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Last week, both The Verge and Wired announced major newsletter strategies. Wired writes of a “traffic apocalypse”, where “platforms on which outlets like Wired used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time”.1 The Verge describes “Google Zero”: the moment when the dwindling supply of visitors from Google Search completely dries up.2

Traffic to news sites from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has atrophied as those services limit links to external sites to keep users locked in. Google Search’s excerpts and, more recently, AI overviews have satisfied users’ questions before they click on the article that actually provided the information. Some have abandoned Search altogether for ChatGPT or other chatbot LLMs that summarize journalists’ work with varying degrees of accuracy, often without linking or even mentioning the source.