Publishing has been defending for too long - it's time to go on the attack

It's always darkest before the dawn, and that means current predictions about the future of content are still informed by the dark. We think the dawn is imminent.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:09, 07 August 2025

As the relatively narrow base of what GenAI actually does creaks ever more alarmingly under the weight of expectations loaded upon it, in the manner of an upside-down iceberg floating on its tip, there are more reasons to be optimistic about the future of original content and the publishers that still produce the vast bulk of it than has been the case in a while.

Interestingly, nothing has yet actually materially changed to cause this optimism, other than observing a technological timeline running at a pace that outstrips the reality of adoption, and, indeed, the willingness and sense to adopt. As we've pointed out previously, you can tell it's a gold rush when really the only business making actual money from it is the one selling shovels, that being Nvidia and their magical GPUs.

So as we see the very businesses that are involved in promoting GenAI, such as Meta and Alphabet, restrict the use of such content on their own platforms even as they are involved in an insane bidding war for the world's best computational brains to further the use of the same, anyone possessing even a wonky commercial compass must see the direction of travel doesn't quite add up. Particularly when the product so frequently fails to meet the standards of Production.

What has happened over the past couple of years leaves the publishing industry rather in the situation of the monks of Lindisfarne Abbey clearing up after a morning visit by some enthusiastic and heavily armed Viking tourists. 

Notably, the Abbey outlived the Vikings. 

There's no doubt we have all been pillaged for training data though, and many of us continue to be pillaged. It's more the result of what is being done with all the stolen treasure though that leads me to optimism. To continue the analogy, our content is being melted down and reforged by GenAI into something much much blander. Bland won't win. It must not.

Call me old-fashioned, but as a newsman, I prefer to base my reporting on deterministic rather than probabilistic methodology. Probabilistic doesn't do so well in court. GenAI is probabilistic all the way down. Once that simple realisation filters through to more people, attitudes will change.

Given that the GenAI maelstrom has at least given us some wild and absurd things to report on, it's not all bad. Other than the various legal and political avenues being pursued by original content creators against the data harvesters, the irrational GenAI scramble and its galactic spending war carries the seeds for its own end, without intervention. Given that is the case, what should publishers be thinking about now, in the darkest before dawn period? What does freedom from fear of Big Tech feel like?

A big step in removing such fear is the simple realisation that worrying about discoverability in AI search is largely a waste of energy. The rules of that game are so heavily loaded against publishers, and the reward window so pitifully small that "why bother?" is both the instinctive and logical position. We've even got a phrase for it - "Google Zero" - coined way back in 2024 and suddenly very real. Attempting to co-operate with someone trying to murder your business makes no sense. There is little point in expending resource on it.

Instead, that energy, freed from the uncertainty of trying to make Google like you this month, should be redirected to the core business, that of good content. Do what you do well and do more of it. Direct some zeal towards relationship building with your audience. It works. We are all both sides of the screen, producer and consumer. We know what works. Once loyalty is gained, it is only the work of fools to lose it. There's going to be an ocean of slop out there, if there already isn't, so be a safe harbour of quality content. Given how bad much GenAI content is, quality isn't even that high of a bar.

That also leads to having the most open mind about transactional relationships with your audience. Offers, contests, prizes, merchandise, exclusive access, direct access, whatever works and more. It's a slippery world out there, so that relationship of trust can yield financial benefits to publishers. Do an audit of the direct and indirect relationships you have, and look for them in unexpected places, they can yield benefits to both parties.

What has come to be called churnalism might be in trouble, at least at the lowest and most numerous end of it. GenAI can well cope with turning round a formatted press release or introducing stats to an accepted template. but other content is not reliably to a high standard though, speaking as someone whose journalistic career saw me spin some very rough thread into content gold, or at least gold-plated. Humans are good at stuff they know how to do well. Spend money on them.

Being slow to adopt or adapt is fatal. In some respects, if we are facing the death of search, and that means all previous ways of thinking about visibility are obsolete, then a tremendous freedom is being offered to the industry. We have been playing the second guess game so long with the Big Tech that sometimes it seems we've forgotten how to guess for ourselves. That has to change, and organisational agility in tech and people is vital.

This is harder for some publishers to swallow than others, particularly for those not big enough to be big, but not small enough to be small. We are exiting an abusive relationship, and what happens next is up to us.

It's my personal belief we are on the verge of an age in which the smaller, relatable, controllable and more personal spaces will come to be valued more highly once again. People have a well-developed suspicion of the huge, and watching mega corporations roll across the planet on a suffocating carpet of seemingly endless cash is getting tiring.

You have nothing to lose but your soon-to-be non-existent SEO ranking, so get up and get at them. As Marshal Foch said: "Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I am attacking."