SODP Dispatch - 26 April 2025

Invite only: Publisher Dinner in NYC 🍷

We're bringing together a select group of media publishing professionals—those working within media companies in AI, product innovation, monetization and audience growth and innovation —for an intimate dinner in New York City on

This gathering is designed for operators, senior leaders, and founders who are shaping the future of media.

What to Expect:

✅Engaging conversations with industry peers

✅Insights into the media industry

✅A relaxed atmosphere to foster genuine connections.

Event Details:

🗓️ Date: May 1, 2025

🕕 Time: From 6 PM

📍 Location: New York City

We're especially interested in welcoming individuals who haven't attended similar events before but are eager to engage in meaningful dialogue about media and technology.

If this resonates with you or someone in your network, please reach out to express interest.

Contact: [email protected]

Even experts disagree over whether social media is bad for kids. We examined why

By Simon Knight & Kristine Deroover

Disagreement and uncertainty are common features of everyday life. They’re also common and expected features of scientific research.

Despite this, disagreement among experts has the potential to undermine people’s engagement with information. It can also lead to confusion and a rejection of scientific messaging in general, with a tendency to explain disagreement as relating to incompetence or nefarious motivations.

To help, we recently developed a tool to help people navigate uncertainty and disagreement.

To illustrate its usefulness, we applied it to a recent topic which has attracted much disagreement (including among experts): whether social media is harmful for kids, and whether they should be banned from it.

A structured way to understand disagreement

We research how people navigate disagreement and uncertainty. The tool we developed is a framework of disagreements. It provides a structured way to understand expert disagreement, to assess evidence and navigate the issues for decision making.

It identifies ten types of disagreement, and groups them into three categories:

1. Informant-related (who is making the claim?)

2. Information-related (what evidence is available and what is it about?)

3. Uncertainty-related (how does the evidence help us understand the issue?)

📈 WordPress VIP Performance Tip

If you're using filesize() or wp_getimagesize() on WordPress VIP, be aware: these functions can trigger remote requests to the VIP image server, adding unnecessary latency due to cURL operations.​ Instead of relying on these functions, retrieve the image size from metadata. See more ▸

🧭 Insights from NAMS25 on AI's Impact in Media

At the Nordic AI in Media Summit 2025 (#NAMS25), Ezra Eeman, Strategy & Innovation Director at NPO, introduced the "infinity paradigm," highlighting that news organizations are no longer just competing with other media outlets but are now contending with an endless array of knowledge providers. See more ▸

By Vahe Arabian

🤝Audience collaboration is the future of journalism

Audience collaboration isn’t a buzzword, it’s a revenue and relevance strategy for local news.

Local journalism has been under pressure for years, but collaborative investigations could offer a sustainable path forward. Community-driven journalism, where newsrooms work directly with audiences to source information and leads, is reshaping how impactful stories are uncovered. By involving audiences directly in storytelling, publishers unlock deeper insights, rebuild community connections, and diversify revenue, without relying solely on traditional advertising models.

Collaborative journalism works such that communities contribute firsthand data, reducing reporting costs and uncovering underreported issues such as systemic discrimination and environmental risks. Also, public participation fosters accountability, helping counter perceptions of bias or disconnected reporting. Then, smaller newsrooms pool resources with peers or broader networks to tackle complex, resource-intensive investigations.

Projects that document hate crimes or public misconduct through open submissions show the tangible potential of this model. Crowdsourced investigations allow publishers to broaden their reporting reach without expanding headcount which is a crucial advantage amid ongoing financial constraints.

Revenue Models for Collaborative Work

• Memberships/Subscriptions: Offer exclusive access to collaborative findings, early reports, or behind-the-scenes updates.

• Grants and Philanthropy: Secure support from organisations focused on civic engagement or public-interest journalism.

• Sponsored Content: Partner with businesses to fund hyperlocal investigations into issues like housing affordability or environmental impact.

• Licensing: Syndicate investigative work to larger networks, research institutions, or educational platforms.

The focus is on building a reciprocal relationship where audiences are not just passive readers but active participants, directly contributing to meaningful reporting.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Start Small: Pilot a single collaborative project, such as crowdsourcing insights into local infrastructure challenges, to gauge community interest.

2. Monetise Participation: Offer tiered membership perks linked to audience input, like early-access reports or Q&A briefings.

3. Measure Beyond Clicks: Track engagement metrics such as submissions received and policy changes influenced by investigations.

Crowdsourced journalism demands upfront investment in moderation systems, fact verification processes, and audience education. Maintaining editorial standards while scaling collaboration is key. However, the potential payoff includes sustainable revenue streams, loyal readerships, and journalism that drives real-world change which justifies the shift.

Google AI Overviews already has (almost) apocalyptic data. This is how you'll destroy your audience if you only focus on these topics. | JournalistsNetwork

There is already data that contradicts Google 's techno-optimistic version . Not surprisingly, there is a before and after AI Overviews . Thus, when Google's AI takes over the top of search results, its generative summaries plummet traffic by an (almost) apocalyptic percentage.
Read more ▸

What WPP and Publicis’ quiet acquisitions mean for the future of data trust in advertising | Financial Express

In March, an announcement landed quietly but landed hard. Publicis picked up Lotame. A month later, WPP had acquired InfoSum. To most people outside the marketing and media world, these names mean little. But inside ad-land, the acquisitions triggered a not-so-quiet panic about what had just changed, and what had just been lost.
Read more ▸

Google Discover, in the midst of a metamorphosis: rebirth or definitive decline? | Cms Mag

Google Discover, Google's content recommendation feature that promised to be an endless source of traffic for media outlets and creators, is going through a difficult time. Amidst a sea of ​​algorithm changes and with a desktop version announced but still without a clear date, many are wondering if Discover is evolving... or if, on the contrary, it's doomed to remain stuck in the past . Read more ▸

Meta adds dynamic overlays to Advantage+ Catalog ads | Search Engine Land

Meta introduced a small but potentially powerful tweak to its Advantage+ Catalog campaigns: dynamic overlays. Advertisers can now add price, discount, and shipping labels directly onto product images – styled like stickers – to make promotions pop in the Facebook Feed. Read more ▸

Conversational tone, audience interactions underscore ABC’s live blogging success | Inma

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has been using live blogs as a core part of its digital strategy for years — covering everything from national and international elections to cultural moments like the Game of Thrones finale. What began as a breaking news tool has evolved into a versatile, audience-first format that now plays a key role across ABC’s editorial output.
Read more ▸