn:

But we want them to be able to have other reasons to come to us.

Renn:

The kind of reasons that they had in the past that, that, that dwindled and that we're trying to reinvigorate.

Renn:

We want to have more direct commerce for consumers.

Renn:

We want to have more service journalism or more evergreen content for, for them to come and solve problems.

Renn:

More trending content that helps them to make decisions about things that are happening, you know, currently in the news or currently in the zeitgeist.

Renn:

And the more of the problems that we can give people to solve, the more we'll be able to expand their repertoire on our domains.

Renn:

And then the more they'll think of us as a destination first, rather than just the place that they happened to have showed up when they were following a subject through a Google link.

Kristin:

Yeah, we used to call that bookmark traffic.

Kristin:

Remember that?

Kristin:

We used to call that bookmark traffic.

Kristin:

And, you know,

Kristin:

you are right to point out that Google puts its finger on the scale whenever it wants to.

Kristin:

It's a monopoly.

Kristin:

That's what it does.

Kristin:

And it exerts monopoly power.

Brian:

I'm glad we can finally say

Kristin:

we

Brian:

does what

Kristin:

it.

Kristin:

It does what it wants.

Brian:

it never, Google never gave guidance for a reason because it didn't have to.

Brian:

It could make its numbers anything, it just, you just change the

Renn:

So, is that what we're talking about?

Renn:

Because, just don't get me started with

Brian:

Really?

Renn:

Yeah.

Brian:

Let it out.

Renn:

Well, you know, we, we're a good partner to Google, and we, and we want to be enriched by them, we do.

Renn:

You know, and as a partner, we want to have the traffic, all of the

Brian:

from

Renn:

sure.

Renn:

We'll take it from anywhere, anywhere.

Renn:

But we want to have control.

Renn:

And we want to make sure that we have a business, if they're capricious.

Renn:

You know, sends them one way or another, you know, and they create random decisions.

Renn:

We want to make sure that we still have a business.

Renn:

Yeah.

Renn:

When, when they, when they do

Brian:

But can you, are you truly in control of your business when you do not control most of your distribution?

Renn:

We are, and we're more and more and more in control of our business every day.

Renn:

And actually, we have them to thank for a little of that.

Kristin:

We

Renn:

We were spurned to make greater and faster progress by them.

Renn:

And we've been very successful at doing that, at compensating.

Renn:

If they take an action against us, we don't understand the action.

Renn:

It is something we're compliant.

Renn:

You know, we think we're compliant, and then we work really hard with them, as partners, to try to figure out how

Brian:

this the,

Brian:

the, the, what is this?

Brian:

Is it the site reputation?

Renn:

reputation?

Renn:

Yeah, the, Yes.

Renn:

yeah, the de indexing.

Brian:

Yeah.

Renn:

anyway, what, what we're being inspired to do is the things that we should be doing anyway.

Renn:

More of the things that we're already doing.

Renn:

Which is to create reasons for consumers to come directly to our domain, and for more reasons for them to stay.

Renn:

When they get here, rather than dropping in for a single story.

Renn:

And I, I love my single story traffic, too.

Renn:

You know, everybody's welcome.

Renn:

If they want to come and just read a story and go do something else, then I think that's great.

Renn:

But I really, really want to give them more reasons to stay.

Renn:

And more reasons to decide to come to our domains.

Brian:

Yeah, let's talk about making money.

Brian:

MTS, how, what are the challenges for, publishers, like a publisher like Gannett, to become sort of cust, like customer focused, and customer like audience focused?

Brian:

Because usually, you know, most publishers are in, there was a little lighting change, that's good.

Kristin:

lighting.

Kristin:

It's good.

Kristin:

I like

Kristin:

it.

Brian:

you know, usually it's, it, you know, these, these businesses, it's an indirect business model, in which most of the revenue is coming from, you know, B2B, I guess it would

Kristin:

it would be called in this instance.

Kristin:

Yeah,

Kristin:

you know, for, for us, we do have a

Kristin:

significant amount of direct revenue, right, subscriptions.

Kristin:

We have a very large subscriber base, over

Kristin:

two million

Kristin:

digital subscribers, over a million print

Kristin:

subscribers.

Kristin:

So it is a

Kristin:

big business for us.

Kristin:

now,

Kristin:

the challenge historically has been that without the data, without,

Kristin:

the way we've been approaching

Kristin:

this is thinking about like

Kristin:

one size

Kristin:

fits all, talking to customers exactly the same way.

Kristin:

With greater

Kristin:

data, what we can do now is really have different conversations with different people and really think about their interests and what are they interested in.

Kristin:

And how do we How do we message

Kristin:

them?

Kristin:

How do we connect with them?

Kristin:

How do we appeal to them?

Kristin:

One of, one of the things, and I know we're going to go down the AI path for this,

Kristin:

what I'm really excited about is how we can have much more contextual conversations, right?

Kristin:

If I

Kristin:

understand your profile, your behavior, when we interact with you, I can use that information to have a really, connected

Kristin:

conversation.

Kristin:

Very specific conversation to you as a consumer.

Kristin:

That improves

Kristin:

your experience with us.

Kristin:

It

Kristin:

allows us to better meet your needs.

Kristin:

And really thinking

Kristin:

about, we talk a lot about

Kristin:

the customer journey, right?

Kristin:

What's their journey?

Kristin:

What journey should they be going on?

Kristin:

So that allows us to get much more specific.

Kristin:

You can almost get to a point of one to one relationship.

Kristin:

And AI allows us to kind of do that.

Kristin:

Historically, we

Kristin:

just can't do it because at our scale and, with the number of people come in at us, it's just physically hard to do.

Kristin:

But AI and

Kristin:

data

Kristin:

and connecting all the bits allows us to do that.

Kristin:

So give me an example of enables that.

Kristin:

So let's, let's say you're a consumer who calls into a call center,

Kristin:

right?

Kristin:

And you have, you're calling in because, you're thinking about canceling.

Kristin:

Let's use that use case.

Kristin:

Now.

Kristin:

By connecting our consumer database, right, and understanding your

Kristin:

profile, understanding your behavior,

Kristin:

and connecting that

Kristin:

to the agent interface, an agent can see what you've

Kristin:

been using,

Kristin:

how often you've been using, and really think about,

Kristin:

well,

Kristin:

talk about the value of the content you've been using, and make it so specific to the type of things you're reading, right?

Kristin:

So now it's not a generic question,

Kristin:

Now

Kristin:

it is a conversation based on you.

Kristin:

And we can then think about

Kristin:

how to save that customer and show them the value of the product they're getting.

Kristin:

Now, if it gets down to

Kristin:

price, we can also get very specific around price, right?

Kristin:

So if someone's a highly engaged

Kristin:

user, I don't need to cut price to the lowest level, right?

Kristin:

There's another level of

Kristin:

pricing that I can provide that probably retains some revenue for us,

Kristin:

but makes

Kristin:

them also feel like they're getting value.

Kristin:

So this is like an exchange we've got going on there.

Kristin:

That's just one case, and there's a lot of different use cases like that.

Kristin:

Okay,

Kristin:

so like the saves team can have more ammo.

Kristin:

Yeah,

Kristin:

more ammo, but it's smart, right?

Kristin:

We can't train every single

Kristin:

agent, and we've got over 400 agents, right?

Kristin:

We can't

Kristin:

train every single agent for every single use case, but

Kristin:

now with AI Assist, based on the profile, we

Kristin:

can put in some rules

Kristin:

that then creates a very

Kristin:

simple Specific way for the agent to respond

Kristin:

and it learns right?

Kristin:

And it can keep

Kristin:

improving on that based on the kind of results we're seeing.

Kristin:

Yeah,

Brian:

Jason, I want to get into the AI thing, but like, I think one of the conversations has been going on a long time really is around can advertising truly support like an ambitious news business, right?

Brian:

I mean, advertisers have fled from news.

Brian:

There's a lot of initiatives that, about bringing advertisers back to news, right?

Brian:

And, I'm like of two minds about it.

Brian:

I think it's like great, I support it, obviously.

Brian:

But at the same time, I feel like a lot of these things are acting like it's a charity or something.

Brian:

it's some sort of initiative to, to give back to the community.

Brian:

Whereas, you know, you've got to create economic value like long term.

Brian:

What do

Brian:

you, in your conversations with advertisers, like how can you become, how can news become essential to, to their, their strategies?

Jason:

I think it starts by, you know, the conversation of what Kristen was saying earlier.

Jason:

It's more than just news.

Jason:

It's content, right?

Jason:

And we have to think about it as content.

Jason:

And how do we slice and dice that content to drive performance for that customer or that brand's needs?

Jason:

what puts us in a unique position, our unique value proposition, if you will, is the depth, breadth, and scale of our organization, right?

Jason:

because we're in so many markets across the country, we have so many active advertisers, you can say, oh, these advertisers don't want to be around news, or they don't want to be we have thousands of active advertisers, right?

Jason:

So if we can take the learnings from a florist in Austin, Texas, right?

Jason:

And take those same learnings and what we learn from the campaign, from the management of the campaign, from the delivery of the campaign, from the optimization of the campaign, and apply those same learnings to Nashville, Tennessee, to a florist, then we can drive their business so the result is there

Jason:

regardless of, of their opinion about being adjacent to news or being, you know, whereas at the same time, there's that evergreen, the Content or that that that helpful content of of solving problems etc.

Jason:

That really can drive a premium because if I'm looking up What's the best cruise line?

Jason:

How do I plan a cruise?

Jason:

I can drive a premium by putting cruise brands next to that.

Jason:

It may not be what you Think of as news, but that's valuable news to a consumer.

Jason:

That's valuable, valuable content to a consumer And now as we look at the next generation, you know when I'm when I'm looking at Awards coverage for entertainment and I see what they're wearing and I have an interest in that Can I have a shopping carousel next to that right there's I just think it's going to continue It's going to continue to evolve and, and we just have to be there regardless of what it's adjacent to.

Jason:

If a customer wants to be adjacent to a certain kind of content that will deliver a premium for them in terms of, client purchase, client activation, we can deliver that.

Jason:

But if they just want sheer volume, magnitude, and learnings, that's a unique thing that we can do as well.

Renn:

you think that they That they don't find value in it.

Renn:

Why would they even do it if they didn't find value?

Renn:

They do, they absolutely do find value.

Renn:

And I think we're looking for it.

Renn:

All of these problems are solved all the same way.

Renn:

More traffic, deeper engagement, more reasons to come, more reasons to stay, equal more reasons to subscribe, more reasons to not cancel a subscription, equals more reasons to buy advertising in a contextual advertising context or a premium advertising context.

Renn:

I think the thing that's in jeopardy is pro programmatic advertising.

Renn:

That's it.

Renn:

And I think that's the thing that we're, we're also, I hope it's okay to say, less interested in, in, in having that as a, as the biggest driver of business for us.

Renn:

But sponsorship is immensely important both to the advertiser as well as to us because we have the audience.

Renn:

And if we can demonstrate that the audience is understood and also that it's bigger and getting bigger and it's staying longer and it's committed to us, that drives tremendous value for, for

Kristin:

Yeah.

Kristin:

I think

Brian:

the argument would be that, you know, so much of the market has shifted to performance, right, and, and so much has shifted to programmatic because there's a lot of interest.

Jason:

that,

Jason:

to

Brian:

that, to, to shove more through programmatic

Kristin:

right?

Kristin:

And,

Brian:

you know, Google has like a PMAX or something.

Brian:

Ultimately, you have to perform, right?

Brian:

and I think that to me is, when I, when I see these initiatives to support news, it's not saying, it's saying you should support news because it's important for democracy, et cetera.

Brian:

It's not saying you're going to sell more of what, like, stuff.

Renn:

I think that's just one way that the message is delivered.

Renn:

I think it's fine.

Renn:

I personally have never been a big fan of this idea of news as a charitable thing.

Renn:

I think that it's worth paying for.

Renn:

It's certainly worth sponsoring.

Renn:

And I want to, I'm committed to making it more worth sponsoring, and more worth paying for.

Jason:

And

Jason:

and I think, too, within our own organization, what we're seeing is that open exchange programmatic revenue is starting to shift into a more direct premium delivered programmatic.

Jason:

That's direct sold by our, by, by a, a sales representative who's working alongside an account to drive a more premium rate, a more premium result, a more premium return.

Jason:

And I think we'll see more and more of that over time.

Jason:

And, and, and the last thing I would comment on, I think, when I look at, like, Kristen's organization, my organization, it, it's a parallel tract in that sometimes the ideation comes from her side to ours, and then we have to figure out how to monetize it.

Jason:

Sometimes it's our side to hers saying, we know there's a lot of revenue being spent in this category.

Jason:

If you can give us the right content, we can drive a premium and align behind that.

Jason:

And, and I think that's one of the things that's driving our return to success.

Brian:

Yeah, how do you think about the user experience?

Brian:

I mean, local news sites, I gotta be honest.

Brian:

They can be rough.

Brian:

They're, they're way, it's really bad in the UK.

Brian:

But, it's, I mean, right?

Brian:

Like, it's really bad.

Brian:

Some of

Renn:

Some of

Brian:

it's

Brian:

really bad.

Brian:

how do you think, because like, I always feel like there's, there's such pressure where, you know, particularly for news content, but not exclusively, right?

Brian:

Like, I always joke that the jump to recipe button is, is just a failure of the open

Renn:

web.

Renn:

The

Brian:

fact that that exists is just a complete failure because it, it shows that Google sets bad incentives.

Brian:

Absolutely.

Brian:

And then blames the people who follow the incentives that Google And they

Kristin:

Just

Renn:

like those, you know, those stories that are essentially restating the premise over and over throughout a long portion of the article before resolving

Kristin:

it.

Renn:

It's simply because they want you to keep scrolling.

Renn:

So they restate the question, and they restate the premise, and they do it again, and they do it again, and they do it again, and sometimes they don't even resolve it at all.

Jason:

but

Brian:

but how do you all strike that balance, right?

Brian:

Because there's a lot of, there are a lot of incentives to push the user experience as, as far as possible out there.

Brian:

I mean, you know, putting more ads on the page, more

Kristin:

I don't think that's true anymore.

Kristin:

I think there are If we're looking at, just lift up and out of the moment, right?

Kristin:

If you look a few years down the line, we need to be in a different place.

Kristin:

And bringing it back to the conversation around AI.

Kristin:

You know, as, as we

Kristin:

we need to begin to establish a direct relationship, re establish the direct relationship with our users, with our readers and our viewers and our listeners.

Kristin:

And the only way to do that, sustainably,

Kristin:

is to create an experience that is somehow satisfying, that doesn't punch them in the face with ad after ad after ad and pop ups.

Kristin:

And get them back to a place where they actually really enjoy being.

Kristin:

That's the future that we're trying to create.

Kristin:

We look at our story pages and we see the same thing that you do.

Kristin:

We don't put on our blinders about how dissatisfying that experience is.

Kristin:

But one of the key initiatives of the next year that Wren is partnering with all of us on is actually taking a look at that and taking a clean slate approach to it.

Kristin:

How do we create a more premium feeling experience?

Kristin:

Because a more premium feeling experience will allow.

Kristin:

It will allow MTRs to sell more subscriptions.

Kristin:

It will allow Jason to sell more premium advertising.

Kristin:

It will allow me to hold on to people for longer so that they experience more of the products that Wren is creating.

Kristin:

We can't continue with the user experience that it is right now.

Kristin:

It might serve a revenue, it might allow us to do revenue triage today, but at the expense of a year from now.

Kristin:

And we've all recognized that, and we're holding hands and jumping together.

Kristin:

Transcripts

Brian:

users like, right, like, I mean,

Kristin:

It trains them to go away.

Kristin:

It trains them to look and jump.

Kristin:

And you can see that in duration on article, for example.

Kristin:

You can see that on the lack of frequency.

Kristin:

You can see that on the lack of second assets encountered, or the third asset encountered.

Kristin:

They're not clicking again.

Kristin:

They're not staying with us.

Kristin:

They're one and done.

Kristin:

They're drive by readers.

Kristin:

We have to actually change that.

Kristin:

And the only way to do it is by all of us, all of the leadership of Gannett Media, holding hands and saying, these guys are willing to experiment.

Kristin:

They're willing to experiment because we know over the long haul we will get more revenue out of a better, more streamlined experience.

Renn:

very, it's also very difficult to evolve an ad experience without, without making it less, less revenue or less performant.

Renn:

But I think that the reasons that that's difficult are kind of, industry reasons, and I really feel that there are ways that you can use design and you can use data, of course, to to be able to surface an ad experience that is less interruptive and less offensive to consumers to the extent that it is already and still maximizing the revenue potential first by being just smarter about how you sell it, because we really want more of the kinds of things that require less touch, but more presence for the brand sponsored things.

Renn:

But also by simply improving the way that the ad experience itself behaves like a video player or the ads themselves.

Renn:

in ways that maximize the value without, without making a more cluttered experience.

Renn:

Because the overall revenue that you get from a page will absolutely go down the more things you pile on.

Renn:

There's a tipping point.

Renn:

The other thing that we really want to do is, we mentioned contextual advertising, but also, Sponsorship, it's premium sponsorship, contextual advertising itself, which is really destination, you know, based advertising, and also shoppable experiences within an article page.

Renn:

You know, people are hunter gatherers and they love to shop and I've been in this business for a long time and don't tell me people don't like ads.

Renn:

What they don't like is terrible ads that mean nothing to them, that are intrusive, that stop them on their mission.

Renn:

But they certainly like to shop for things.

Renn:

And if they see things that they find interesting and compelling, you know, Instagram itself is a perfect example.

Renn:

Everybody says this, but Instagram has the least offensive ads of any, you know, media channel.

Renn:

And now the ads on Instagram are directly shoppable.

Renn:

And I think people, the only ads I ever click on personally are on Instagram because I just can't help it because it looks so compelling.

Renn:

It doesn't mean I'm going to buy anything, but I, you know, I do click

Brian:

them.

Brian:

And

Renn:

that's the destination for it.

Renn:

You know, a

Renn:

year

Brian:

of your experiences.

Brian:

Well that,

Renn:

Well, that So you've got to create the mode.

Renn:

That's what A year ago, people said to me, nobody wants to shop, to shop on an article page because they see it as interacting with an ad, which is dangerous and unknown.

Renn:

I think that's changed a lot just in the last year.

Renn:

you know, people, people are quite happy, I think, to shop things based, it all depends on how it's designed and how it's presented and what kind of brand familiarity they have.

Renn:

And once we break through that barrier where consumers are less, are less worried about doing that or think it's less incongruous, the, the, the better it'll be for everyone.

Renn:

Because you'll have a cleaner, more enriching experience that provides something that consumers actually want, rather than something that feels to them like a value exchange.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

So Kristen, do you use perplexity?

Kristin:

What

Brian:

do you think about it?

Kristin:

What's the real question?

Brian:

Depends on your

Brian:

answer.

Kristin:

I'm not offended by it?

Brian:

No, I'm just wondering when you think about, like, you know, obviously creating useful content, right?

Brian:

Like, for instance, recipe content, right?

Brian:

I use Perplexity for recipes all the time.

Brian:

it returns like what I want.

Brian:

I don't wade through the story about the, the person's grandmother in Tuscany or and it's, it's better, right?

Brian:

And I, I wonder about user expectations as these AI engines become agentic, etc.

Brian:

It, it already feels a lot of times, not Gannett aside.

Brian:

But on a lot of publisher, other publisher sites, it feels like stepping back in time now.

Brian:

I don't know.

Brian:

I think ahead in a couple years, when people are regularly getting things just brought to them almost like seamlessly, what is the incentive to go out to get that kind of useful content, we call it evergreen content,

Kristin:

service.

Kristin:

Yeah, we call it service journalism now.

Brian:

Yeah.

Kristin:

I think there's a couple things, and I would take it and pull it apart a little bit.

Kristin:

And, you know, there is still some of that in Gannett.

Kristin:

I appreciate you being nice, but, or anticipating my pushback.

Brian:

don't want to get hustled out.

Kristin:

Well, you know, listen, I love

Renn:

you

Kristin:

know, Team Hustle, right here.

Brian:

it up.

Brian:

First Luigi reference,

Kristin:

So, listen, fundamentally, the things we produce and the format we put it in has to change.

Kristin:

And a lot of that is already happening.

Kristin:

And you're right to point out recipes.

Kristin:

It's a wonderful example.

Kristin:

We struggled with this last year.

Kristin:

How do we produce recipes schema that allows us to actually capture and present what people want, rather than leading them through a circuitous path so they can have a million programmatic ads thrown at their face while they're just trying to figure out how much sugar they need for this recipe, right?

Kristin:

but I think the thing that we, that I'm a little bit worried about you missing when you're thinking about Gannett is you keep talking about news.

Kristin:

News

Kristin:

is really one component.

Kristin:

Yes, it's the crown jewel.

Kristin:

Yes, that's why people come to us.

Kristin:

Yes, that's actually our mission.

Kristin:

And our purpose, but our mission, our purpose are also in simply being essential to the communities that we're serving, all the various communities that we're serving.

Kristin:

And news is not the only way that we're essential.

Kristin:

We're also essential by providing them recipes.

Kristin:

We're also essential by providing them high school sports scores.

Kristin:

We're also essential by simply telling them how the overturned tractor trailer on I 95 is going to affect their ability to get their children to school that morning.

Kristin:

Right?

Kristin:

Like, these are the ways that we're essential, and how we deliver that to them is no longer and has not been for a very long time an inverted pyramid story.

Kristin:

It's through push, it's through newsletters, it's through alerts, it's, it's running alerts at the top of our homepages, it's, and also stories.

Kristin:

Right?

Kristin:

There are a million things.

Kristin:

You know what else it is?

Kristin:

In the hurricanes, it was SMS text.

Kristin:

Right?

Kristin:

It was saying to the community, we know your web is going to be down and you're not going to be, your Wi Fi is going to be down and you're not going to be able to load webpages.

Kristin:

So instead, send us a text and we'll give you every single update you need during this storm and for days and days afterward.

Kristin:

Like, that is how you serve the community and that's how you restructure how you deliver information.

Kristin:

It's not just a, you know, a 500, 700 word story anymore and it hasn't been for a really long time.

Brian:

time.

Brian:

Brian,

Renn:

Brian, I want to, I want to ask you, I want to say something about Perplexity if you don't mind.

Renn:

So I, I think Perplexity is a wonderful user experience.

Renn:

And where before have we ever seen a business that was

Renn:

a platform

Renn:

whose goal was to build an enormous unmonetized audience And then be successful on that basis.

Renn:

We've seen that a lot, that social media.

Renn:

But, it doesn't stay that way.

Renn:

So, if things go the way that some of these new products want it to go, these new services would like it to go, they will be a cleaner experience without monetization, largely free of all the clutter.

Renn:

Providing exactly what the consumer needs without even the distraction of our brands and, you know, and our attribution and our full story.

Renn:

While, as long as it takes them to drive us out of business, and then once we're out of business, they're going to start piling all that monetization back onto their products.

Renn:

And this is just a classic market entry, you know, approach.

Renn:

It's what Uber did.

Renn:

It's what a lot of them do.

Renn:

And my, my aim is to be as much as we can like a perplexity in the ways that it's good, because there are a lot of good things that are very good about it.

Renn:

It's a wonderful experience to use.

Renn:

And, you know, adapt to this, this circumstance and be able to remain strong or remain viable and remain, you know, leaning into what the consumers really need and what we know we can uniquely give them.

Renn:

Until the point comes when a perplexity or another thing like it has to figure out that they have to pile on monetization or they have to get out of business.

Renn:

Like how can you stay in during that aggressive market entry that discounted or no cost products?

Renn:

You know that that methodology that they follow that they followed all through for decades very, very successfully.

Renn:

You go in cheap, saturate, and then once you've cleared all the competition, then you bury the consumer with new fees and, and other monetization.

Renn:

And that's absolutely what they're all going to do.

Renn:

And how can we endure and thrive until that storm has passed or, or even pushed the storm out of the way?

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, look at Uber, right?

Brian:

I mean, like, I was a little south of here.

Brian:

I was going a mile the other night.

Brian:

They said it was 80 bucks.

Renn:

Exactly.

Renn:

So they, they,

Brian:

it's not how I

Renn:

they could, yep.

Renn:

And that, and that is, and that was not an accident.

Renn:

not an accident.

Renn:

And that model is the model that they're, that they all follow.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Do you, do you consider these AI engines like friends or foe.

Renn:

Both.

Renn:

I mean, I think we can absolutely work with them.

Renn:

I think we want to work with them.

Renn:

And I think that by working with us, they would have a better product.

Renn:

I don't think it's a, it's a, it's just a, you know, a, a ransom, you know, that, that, that we're looking for.

Renn:

And I, that's not at all the way I think we should work with them.

Renn:

I see, I see them as a foe and they show up like a foe.

Renn:

And I see them as a friend when we're able to work together to create a better collective experience for the consumer.

Renn:

And a business that sustains everybody.

Renn:

I think sometimes they take a while to see where the value could be.

Renn:

But I think that they seem to get there, you know, and that's, that's the, the tricky middle.

Brian:

Yeah, Jason, is, is, would a broken up Google be positive for, publishers?

Kristin:

Ooh, pick

Jason:

me.

Jason:

Yeah!

Jason:

Hmm.

Brian:

You can go next.

Jason:

I mean, I, I think,

Jason:

yes, in many ways, obviously, you know, it's, our business, we're constantly having to pivot based on decisions that Google is making.

Jason:

And that just, it's, it's hamstringing for us, if, you know, and so

Brian:

the most reliable and then it became unreliable because it's under pressure.

Jason:

That's a good point.

Jason:

So I think that's, you know, anything that would remove that shackle, would be helpful, you know.

Jason:

For us to drive a strategy that we have more control over day to day.

Jason:

We're gaining it on our own, but at the same time, if, if, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to navigate.

Jason:

The curveballs that are thrown to us on any given month, in any given month, create a lot of challenge for the business.

Brian:

going to say?

Brian:

No,

Kristin:

No, I think Jason's brilliant.

Jason:

Write that down, write that down.

Jason:

I know.

Brian:

What?

Brian:

What?

Brian:

What are your sort of?

Brian:

I mean, like, because I think one of the things with the Google question when it comes to breaking up particularly their ad tech is whether it would result in a healthier ecosystem for for publishers creating high quality

Renn:

Depends on the, on the requirements attached to that.

Renn:

If the remedies include control over how the new entities are able to operate, then it would, otherwise it won't.

Brian:

right?

Brian:

one thing on like subscriptions.

Brian:

and I'm wondering how a I like you mentioned a couple of, you know, examples with sort of, you know, customer service but like, how can particularly when people are, people are going to be paying for a lot of these a I agent And I think they're figuring out what the price point is.

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

And I just think everything is just like with subscriptions, everything, like, you're paying a lot in subscriptions, I think we all How do you think that'll end up affecting the sort of, the market for, for, you know, Gannett content?

Jason:

I

Jason:

think we're

Jason:

already seeing

Jason:

subscription I'll

Jason:

use my example.

Kristin:

I didn't realize

Kristin:

how many paid

Kristin:

for and I money.

Jason:

think I

Kristin:

saved a few hundred

Jason:

bucks

Jason:

a month, right?

Jason:

Just

Jason:

going through

Jason:

and

Kristin:

finding subscriptions

Jason:

that I'm

Kristin:

paying

Jason:

I

Jason:

really

Kristin:

shouldn't

Kristin:

be paying for.

Jason:

So

Jason:

we're

Jason:

already seeing a

Jason:

lot of

Jason:

fatigue in the industry.

Jason:

So

Jason:

it's

Jason:

not like

Jason:

it's coming.

Jason:

It's here, right?

Jason:

So

Jason:

what we

Jason:

have to really

Kristin:

think about what's

Kristin:

the

Kristin:

value

Jason:

we're And

Jason:

as long

Jason:

as

Jason:

we're

Kristin:

giving value,

Jason:

they will pay for

Jason:

value,

Jason:

But

Jason:

we

Jason:

also

Kristin:

have

Kristin:

to,

Kristin:

It can't be

Kristin:

a model

Jason:

where

Jason:

it's all ads

Jason:

or it's

Jason:

all subscriptions, right?

Jason:

We

Jason:

really

Jason:

have to think about how do you optimize across all

Jason:

different

Jason:

revenue

Kristin:

So

Kristin:

one

Jason:

of the things we're

Kristin:

thinking about

Jason:

also

Kristin:

how

Kristin:

else can

Kristin:

I monetize my

Jason:

consumer

Jason:

base?

Jason:

Yeah,

Jason:

obviously stuff like that, but is there a

Jason:

way we

Kristin:

can get

Kristin:

into

Kristin:

the commerce Is there?

Jason:

We

Kristin:

just launched a wine club.

Jason:

Are there other things we can do around

Jason:

experiences that tie

Jason:

to our

Jason:

content?

Kristin:

So that

Kristin:

gives us permission

Jason:

to

Jason:

sell

Jason:

them

Jason:

other things.

Jason:

So

Jason:

are

Jason:

there

Jason:

alternative

Kristin:

to

Kristin:

monetize

Kristin:

so that's really where we've

Kristin:

got to go.

Kristin:

And

Kristin:

I

Jason:

do still believe we as

Jason:

an

Jason:

organization can

Jason:

actually

Jason:

grow our subscribers

Kristin:

because

Jason:

We're

Jason:

seeing it in

Jason:

our traffic,

Jason:

right?

Jason:

That

Kristin:

says

Jason:

that

Kristin:

this content now

Kristin:

Some

Jason:

of it

Jason:

people will pay for,

Jason:

some of it they

Jason:

won't

Jason:

So we've

Jason:

got to get smarter

Jason:

about what pieces of it that they're

Jason:

going to We

Jason:

also

Jason:

have to move away

Jason:

from this notion of

Kristin:

everyone wants,

Kristin:

will buy

Jason:

a subscription to a general news

Jason:

site

Jason:

and

Jason:

they will

Jason:

go down the

Jason:

vertical that they care about or the interest

Kristin:

area

Jason:

that they

Jason:

care

Jason:

about.

Jason:

Is

Jason:

it

Jason:

sports?

Jason:

Is it

Jason:

food?

Kristin:

it

Kristin:

what?

Kristin:

Right?

Kristin:

So how can we create

Jason:

subscription products or

Jason:

products monetized

Jason:

differently around

Jason:

those interest

Jason:

areas?

Jason:

We've got to

Kristin:

come

Kristin:

at

Kristin:

it in a better way.

Jason:

Much smarter

Kristin:

in a

Kristin:

more

Jason:

complex but it's about

Kristin:

monetizing in

Jason:

we

Jason:

just rely on

Jason:

subscriptions, it's

Brian:

to work.

Brian:

But on subscriptions, are you using like AI to optimize when you, when you block people and what you offer

Kristin:

We have

Kristin:

launched

Kristin:

a

Jason:

dynamic

Jason:

paywall in a number of

Kristin:

our

Jason:

sites.

Jason:

We're tweaking

Jason:

it right now.

Jason:

we will be

Jason:

fully

Jason:

launched in the

Kristin:

the

Kristin:

first

Kristin:

half of

Kristin:

except

Kristin:

USA Today,

Kristin:

being

Kristin:

on a

Jason:

paywall.

Jason:

Yeah,

Renn:

Yeah, we also have a lot, fairly advanced propensity modeling that we're, you know, that we've developed and that we're continuing to evolve.

Renn:

And that extends to propensity to do any kind of valuable action.

Renn:

but it's important for us to make sure that the action that's valuable for us is also valuable for the consumer.

Renn:

And that, that doesn't, that's not obvious.

Renn:

Because if you're tricking someone into some sort of action that's good for the business, but will alienate the consumer, then that's not good.

Renn:

And so, propensity can help us to do that as well.

Renn:

To figure out the thing that's going to maximize the value for the consumer as well as for us Whether it's advertising revenue or a subscription to one thing Or even just a registration or engagement of any kind signing up for a newsletter.

Renn:

Yeah, whatever the kind

Brian:

Will you use that to optimize the, the, the user experience?

Brian:

Like, overall?

Renn:

Backwards, you know So if you if you create user journeys that end up with dead ends if you have a long tail of content that nobody consumes You have to examine why?

Renn:

Is it because it's not interesting?

Renn:

Is it because it didn't get in front of the right people?

Renn:

You know, so all of those things though We we do use we will use those propensity signals to to back into user experience improvements Traditionally, we improve the user experience based on looking at, you know exemplars and benchmarks out in the world And we say oh i'm really jealous of how that thing looks And that's that isn't at all the way to to improve a user experience Um If you, if you use, if

Renn:

you're informed entirely by data or largely by data and not by the competitive edge that we all in our conceit want to reach for, especially if you're a designer or if you're just somebody who is own, owns this thing and you're proud of it, then you'll see that the consumer will tell you through their behavior that they want something that isn't the thing you think you want to give them, necessarily.

Renn:

You know, like they'll tell you that something's good enough, When it's not, when it's not maybe good enough for us, they'll tell you that something that we think is good enough isn't, isn't good enough for them, in terms of the user experience and the kind of thing that we surface for them.

Renn:

We have to be led by them.

Renn:

It has to be outside in, entirely, to get it right.

Renn:

And data tells us what to do, and data will also tell us whether we're doing it, or not, correctly.

Brian:

Okay, that's a great, that's a great way to end this.

Brian:

So thank you.

Brian:

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts.

Brian:

and all for coming.

Brian:

And, we'll have a few drinks afterwards, too, if you want to stick around.

Brian:

So, thank you

Kristin:

You want to stick around.

Kristin:

so much.

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