Media Briefing: Publishers’ new power player: the AI negotiator

In the age of AI, publishers are hiring for survival

In publishing, existential threats tend to create job titles. 

When Facebook was the future, “platform wranglers” emerged to make sense of the news feed. Programmatic ushered in the era of yield specialists and data analysts. The subscription gold rush brought paywall architects and retention gurus. 

Now, it’s AI’s turn.

As tech firms scrape with one hand and wave licensing checks with the other, publishers are drafting a new role: the AI negotiator. Part diplomat, part dealmaker, this person sits at the awkward intersection of legal risk, platform power and the value of content.

“Having someone who can have domain expertise and understand this space is super helpful,” said an exec at a large news publisher, who exchanged anonymity for candor. 

It’s difficult to find the right person to oversee a project that touches product, editorial, ad sales and legal — but having the right exec be the go-to person to grow a publishers’ business in 2025 and beyond is essential, they said.

Put simply, it’s a tough remit — and one that’s pushing publishers to look outside the usual suspects. 

Some are even turning to the very platforms they’ve spent years keeping at arm’s length. The last three months tell the story: 

In May, Gannett brought in an Amazon alum as its vp of enterprise and distributed partnerships. Two months later, The New York Times hired its vp of strategic partnership from Google. Around the same time, BBC News tapped a former Meta exec to be its director of AI, innovation and growth. 

Others are going a different route: building the role from within. 

At The Washington Post, Emily Echave was promoted in April to head of global platform partnerships, a role that includes managing the paper’s relationship with Amazon and its Alexa+ integration. Similarly Forbes promoted svp of global sales Kyle Vinansky last month to chief business officer, overseeing a newly formed “AI & Strategic Platforms Group.”

And that’s just the start. According to Matt Prohaska, CEO of Prohaska Consulting, publisher demand for roles focused on AI and platform partnerships has picked up in recent months. He’s currently helping place a CRO whose remit will include landing the company’s first AI licensing deal.

“It’s very encouraging to start to see the shift of talent, moving back from five tech companies [to publishers],” Prohaska said. “More publishers are rallying to the cause and recognizing they can be back on offense, not just for a quick money grab… but actually creating real, sustainable audience, development and regrowth.”

However they arrive, whatever their title, these execs are all grappling with the same reality: protect the business from giving away too much, too early, for too little in return. With so many AI platforms trying to strike deals, that stance is table stakes for many publishers. They need someone at the table who can parse the fine print, push back when needed and recognize when walking away is the better move. 

Because a lopsided deal doesn’t just hit the quarter’s numbers — it can quietly shift leverage for years to come. And the stakes are constantly moving. Not long ago, these partnerships were primarily about traffic. Today, they’re more about training data. The terms — and the risks — are in flux. 

“If you look at the 10 year horizon — from 2015 when Google and Facebook and their partnerships teams to now — there’s been waves of what those teams looked like. We’re in a new one with AI,” said the news publisher. “There is no more traffic. Anyone who thinks there’s more traffic, they’re delusional about it. The mission writ large — of, how do we structure relationships with these companies in the context of litigation and zero-click [search] and the shift away from text-based communications — that’s all happening at the same time.”

That’s the other thing about these roles: success isn’t just about landing better terms. It’s about redefining what the terms should be in the first place. 

“All AI companies must learn to pay for the publisher content they train their models on,” said the head of digital at a publisher in Europe, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to Digiday. “It’s not just something that is available for general use. We publish content for users to engage with it on our platforms and services, we don’t produce raw material for other  companies to build products and services — and it is publishers that have the right to decide whom we grant the right to use our content and for what price.”

In many ways, the rise of the AI negotiator is a reflection of that stance. It’s a sign that publishers, even if outgunned, are no longer content to play defense.

Not that there’s much of a choice. AI is reshaping the industry at a speed few are prepared for. From how publishers are structured to how they monetize, it’s forcing hard questions about what these businesses are actually built to do. Which is why the emergence of these AI negotiators — in all their various guises — isn’t just a strategic move. It’s a response to an identity crisis in real time. 

“Publishers need this role because increasingly — as these LLMs or [AI] agents are being designed and developed – you want to be able to…have an understanding of the role that a particular platform can play,” said Samrat Sharma, PwC US & global marketing transformation leader. “Some have recognized the role of this ecosystem orchestration and partnerships, and have identified that as a critical enabler, which they currently do not have.”

What we’ve heard

“When you’re negotiating [a contract with a platform], it’s very difficult to build [a relationship]. Once you sign it, then you can start to… enter this next phase where it’s like OK, great, we got the like deal done. How do we work together? You have to sign the deal first, kind of like a prenup. You’re still getting married.”

– A head of partnerships at a publisher on working with AI and tech platforms.

Mediavine joins the growing — albeit ‘long shot’ — movement to regulate AI and protect publisher content

In the latest round of publishers versus AI, Mediavine is stepping into the ring.

On August 6, the ad management platform sent a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office urging it to create protections against AI systems scraping content for training, in another example of media companies turning to regulators for help amid the threat of AI on traffic-based ad revenue.

Mediavine has a network of over 17,000 content creators and bloggers, and has seen a 25% drop in search traffic since the debut of Google’s AI Overviews, according to its CEO and co-founder Eric Hochberger. 

Admittedly, influencing AI policy is a long shot. But the goal, for now, is to get the White House’s attention, he added.

Not least because these efforts are going up against tech companies’ own lobbying efforts to make publicly available content fair use, according to Aaron Rubin, partner in the strategic transactions & licensing group at law firm Gunderson Dettmer. But the White House’s recent AI action plan suggests a hands-off approach to regulating AI. 

The bind for publishers is familiar: they’re caught between shrinking traffic and growing platform power — with few obvious levers to pull. 

“If [publishers are] not making money, we’re not making money,” he said.

Speaking of money lost, Mediavine was among the ad tech firms IAB Tech Lab’s workshop last month, where publishers and tech companies debated what — if anything — can be done.

“Mediavine is doing a multi-prong approach when it comes to advocating for our publishers,” Hochberger said. 

One of those prongs: a petition launched earlier this week (August 6) urging others in the industry to beat the drum with them. Hochberger is hoping all of Mediavine’s creators will sign it.

Media execs like Hochberger know these individual efforts may look light-touch on their own. But as part of a broader wave — alongside copyright lawsuits from The New York Times, Ziff Davies and others — they could help move the needle. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson made that exact point on the company’s earnings call on Tuesday (August 5), noting the cumulative pressure is what may ultimately drive change.

“Is it fair that creators are having their works purloined?” he said. “We will fight to protect the intellectual property of our authors and journalists, and continue to woo and to sue companies that violate the most basic property rights.”

Danielle Coffey, CEO of publisher trade body News/Media Alliance, has also tried to put pressure on Congress to regulate AI on a federal level. But it’s unclear how effective these efforts will be.

“Content owners are seeking either legislative solutions or court victories against AI providers whom they assume are scraping their content,” said Gary Kibel, partner at law firm Davis+ Gilbert, which advises media and advertising clients. “Neither have been achieved in any material way so far.”

Numbers to know

18.7%: The New York Times’ year over year digital advertising revenue growth in Q2, to $94.4 million.

$20 million: The amount Amazon is paying The New York Times a year in its AI licensing deal.

$100 million: The amount Gannett is planning on saving from its cost cutting measures. 

100: The number of jobs being cut at podcast network Wondery by its parent company Amazon.

What we’ve covered

Inside IAB Tech Lab’s meeting with publishers to confront the AI era

• IAB Tech Lab gathered together publishers and tech companies to get on the same page for how to deal with generative AI. 
• Digiday senior media reporter Sara Guaglione and executive editor of news Seb Joseph joined the Digiday Podcast to share what was said and what may come of the confab.

Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.

WTF is Model Context Protocol (MCP) and why should publishers care?

• The agentic web is a vision of the internet where AI agents make decisions and perform tasks on behalf of users.
• In the future, publishers may need to figure out how to make their content accessible to AI agents, and rewrite their websites for an agentic web. That’s where MCP comes in.

Find out more about MCP and what it means for publishers here.

Creators are ‘doubling’ their rates

• As brands move faster and spend more on creator marketing, creators are gaining both the confidence and the opportunity to raise their rates significantly — sometimes by 100 percent.
• Brands seem largely unconcerned about the increases as they ramp up their influencer marketing spend.

Read more here.

Dotdash Meredith’s rebrand to People Inc. formalizes a post-search media strategy

• The rebrand reorients the company around its flagship publication, and is the start of a more concerted effort to grow the publisher’s core titles, said CEO Neil Vogel.
• Those 19 titles will get the investment, the protection, the long-term bets. The other 21 are no longer in the growth plan. 

Read the Q&A with Vogel here.

Podcasts become a strategic IP play for Hollywood talent

• There’s a growing wave of film or TV actors taking on a more direct role in the production and ownership of scripted, narrative podcasts.
• These podcasts are a strategic move toward owning valuable IP for these actors, something traditionally out of reach in the film and TV industries.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

Gannett signs an AI content licensing agreement with Perplexity

The company announced its joining Perplexity’s publisher program and licensing content from USA Today and its network of over 200 local publications to the AI-powered search engine.

New York Post is expanding to California

The New York Post is launching a California edition of its tabloid early next year in both print and digital, The Post reported. It’ll be based in Los Angeles.

CPB shutting down

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is winding down, after President Trump signed a law pulling almost $1.1 billion in federal funds to broadcasters like NPR and PBS, Axios reported.

Reddit is the most cited domain in AI-generated answers

New data shows Reddit was the most cited domain in AI tools such as ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity, and cited twice as often as Wikipedia, Press Gazette reported.

The Washington Post’s longtime fact checker on why he’s leaving

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler explains in this Substack essay that he’s leaving after nearly three decades at the news org due to the lack of a clear strategy from leadership amid declining readership.