SODP Dispatch - 20 February 2025

Generative AI is Already Being Used in Journalism – Here’s How People Feel About it

By T.J. Thomson, Michelle Riedlinger, Phoebe Matich & Ryan J. Thomas

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has taken off at lightning speed in the past couple of years, creating disruption in many industries. Newsrooms are no exception.

A new report published today finds that news audiences and journalists alike are concerned about how news organisations are – and could be – using generative AI such as chatbots, image, audio and video generators, and similar tools.

The report draws on three years of interviews and focus group research into generative AI and journalism in Australia and six other countries (United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France).

Only 25% of our news audience participants were confident they had encountered generative AI in journalism. About 50% were unsure or suspected they had.

You still have time to register!

Join us for the 2nd Annual WP Publisher Success Week, an online event from February 24–28, 2025, designed to empower digital publishers with high-impact insights and tools.

Event Highlights:

Day 1: The evolution of WordPress and what’s upcoming in 2025 - keynote presentation by Raelene Morey (The Repository) and Vahe Arabian (State of Digital Publishing) discussing recent updates, key trends, and upcoming innovations in WordPress.

Day 2: Streamlining editorial workflows for a major WordPress migration - Case study presentation by Aslam Multani (Multidots) focusing on effective editorial planning, processes, tools, and frameworks for successful migrations.

Day 3: Website migration essentials - panel discussion featuring Kyle Sutton (The Points Guy), Shelby Blackley (The Athletic), Bryan Davis (The Associated Press), and moderator Jessie Willms (The Guardian) covering best practices for SEO retention, site speed optimization, and hosting selection.

Day 4: Security at scale: enterprise insights workshop - workshop led by Dan Knauss (Multidots) offering insights into security protocols, maintenance best practices, and compliance for large-scale WordPress implementations.

Day 5: Unlocking AI potential for media publishers: real-world strategies and insights - panel with Pete Pachal (The Media Copilot), Matt Karolian (The Boston Globe), and moderator Vahe Arabian exploring practical AI applications to enhance content workflows and audience engagement.

🎤 WTF is SEO?

WTF is SEO? is a newsletter designed to help news publishers navigate search engine optimization (SEO). It offers actionable insights to enhance your publication's online presence. See more ▸

🔍️ SEOquake

SEOquake is a free plugin that provides you with key SEO metrics, along with other useful tools such as SEO Audit and many others. It will allow you to review all major metrics in a heartbeat, get a thorough analysis of SERPs and export the results in CSV format etc. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

🚀 Transform your publishing strategy with WordPress insights

WordPress isn’t just a CMS – It’s your publishing growth engine.

The State of Enterprise WordPress Survey 2024 provides a comprehensive analysis of how major organisations are leveraging WordPress to achieve their business objectives. This survey highlights the platform's versatility, scalability, and its growing importance across industries. In line with the findings of the survey, publishers must adopt innovative approaches to stay ahead, and WordPress serves as an ideal foundation for achieving these goals.

Here are the key insights from the survey:

1. Geographical Reach : Over half (54%) of respondents are based in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, with notable participation from North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. This underscores WordPress's global adoption and its relevance across diverse markets.

2. Industry Adoption : The primary sectors utilising WordPress include publishing/media (31%), technology (29%), marketing/advertising (16%), non-profit (7%), finance (5%), education (5%), lifestyle (5%), and entertainment (1%). These figures highlight the platform's adaptability across industries, particularly those reliant on robust content management systems.

3. Role Distribution : A significant portion of respondents hold positions in engineering/product development (44%), leadership (31%), and marketing (24%). This indicates that WordPress is not only a technical tool but also a strategic asset used by decision-makers at all levels of an organisation.

4. Traffic Growth : There's an upward trend in site visitors, with 18% of enterprises reporting over 10 million unique monthly visitors—an increase from 15% in the previous year. This demonstrates WordPress's ability to handle high traffic volumes while maintaining performance and reliability.

WordPress has evolved far beyond being just a content management system—it's now a powerful growth engine for publishers and enterprises alike. By adopting innovative strategies, staying attuned to industry trends, and leveraging the platform's robust features, publishers can unlock new levels of success in this digital age.

Why you need humans, not just AI, to run great SEO campaigns | Search Engine Land

Whether you’re on the brand or agency side of SEO, I’m guessing you’ve heard some version of this from an exec or a client with little knowledge of AI tools, SEO principles, or both. I’ve been asked that question multiple times because the other party saw or heard about modest success from LLM-generated content that got some clicks and impressions.
Read more ▸

Google: There Is No Persistent Shortcut To Faster Crawling | Search Engine Roundtable

Google's John Mueller said that there is no persistent shortcut to faster crawling. Yes, you can expedite crawling for specific situations and times, but there is no way to just tell Google you want them to crawl you faster, all the time.
Read more ▸

Google Reassures That #Anchor URLs In GSC Are Okay | SEJ

Google’s John Mueller explained why Google Search Console sometimes shows URLs with hashtags in performance reports and clarified that there’s no need to be concerned that that the wrong URLs are being indexed.
Read more ▸

OpenAI tries to ‘uncensor’ ChatGPT | TechCrunch

OpenAI is changing how it trains AI models to explicitly embrace “intellectual freedom … no matter how challenging or controversial a topic may be,” the company says in a new policy.
Read more ▸

New York Times goes all-in on internal AI tools | Semafor

The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code. In messages to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool called Echo to staff, Semafor has learned.
Read more ▸