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Minnesota Star Tribune traffic boost | The regional dailies proving news can pay
And the publishers beginning to offer GEO as a service (Future) and experiment with using AI agents for every step of 'first-line news' (Mediahuis)
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Welcome to the Press Gazette Future of Media US newsletter on Friday, 20 February.
We’ve got a subscription discount running until the end of February so you can get unlimited access to our website:
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🚔 It’s been a horrible start to the year for Minnesota, making global headlines for all the wrong reasons. But it’s reassuring to see people are turning to their leading local news source for trusted information.
Visits to the Minnesota Star Tribune were up 126% in January compared to the prior month, and 67% up versus January 2025, according to our latest analysis of the biggest 50 news websites in the US.
In January The Star Tribune put its breaking news live blog outside the paywall, added a family plan and let subscribers gift an unlimited number of articles.
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💲 The Star Tribune was one of five major metropolitan dailies outlined in a piece by journalism professor Dan Kennedy who said they were good examples that news can still pay.
Although he draws together newsrooms with different ownership and business structures, including both for-profit and non-profit models, Kennedy says some common themes are present.
Some of them (including the Star Tribune) have expanded their geographic area of coverage, they put value on their journalism online, and they experiment while doing the basics well.
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🤖 Also today we bring you two intriguing new ways publishers are experimenting with AI.
Major European publisher Mediahuis is trying out the use of AI agents for almost every stage of a story (from commissioning and writing to legal checks) classed as “first-line news”. The idea is to free up journalists to spend more time on their valuable “signature journalism”.
I was at a conference last week where this plan was explained to publishers, and it’s fair to say it generated the biggest reaction of the day. It’s an unusually clear example of how publishers actually envision AI as a gamechanger in the very near future for the newsroom, rather than wishy washy statements about efficiencies in the backend.
💻 Meanwhile Future plc is now offering LLM optimisation as a marketing service to help commercial partners boost their visibility on ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.
Future’s Techradar is apparently the most cited publisher website domain globally on ChatGPT and it’s found a revenue opportunity in sharing its techniques with others.
It should be noted that Future does have a deal with OpenAI, which appears to make a big difference in a publisher’s visibility on ChatGPT.