Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 3 August.

🤳 Venerable US newsbrand Time is getting down with the kids in its bid to recover audience lost during these end days of Google referral traffic.

Charlotte Tobitt spoke to editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs to find out how its big push into the world of social media creators is paying off – both in terms of audience and revenue.

It is a world where publishers are dependent on fickle friends like Google and Meta and their video platforms. But for now, it is where the audience has gone so consumer brands have to follow if they want to remain relevant.

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🔎 In what appears to be a positive sign for publishers, Google has begun adding a “Top Stories” carousel to some news-related searches that throw up an AI-generated summary.

At first glance this should provide more clicks. The catch is that it appears publishers have to allow Google to have full AI access to pillage their websites in order to stand a chance of appearing in this new feature.

And it is bad news for publishers that Google is running AI summaries on news stories at all.

AI gets things wrong, so this is a good way to spread misinformation. And we know that for most people the AI summary, poor as it often is, is good enough to not bother clicking through to sources.

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🥇 Newsguard co-founder Steven Brill is now officially my favourite Press Gazette subscriber.

Interviewed for our latest “What I’ve Learned” feature he said (unprompted, I might add): “I’m sort of an afficionado of press trade publications, and yours is by far the best.

“In fact, it’s sort of stunning to me that you cover media in the United States better than any US publication.”

Thank you Steve!

He also shared valuable insights from his near 50-year-career in news media and banged the drum for Newsguard AI, which provides fact-checked AI answers about the news trained on 12,000 reputable sources.

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