How Newspack helps independent news publishers strengthen audience relationships in the AI era

Newspack is a Workshop and Vending Sponsor of the 2026 Independent News Sustainability Summit. LION is featuring some Summit sponsors in Q&As to help members learn more about their work. Find out how to become a Summit sponsor.

Hayley Milloy, LION Publishers: Last year, LION connected with you to learn more about how Newspack helps local independent publishers (including many LIONs) increase their revenue through tailored tech solutions. Building on that Q&A, have you expanded your core services or partnerships since 2025?

Kinsey Wilson, Newspack: Helping publishers drive revenue to ensure they fulfill their mission remains our overarching focus. We’ve continued to build out the Revenue Development Program, which combines hands-on expert coaching with peer support and is available at no cost to every Newspack publisher. In its two years, the program has returned more than $16 million in direct incremental value to more than 160 publishers.

As AI becomes more prevalent, we’re also helping publishers identify what’s changing — and what’s not. 

As the business blogger Ben Thompson has observed, “The answer for publishers in the age of AI is no different than it was in the age of Aggregators: build a direct connection with readers.” That remains a constant. 

But with AI, so much is changing — from news consumption habits, to consumers’ relationship with trusted news brands, to news gathering itself. It’s pretty overwhelming.

So we’ve spent the past year developing tools and services that simultaneously deepen a news organization’s relationship with its most engaged readers, and give them a sense of confidence and control over AI.

Hayley: Can you give us a sense of what that looks like so far?

Kinsey: It’s meant rolling out features that make it even easier for publishers to identify, engage, and monetize their most loyal readers, such as a redesigned “My Account” portal that streamlines how a publisher manages their newsletter and subscription preferences, and new content-gating features that move readers down the funnel to registration, newsletter signup, and subscription.

On the AI front, we’re developing features that will help publishers accomplish three things:

• And choose from a growing array of tools that have been beta-tested with other publishers and proven their value.
• Measure and manage traffic from AI agents, which is largely invisible at the moment.
• Apply AI to trusted sources of information without fear of unintended consequences.

Hayley: What’s a major pain point Newspack solves for publishers? How does that change (if at all) based on the size of the news organization?

Kinsey: Managing information that’s scattered across many platforms. Newspack solves that by bringing together everything a newsroom needs to publish great content, build relationships with readers and advertisers, and analyze site performance. Most small Newspack sites don’t have on-staff tech support, so they rely on us for continuous product development and support.

For larger publishers who want greater flexibility and may have small developer teams, Newspack solves the vast majority of their needs at significantly reduced cost, and gives them the option of integrating with other services and deploying their own code.

Hayley: What’s the thing that surprises (or excites) your customers most after they join Newspack?

Kinsey: It just works.

That may sound glib, but news organizations typically have fallen into one of two camps when it comes to tech: either it’s hard to put together and they are overly dependent on a single tech resource, or it’s costly because they end up with custom solutions that have to be maintained over time.

Newspack was developed by longtime digital journalists, who identified what every news organization needs — and spread that cost across hundreds of publishers — while still providing the flexibility to accommodate different business models and levels of innovation.

Here’s how Ra-Jah Kelly, head of technology and grants at The Washington Informer, put it in a recent email:

“I want to thank you and the Newspack team for the support, training, and guidance you’ve provided The Washington Informer over the years. Working on the recent case study reminded me how influential Newspack has been in our digital growth, audience strategy, and reader revenue development. We’re proud to be one of your success stories, and grateful for the partnership . . . We value the platform tremendously.”

Hayley: What advice would you give a publisher who’s considering a more robust tech stack?

Kinsey: In a world where news and information consumption is in flux, the first question is whether your tech solutions lock you into one way of doing business, or let you easily adapt to market changes.

As an open-source platform, we’re positioning Newspack as a central hub where you can manage your content, no matter where it flows, and where you can manage your relationship with readers, no matter how they reach you. In some cases we supply the tools; in others we make sure they can easily “talk to one another” — with the goal of creating the best experience. With no lock-in.

Hayley: Is there anything new on the horizon you’d like to preview for us? Or a recent success story you’re particularly proud of?

Kinsey: We’re rolling out two things I’m very excited about, both of which give publishers the insight they need to manage their businesses in uncertain times.

The first is a beta test we’re conducting with about a dozen publishers of a tool that gives visibility into the AI bots scraping their sites. Today, about half the traffic to Newspack sites comes from agentic sources. And yet it’s largely invisible to our publishers because AI agents ignore the JavaScript that analytics tools like GA4 and Parse.ly use to record traffic. Because Newspack sites are hosted on Automattic’s cloud service, we’re able to provide log files to companies that specialize in AI analytics. One of those, a startup called Axioma, has developed an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you who’s hitting your site, for what purpose, and whether you’re seeing any benefit.

And secondly, we’re launching Newspack Insights at the end of July. This powerful tool uses AI to extract 10 different tabs of audience, conversion, revenue, advertising, and app data, all conveniently displayed within the Newspack dashboard.

Hayley: How can publishers get in touch with you to learn more?

Kinsey: Visit us at newspack.com or reach out to us directly at newspack.com/request-a-demo.