NYT’s Video Pivot, The Atlantic’s Subscriber Playbook, and the Case for Blocking AI Search | Adrian, your AI curator

How the New York Times is Using Video in Its App

Press Gazette, How Tiktok inspired the New York Times vertical video strategy

The New York Times has redesigned its app to make video a core part of the experience, adding a “Watch” tab that offers about 20 short, vertical videos each day. They say that video consumption on its platforms has doubled in the past year as it produces around 75 hours of video monthly, with strong performance from on-the-ground reporting, first-person narratives, and breaking news.

The feed looks like TikTok or YouTube Shorts in how you swipe through it, but it’s not personalized. Instead, editors curate a mix of top news, investigations, analysis, and lighter content from across the newsroom, including The Athletic, Wirecutter, and NTY Cooking. Their bet is that editorial curation, not algorithms, is the key differentiator and a way to help people quickly “catch up on the news.”

Why Publishers Should Block AI Search Now

Baekdal, Publishers must block AI search

Thomas Baekdal’s article argues that publishers must immediately block AI search crawlers because AI search poses an existential threat to the core pillars of publishing: building a loyal paying audience, maintaining valuable direct advertising, promoting their brand, and distributing content in controlled channels.

He explains how past decisions, such as giving away content online, relying on low-value programmatic ads, and embracing Google, Facebook, and other intermediaries, have gradually eroded publishers’ direct relationships with readers and destroyed audience value.

With traffic from search and social already declining, AI search represents a final, more dangerous shift: it answers user queries directly using publishers’ journalism, sends minimal traffic back, and further weakens subscriptions. He warns that AI valuations are inflated and depend on free access to publisher content; if publishers block AI crawlers collectively, the bubble could burst.

How Publishers Are Redesigning Articles Around Reader Needs

The Audiencers, 5 ideas of article formats where form follows function

Publishers are finally moving beyond text-heavy, one-size-fits-all articles and are redesigning formats to better serve reader needs while boosting engagement. The piece highlights five successful approaches:

1. The LA Times integrates utility by pairing reviews with a live, scroll-synced map that helps readers make decisions.
2. Der Spiegel turns comments into structured weekly debates that build loyalty and crowdsource valuable recommendations.
3. Wired uses layered storytelling with bite-sized cards that let skimmers and deep readers choose their level of depth.
4. The New York Times gamifies evergreen lists with interactive checklists that encourage return visits and sharing.
5. The Telegraph uses assessment calculators that turn health advice into personalized, actionable scores.

Across all examples, when article form supports the reader’s function—decision-making, learning, sharing, or self-assessment—publishers gain higher engagement, stronger loyalty, and better data to guide editorial strategy.

The Atlantic’s Path to Sustainable Subscriber Growth

Media Voices, Where The Atlantic is looking for subscriber growth in a challenging landscape

The Atlantic’s Chief Growth Officer Megha Garibaldi says the era of effortless traffic is over, and that future growth depends on finding audiences intentionally rather than relying on search and social.

She argues that publishers must balance strong paywalls with smart discoverability, focusing on what they can control: user journeys, conversion messaging, and direct touchpoints like newsletters.

Garibaldi notes that many new subscribers pay to support quality journalism, not just for utility. With acquisition now steady, The Atlantic is shifting to retention by boosting early-life engagement and expanding value through puzzles and games. Across all efforts, Garibaldi stresses that The Atlantic’s advantage is human-made journalism, which she believes will become even more valuable as AI use grows.

AP Turns Its Archive Into High-Value Fuel for Enterprise AI

Digiday, AP makes its archive AI-ready to tap the enterprise RAG boom

The Associated Press has rebuilt its entire archive to make decades of verified reporting easy for enterprises to use in their own AI systems. Over the past year, AP has structured tens of millions of assets (e.g., text, photos, video, and audio) so they can be reliably ingested, cited, and licensed by LLMs.

This shift positions AP alongside publishers such as The Economist, FT, and Dow Jones, who are already capitalizing on the rising demand for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) among enterprises. The core idea behind this investment is that high-quality, trusted journalism data is becoming essential infrastructure for the AI economy.