High Value Publishing
Join digital media veteran, Eric Shanfelt, each week as he helps magazine publishers and media companies grow their digital audiences, drive revenue, and improve their technology. We'll cover digital advertising, SEO, AI, social media, email, subscriptions, content distribution, and much more. Whether you publish an enthusiast / hobby magazine, a B2B trade magazine, an association journal, a regional consumer / business publication, or a local newspaper, each session has something that you can immediately apply to your business.
High Value Publishing
What’s New in Publishing for March 2026
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Eric Shanfelt and Jez Walters are back for the March edition of What's New in Publishing, the monthly roundup of the biggest stories in digital media for magazine and news publishers.
In this episode:
Google's alarming new patent—It's been granted, and it could allow Google to replace your publisher pages with AI-generated versions. Should you panic? Eric and Jez break it down.
Meta AI Summaries on Facebook—AI-generated answers are now sitting right below posts. Facebook users never have to even read the post, let alone click through to your site.
SPUR Coalition—A new international AI defense coalition backed by the FT, The Guardian, The Telegraph, BBC, and Sky News wants to protect publishers from AI scraping and unauthorized use of content. Publishers of all sizes can join free for now.
Condé Nast's search traffic collapse, but niche publishers tell a different story—The big names are screaming that AI is killing traffic, but Eric shares real data showing some publishers have more than doubled their search traffic this year. The difference? It depends on what kind of publisher you are.
What actually happens when you block AI bots? One publisher blocked all generative AI crawlers in September. The result? Search traffic actually went up.
Ars Technica fires a reporter over AI-fabricated quotes—A cautionary tale about using AI to surface source material without verifying it. What every editorial team needs to put in place now.
Two brilliant subscription tactics—The Guardian's hard paywall on older archived content drives serious conversions with no SEO impact. The Information locks its AI and search tools behind a paywall. Eric explains why combining these strategies is powerful.
Mumsnet monetizes 6.5 billion words of forum data—How they're using AI to generate advertiser insights from 20 years of community discussions and what publishers without big forums can learn from it.
Email newsletters in 2026—A breakdown of Dan Oshinsky's must-read piece on strategies for email newsletters.
Links
- Google patent story: https://searchengineland.com/google-patent-hints-searchers-will-land-on-ai-generated-pages-and-not-web-pages-470499
- SPUR Coalition: https://www.spurcoalition.org/
- Condé Nast/search traffic: https://ppc.land/conde-nast-ceo-calls-google-ai-a-death-blow-as-search-traffic-collapses/
- Google on skipping AI overviews: https://ppc.land/google-says-letting-publishers-skip-ai-overviews-is-a-huge-engineering-challenge/
- Blocking AI bots: https://nearviewmedia.com/block-ai-bots/
- Ars Technica/AI quotes: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ars-technica-fires-reporter-ai-quotes
- Archived content paywall strategy: https://email.poool.tech/the-guardians-3.1m-end-of-year-campaign
- The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/
- Mumsnet/AI forum insights: https://voices.media/why-parenting-forum-mumsnet-is-the-perfect-publisher-use-case-for-ai/
- Inbox Collective (Dan Oshinsky): https://inboxcollective.com/what-i-learned-about-newsletters-in-2025/
