US traffic reports, Rolling Stone vs Google, SEO's ranking confusion, and WordPress war drags on

AI character theft, Google's new shopping buddy, Daily Mail's landmark moment, and canonical URLS 101 - all in this week's Content Aware.

Published: 15:47, 18 September 2025

Corbidge comments on...real journalism
Recently we lost a legend, and after Robert Redford's passing, the movie All the President's Men is back in the spotlight, and for good reason. He portrayed journalism as sharp, stubborn, and essential, which is the kind of journalism we need today. Even though the movie is a blueprint to gritty journalism, it also reminds us that real journalism is slow, expensive, and under threat, but incredibly crucial. If you think news doesn't matter, watch it again.
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US/UK traffic report: the data
Hot on the heels of ONA25 was the latest Mather Audience Benchmark report of more than 500 news and media titles around the world: how have you faired in the last 12 months? The report indicates that election-spurred traffic surges in 2024 have subsided one year on, as engagement for many U.S., Canadian, and U.K. news brands took a year-on-year dive of 20% in August 2025. Big outlets were hit first, while smaller and micro publishers continue to punch above their weight. It seems that when it comes to keeping eyeballs, size isn't everything after all. See the PDF below.
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Cloudflare sounds the alarm 
Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince is shedding some light on a future where AI "answer engines" quietly push out traditional search engines, leaving content creators and their income in the dust. According to him, there are three options, a "dead internet" where bots rule, a "Black Mirror" world where a few AI giants hold the reins, and a brighter future where AI actually pays for the content, keeping the internet's spirit alive. Prince and Cloudflare are already in the ring, fighting for publishers to kick out pesky crawlers unless they cough up cash, a high stakes AI battle to save the web as we know it.
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Google's stone rolling over
Penske Media (Rolling Stone, Variety) is suing Google for allegedly hijacking its content to power AI Overviews, draining traffic and revenue in the process. PCM claims that Google is more or less throwing publishers an ultimatum: either hand over your content for AI, or disappear from search. Tough bargain. Meanwhile, AI startup Perplexity is getting sued too, by none other than Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, for scraping and repackaging their content.
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Alaska public media hits funding iceberg
Alaska's public media is feeling the chill after Congress cut $15 million in federal funding, a move already silencing programs and trimming staff. Now stations and donors are scrambling to patch the gap with $3.5m already raised.
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UK journalists' time to shine
The entry deadline for the British Journalism Awards is right around the corner. The big show is taking place on the 11th of December but the awards entry deadline is on the 25th of September, so make sure your submissions are in!
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New gateways for news traffic
Search is shaking up the game, and not everyone is a fan of it as AI-powered engines are making news links as rare as unicorn sightings. Some publishers are lamenting a drop in Google referral traffic, but the real picture is more like a complex traffic jam reroute than a complete road closure. Meanwhile, platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, and even ChatGPT are crashing the party, stepping in as new gateways for discovery. Today's audiences don't just click, they roam far and wide.
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Mail milestone: 250K+ and climbing 
DailyMail+ just smashed a huge milestone with 250,000 subscribers in only 18 months, which brings their total digital subscribers to a whopping 350,000. Cheers to everyone who made this happen, here is to climbing even higher!
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100 results hide-and-seek
Google is tinkering with the beloved 100-results-per-page option used by many publishers to measure rankings, leading to confusions amongst SEOs and rank trackers. Google seems to be running an A/B test, minus the consistency. Another reminder that when it comes to search, what works today might not work tomorrow.
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Unsung hero, or hidden hazard
Canonical URLs used to be a quiet wallflower of technical SEO, easy to overlook and rarely invited to the spotlight. These humble tags have an important spot in the heart of how search engines decide what content matters and what doesn't. If you get the right, they pass on ranking signals to your preferred pages, but if you get them wrong, chaos can visit. They might not make the final call, but that doesn't mean they don't influence it.
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WordPress war goes on
The very public fallout in WordPressland goes on after a federal judge awarded WPEngine a partial victory in its suit against Automattic, part-rival and part "sort-of-owner" of WordPress. New to the whole fight? Rob Corbidge has a look here.
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AI goes after Hollywood
Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros Discovery are suing Chinese AI firm MiniMax, claiming its shiny tool Hailou AI is less innovative genius and more of a shady IP burglar. The studies are claiming that Hailou allegedly rather casually churns out downloadable videos of the Minions, Wonder Woman, and Darth Vader, all iconic characters that they do not own. MiniMax just said "hard pass" to the U.S. copyright laws and continued doing what it was doing, so the studios went to the court to ask for some help. This isn't a skirmish happening in a vacuum though, it follows a growing number of lawsuits against AI firms for blatantly taking what isn't theirs.
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AI spills the secrets, with a few glitches
Once again, AI Overviews are leaking insights, much to the intrigue of SEO pros. This time, the spotlight falls on how vague queries get fanned into more finer intents and reveal AI's secret playbook. Not all is perfect though, some responses leave answers hanging and sources silent, which begs the question whether AI is just having a day off or if this is something bigger.
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Cash with strings attached
Through its News Showcase program, Google has handed out contracts to thousands of outlets worldwide, throwing cash in exchange for content. But, is there a catch? According to critics, this approach fosters quiet dependence, buries transparency under NDAs, and also may be used as a legal shield to train AIs on that same content.
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The UK-US team up
The UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal has gone full throttle with £31 billion in investments from different tech titans such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and OpenAI. The goal, you might ask? Supercharge AI, quantum, and clean energy while turning the UK into a global innovation hub. It is a partnership which is a bold blueprint for jobs, chips, and a whole lot of cloud power.
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Google's AI shopping protocol
Google's latest play, the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), will let AI agents go shopping without the need for the final human thumbs-up. With clever "intent" and "Card Mandates" acting as some sort of digital watchdogs, the system promises a clear paper train and no fraudsters in sight. There are already over 60 backers, including big names such as Mastercard and Coinbase, who accept everything from traditional payments to crypto. As AI takes the wheel in our wallets, the question remains: will these safeguards keep up, or are we on the brink of an AI shopping spree gone bad?
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From friends to Europe's news frontier
What started as two friends swapping news from Amsterdam to Basel turned into a scrappy pan-European newsletter boasting 70,000 daily subscribers, €2.16 million in European Commission backing, and a crew of 140 eager contributors. Nieman Lab shares more info on a youthful trio which delivers fresh, original stories in multiple languages while swiftly dodging the pitfalls of big money influence.
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