News Publishers Are Rethinking How AI Firms Should Pay for Their Content

Media giants pivot from free-for-all to pay-up-or-get-out stance as AI scrapers drain content value.

The Compensation Conundrum

News organizations finally woke up to the multi-billion dollar heist happening right under their noses. AI companies have been feasting on decades of journalistic output without cutting checks—training models on content that cost publishers millions to produce.

New payment frameworks emerging demand per-article licensing fees, revenue-sharing models, and flat-out blocking unauthorized scraping. Some publishers already secured deals worth eight figures annually—pocket change for AI firms sitting on venture capital mountains.

The irony? Tech giants now negotiating content deals they would've called 'rent-seeking' a decade ago. Guess disruption feels different when you're the one getting disrupted—and your advertising revenue gets cannibalized by AI-generated summaries.

Wall Street's take? 'Content has value again—who knew?' Besides everyone except VCs betting on free-lunch economics.

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Interestingly, several factors are driving this shift. For one, AI firms are growing fast and using much more web data than before. For reference, OpenAI’s web crawlers, which scan websites to collect information, saw their traffic increase by over 300% from May 2024 to May 2025. As a result, publishers say that this puts more strain on their servers, thereby increasing their costs. This has led organizations like Cloudflare (NET) to propose tools and standards that WOULD let AI firms pay publishers per web crawl or per question answered.

Nevertheless, flat-fee deals still dominate the industry. In fact, OpenAI has signed many licensing agreements, including a major deal with News Corp (NWSA) that is worth over $250 million over five years. But most of these deals don’t depend on usage, and publishers say they’re hesitant to accept complex deals until the market settles. In addition, some who tried calculating how much their content was worth based on Google-referred traffic found that the numbers far exceeded what OpenAI was willing to pay. Therefore, some publishers are now suing AI firms for using content without fair compensation.

Is NWSA Stock a Good Buy?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on NWSA stock based on five Buys, one Hold, and zero Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average NWSA price target of $36.95 per share implies 24% upside potential.