"Journalism and Big Tech have long been frenemies. For 15 years, Facebook and its peers have wielded immense market power behind polite smiles and self-serving terms. But the wheel of progress turns, and generative AI has recently disrupted news publishers and tech platforms alike. The AI bubble may soon pop, but conversational interfaces powered by large language models (LLMs) are here to stay, and with them, an opportunity for publishers to break free from the grip of the tech titans."
"The key is the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source project from Anthropic that allows generative AI tools to interact with more traditional software systems via any standard application programming interface (API). Barely a year old, MCP has seen rapid market adoption and the support of major platforms from Azure to WhatsApp. The magic is that an MCP server is a dictionary, translating GenAI requests into actions that the API of an external service can provide. In effect, it makes LLMs infinitely extensible via seamless integration with any digital tool available on the internet."
Referrals from social media and organic search have sharply declined by late 2025 while generative AI increasingly handles factual queries. Conversational LLM interfaces will persist and change how people access news, creating an opening for local publishers to supply hyperlocal facts that Silicon Valley overlooks. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic enables LLMs to call external APIs by translating requests into actionable API commands. MCP adoption has spread rapidly among platforms and developers, allowing commands that automate software tasks. For news consumers, MCP can surface timely updates from local sources and answer neighborhood-specific questions, embedding community knowledge into AI-driven interfaces.
Read at Nieman Lab
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