Exclusive: TMTG CEO declines to comment on Truth API investigations. Trump Media and Technology Group CEO Kevin McGurn declined to comment on investigations into Truth API when asked onstage at Axios' annual Media Trends Live event in New York City on Tuesday. Why it matters: Democratic lawmakers have called for investigations into TMTG's Truth API product, alleging faster access to President Trump's market-moving posts would constitute insider trading. What he's saying: McGurn said "some of these investigations are ongoing, so I can't really comment on them specifically." * "We do our diligence, obviously, present all the different details of the business back to them when asked and we're just going to continue along with our business," he said. * "Listen, we hear from all sorts of government agencies all the time. We're one of the most scrutinized businesses on the face of the planet," he said. "There's not a day that goes by where we don't have those conversations. Just don't want to get too far ahead of it." Catch up quick: TMTG launched Truth API earlier this year, selling faster access to posts from Truth Social's top 10 trending accounts. * Democrats criticized the move and asked the SEC to investigate whether the product violates federal securities laws. * McGurn defended the product, saying "this is a tried-and-true technology that's out there from all other social media and information platforms." * "We had an API built and we went out to license it, and had a bunch of demand that actually constructed our business model," he said, adding that high-frequency trading platforms had asked about it over the last 18 months. State of play: McGurn declined to offer specific figures, but said the API is "a good cash-positive business for us" that monetizes a "big news and information source already built up." * Asked whether the API would still have value after President Trump leaves office, McGurn said, "I would never bet against the president in terms of his influence, whether he's in office or not." * He expressed confidence that the brand would live on after the Trump administration. * "The conversation on social media is always going to be valuable for a high-frequency trader or any other trader in the retail world... I think whenever you have context, you have the need for someone to get that information quickly and trade on it," he said. The intrigue: Asked about the pledge to investors that President Trump would always post first on Truth Social, McGurn said "it is really up to the president, and I will tell you that he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to and we certainly don't comment on that or stop him from doing that." * He added that the president "absolutely loves" the company and calls Truth Social "his typewriter." What's next: McGurn said TMTG is proactively recruiting more creators to Truth Social as it builds out its content and distribution platform. * "I want more content on the service. I want more creators on the service. I want more distribution, not just here in the U.S. around the around the world," he said. Disclosure: In 2023, TMTG sued 20 media organizations, including Axios, for defamation. Litigation is ongoing.

Inside the post-Google playbook: Subscriptions, AI and team reorgs. Publishers' hemming and hawing over the Google Zero post-search era has reached a fever pitch. Now, they're finally doing something about it. Companies like Axios, The Verge and Time have started rewriting their playbooks to prepare for a future in which Google isn't providing meaningful traffic. They're revamping subscription offerings, selling AI visibility products and restructuring their internal teams to survive in what could best be described as a search-pocalypse. Related Insights Senior media reporter at Digiday Sara Guaglione and senior media editor Jessica Davies joined a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast to discuss the publisher investments that seem the most promising - as they were discussed at this year's Digiday Publishing Summit and the Digiday Media Strategies in London. Here are three ways publishers are trying to survive a post-Google world: LLM subscriptions. At the Digiday Publishing Summit (DPS) in September, Axios' chief revenue officer Jacquelyn Cameron shared a subscriber-first AI integration. The integration allows Axios subscribers to connect their subscription to AI tools and query Axios content through the chatbots rather than visiting the publisher's website. Subscription publishers have been scrambling to figure out how to monetize agentic audiences, said Davies. She added, "Axios is the best example in terms of the detail that publishers have been willing to give on that so far." Team reorganizations. Also at DPS, Esther Cohen, director of audience and subscriptions at The Verge told Digiday that audience teams are being reorganized around specialists. Specialist areas include newsletters, platform engagement and audience analytics. The Verge has managed to expand the team over the past two years and avoided layoffs through the changes. Related Insights The Verge isn't alone in its team restructuring. Politico's Francesca Barber stepped into a new role that combines product, audience and AI under one person. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal's head of digital Taneth Evans detailed new roles in the newsroom, including a new head of multimedia and head of shows. "Publishers, when they do these kind of things, it's like 'OK, this is a new era. This is real disruption. We can't just wish it away. It's here to stay and we need to figure out what the heck we're going to do about it. That requires new titles, new job responsibilities to really reflect on the moment that we're in," Guaglione said. AI visibility products. Time is seemingly taking the approach of "if you can't beat them, join them." The publisher has begun serving ads to AI agents to squeeze revenue out of its growing bot traffic. (AI-powered search engine Perplexity blocked those ads from influencing its own search index last than two weeks after Digiday's initial report.) In the same vein, Future is offering GEO service while Ziff Davis is offering AI visibility services. "There was a real divide, really, between publishers who've chosen to block everything [regarding AI web crawlers], and the publishers who haven't been quite as hard on blocking," said Davies, "but as a result have said that they've had really strong AI visibility as a result. Now, they're benefiting from that when it comes to now selling that with clients because they've got so much data on that."