Good morning and welcome to your weekly Future of Media update from Press Gazette on Thursday 8 May, brought to you this week in partnership with The Publisher Summits - a two-day event in London dedicated to newsletters, print, podcasts and apps.

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At three big publishing conferences this week a recurring theme emerged: we need to be preparing for the end of Google search as the main way readers discover publisher websites.

In as much as you can predict anything about the future of news, a consensus is emerging that generative AI will profoundly upend search.

CNN chief Mark Thompson and Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes shared conflicting views on how this seismic shift impacts publishers while speaking at the Sir Harry Summit.

Earlier this week we heard from OpenAI's content chief Tom Rubin, speaking at the World News Media Congress in Krakow, on why the Google "ten blue links" era of web browsing is over.

And the idea that we have reached peak search was also widely discussed at the PPA Festival. Google-baiter-in-chief Ricky Sutton warned that publishers have two years at most to prepare for life after Google.

In my view that means focusing hard on creating distinct content which serves your core audience (rather than harvesting drive-by readers with curiosity-gap headlines on Google Discover and spending too much effort creating generic articles optimised for search).

This is something the Financial Times team have been masters at and it is a philosophy they have taken to their video strategy. We found out why the FT video team is producing longer videos, less often, which are targeted firmly at serving subscribers (but are also made available for free on Youtube).

And finally, I spoke to former Mirror editor Alison Phillips about her new weekly podcast Crime Scene, which she is co-hosting with former Met chief Bernard Hogan-Howe.

I asked her about the current boom in crime podcasts, the future of tabloids and her reflections on her time as editor of (possibly) the shortest-lived national newspaper in UK publishing history. You can also listen to our conversation in our latest podcast.

As an aside, when Hogan-Howe stepped down from the Met in 2017 I reflected that he "had a record for arresting journalists which Kim Jong Un or Turkey’s president Erdogan might have been pleased with". His force unlawfully intercepted the call records of journalists in order to find and punish entirely legal sources. It also memorably served a prevention of harassment notice to a local newspaper journalist because they doorstepped a convicted fraudster suspected of ripping off one of his readers.

But I am a believer in rehabilitation, so welcome to the world of media Bernard!

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On Press Gazette:

Left to right: CNN chief executive Mark Thompson, BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness, The Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes and BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins. Picture: Reuters/Chris J Ratcliffe

‘Search is going off a cliff’: CNN, BBC and Economist chiefs on future of news

“That is, with respect, blindingly obvious.”

Read more

Why the Financial Times has gone long with video

The FT cited internal data that shows those who visit its website and app regularly are 20 times more likely to watch FT films than those who are less engaged.

Read more

Ex-Mirror editor Alison Phillips on true crime, the future of tabloids and positive news

Asked for her views on future revenue models for tabloid journalism, Phillips said: “It’s not neces