AI will Kill Online Media
If declining trends continue, then online media may go the way of the telegraph. I believe I will see it in my lifetime, and I would not be surprised to see this catastrophic shift occur in the next five to ten years.
Why? Well, AI.
Most of us have already seen AI overviews in action, even if they did not know the name. When you type a question into Google, the colored box at the top now often shows an AI-generated summary that tries to answer directly. Gmail has also begun inserting similar AI summaries in promotional and travel tabs. These are AI overviews: short machine-written responses that appear above links, designed to satisfy the query immediately.
I personally never gave them much thought until recently. However, one of the reasons for being so bullish on AI has been my belief that people will demand that their local government provide information, with personalized context and customization at the same speed and consistency as AI. We saw it before with social media, and I have a strong suspicion AI will have a similar, consumer-initiated (or in local government terminology: resident-initiated) response.
Why is it a big deal?
In July 2025, DMG Media—publisher of MailOnline, Metro, and other UK outlets—wrote to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (the equivalent of the U.S. FTC). Their message was simple: AI overviews are cutting into referral traffic and shrinking ad revenue. It's a concern that's now being echoed loudly across the industry, as journalists and media analysts warn that this shift threatens the basic economics of news.
AI overviews are less than 2 years old (they were launched in May 2024). Digital Content Next (DCN) found that top-result click-through rates (CTR) dropped by about 34.5% from March 2024 to March 2025. The Daily Mail reported an 89% traffic collapse on some properties when AI summaries appeared. A JumpFly SEO analysis confirmed that when AI summaries appear, user clicks fall from 15% to 8%. 70% of users don't read beyond the AI Overview. Meaning, they aren't even clicking on the underlying sources.
The effect is behavioral: when an AI overview provides what looks like a full answer, many users treat it as the endpoint. Curiosity is satisfied at the summary level, which compresses demand for the depth, nuance, and conflicting perspectives that a full article would normally supply. In other words, the interface itself subtly trains people to stop earlier and accept the surface explanation, rather than clicking through to explore context or alternative views.
I have always believed that if you pay attention, people will show you the truth. Publications are already signaling what AI overviews mean for the future of journalism, and the story is not encouraging.
Take DMG Media, for example. As early as June 2023, they warned that AI could dismantle the economic foundation of their industry. David Higgerson, Chief Digital Publisher at Reach, put it bluntly: full AI mode would be "completely devastating for the industry." Jill Brown, Director of SEO at JumpFly, added that the collision between AI and search isn't a distant possibility but an imminent reality. Whether it happens in one year or three, she argued, those who fail to prepare will be left behind.
The numbers back up those concerns. When users are presented with an AI overview, the click-through rate drops sharply—from 15% down to just 8%. That gap translates to real losses: one analysis called it a "strategic collapse," noting organic traffic is already down 15–25%. Put differently, the audience is no longer making it past the summary box to the underlying article, leaving the journalism behind it unseen and unfunded.
What's Really Going On?
At the core of these shifts is Google's strategy to become the final destination, not just the gateway. For years, search dominance meant controlling the entry point to the web. But AI has changed the equation. A gateway is no longer valuable if users immediately leave to find answers elsewhere. To protect its position, Google now aims to keep people inside its ecosystem: ask the question, receive an AI-generated answer, and perhaps click deeper into a Google-hosted page, but never leave the platform entirely.
We see the same logic in social media. LinkedIn, for example, rewards posts that keep users on its platform and quietly penalizes external links. The objective is clear: capture attention and minimize exits. It is likely that more platforms will follow YouTube's lead by deploying their own AI-generated summaries, ensuring users get what they need without ever leaving the platform.
Implications for Local Information Ecosystems
The implications for local government are not straightforward. Whether AI overviews prove to be good, bad, or neutral will depend heavily on context. For some municipalities, faster information delivery could ease communication with residents. For others, the loss of media intermediaries may reduce accountability or distort how decisions are understood.
It is also important to recognize that declining web traffic is not solely the fault of AI. Much of it reflects consumer preferences. People are often tired of wading through a long personal story, pop-up ads, and autoplay videos just to find a simple chicken noodle soup recipe. In that sense, AI overviews are meeting a demand for immediacy and clarity that news sites themselves neglected.
For local governments, this means the information environment will keep evolving. Residents will gravitate toward sources that feel efficient and trustworthy, whether those are AI summaries, official city pages, or streamlined newsletters. The challenge is not just to respond to AI, but to meet people where they already are.
In my next newsletter, I'm going to discuss what it means for a local government to produce information-driven content in an AI search world.