Launching the News & Newsletter Market Map

Our third market map covers news and newsletters. We compiled 164 news publishers, email newsletters, creator-led media outlets and publishing tools across the US, Europe, Korea, Japan and China into a single interactive directory. Research is as of October 13, 2026.

Open the News & Newsletter Market Map

What's Inside

• By region: Korea 44 · US 38 · Europe 35 · Japan 24 · China 23 (164 players in total).
• 5 origin types: ① Legacy print, broadcast and wire agencies (53), ② Digital-native outlets (35), ③ Newsletters and solo paid publications (32, including 15 publishing platforms/tools), ④ Portals and aggregators (24), and ⑤ SNS and creator news channels (20). Because legacy papers now run paid newsletters and broadcasters draw millions on YouTube, cross-format activities are tagged as secondary types.
• 7 filter dimensions: Region, origin type (with a toggle to include secondary types), scale tier (S 100M+ to D <100K), metric type (monthly visits · app users · paid/backers · email subscribers · video followers · print circulation), revenue stream (12 tags), ownership structure (publicly listed · family/billionaire · trust/employee/nonprofit · public/state · corporate subsidiary · founder-independent), and focus flags (11 AI-specialist outlets · 15 publishing platforms · closed/defunct).
• Beyond the directory: 6 headline numbers shaping the industry, share of adults paying for online news across 9 countries (Reuters DNR 2026), market size definitions compared side by side, 16 media business models and their trajectory, 14 AI licensing deals and lawsuits (2023–2026), 18 M&A and funding milestones, 24 key leaders, 12 structural trends, and 5 notable players across regions.

What Stood Out While Building It

• Google search referrals are collapsing, while social video and AI chatbots have overtaken publisher websites as primary gateways. In 2025, Google search referrals to news sites fell 34% on average and 60% for smaller publishers (Chartbeat). Traffic declined at 45 of the top 50 US news sites (CNN and Axios −48%), and UK publisher Reach cited Google AI Overviews after its pageviews fell 40%. Meanwhile, in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 (48 markets), social media and video (54%) surpassed publisher websites and apps (51%) as a weekly news source for the first time, while weekly news use via AI chatbots rose to 10% globally and doubled to 14% in Korea.
• Consumer subscriptions are consolidating into multi-product bundles, while newsletter revenue shifts to sponsorships and B2B. The share of readers paying for online news has stalled — 16% in the US (−4pp), 11% in Germany (−2pp), 9% in Japan (−1pp) and 19% in Korea (flat) — concentrating net additions in bundle leaders like The New York Times (13.35M subscribers across News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic). In the newsletter space, growth is led by sponsorship-first and B2B models: bootstrapped TLDR (8M+ readers) grew from $20M in 2025 to a projected $35M in 2026 entirely on sponsorships; Semafor reached its first annual profit ($40M revenue) in year three via sponsored newsletters and global summits; and Morning Brew's B2B verticals overtook its flagship daily newsletter.
• Non-advertising, non-reader revenue has doubled from 13% to 25% of publisher income in four years. Live events, B2B intelligence subscriptions and AI licensing deals are filling the gap left by display advertising. Yet AI licensing money (News Corp ↔ OpenAI $250M+ over 5 years, NYT ↔ Amazon $20M–25M/yr, Meta ↔ News Corp up to $50M/yr) goes overwhelmingly to giant publishers, splitting the industry between licensing agreements and copyright lawsuits (NYT, Yomiuri, Asahi, Nikkei and the Korea Association of Newspapers). In Korea, portal Daum (AXZ, acquired by AI startup Upstage) introduced the country's first KRW 2B/yr "AI citation fee" pool in September 2026.

!News & Newsletter Market Map cover illustration (Textless editorial illustration of Tiki the rooster from our Newsletter desk presenting the five origin types of news and newsletter players)

Notes on Reading the Map

• Because different outlets disclose different headline metrics (monthly web visits, app MAU, paid subscribers, email list size, video followers or print circulation), always check the metric type alongside the scale tier.
• Every figure is marked ✔ when verified against primary filings or official disclosures, △ when based on press reporting or third-party estimates, and ✘ when sources conflict or lack primary backing.
• Both Korean (/ko/maps/news-newsletters/) and English (/en/maps/news-newsletters/) editions are live. If you spot a figure to update or a player to add, let us know via the corrections link in the header.