Can AI Fix the News Feed? Cory Ondrejka on NewsArc, Outrage Loops, and Smarter Curation
Season 3 · Episode 28
Friday, September 19, 2025 • Duration 58:02
Social feeds turned news into a rage machine. Cory Ondrejka says it’s time for a reset! Use AI to cut the noise, respect your time, and deliver journalism that actually matters.
For years, the way we consume news has been warped by engagement algorithms that reward outrage and overwhelm. With attention hijacked and trust eroding, millions have simply tuned out. But what if AI could help fix what it broke?
On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal talks with Cory Ondrejka, former Facebook and Google exec (and co-creator of Second Life), now at SmartNews, where he leads the development of NewsArc; an AI-powered app that curates the best single article on each major news event. No doomscrolling, no junk summaries, and no ragebait. Just clarity, curation, and a front page you can trust.
Why this matters now:
News avoidance is at record highs, and trust in media is cratering. NewsArc offers an alternative: a shared, AI-assisted “Daily Dozen” that highlights the most informative reads, respects journalistic integrity, and compensates publishers fairly. With LLMs used for claim-checking, not content theft, the app delivers a smarter, calmer news experience for readers who want to be informed, not inflamed.
Key Topics:
🔹 Why social feeds broke the news 🔹 How NewsArc uses AI to elevate not replace journalism 🔹 The problem with summaries and the power of “claim-level” analysis 🔹 Why a shared front page matters in a polarized world 🔹 How SmartNews compensates publishers in the LLM era
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Who Pays When AI Eats the Web? Bill Gross on Zero-Click Search, and the Conversation Layer
Season 3 · Episode 27
Friday, September 12, 2025 • Duration 41:53
AI engines are siphoning off billions in value from publishers. Bill Gross says it’s time to flip the model: charge for crawls, share revenue on answers, and build the “conversation layer” that keeps audiences engaged.
If the 2010s were about gaming Google with SEO, the 2020s are about surviving AI’s takeover of distribution. Global pageviews are down 25% in a year, roughly $100B in value shifted from websites to AI engines without compensation. Bots now outnumber human visitors by staggering ratios, and publishers are footing the bill.
On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachaltalks with Bill Gross, founder of ProRata and creator of Gist AI, an ethical AI search platform backed by 750 publishers. Gross makes the case for a new deal: pay publishers when AI crawls their sites, share revenue when AI uses their work, and build experiences that move beyond “ten blue links” to true conversations with audiences.
Why this matters now:
Web traffic is plunging and is down 250 billion views a day, or about $100 billion a year in lost value. Bots now scrape far more than they give back, with Google at 12:1 and some AI engines hitting 1,200:1, leaving sites like Wikipedia footing huge server bills. Bill Gross’s solution is Gist AI, a publisher-backed search platform with 750 partners, 30 million documents, and a 50/50 revenue share model.
Key Topics: 🔹 The economics of zero-click search 🔹 Why one-time licensing checks won’t sustain publishers 🔹 How “sponsored supplements” could reinvent ads in AI answers 🔹 Why publishers should stop chasing SEO tricks and focus on true value 🔹 What Gross calls the “conversation layer” and why it’s the next big battleground
The new SEO: Chris Andrew on mastering AI search
Season 3 · Episode 17
Friday, May 16, 2025 • Duration 45:38
What does it take to get AI to notice your content? Scrunch AI’s Chris Andrew shares the secret sauce.
On this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal welcomes Chris Andrew, CEO of Scrunch AI, to unravel the mysteries of AI-driven search. As AI platforms increasingly summarize news without driving traffic back to publishers, the game of visibility is changing. Chris explains how Scrunch AI is helping content creators understand and optimize for "AI SEO," a new frontier that goes beyond traditional search algorithms.
Pete and Chris dive deep into the emerging concept of "SEO for Chatbots"—why AI-generated summaries are redefining content discovery, and how publishers can adapt to avoid getting buried in the noise. They also explore the uncomfortable truth: AI summaries are designed to be self-contained, reducing the need for users to click through to the original source.
If you’re a media executive, content strategist, or just curious about the shifting landscape of digital publishing, this conversation is packed with practical insights and bold predictions.
This episode covers:
🔹 AI SEO: What it is and why it's the next content battleground
🔹 The Clickless Future: How AI summaries are shifting audience behavior
🔹 Publisher Panic: Why media outlets are scrambling to adapt
🔹 AI’s Surface Area Problem: Fewer sources, fewer clicks, and what that means
🔹 Scrunch AI’s Strategy: How Chris Andrew’s platform is re-engineering content for AI visibility
🔹 New Rules of Engagement: What publishers need to know to stay relevant
🎙 Guest: Chris Andrew -CEO of Scrunch AI
Building resilient content strategies for publishers with David Buttle and Will Barker
Season 3 · Episode 16
Friday, May 9, 2025 • Duration 01:01:37
AI risk and the tenacity required.
In this special episode of The Media Copilot podcast, we're diving into the seismic shifts AI is causing in digital publishing. I recently hosted a webinar on AI Risk and Resilience for Publishers, where we unpacked how AI search engines are disrupting traditional traffic flows and what that means for content creators. The implications are significant: if audiences no longer need to visit publisher platforms to get information, how do publishers maintain visibility and revenue?
To explore this challenge, I sat down with David Buttle, founder ofDJB Strategies and former Director of Platform Strategy at the Financial Times. David has been at the forefront of analyzing how AI impacts media consumption, and he's developed a methodology to assess risk levels for publishers in an AI-driven world.
Joining us is Will Barker ofBluConnick, a company focused on enhancing audience engagement through first-party data. Together, we discussed how publishers can create AI-resilient content strategies and maintain their audience relationships in the age of AI-generated summaries.
Key Topics Covered:
The rise of AI-driven search and its impact on publisher traffic
How to identify content most at risk for AI substitution
Strategic approaches to maintain audience loyalty and engagement
Leveraging first-party data to optimize reader experience
Listen in as we uncover the roadmap for resilient content in an AI-first world. Whether you're a publisher, content strategist, or media executive, this episode will equip you with the insights needed to navigate this technological shift.
How ScalePost’s Ahmed Malik is building an AI survival strategy for media
Season 3 · Episode 15
Friday, May 2, 2025 • Duration 50:46
When chatbots summarize your reporting instead of sending audiences to your website, who really wins—and how can creators fight back?
Ahmed Malik, CEO of ScalePost, joins The Media Copilot to unpack the act of AI disintermediation. It’s a term that’s thrown around a lot, but it’s just a fancy word for when an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Perplexity writes a summary based on a topic instead of directing a person to a website.
That's the basic thing AI services do, but if you think about it, even if the user doesn't have to read the website anymore, the chatbot does. The thing is, chatbots don't look at ads, they don't buy subscriptions, and they sometimes don't even respect paywalls.
Because of this simple idea, AI search is rewriting the economics of the web. But what if media companies could push back and get paid? That’s where Malik and ScalePost come in. As a bridge between publishers and AI platforms, ScalePost helps news organizations protect their work, monetize their data, and create a dialogue with the tech companies shaping the future.
Ahmed and I break down:
The hard truth about how AI is siphoning traffic—and what bot activity means for the future of metrics
Why evergreen content is especially vulnerable to AI disruption
What ScalePost is doing to make private deals and licensing discussions possible
How media companies are thinking beyond lawsuits to carve out new business models
What the Ziff Davis lawsuit against OpenAI signals for the industry at large
Ahmed also shares insight from ScalePost’s closed-door sessions with major publishers and AI platforms—giving us a rare peek into how the media business is negotiating its future in an AI-dominated landscape.
If you’re a journalist, media executive, or content creator wondering how to stay relevant—and solvent—in the age of generative AI, you’ll want to hear this one.
Inside Reuters’ AI playbook: Why Jane Barrett says journalism can’t afford to sit this one out
Season 3 · Episode 14
Friday, April 25, 2025 • Duration 45:55
Jane Barrett, Head of AI Strategy at Reuters, joins The Media Copilot to share how one of the world’s largest news agencies is actively shaping the future of AI in journalism—without crossing the line on trust.
AI is rewriting the rules of content, but who’s writing the rules for AI in newsrooms? At Reuters, Jane Barrett is making sure they’re not written for them. As Head of AI Strategy, Barrett has led one of the most ambitious and thoughtful integrations of artificial intelligence in a major newsroom—balancing innovation with editorial ethics at every step.
This week on The Media Copilot, I talk to Barrett about how Reuters went from “wait and see” to “lead and shape” when it comes to generative AI. From building new workflows to launching the Reuters AI Suite, the global news agency isn’t just experimenting—it’s operationalizing.
In our conversation, we cover:
How Reuters got its 2,500+ journalists to embrace AI tools without fearing obsolescence
Why generative video and imagery are off-limits—and what that says about editorial values
The tension between using AI for speed and preserving the nuance of human reporting
Why Reuters’ B2B AI Suite is less about automation and more about augmentation
The hard truths about “publicly available” content and how publishers are fighting back
Barrett also shares the internal strategy behind launching AI products for business customers, how trust and transparency guide every deployment, and why AI shouldn’t be viewed as a newsroom shortcut—but a newsroom collaborator.
If you’ve ever wondered how legacy media can innovate without compromising its soul, this episode is a masterclass in doing just that.
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If you’re enjoying The Media Copilot, don’t forget to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leaving a rating or review helps more people discover the show. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe for weekly episodes on how AI is reshaping media, journalism, and content creation.
Dotdash Meredith’s bold bet on AI—and why it might actually work
Season 3 · Episode 13
Friday, April 11, 2025 • Duration 43:39
Jonathan Roberts of Dotdash Meredith unpacks how one of the largest digital publishers is adapting to AI and the changing nature of online audiences.
The media business is no stranger to disruption—but AI is changing the rules of engagement faster than most companies can respond. At Dotdash Meredith, Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Jonathan Roberts is trying to stay not just afloat, but ahead. This week onThe Media Copilot, I talk with Jonathan about how one of the biggest names in digital publishing is confronting—and capitalizing on—AI’s rapid rise.
Dotdash Meredith is home to household-name brands like People, InStyle, and Investopedia. But behind the glossy covers and evergreen SEO content is a highly engineered operation—one that’s been data-forward for years. From its proprietary ad tech platform D/Cipher (built to thrive in a post-cookie world) to deep integrations with OpenAI, the company is betting on innovation as its survival strategy.
In our conversation, we cover:
Why Dotdash leaned into its OpenAI partnership early—and how it’s paying off in real-time
The evolving relationship between editorial integrity and algorithmic optimization
How personalization at scale is being done without compromising trust or quality
What AI agents mean for traffic, SEO, and the entire structure of online publishing
Whether we’re heading toward a future where humans don’t browse websites—they just ask
Jonathan shares how Dotdash is adapting its product, content, and monetization models to survive in an environment where Google is no longer the gateway to the internet—and where AI summaries may be the only thing standing between your brand and invisibility.
AI vs. truth: Inside the fight to keep propaganda out of the algorithm
Season 3 · Episode 12
Friday, April 4, 2025 • Duration 38:33
A revealing conversation with NewsGuard’s Steven Brill on trust, truth, and the battle for clean data in the AI age. The AI era is rewriting the rules of media — but what happens when disinformation sneaks into the algorithms shaping what we see and believe?
This week on The Media Copilot, I sat down withSteven Brill, a legend in the journalism world and co-founder ofNewsGuard, the company working to restore trust in news. Steven’s media legacy includes launchingCourt TV, creating American Lawyer magazine, and authoring bestsellers on health care, education, and much more. But his latest focus? Making sense of AI’s impact on information integrity.
In this episode, we dive into:
The bombshell NewsGuard report exposing a Russian propaganda campaign that infiltrated AI training data
Whether NewsGuard itself can stay unbiased — and how it handles critics
What’s next for NewsGuard in the AI era (including an exclusive announcement: NewsGuard’s TrueNews AI, a small language model that indexes only sites NewsGuard deems “not unreliable”)
If you care about the future of media, credibility, and the truth itself in a world shaped by AI, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.
Listen now to hear from Steven Brill on the fight to keep our information ecosystem clean — and how we all have a role to play.
Reinventing local news with AI: Warren St. John unpacks Patch’s growth story
Season 3 · Episode 11
Friday, March 28, 2025 • Duration 47:34
By using AI, hyperlocal news platform Patch expanded from 1,100 to over 30,000 communities in a matter of months. How they did it without creating slop.
This week on The Media Copilot, I sat down with Warren St. John, CEO of Patch, to explore how AI is driving this exponential growth. Patch’s AI-powered newsletters can now spin up hyperlocal updates for virtually any ZIP code in the U.S., offering a new model for personalized, community-driven journalism at scale. But what does this mean for the editorial process, and how does AI fit into a model that has already made Patch a profitable success?
In this episode, we dive into:
• How Patch uses AI to create high-quality, hyperlocal newsletters
• Why ChatGPT can’t replicate what Patch is doing—yet
• The surprising reaction of Patch’s editorial team to this AI-driven shift
• What this level of scale means for the future of local news
• How to scale AI in media without sacrificing quality
If you're curious about how AI can empower, rather than replace, local journalism—or how media companies can harness AI to grow without diluting their editorial integrity—this conversation is a must-listen.
🎧 Tune in now to hear how Warren St. John and Patch are redefining the future of hyperlocal news.
How to get the essential AI skills every PR pro needs, with Peter Bittner
Season 3 · Episode 10
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 • Duration 59:33
We're slashing the price of our AI course for PR and media professionals for one day only.
The results from the first cohort of AI for PR & Media Professionals are in. The six-week AI training course closed on Tuesday with two dozen students showing capstone projects that incorporated advanced AI techniques like automations and custom tooling, often pairing them with popular tools like Perplexity and Claude. The AI-enhanced workflows they created are going to save them hours of tedious work every week.
And now we're about to do it all again.
On March 18, the second cohort of AI for PR & Media Professionals begins. Over the course of six weeks, we're going to take a group of students from basic prompting all the way to developing their own specialized monitoring tools and tailored assistants. And there's still time for you to join.
Want more detail before signing up? That's exactly what fellow instructor Peter Bittner and I explore in this week's Media Copilot podcast. We unpack some specific lessons in the course, why they can move the needle for communications work, and what we learned from our students.
Even better, we're offering a big discount on the course for one day only. If you buy a spot now, you can save 30% off a $1,499 ticket — taking the price down to $1,049. Just use the code FLASH30 at checkout. Payment plans are also available.
Still need convincing? How about this testimonial from one of the new graduates: "The tools and techniques have saved me countless hours while opening doors to new client opportunities. My family has noticed the difference too—they're proud to see me embracing these technologies with such enthusiasm. This course has truly been empowering."
Spring 2025 cohort participants will gain practical experience in:
📩 And if you enjoyed this conversation, I’d encourage you to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app that you want. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a rating or review — it really does help the show. And if you’re on YouTube, don’t forget to “like” the video and subscribe to the channel 🔔
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
And if you enjoyed this conversation, I’d encourage you to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app that you want. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a rating or review — it really does help the show. And if you’re on YouTube, don’t forget to “like” the video and subscribe to the channel 🔔
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter (link in show notes) and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
And if you enjoyed this conversation, I’d encourage you to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app that you want. Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a rating or review — it really does help the show. And if you’re on YouTube, don’t forget to “like” the video and subscribe to the channel 🔔
🎙️ Guests:
David Buttle
Founder of DJB Strategies
Former Director of Platform Strategy at Financial Times
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter (link in show notes) and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
If you’re enjoying The Media Copilot, don’t forget to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leaving a rating or review helps more people discover the show. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe for weekly episodes on how AI is reshaping media, journalism, and content creation.
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter (link in show notes) and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter (link in show notes) and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
We also talk about what’s not changing: the need for trusted, human storytelling—and the critical role publishers still play in shaping how information flows online. But how do you fund it? That’s the tension we explore.
This is a candid, smart look at the state of play in media innovation—one that pulls back the curtain on how digital publishers are rethinking their entire business to meet the moment.
—
If you’re enjoying The Media Copilot, don’t forget to follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leaving a rating or review helps more people discover the show. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe for weekly episodes on how AI is reshaping media, journalism, and content creation.
You can also subscribe to The Media Copilot newsletter (link in show notes) and visit mediacopilot.ai for exclusive resources, tools, and AI training courses built specifically for media professionals.
I'm also hosting a live webinar on Thursday, April 10 withDavid Buttle, founder ofDJB Strategies. We'll be taking a deep dive into AI substitution risk — how AI-powered search engines are summarizing the news, killing clicks, and reshaping publisher economics.
We'll cover:
What types of content are most at risk
Why AI search is disrupting audience engagement
Tactical strategies to protect and future-proof your content business
Don’t Miss This! Webinar on AI Substitution Risk – April 10th
If you’re interested in AI’s impact on the media, I’ve got something else for you. Join me, Pete Pachal, and David Buttle, founder of DJB Strategies, for a deep dive into AI substitution risk on April 10th.
AI-powered search engines summarize content, siphon off clicks, and threaten revenue. But what can publishers do about it? This webinar will provide a roadmap for content strategy that breaks down: ✅ Which types of content are most vulnerable ✅ Tactics to mitigate substitution risk ✅ Actionable insights to future-proof your media business
And as always, if you’re enjoying The Media Copilot, I’d be grateful if you’d: ✅ Follow the show on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen ✅ Leave a rating or review—it helps more than you know ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit that notification bell 🔔
AI is reshaping the future of media. Let’s make sure it’s a future worth building.
Building automations that streamline routine PR tasks, significantly improving workflow efficiency
Utilizing tools like GPT for Sheets and Excel to generate insightful data and automate complex analyses
Constructing custom GPT systems to manage real-time crisis scenarios with precise, consistent messaging
Creating AI-driven media strategies and visualizing ROI with automated data analysis
Developing customized media monitoring systems that spot trends competitors might overlook
Each attendee receives two personalized coaching sessions, ensuring the skills acquired directly apply to their unique professional challenges. Graduates consistently report tangible benefits: tasks previously taking hours become manageable in minutes, enabling PR pros to expand their business into new sectors confidently.
Listen to the podcast to get a feel for what makes the course so special (more detail below), and hit me up directly if you have any questions.
The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.
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