Newspack

Introducing new AI-powered tools to Newspack! Many of you are excited about what AI can do to improve your workflows. Several of you are more skeptical about using AI. And some of you have union agreements that restrict or prohibit the use of AI-generated content. That’s why we’re introducing Experimental tools, a new section in your Newspack settings where you can opt in to features we’re actively developing. 𝐖𝐞'𝐫𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮:  ✍ Pull article summaries into newsletters 📈 Optimize headlines for different contexts like search and social 💡 Identify key takeaways from articles 💬 Find strong pullquotes 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞:  🟢 Everything is off by default 🟢 Only site administrators can enable these tools 🟢 Every tool is opt-in and opt-out ✨ Read this article to learn how to get started using these tools 👉 https://lnkd.in/gdN-R6TM

This month, we'll be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for two back-to-back events: ✨ Institute for Nonprofit News' INN Days, June 16-18 ✨ American Press Institute's Local News Summit: Measuring Impact for Civic Discourse, June 23-24. We hope to see you there!

👏 Congratulations to our community member, The Florida Trib, for winning a Vision Award from the Next Challenge for Media and Journalism Awards! 🏆

🪩 🎉 We're thrilled to welcome the following publishers who joined our community in May! North Fork Sun | One year ago, the North Fork Sun launched with a simple but ambitious goal: to build a reliable, truly independent source of local journalism for Long Island, New York's North Fork — one that moves quickly, reports deeply, and treats this community with the seriousness it deserves. 👉 https://northforksun.com/ MyRye.com was founded in 2006 to celebrate the place it calls home–Rye, New York. Their daily updates can be on the annual Little League parade or the Halloween window painting on Purchase Street, news from their schools, city council, or local businesses, activity from police and fire, achievements of local residents, updates on the real estate market, and events from Rye’s myriad of community groups. 👉 https://myrye.com/

WordPress 7.0 is here! 🎉 This release introduces features that create a more cohesive editing experience and can boost reader engagement. You can now create slideshows from Galleries, build responsive grids, and use third-party videos as backgrounds. And, don’t miss the enhancements to specific blocks that will help prevent you from publishing malformed links, select icons from a library of SVG files, and edit images directly from blocks. Check out the release notes 👉 https://lnkd.in/gJwhdAs8

We’re in an era where building direct relationships with your readers matters more than ever. When publishers can no longer rely on search and social for traffic, mobile apps have proven to be an effective tool for strengthening relationships with readers. Lookout Local is already seeing the positive impact on engagement after working with our partner, Pugpig, to build apps for Lookout Santa Cruz and Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Both apps are 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 5,000 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐬 in each market without significant marketing required to promote the apps. And each app has driven 3.6𝐱 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 for each market. Our partnership with Pugpig means that any story published to the web automatically publishes to the app with no additional steps and no extra overhead. Read the case study for more details 👉 https://lnkd.in/dn4vzf-V

If you’re headed to the Hacks/Hackers AI x Journalism Summit this week, 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐲 14, 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 10:45𝐚𝐦 - 12𝐩𝐦 𝐄𝐓. Our Senior Technical Account Manager, Joe Boydston, and our Head of Customer Experience, Tracy Becker, will host “𝐀𝐈 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤.” As generative AI systems ingest publisher content at scale, newsrooms face a new, largely invisible layer of traffic: AI bots. Based on aggregated traffic analysis across a diverse set of Newspack publishers, they’ll share concrete findings about AI crawler volume, behavior patterns, content targeting, and downstream effects on search and referral traffic. They’ll pair data insights with actionable takeaways, including how publishers can use tools like Cloudflare, Scrunch, and TollBit to monitor, manage, and respond to AI bot activity. The goal: help news organizations move from uncertainty to informed strategy. We hope you'll join us for what should be a fruitful conversation! See the full program here. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ehfbEbWC

🥂 Congratulations to the team at The Connecticut News Project; The Connecticut Mirror for taking home a Pulitzer Prize in the Local Reporting Category! 🍾 They conducted an investigation in partnership with ProPublica that revealed how Connecticut’s outdated towing laws favored truck companies over vehicle owners and how the DMV’s lack of oversight allowed for abuses in the system. Their work led to the Connecticut legislature passing a bill to reform the outdated towing laws, thereby protecting consumers. View the winning work. 👉 https://lnkd.in/e3K5QBHq

Headed to any of the following events in May? Come say hi! 👋 🇩🇪 Media Forward Fund - May 6-7, Düsseldorf, Germany 🇺🇸 Hacks/Hackers 2026 AI x Journalism Summit - May 13-14, Baltimore, Maryland 🇺🇸 Center for Cooperative Media's Collaborative Journalism Summit - May 14-15, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 🇺🇸 WordPress VIP's Media Product Forum, May 20, NYC 🗽

Please give a warm welcome to the following publishers who joined us in April! ✨ Martha's Vineyard Times | Based out of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, The Martha's Vineyard Times is dedicated to covering Vineyard life broadly and deeply, from municipal accountability to arts and community events. 👉 https://www.mvtimes.com/ ✨ The Lab Report Dallas | The Lab Report invests in insightful enterprise journalism that provides readers a deeper understanding of critical issues facing Dallas and other American cities. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gtqnMrxG ✨ Compliance Week | Compliance Week, published by Verdian Insights, is a business intelligence service on corporate governance, risk, and compliance that features daily news and analysis, proprietary databases, industry events, and interactive features and forums. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ebNrb2YN