From the Field: Sulzberger Draws a Line on AI

At the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille on June 1, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger condemned AI companies for the “brazen theft of intellectual property,” and threw the paper's weight behind the expanding SPUR coalition — Standards for Publisher Usage Rights. Two days later, the congress unveiled its Innovation in Media report, whose core argument is blunt: in the AI age, newsrooms survive only by owning their direct relationship with the audience.

Read together, it's not a corporate squabble. It's the structural side of the trust story: whether original, verified reporting can survive being absorbed, uncredited, by models that never send a reader back. Rigor only matters if it isn't strip-mined for free.

Read the WAN-IFRA report.