How AI is impacting strategy at The Times & Sunday Times

Alessia Horwich (00:07):

Welcome to On The Rox, the podcast from Roxhill Media that asks some of the best journalists in the UK what their answers are to some of the questions that confront PRs daily. We know there’s not a one size fits all way of communicating with journalists, so we’re going straight to the writers in the newsroom to find out how they like to work with PRs and the best way to stand out in their inboxes. My name is Alessia Horwich. I’m a former Sunday Times journalist now head of brand at Roxhill. Hi everyone. On the pod today, we’ve got Elyse Popplewell, the former director of audience at the Times and Sunday Times. She’s actually just moved home to Australia, but the tips and tricks that she gives us in this episode are still valued and great listening for PRs everywhere. Let’s get stuck into the episode. Elyse, how long have you been working in a newsroom and how has it changed since you begun?

Elyse Poppelwell (00:55):

Yes, I’ve been working in a newsroom for eight years now.

Alessia Horwich (00:58):

Okay

Elyse Poppelwell (00:58):

Most of that was in Australia and then I’ve been at the Times and the Sunday Times for the past two years. I feel very fortunate because my position in a newsroom has been almost always one that didn’t exist five years prior. So I started as a social media editor and then moved around in different audience roles and now I’m the director of audience at the Times and Sunday Times. And these were roles that I didn’t know existed when I first started. So it’s changed a lot, but I feel fortunate to be at the forefront of audience, which really means how do we grow the audience? How do we retain the audience? How do we find them?

Alessia Horwich (01:34):

What’s involved in that job?

Elyse Poppelwell (01:35):

If the nutshell is to find the audience and retain the audience, we’re looking at both what’s happening to bring in new audience members as well as what’s happening to make sure that our existing subscribers are well serviced. So when it’s growing the audience, it’s SEO, search engine optimization, what’s happening on Google, for example. It’s social media and that’s including video as well as the link based platforms like Facebook, for example, Reddit and so on. And then we’ve got our newsletters, which are both bringing in people as well as retaining people and then our community team. And I know we’ll get into that in regards to AI especially, but that’s kind of the whole gambit of it and it’s really data led. We say, this is the data, this is the audience feedback. This is what the audience is saying about this piece.

Alessia Horwich (02:20):

Is that a huge boon though that you’ve got all of this data to back up what you’re saying?

Elyse Poppelwell (02:25):

Yeah, it is. We have to be careful though that we’re in a newsroom perspective that we’re not beating everyone over the head with data because it needs to be data is not a number. Data is your audience. So when we say that 10,000 people read this story, this got 10,000 reads. It’s 10,000 subscribers clicked on this story and they read it and they read it for an average of five minutes. So we really try to personalise the experience of what the data is because journalists are the first people to say, “Oh, I’m not a numbers person.”

Alessia Horwich (02:57):

Has that been sent to you many, many times before?

Elyse Poppelwell (02:58):

Yes.

Alessia Horwich (03:01):

Are you like a bit of a data nerd?

Elyse Poppelwell (03:02):

I think I became one. I wasn’t one originally and it’s actually … I got into journalism because I wanted to be a journalist and it’s now the advice that I give so many people who are starting in their careers is to avoid saying like, “I’m not a numbers person or I don’t do well with that or I was never good at maths.” That’s why I got into journalism because it’s career limiting. I learnt to get better with numbers and with data and particularly now using some of the LLMs, it’s just there’s no analysis that is off limits to you if you know the right question to ask, even in plain English. So it’s always my advice to everyone. Don’t write yourself off on the data front.

Alessia Horwich (03:39):

I think that’s probably applicable for PRs too, right?

Elyse Poppelwell (03:42):

I think so, definitely because the difference between you and the person next to you, if you’re otherwise completely comparable is that you will be able to say, “Here is what I’ve done, here’s the increase, here’s what I’ve learned from this. ” While the person next to you is wondering over success, but I don’t really know why. So I definitely, I was not a numbers person by any stretch and now I would consider myself one and I always tell people on my team that if you have a set of numbers and you want to work out what’s worked rather than just anecdotal like, “Oh, I think that did better than usual,” ask a question of Gemini and say, “Hey, this is what I’ve learned. I want you to challenge me what are the questions I should be asking about this data?” And it will tell you, “You should be asking, what’s the uplift?

(04:28):

What’s this? ” And then you say, “Okay, tell me what’s the uplift.” And it will tell you what it is. So I think that plain English has never been more applicable to data.

Alessia Horwich (04:37):

Okay. So we’re talking about LLMs. It’s a scary thing for lots of people. It’s new. You’re obviously fine with it, but we’re here today to talk on the podcast about what LLMs, how LLMs are changing the strategy at the times and the Sunday times. But for publishers as a whole, what are the challenges that LLMs pose?

Elyse Poppelwell (04:57):

I think this is a really, really seismic change. Of course, I’m not original in thinking that. Some of the challenges for publishers are that it changes our business model or it can change our business model because what readers experience is completely different now. For example, maybe the difference is people were previously typing something into Google, now they’re typing it into ChatGPT. For us as a publisher, the way that those two platforms link back to us is very different. It could also be that people are typing things into Google like they always were, but now they’re getting that AI overview at the top. So if I’m Googling when’s the best time of year to go to Mallorca and it’s bringing up an AI overview, I can see, oh, it’s August, for example. And then previously maybe I would have clicked on the first link that was going to give me the whole gambit of all the information I need about a trip to Mallorca and instead it’s, “Yep, great.

(05:51):

Thank you. That’s all I need.” So we’re not going to get that same traffic as we always were and that’s really seismic. But also as publishers, not just as a business but journalism as a vocation means that we need to make sure that we’re still making a record of history and we want to have influence over the way people engage with information and therefore we need to make sure that when we’re working with LLMs, we’re giving them high quality information. We do want LLMs to cite our work because we want quality input going in so that quality input comes out because that’s what journalism is about, creating impact.

Alessia Horwich (06:29):

It’s quite interesting, this sort of zero click behaviour because it’s bringing PRs and journalists together in a joined goal because the PRs want their clients to appear in these kind of summaries and you guys want your journalism to be appearing in these summaries. So it’s like you’ve got a joint cause now, but it’s a challenge, right? So how are you guys changing your articles and how are you working with LLMs to ensure that you’re getting cited in these summaries?

Elyse Poppelwell (06:55):

Yes. Okay. So there are two things happening. One’s at like that global company level and the others at the newsroom level. So at the global company level, the news core approach is woo or sue. We’ll woo you, let’s work together, let’s be partners. If not, we’ll sue you. So if you’re going to get value from us, we will get value from you. So NewsCorp has a relationship with OpenAI, for example, and is in discussions with Gemini and Anthropic as well. So I just want to share that because every publisher’s experience and relationship with the LLMs is different. That’s where we stand. At a newsroom level, it’s tricky because we want to inform the LLMs because we want that record of history, we want accurate information in the world, we want up to date information, but it’s not as though we seek to be cited in an LLM so to speak, because the click rate from that is not great.

(07:49):

So when previously if we were in the top stories on Google, we would have had a higher click rate now than if we cited an AI overview for the logical reasons, people are getting the information they need and they’re moving on. But also it means for journalists and PRs alike is that if your client is mentioned in a story in the Times and the Sunday Times, that quote may now be used to train models and exist in super snippets everywhere, but that won’t necessarily be attributed to the client or to us as a publisher because Google will bring it out. For example, I’m talking about Google here, but they’ll summarise and it won’t say according to blah from X as published by the Times and Sunday Times, it’ll just give the information. So that’s something we’re both in the same boat where attribution is stripped out.

Alessia Horwich (08:36):

Okay. Which is not great for anybody. I mean, your business model somewhat insulates against this, right? So this paywall, it’s turning

Elyse Poppelwell (08:43):

Yes

Alessia Horwich (08:43):

Out to have been a good decision.

Elyse Poppelwell (08:45):

That’s right. I mean, the Times in the Sunday Times, we’re so fortunate because we have a large paying subscriber base and it’s not as though these people are kind of coming through a revolving door. It’s part of their identity to be a Times and Sunday Times subscriber. It’s an identity claim. They share our values, they share our interest in journalism, they’re part of our community, they’re commenting below the line. These people are very attached to us as a brand. And so thankfully our business model is resistant in many ways to some of the changes in AI. If we were a publisher that relied more on that fleeting traffic, that capturing of attention at just the moment when someone was Googling something and they’ve come across your publication, then we’d be in more trouble.

Alessia Horwich (09:29):

Yeah. Are there particular parts of the newsroom that are even more insulated from this? Tell me about like how it affects maybe news differently to features.

Elyse Poppelwell (09:37):

Looking at Google’s AI overviews, for example, at the moment they do not reference news or breaking news in any way. So Google has said that they’re not going to do that. Of course, that could change. 12 months from now, we might be talking about something different. Naturally as a newspaper, news and breaking news is a big part of our output. So that is resilient to that. The areas that have been impacted the most for us, it would be the travel section. And again, it’s because some of those queries that are kind of at that very surface level of research about a holiday, is it hot in the Bahamas in July, for example, that is being eaten up by an AI overview, but the really good news is the clicks we’re getting now from Google are higher quality. So for us on our travel section, we have commercial objectives.

(10:23):

We’ve got advertisers on the page and we want people to book holidays through us and our affiliates. The people coming through to us now are further in their research journey. So they’ve already seen, yes, it’s hot and mayor at this time or whatever it might be and they’re now looking for expertise. So we do have a higher conversion rate of the people who do make it through, which is a great thing, but we are missing that overhead of that fleeting traffic.

Alessia Horwich (10:46):

That’s really interesting. How are you guys approaching that then? What are you doing about the fact that you’re … I mean, does it mean it doesn’t matter that there are fewer people coming in because it’s the same impact at the end of the journey or are you still thinking like, how can we grab more people?

Elyse Poppelwell (11:00):

Well, it’s like all things in journalism, the different tides are ebbing and flowing at different points and this is why we need to have our fingers on lots of different pies. As an audience team, we need to be really diversified. This is why newsletters are so important for us, for example, because they are resilient to a lot of the things happening on platforms. They’re not algorithmic. So doubling down on newsletters for us is really important and making sure that we have newsletters that serve our subscribers as well as new audiences and that’s something we’re doing differently at the times and Sunday times now is that newsletters have been a subscription perk for a long time. We’re still retaining that benefit. So anyone subscribing for these will still only get them if they’re a subscriber, but we’re making sure that we’ve got other newsletters now that bring in new readers as well and get them to sample the content, come up against the paywall and become part of our community ultimately.

Alessia Horwich (11:52):

What topics are they happening in? Is it across the board?

Elyse Poppelwell (11:55):

Yeah. So our travel newsletter is out of paywall, for example. So some of our sport newsletters as well and our money newsletter is out of paywall. So we’re experimenting to be honest and if six months down the track, we find that some of these aren’t the right newsletters to be out of paywall, we’ll pull it back, but we’re also going to launch new ones that will be specifically for finding these new audiences. But this is the dance we have done as publishers for over a decade with digital media. AI is the latest kind of disruptor, but luckily we’ve learned this lesson many times before about being relying on algorithms, we’re in a good place.

Alessia Horwich (12:34):

Yeah. Do you think this feels more significant to you though? I mean, I’ve been in a newsroom, I’ve seen the arrival of an app and new websites being created and then closed again. This kind of feels momentous.

Elyse Poppelwell (12:46):

It is. It definitely is. There’s no doubt about that. This is the biggest thing that has certainly happened in the past decade, but I think that the lessons we’ve learned from previous adjustments have meant that we’re more resilient, I suppose, to doubling down on that now, but it is seismic. There’s no doubt. And I think also unlike some of the previous changes we’ve seen in Facebook and Google algorithms is that some people are still really ethically opposed to using AI or our journalism appearing there. So we do have practical elements, ethical elements all convoluting here. And then also how our journalism appears according to AI is one thing, but how people in the newsroom use AI to do their jobs is another. So there are so many tentacles to this.

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Alessia Horwich (14:25):

Are there other ways in which you’re trying to kind of humanise your articles and make them stand out more as definitely human-led?

Elyse Poppelwell (14:31):

As always, wherever we can have human stories in there, we know that for example, headlines on our website that are written in the first person will very often get more clicks than an article that isn’t done without formula.

Alessia Horwich (14:45):

Do you guys know why that is? I mean, that’s been the case for ages, hasn’t it?

Elyse Poppelwell (14:48):

Yeah

Alessia Horwich (14:49):

A long time since I’ve been in the newsroom, but …
Elyse Poppelwell (14:50):
I think it’s just really personable. People can see themselves in it, but also if they can, if it’s some seriously salacious, extraordinary story and someone’s telling it in the first person, that’s access. You want to click on it because someone’s telling you their most inner thoughts, that’s always been relevant. Having great photographs of that person is also really relevant. Again, it’s so much better to look at a person, a real person rather than a stock image. And then another thing that we’ve really doubled down on in the past probably about nine months now is social video. So bringing both our journalists on camera more to talk about the authority of the reporting and how when I met with this person, what they told me was, so we’re reinforcing this is true, we bore witness to history here and building this relationship between audience and the journalist.

(15:42):

But then also we also love to film interviews for social media as well. Again, this is something that separates us from a lot of the AI slop that’s coming through on social feeds. So that humanization is really important, but I think it’s that visual cue as well, which is not something specific to AI, but just the way that our habits have evolved, that people want to see it in a 360 way. They want to hear it, they want to see it, they want to read it.

Alessia Horwich (16:08):

And do you think for PRs, when they’re pitching articles, if they can offer this kind of material, if they can offer access or offer video or offer incredible imagery, is that something that a journalist is going to say, “Well, maybe actually, yeah, this would be great.”

Elyse Poppelwell (16:21):

Yes, absolutely. Because the journalists, particularly those who’ve worked at newspapers, for example, they are under more pressure than ever before from people like me and my team bouncing over to them and saying, “What have we got for social? We love the sound of this story. It would go great on social. Can we film with you? Can we go to location? Can we speak to the person you spoke to? ” So having that access means that someone in the newsroom, a journalist who is under a lot of pressure from teams like me are then able to say, “Yes, thank gosh, because our social team will get off my back.” But it also, just because it’s going to create more impact, now people in the newsroom can really see, okay, so maybe this story has 50,000 page views on it. I’m making that up, but wow, look at this, the teaser we did on social, that has three million people who have viewed it.

(17:09):

It makes perfect sense that it’s really incentivizing reporters. So I do believe reporters are probably more likely to pursue pictures that give that access and that visual access as well because they’re under a lot of pressure to deliver it.

Alessia Horwich (17:23):

Yeah. Do you think that counts across the board or are there particular bits of the paper where it’s more relevant?

Elyse Poppelwell (17:29):

I think it does count across the board. I can’t think of an area where our team is saying, “No, don’t worry about social video for that. ” We want it for all areas, but equally every desk wants social video as well. So desks are coming up to us like the sport desk, the business desk, the money desk. “Hey, we’ve got this idea we want to do something on social. What do you think we can do? “Because they know it’s a boom area for us. We are having so much success with social video.

Alessia Horwich (17:53):

Yeah. Do you guys see the kind of social platforms as operating as a separate entity to potentially the print and then the digital website? Because I know I spoke with Anna Silverman,

Elyse Poppelwell (18:03):

Yes

Alessia Horwich (18:03):

She’s the features director at Style and she was sort of saying,” Style do so much on social that they’re not replicating in other bits of their, well, other platforms that are available to them. Sometimes it’s on a archive content, but then sometimes it’s just stuff they’re doing just on social. Is that the case across the paper?

Elyse Poppelwell (18:22):

Yeah, it is. Sometimes we do things just specifically for social. We try to tie it in for the sake of doing fewer things better. We try to make sure that whatever we’re doing has impact on as many channels as possible, but that has always led to doesn’t make sense for that platform, doesn’t make sense for the audience there, but we’ll publish an article, it’ll be words, it’ll be photos, but there won’t be video. And then on social using that same talent, we’ll then have the video with the talent from there. So we try to get more bang for our buck, but we want to do fewer things better because I know that at this point in newsrooms, journalists are being asked to do more with less all the time and we’re just really determined on our audience team, stop trying to boil the ocean. If you’re doing this, just focus on it, do it really well.

(19:10):

We’ll amplify it as far and wide as we can rather than just trying to have everything on the boil at once.

Alessia Horwich (19:16):

Do you think that’s a specific reaction to this advance in AI tech or is it just something that’s kind of happened at the same time?

Elyse Poppelwell (19:22):

I think it’s something that’s happened at the same time and I say that because I know that this mantra in our newsroom, Fewer Better, has been around since 2023, which of course AI was existing then, but the biggest boom really has happened in the past 18 to 24 months. So it’s come at a really good time though because again, that overwhelm feeling of I need to do this for social, I need to also appear on the podcast and then I need to make sure that I’ve pitched it to this person to appear in a newsletter all while still making sure my print editors are happy and then I need to check that it reached enough people in the data. It can be too much. And then when you add AI into the mix, which can be really mystifying for people, I think it’s come at a really good time.

Alessia Horwich (20:01):

Do you think that the desks are producing fewer stories now then?

Elyse Poppelwell (20:04):

Yes they are.

Alessia Horwich (20:04):

Is that a trend that we’ve definitely seen?

Elyse Poppelwell (20:06):

Yeah. Yes, they are producing fewer stories. That’s right.

Alessia Horwich (20:09):

So that means, I guess if you’re a PR and you’re coming to pitch to the Times and Sunday Times, you’ve got to offer a good package instead of just a one line story kind of situation.

Elyse Poppelwell (20:18):

Yeah, the bar is higher. I know this isn’t the only reason we would publish stories previously in print, but we would have small stories in print, sometimes they’re called nibs and it was really because we needed to fill that spot in print and online we choose not to say the internet is infinite, it’s fine. You can publish as much as you want. Instead, we say, no, we have to respect our subscriber’s time. We know there’s only so much of their attention that we can take in the attention economy, make sure everything we put in front of them is absolutely top tier. And we review anything that doesn’t meet that on a daily basis.

Alessia Horwich (20:55):

What aspects at a publisher can AI not replicate do you think and how can PRs capitalise this? I think I sort of said, what about your community that you have.

Elyse Poppelwell (21:05):

Yes. The community is really, really important. So as I said, when you say you’re a subscriber to any particular publication, that’s an identity claim. There aren’t that many people outside of journalists and PRs who are subscribed to like 10 different publishers, right? So for a lot of people it’s, “Yeah, I’m a Time subscriber or I’m a Washington Post subscriber,” whatever that is. Being a part of that community is signalling something. You know a lot of the regular columnists, you know the regular commenters below the line as well, so you’re fellow subscribers and you’re in an enclosed community, particularly when you’re on an app. You know that not everyone has access to this or is accessing this. So the community part of what we do is really important and that is a digital experience as well as an in- person one. So of course we run events for our subscribers and also guests, so non-subscribers as well so that we bring the journalism to life in a physical format as well because particularly since COVID, that has just been extremely important and something that bears out in a lot of the data we get from readers.

Alessia Horwich (22:06):

Yeah. So I guess in a way, if PRs want to capitalise on that, they have to think very carefully about the type of person who is a Times subscriber and then how their client can relate to that subscriber. In what way would an event be more appropriate? Is it good to pitch a piece? Is it …

Elyse Poppelwell (22:19):

Yeah, absolutely. I think because especially with the Times and Sunday Times being a subscription publisher, even more so the view of what is a Times Subscriber is really clear in all of the desk editors and a Times Subscriber will look like a different person in the head of the property editor versus the news editor and that’s fine because there’s not just one Times subscriber, but building the relationships with the right reporters and editors is so key because they have a really clear view and they should be able to share that with you because I know that when they’re commissioning pieces, they’ve got a caricature of who is the reader for this in their mind.

Alessia Horwich (22:54):

If you were a PR, how would you be adjusting your pitching in this new world of AI?

Elyse Poppelwell (22:59):

I really think the number one thing would be to have that as ever it’s access. It’s always been access and exclusivity. Of course we need to compete, we need to stand out. The only other thing I’d add, which is come up parallel to the advent of AI is again, that visual access as well. Can we take photos? What archival photos can you share? Can we film with them? Can we go to location? Can we film ourselves there? All of that is really important and it is parallel to the advent of AI, but it’s so crucial.

Alessia Horwich (23:31):

Yeah. I’m thinking about evergreen content and whether you think that there’s future in it.

Elyse Poppelwell (23:38):

Interesting. So evergreen content to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, I’m thinking about a piece again to go back to travel, but the best hotels in wherever and then we’re updating it so that it regularly appears in search. That’s what we’re talking about with Evergreen. I don’t know, to be honest, I don’t know from a guest visitor perspective. I don’t feel that we’re going to get enough numbers from places like Google in the future because while we’re not seeing Armageddon personally yet, that’s not what’s coming out in our figures, I think that we could be there. So I don’t know how much of a future there is, that’s my view. But I think when it comes to subscribers, we have a job to do to make sure that at the same time every year when we know people are looking for their ski holidays, that we are bringing up our evergreen so to speak.

(24:27):

So the purpose of evergreens previously was capture that fleeting attention. When someone Googles something, you want to be there right when they’re Googling. For us now, I think it’s how do we make sure that we’re just meeting the audience expectation, putting it in front of them before they know they need it and that’s a really big shift. It means we have to be much more intentional. We can’t be more set and forget like we used to be.

Alessia Horwich (24:48):

It’s almost like a reverse to how it worked before because you would be doing pieces. So for skiing, whatever, you would be doing them just before ski season starts because that’s when people are starting to think about it. And it’s quite refreshing in a way to go back to how it was.

Elyse Poppelwell (25:00):

Well, exactly. It is more intentional.

Alessia Horwich (25:02):

Yeah, because these engines, LLMs are prioritising new content, right?

Elyse Poppelwell (25:06):

Very often, yes. Newness is one of the biggest signals for this, but it’s a series of signals, but typically, yes, newness or recency is key.

Alessia Horwich (25:14):

Take us through really quickly what the other signals are just to have them.

Elyse Poppelwell (25:17):

Authority is one of them. So again, showing that you have authority in this era, you’ve reported on it before, expertise is another one again. So making sure that you’ve got credible people cited in the journalism and that’s certainly a place where PRs can support making sure that we have the top talent referenced inside an article and both of those things have editorial implications like describe, but also technical ones. We need to make sure that it’s really easy for Google and LLMs to read our site and say things like, for example, we need to make sure our author pages are linked to up-to-date information on the journalist because that is helping our expertise signal.

Alessia Horwich (25:56):

Yeah. Lucky for PRs that you guys handle that stuff.

Elyse Poppelwell (25:59):

Yeah, it’s all us.

Alessia Horwich (26:01):

It also means, I mean, it seems to me that this really signals that earned media is more important than ever. Do you agree?

Elyse Poppelwell (26:06):

Yeah, I totally agree with that. That’s true.

Alessia Horwich (26:08):

Okay. Elyse, if you’re giving advice to a PR, what would your three essential pieces of advice be about how you pitch and how you need to kind of rethink what you’re doing with regards to AI?

Elyse Poppelwell (26:19):

Okay. First thing would not be a rethink. It’s simply just to continue to maintain and work on your relationships that you have with editors and journalists. A lot of editors and journalists are also rethinking how they commission pieces and write pieces in the advent of AI. Good quality journalism is not changing. That’s still part of it, but that’s certainly a shared value on that front. So continue to build the relationships. The next thing I would say is to work out what is easily answerable in a zero click environment, because that’s probably not going to be something the editor is commissioning. That’s something we look at in our newsrooms. Should we write an article on JD Vance’s approval rating? Then we’ll Google it and see if something’s coming up in an AI overview or not. And if it is, we’re probably not going to try and commission that and compete with that.

(27:07):

So have a Google yourself, is something coming up in an AI overview? And if yes, then maybe that’s not something they’re going to commission, or what is something you can offer that’s different? And the final thing again is that 360 view. What physical access can you give us for filming, for photography, and can we get someone that’s on your client’s side on camera? Maybe we’d want our journalists on camera, but the more accommodating you can be for that really the better.