Howl Hurting (EXCLUSIVE): Last week, I scooped that the affiliate platform Howl had sold its creator business to the Taboola-owned firm Connexity. After looking further into the matter, it appears Howl had once again fallen behind on its payments, both to creators and publishers, just as it had when I unearthed these issues originally. Connexity has since paid off any outstanding debts to the creators whose business it acquired, part of a broader effort to win over their relationships with brands, but several publishers remain unpaid, according to two sources. Howl, for its part, has no plans to let these issues stop it. According to founder Li Haslett Chen, it now has its sights set on the AI space.
The Daily Mail ‘New Media’ (EXCLUSIVE): The Daily Mail officially launched its New Media division last week, an operation that will create upward of a dozen socially native series featuring in-house talent, according to Bob Marshall, the U.S. head of content at DMG Media. The division aims to mirror the success of its U.K. counterpart, which launched last year and has grown to over 100 staff and produces videos that average around 300,000 views apiece. The launch comes freighted with serious commercial ambitions: While social video currently represents roughly 20% of all direct advertising revenue at the Daily Mail, the company expects that figure to top 33% by 2027. The infrastructure is all there, but analyst Sheel Shah is skeptical about whether its copycat formats will prove to be a success in the long run.
Wired to the App: The Condé Nast publisher Wired launched a mobile app on Tuesday, making it the latest editorial brand to launch such a lifeboat as online traffic continues to sink. I have come to see the launching of a mobile app as a litmus test for how fervently leadership believes in a brand (as well as a reflection of the resources it has on hand to make such an investment). In an era of diminishing traffic, where only editorial titles with sticky, durable audiences will survive, media companies are having to make hard choices about which of their holdings have the highest likelihood of success. Congrats, Wired!
Quote/Unquote
Ryan Merkley is the chief operating officer of NPR. He joined the company in January 2025, just months before the public media organization would face dramatic cuts to the federal funding that helps it and its nationwide network of member organizations operate.
Merkley is also intimately involved with the publisher and its artificial intelligence strategy, which involves finding innovative ways to maximize engagement in the face of declining traffic, as well as negotiating with the AI firms over licensing deals. So far, NPR has not struck any content partnerships with any of the major AI companies, although it remains in active negotiations.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: NPR is one of the most prominent major news publishers to have neither struck a content licensing partnership with nor sued an AI firm, defying the “woo and sue” approach” I have seen used so often. Why is that?
Ryan Merkey: Blocking them is on the table, but it is more complicated for us because we are a distributed network through our member stations, so we would have to block nationwide. We are also a mission-driven organization with a mandate to serve all Americans, so access is really important to us. That being said, the integrity of answer engine results is paramount, and that has not been a top priority for many of these companies.
