The bad news is I just learned I'm editor-in-chief of a second
tier source of news, as far as the PR prose are concerned. The good news is it probably doesn't matter anymore, according to a fascinating analysis of the role LLMs are playing in the news cycle, and
specifically, what sources they are drawing from.
"The PR tier hierarchy no longer reflects how influence works," explains Ronn Torossian, founder of PR firm 5W, which this week released a report "synthesizing" data from nine sources of AI sourcing data -- Similarweb, SEMrush, Profound, Peec AI, SE Ranking, Goodie, Ahrefs,
Evertune, and Passionfruit — revealing that the major LLMs aren't exactly drawing from the kind of prestige editorial sources PR firms deem "tier 1" or below.
Instead, they are drawing
from more non-journalism sources of information like Wikipedia, Reddit and YouTube (see ChatGPT's top 20 sources -- and shares -- above).
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"AI engines don't rank authority — they assemble
answers," Torossian says, noting, "They pull from Wikipedia, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and review platforms, and they ignore most of what the industry has spent 40 years optimizing toward. The
brands that win the next decade will be the ones whose names appear, consistently, in the structured surfaces the models actually retrieve from. That is the entire game now."
Ever the PR man,
Torossian touts the data in 5W's report an "operating manual" for rethinking what sources PR pros should be cultivating in place of their tiers of journalistic ones.
As journalism needed
another nail in its coffin, the 5W report asserts, "Authority is no longer controlled by editors. The brands that win in AI visibility are not the ones with the most prestigious clip book. They
are the ones whose name appears, consistently, in the structured surfaces the models actually pull from."
The report's bottom line is three fundamental consequences of the sourcing shift:
- AI engines favor extractable, structured content over narrative or prestige.
- AI engines prioritize consensus across many sources over a single authoritative one.
- AI engines reward repetition across the web over editorial endorsement.