TikTok becomes a search engine, cyberattack crushes U.S. publisher, Murdoch empire unravels, and more...
A huge thank you to Exact Editions for sponsoring this newsletter throughout February. As a send-off, today’s Long Read is a case study from Exact Editions: The Hidden Value in Archiving for Consumer Magazines, featuring Haymarket’s Autocar, the world’s oldest motoring title. TL;DR: By archiving back issues, annual subs increased 13x.
Right, this has been a big week….
U.S. Publisher Sues Google Over AI Previews, Cites Traffic & Subscriber Loss
Californian edtech publisher, Chegg, is suing Google, claiming its AI Overviews have tanked web traffic and subscriber numbers—leaving the company even weighing a potential sale. The lawsuit is the first where a single publisher is accusing Google of violating antitrust law through AI overviews. Damn brave but perhaps left with little choice….
TikTok Becomes a Search Engine: Why Media Needs to Adapt Urgently
As anyone with teens will attest, TikTok is no longer just social media, it’s also a search engine and a place for content discovery. David Sallinen writes, “The 2025 rankings of European media on TikTok reveal one constant: the leaders are those who post frequently.” Erika Marzano, Head of Audience Development at Deutsche Welle, adds: "Publishing daily has become an imperative for newsrooms that want to grow on TikTok." (article in French)
Is Snapchat Still Worth It For Publishers?
Some publishers are reporting a 60% drop in ad revenue from Snap content as the platform pivots to creators. Yet Snapchat is still growing, boasting 100M DAUs in the U.S. and 99M in Europe. Bottom line? “The good old days won’t come back” but as a tool for engaging Gen Z, it’s a must. Smart publishers are cutting costs by repurposing videos across TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, & Snapchat Spotlight.
New York Magazine Wins AI Protections—But With a Catch
Vox Media’s New York Magazine narrowly avoided a walkout after union workers secured AI-related job protections. Buried in the contract terms was this major caveat: “A prohibition of layoffs due solely to the use of AI". The catch? AI can still play a role in job cuts, but staff will get an extra four weeks of severance. Transparency on AI’s editorial use becomes mandatory. But will it work? Asking for a robot.
‘We’re Heading To Collapse’: Why the Murdoch Empire is About to Go Bang
It’s never pleasant to write about a brutal family feud, especially over an empire valued at $43Bn - after all, there’s plenty to go around. With Rupert at 93 and succession battles raging between his kids, as well as hefty legal challenges from other quarters, the once-dominant dynasty faces an ugly, chaotic unraveling. Some might say the word schadenfreude was invented for this.
Cyberattack Disrupts Operations at Lee Enterprises, Major U.S. Publisher
Cybersecurity is usually left to "Bob down there in IT", who, let’s be honest, just wanted a quiet life and a working coffee machine. This was a biggie, crippling print ops, billing and vendor payments at Lee Enterprises who own 70 dailies across 25 U.S. States. The financial impact? Significant. This kind of breach is avoidable. A cybersecurity professional tells me: “There’s simply no excuse for it.”
ICYMI: 2025 Full List of AI Tools
Here are the AI tools publishers need to know, now. Curated by a leading AI group of London and SE England media professionals. The tools cover content, analytics, writing, productivity, and more. Some real good ‘uns…
AI TOOL OF THE WEEK #1: Lovable
Terrible name but What. A. Solution. Create a fully functioning app in seconds just using voice commands. Zero coding. Described as "your own superhuman full stack engineer", you can fine tweak the app and adjust colors, sizes, and content directly. The tool enables secure synchronisation of the codebase to GitHub, allowing edits in any code editor. Supports databases, API integrations, etc. Wow.
AI TOOL OF THE WEEK #2: Societies.io
A spin off from Cambridge University, Societies creates AI-driven cohorts that interact like real people—perfect for testing audience behaviour, modeling engagement trends, or simulating decision-making. Predict human behaviour without any human involvement. Pure gold for media product developers.
WEBINAR: FT Strategies and Nic Newman on Journalism Trends
Nic Newman, author of the Reuters Institute’s Trends and Predictions Report, joins FT Strategies to explore the key trends shaping journalism’s future - from AI disruption and newsroom innovation to the rise of personality-led journalism. FT Strategies will also present its own analysis. Mon 3rd March | 11am GMT | 6am EST.
DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: Niche Media Conference, Las Vegas
For those looking to relive Bradley Cooper’s The Hangover, Las Vegas’ Niche Media Conference might just provide the excuse. Five tracks to choose from: Publisher Strategy; Digital Strategy; Ad Sales Training; Audience & Marketing Growth; Editorial. 300 attendees, 40 speakers, 25 breakout sessions, over 3 days. April 23rd - 25th, 2025.
GUIDE: How to Brief a Winning Content Partnership
According to the World Media Group, "briefing a news publisher on a content partnership has become a lost art". It's created a comprehensive guide - How to Brief a Winning Content Partnership - for agencies and media companies to follow when implementing content campaigns with brand partners. Good, actionable advice.
Long Read…
Autocar – is it a weekly magazine for car enthusiasts, or valuable research tool? Both, as it turns out. In fact, it’s a research gold mine.
In July 2023, Haymarket Media Group made the decisive move of committing to build a complete digital archive of Autocar, which spans 130 years of automotive history and now includes every single issue since its inception (there are over 6,600 of them). Subscriptions, which are available through Exact Editions, allow users to browse each weekly instalment as it’s released and search the entire archive to pinpoint references to specific models, key events or industry figureheads.
The hitherto untapped value for Autocar and its publisher that this project has unearthed is threefold:
1) Increased Engagement and Revenue
The number of users accessing the digital edition, which previously only stretched back to 2016, soared once the complete archive had been launched. During the period between July and December 2023, there were 21 times as many views as the preceding 6 months, with the most popular decades for browsing being the 1970s and 1980s.
Revenues from digital-only subscriptions also saw a significant lift during this 6-month period; 13 times as many annual subscriptions and 4 times as many quarterly subscriptions were purchased. Autocar are also selling access to the archive directly through their website here.
Haymarket also encouraged further engagement by sharing time-limited links to the archive with their audience, which subsequently directed users back to their subscription pages to drive conversions.
2) Expanded Audiences
The expansion of Autocar’s complete archive also brought an entirely new subscription audience into the fold: libraries.
The magazine’s editorial is not strictly designed with an academic audience in mind, so educational libraries hadn’t made up a large proportion of their customers. However, with the addition of the archive, the title has transformed into an ever-evolving historical record of both the automotive trade itself and the social history that surrounds it. Library subscriptions are much more lucrative than their individual counterparts and have a high year-on-year renewal rate, so Haymarket is benefitting from an entirely new source of reliable revenue.
The publisher has also decided to offer Perpetual and Ongoing Access (POA) subscriptions, through which libraries can opt to pay a higher one-time fee for lifetime access to the resource. The option of POA means that Autocar with its complete archive is not only the oldest continually published motoring magazine but is also on track to be the best preserved, with a guaranteed digital future as long as we have libraries.
3) Brand Authority
Whilst Autocar is widely known for documenting automotive history - with their strapline being ‘the world’s oldest car magazine’ – now they can visually show their legacy at the touch of a button.
The instant and comprehensive availability of their entire history has undoubtedly deepened the brand’s USP as the oldest and most established magazine of its kind. The launch of the archive incited coverage from the likes of The Daily Mail and The Irish News as well as car industry outlets, all of which will build on its brand authority going forward as a leading magazine in its field.
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To sum up, the launch of Autocar’s digital archive was a game-changing decision for both the title itself and its publisher, unveiling previously hidden value in terms of usage, revenue, new markets and brand authority.
The success of the project has even ‘revved up’ Haymarket to complete the archive of another of their automotive titles, Classic & Sports Car, which stretches back to 1982 and comprises 500 issues.
So - a question to other consumer magazines with substantial archives to consider; are you sitting on a gold mine of hidden value?
Ellie Burnage, Head of Marketing & Publisher Operations, Exact Editions
Exact Editions is the premium magazine platform for readers, libraries, and publishers. They specialise in creating, selling and streaming fully-searchable access to archival and ongoing digital editions, and work with household names including The Times Literary Supplement, DAZED, and The Spectator. For more information, please click here.
Got this far? Here’s a bonus extra.
Each month, a number of stories end up on the WNIP cutting room floor. They’re not bad stories per se, on the contrary, but they just didn’t make the final cut. I hope there are one or two gems that can inspire…..Here’s the list of February’s B Sides.
