Ask the News: Reclaiming Trust and Audience Relationships in the Age of AI

At WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress 2026, Joey Marburger, VP of Content Intelligence at Arc XP, challenged publishers to rethink how they engage audiences in an era increasingly shaped by AI assistants, answer engines, and generative search.

As more readers turn to AI-powered tools to ask questions and discover information, publishers face a growing challenge: how do they maintain trust, protect the value of their journalism, and preserve direct relationships with audiences when another layer sits between them?

Marburger argued that the answer isn’t to compete with AI, but to build AI experiences grounded in trusted reporting and designed around reader intent.

Journalism Needs More Than a General-Purpose AI Model

One of the central themes of the session was the disconnect between how large language models work and what journalism requires.

“LLMs are lag tools,” Marburger said. “They’re locked in the past.”

Even as AI models continue to improve, they remain dependent on historical training data. While retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) helps connect models to current information, Marburger argued that publishers need systems built specifically for the realities of news.

“Journalism is the business of the next ten minutes,” he said.

Readers looking for the latest developments on a breaking story need answers grounded in trusted reporting, not responses assembled from a mix of web results and outdated training data.

That philosophy shaped the development of Ask the News, Arc XP’s standalone AI product for publishers. Built on trusted journalism rather than the open web, Ask the News helps news organizations answer audience questions, surface reporting, and understand reader intent while maintaining control over the experience.

Why “No Answer” Can Be the Right Answer

While many AI products are designed to answer every question, Ask the News takes a different approach.

“We pride ourselves on the metric of not having an answer,” Marburger said.

If there isn’t enough reporting to confidently answer a question, the system simply won’t. That philosophy reflects a core journalistic principle: accuracy matters more than completion.

Marburger noted that unanswered questions often become valuable newsroom signals. If readers repeatedly ask questions that coverage cannot answer, publishers gain direct insight into topics their audience expects them to cover.

Questions Reveal What Traditional Metrics Miss

Publishers have traditionally relied on metrics like page views, unique visitors, time on page, and scroll depth to understand audience engagement. But those metrics only explain what happened.

“Page views tell you who walked in,” Marburger said. “Questions tell you why.”

Every question, follow-up, and unanswered query becomes a signal of audience intent. Over time, those signals reveal what readers are curious about, what information they’re struggling to find, and where coverage gaps exist.

“Readers are telling you they expect you to have that coverage,” he said.

Marburger described this as a new editorial feedback loop—one that gives publishers direct insight into audience demand instead of relying solely on historical traffic patterns. In many ways, answer history becomes a modern assignment desk informed directly by reader curiosity.

Rebuilding Journalism’s Feedback Loop

Beyond the technology itself, Marburger focused on a broader challenge: rebuilding the conversation between publishers and their audiences.

“Journalism used to be a two-way thing,” he said. “The paper printed the front page. The town wrote back.”

Today, readers are still asking questions, but they’re often asking them through AI assistants and third-party platforms. When those conversations happen elsewhere, publishers lose both engagement and insight into what their audiences care about.

“Trust is downstream of listening,” Marburger said.

Ask the News brings those conversations back into the publisher’s environment, allowing readers to engage directly with trusted reporting while giving publishers a better understanding of audience needs.

Meeting Readers Where They Are

Marburger also emphasized the importance of reducing friction in the audience experience. Rather than forcing readers to leave an article and search elsewhere for context, Ask the News can surface likely follow-up questions directly within the story experience. The system anticipates what readers may want to know next and provides answers grounded in the reporting already available.

“We want to meet the reader where they are,” Marburger said.

The goal is not simply to answer questions, but to create a more conversational experience that keeps readers engaged with journalism rather than sending them to external platforms for answers.

Built for Journalism

Marburger emphasized that Ask the News was built specifically for publishers, not adapted from customer service software or enterprise search.

“The RAG layer isn’t what differentiates us,” he said. “It’s the security and trust.”

Available as a standalone product, Ask the News operates on a publisher’s own content, infrastructure, and editorial standards. Audience interactions remain first-party, reporting remains the foundation for every answer, and breaking news becomes searchable as soon as it’s published.

The result is an AI experience that helps publishers strengthen audience relationships without handing control to third-party platforms.

Moving Beyond Broadcast

Marburger closed by challenging publishers to move beyond a purely distribution-focused mindset.

“Stop broadcasting. Start asking,” he said.

The message resonated throughout the session: trust is not built through technology alone. It is built when readers feel heard.

As AI reshapes how audiences discover and engage with information, publishers have an opportunity to bring those conversations back to their own platforms, learn directly from reader curiosity, and build stronger relationships around the journalism they produce every day.