Leaders from the media industry offered sharply different readings of artificial intelligence's impact on journalism during a roundtable at Cannes Lions. Roundtable (NASDAQ: RTB) founder and
Leaders from the media industry offered sharply different readings of artificial intelligence's impact on journalism during a roundtable at Cannes Lions.
Roundtable (NASDAQ: RTB) founder and CEO James Heckman revealed that the industry's central grievance is when AI platforms crawl and compile publishers' work while offering little in return.
"It's about cutting the creators out of economics," he said.
He floated the idea of a collective legal response by major media companies. He pointed to Penske Media, owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety. It became the first major publisher in the United States to sue Google over its AI Overviews, filing a federal antitrust complaint in Washington, D.C.
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The suit claims the feature contributed to a one-third drop in Penske's affiliate revenue by the end of 2024.
Related: Roundtable CEO James Heckman offers a solution for AI's destruction of journalism
Digiday managing editor Sara Jerde pushed back on the framing that AI has "ruined the party," arguing the technology instead pressures publishers to deepen reader relationships.
While acknowledging industry-wide dips in search and social referrals, she said niche focus and newsletters, podcasts, and video have kept Digiday relatively insulated.
"Subscriptions are still gonna win out," she said.
Forbes' Steven Bertoni conceded traffic is down significantly at a publication where digital advertising was the largest revenue source.
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The response was roughly 100 live events per year, off-platform monetization on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok, and a network of paid contributors.
"The brand and convening in real life's really powerful," he said.
Rebecca Hutson, editor-in-chief of three-year-old social-first outlet The News Movement, described a strategy of "smuggling the news in," packaging rigorous reporting in socially native formats.
She said the brand reaches two-thirds of U.K. 18-to-35-year-olds and half of that cohort in the U.S. monthly, with 100 million video views.
Business Insider editor-in-chief Jamie Heller took the most sanguine view of the panel.
"I'm not apocalyptic about it," she said.
She argued that editorial leadership, surfacing stories readers didn't know they wanted, matters more than chasing audience data. She said Business Insider is making a major bet on workplace coverage amid workplace transformation.
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Heckman cited an unverified figure of a 30% hit to referral traffic from AI this year, closing with a call for humans to retain accountability for content.
Related: Stagwell CEO Mark Penn tells James Heckman that AI will make marketing more personal
