Friday 15th September: WaPo discovers an engaged gaming audience with new newsletter

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As AI advances continue to disrupt the way we work, there are many questions from news and media organisations: What will be the impact of AI on audience expectations? How can we maintain trust in our news content in the AI era?

Reuters sheds light on these questions in an exclusive report: Powering Trusted News with AI: Navigating the present and shaping the future.

The report explores the role of AI in news and journalism and offers practical advice on how AI can help streamline your processes.

The fact that a daily games newsletter is one of the top-performing newsletters for the Washington Post is no surprise. Game Break links to WaPo’s suite of games including On The Record and Keyword, as well as crosswords and Sudokus. Since the meteoric rise of Wordle and the NYT’s success with game-only subscriptions, it’s something many publishers have been taking much more seriously.

There are a few interesting nuggets in here, from incorporating player statistics into each issue to the timing of its delivery. But the last part in particular stood out for me about the development of the newsletter, which involves engineering, product, marketing and editorial.

"I don't ever want people to feel they didn't read enough of the news to possibly participate in the quiz," quiz writer Amy Parlapiano explained. "If there’s a news item you missed, the way it's written is supposed to give you some contextual hints. You can still play the quiz if you haven’t read the news start to back or if you’re not a hardcore news junkie."

Research has demonstrated that consumers are not averse to digital advertising provided it is of personal relevance, also that they are wary of “creepy” means of determining that relevance. That provides media companies with registration walls with a huge opportunity: they can square the circle between serving up salient marketing and preserving privacy.

Live blogs are still proving incredibly popular, and not just for breaking news. Sky News is one of a number of publishers who still continues to live blog updates from the Ukraine war. The Guardian has been using Strictly Come Dancing and Bake Off blogs to bring communities of users together to chat in the comments. Sometimes the less sexy tech can be the most effective (cough…we have a forum 😉).

The Beautiful Mind analogy is a little laboured here but the point Benaiah is making is nonetheless very valid. AI doesn’t need the New York Times. There are hundreds of dozens other publishers producing training-quality content. Those other publishers won’t block AI, because they don’t care. “While the NYT took Paul Lynde in the center square to block, AP got millions from OpenAI to let them access 170 years worth of old stories. Who won?”

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