The closing session of the 2025 Senior Leadership Conference focused on how news publishers are adapting to the changing landscape of search traffic and AI’s impact on content discovery. Alan Fisco, president and chief financial officer of The Seattle Times, facilitated a panel discussion with Jay Horton, president of digital media with WEHCO Media; Mike Martoccia, vice president of digital sales and marketing with Adams MultiMedia; and Justin Mitchell, managing editor/digital with The Times-Picayune | The Advocate (Georges Media Group). Their focus was on strategies to address declining referral traffic from search engines.
Fisco described the newspaper industry as being at a crossroads, saying no one really has the answers for how this will all play out. He said it’s an important issue from a financial perspective, from a readership perspective, from a mission perspective and one that the industry needs to stay on top of, collectively.
“If there’s one takeaway that I have, it’s not just changing how people search; it's changing what it means to be found,” he said. “We need to do everything that we possibly can to make sure that they not only find our content, but — more importantly — they value that content.”
He said AI systems like ChatGPT and Google are transforming search behavior, creating an “answer machine era” where users get information directly without visiting publisher websites. He compared traditional search to visiting a library for book titles, while AI search is like consulting a super-smart librarian who has read every book in the library and can provide immediate answers tailored to the user’s context.
The panelists shared varying experiences with search traffic changes and they discussed how they’re adapting to these changes. Mitchell explained that Georges Media Group has shifted focus to homepage traffic, newsletters and push alerts. He said they hold a morning digital call with all the editors in the company where they discuss Google trends. In larger markets like New Orleans, the focus is on what people have been searching for during the last four hours; in smaller markets, the focus is on the previous day. The editors look at things that are hyperlocal and think about different angles or layers that their staffs should look at. The emphasis is on local experiences that AI cannot replicate.
Horton highlighted technical improvements, including making pages load 30% faster to improve SEO performance. He also said newspapers need to focus on re-educating their readers about the importance of journalism — after taking them down the wrong path in the early days of the internet where everything was offered online for free. He said newspapers need to continue to help consumers realize that “if they want quality, trusted journalism, they’re going to have to pay.”
Martoccia emphasized the importance of involving all departments (newsroom, audience development and advertising) in developing new strategies. He noted that consumers now seek “answers and conversations, not clicks and links,” requiring a fundamental shift in approach.
The panelists agreed that newsletters have become increasingly important as owned channels. Martoccia described how Adams MultiMedia has redesigned its newsletter structure across 125 brands in 20 states, resulting in 30% to 40% higher engagement. He said Adams MultiMedia recommends at least three newsletters daily in each market: breaking news, morning headlines and at least some other vertical — for example: prep sports, college sports or even obits.
Mitchell shared how Georges Media Group has revamped its sports newsletters to be more concise and focused, improving click-through rates.
Regarding paywalls and subscription strategies, the panel had varying perspectives. Martoccia provocatively suggested that paywalls might not be as important as they once were, indicating his company is rethinking its approach. Horton described using a “four quadrant strategy” to determine what content should be paywalled. Mitchell emphasized that subscriber conversions remain crucial, with aggressive but achievable goals. He shared that during a major news event about LSU’s coach being fired, they published 58 stories in a week with 55 generating at least one subscriber conversion.
Mitchell said newspapers are doing their audience a disservice if they only publish one or two stories about something big happening in any beat across the newsroom. “You really have to look for every possible angle you can get from that story line and beat it like a dead horse.”
