Where Publishing Meets Innovation with Karen Oh

Where Publishing Meets Innovation with Karen Oh

From The Community Exchange Podcast by OpenWeb by OpenWeb

May 19, 2026 · 47 min · Season 4 · Episode 6

About this episode

Karen Oh discusses the intersection of publishing and innovation, addressing challenges faced by digital publishers and the impact of AI.

On this episode of The Community Exchange Podcast, we welcome Karen Oh, Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Partnerships & Initiatives at Ziff Davis, to discuss: • Building a career across Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, and Meta before landing in media • The story behind one of media's rarest roles: Chief of Staff at a major digital publisher • The real reasons publisher traffic is declining beyond Google Zero • The growing pressure on publishers to diversify beyond a single traffic channel • How Ziff Davis thinks about blocking AI bots, and when that strategy backfires • AI scraping as a business model threat, not just a content problem • The enduring value of authoritative brands in a world of AI-generated answers • The duality every publisher is living: fighting AI scraping while using AI every day • The case for one-on-one aha moments as the key to internal AI adoption And more. New episodes of The Community Exchange Podcast are released each week. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts to get the latest right in your feed.

People in this episode

Guest: Karen Oh

Topics covered

  • media innovation
  • publisher challenges
  • AI in publishing
  • career development
  • traffic diversification

Keywords

  • publishing
  • AI
  • traffic decline
  • media roles
  • Ziff Davis

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Ziff Davis, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Meta

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