Yesterday, product professionals from publishers across the country gathered at Current at Chelsea Piers for WordPress VIP and The Rebooting’s Media Product Forum. At the heart of the event was the question of what comes after the article page as we’ve known it. Fragmented tech teams are rapidly trying to spin up forms of content that stand a chance of competing with ChatGPT and vertical video’s endless scroll.
The industry has yet to coalesce around any single solution, but panelists and attendees floated a number of viable paths forward—here are four key insights.
Curtains for the article page
The classic article page—once the atomic unit of publishing—is on its last legs. Bridget Williams, chief product and strategy officer at Hearst Newspapers, said that "anyone looking at scroll metrics or time on page metrics" would have to concede the game is up. It’s a "declining asset," as DotDash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel put it. According to Hearst's metrics, half of readers don't scroll past the first paragraph and a half.
Per our recent report with WordPress VIP—How Media Product Leaders Are Navigating The More With Less Era—audience engagement is the top product and technology priority for media organizations by a wide margin in 2025. Audiences acclimated to the ease and personalization of ChatGPT aren't going to be inclined to search through article after article for the information they want. The question, then, is what comes next.
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