USA TODAY Co.

Major US News Sites Suffer Widespread Traffic Declines

An analysis by the Press Gazette using Similarweb data finds that in July only six of the 50 largest US news websites registered year‑on‑year traffic growth, while 44 lost visits. The New York Times remained the most visited site with 406.3 million visits but was down 12% year‑over‑year; Fox News (222.1M, -11%) and CNN (220.5M, -32%) also saw substantial declines. Among the top 20 only Substack grew (95.9M visits, +27%). Across the full Top 50, Al Jazeera posted the largest gain (+108% to 24M). The data highlight mounting pressures on open‑web publishers and reinforce industry debate about monetization as publishers increasingly look to revenue outside their own websites.

Publishers Shift Away from Google Search Traffic

Publishers are increasingly trying to reduce dependence on Google search traffic by diversifying audience and revenue sources, according to analysis of recent earnings calls. The New York Times is investing heavily in video production; News Corp’s Dow Jones relies primarily on subscriptions; People Inc., USA Today Co. and Ziff Davis are building audiences across social, video and newsletters while growing non-traffic revenue; and BuzzFeed is cutting costs and moving to a flexible contributor model. Publishers face trade-offs — for example, blocking Google crawlers would also remove search referrals — so many are pursuing multi-channel strategies rather than a single replacement for search. The briefing also highlights trends around ads aimed at AI agents, AI-generated summaries, and publisher/industry responses to AI-driven changes in search traffic.

USA Today Partners with Palantir on Reader Data

USA Today's parent company is partnering with Palantir to build a "common intelligence layer" on reader data intended to monetize subscriber relationships more quickly and at higher value. The News Guild and USA Today journalists have expressed shock and demanded the deal end, citing reader data security and conflicts of interest. The newsletter also reports several AI and infrastructure developments: Riot Platforms signed a long-term power deal with Anthropic, Meta and BlackRock struck a $14 billion joint venture to build a 1GW data center, SpaceXAI shipped an early version of Grok Bot, and multiple AI/cloud vendors and publishers reported product launches or financial updates.