Twipe Insights: The Best of 2025

Somehow, 2025 is already coming to an end. It’s been a year where the ground kept moving: traffic patterns changed, product priorities shifted, and AI found its way into more corners of the newsroom.

Through it all, a handful of stories consistently rose to the top in our 13-year long weekly articles series, Twipe Insights.

Here’s a look at the articles that sparked the most interest and conversation across the industry this year. Thanks for following along.

Best overall

12 ways journalists use AI tools in the newsroom

No surprise here: the piece that performed best overall this year is the one that made sense of AI’s growing role inside the newsroom. Instead of focusing on hype, this updated 2024 article broke down the actual day-to-day uses that are sticking.

Most read newsletter

3 trends in publisher app strategy in 2025

Apps quietly became a bigger strategic focus this year. The newsletter unpacked three shifts we saw across markets: more video-forward designs, better habit-building features, and a more thoughtful approach to notifications. With so much volatility coming from search and social, many publishers revisited the basic question: what should our app actually be for now?

Most viral on socials

Sign or sue? Tollbit’s “third option” for content monetisation

This interview with Tollbit’s CEO and Co-Founder, Toshit Panigrahi, made it’s way across our LinkedIn networks. Tollbit is a company that is enabling publishers to charge AI systems for their content when scrapped.

Their model landed right in the middle of the industry’s biggest tension: how publishers and AI companies should work together (or not). The piece walks through the idea that there might be a middle path between handing over content for free and going straight to court.

Most time spent reading

What we learned at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress

This recap struck a chord because it captured the tone of the event — practical, curious, and a bit restless. AI frameworks, reader revenue experiments, organisational change… the Congress covered a lot, but the common theme was that everyone is trying to build more resilient models. The article became a reference point for those who couldn’t attend (and for many who did).

Most read

What will the news media industry look like in 2025?

This forward-looking piece topped the charts because it gave people something they were already wondering about: where all of this is going. It compiles an analysis of key Nieman Lab predictions that touch on AI, platform shifts, and changing audience habits in a way that connected the dots across things publishers were experiencing in real time.

Conclusion

Taken together, these stories reflect a year where publishers were experimenting early, adjusting often, and trying to stay one step ahead of the platforms shaping their traffic. AI played a bigger role, apps gained new importance, and monetisation models started to shift in ways that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago.