As CEO of the Associated Press (AP), Daisy Veerasingham leads one of the world’s oldest and most trusted news organizations through one of its most transformative periods. Since taking the helm five years ago, she’s navigated the rise of AI, struck early partnerships with tech platforms, and pushed the 180-year-old institution to reimagine itself as both a journalism organization and a data provider. McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti speaks with Veerasingham about the principles guiding AP’s AI strategy, the challenges of cultural change, and why protecting independent, fact-based reporting remains paramount—even as the organization’s structure evolves. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Different world, same mission
Raju Narisetti: What does it mean to be a facts-based journalism organization these days?
Daisy Veerasingham: AP has been a fact-based news organization since its founding because we provide eyewitness journalism—what’s happening, as news unfolds—to thousands of media outlets around the world. What’s quite amazing about what we do is that we provide the same journalism to everyone. We don’t change it. We don’t nuance it in any way. Yet, you will have news outlets and organizations around the world that have different political leanings or different agendas all using that same baseline reporting from the AP. That, I guess, is how I point to how we maintain being fact based.
We provide the same journalism to everyone. We don’t change it. We don’t nuance it in any way.
Raju Narisetti: You’ve been in this role for about five years. What’s genuinely different now and what’s more constant than people might assume about AP?
Daisy Veerasingham: Talking about what’s constant is probably easier than what’s changing, because almost everything is changing. So, let’s talk about what’s constant. That is essentially our news values and standards, that we are independent, nonpartisan, and fact based. Those values and standards have endured since we were set up 180 years ago. While we adapt them for the changing landscape, at their core, they stay the same. That’s really important in today’s world, that you have that same standards running through your reporting.
But what has changed? Practically everything: who our customer base is; how we have income coming into the organization, because we are an independent not for profit, so the income streams are really important to support our journalism; the impact of technology and how we use AI; what our business models look like. I don’t think there is a single facet of the organization that isn’t having to change or hasn’t changed over the last five to ten years.
How AP is rewiring its newsroom for what’s next
Raju Narisetti: AP has been moving, and you’ve pushed a little harder, to become a much more visual, digital-first service: 80 percent of the output is that. What has turned out to be harder than expected in continuing to make that transition?
Daisy Veerasingham: I would say often it’s the culture. It’s taking everybody along with you and helping them to understand why it’s important. We’re a highly disparate organization. We operate in [almost] 100 countries and across 50 states here in the United States. That’s harder when you run an organization like that, to ensure everybody understands why change and adaptability is so important. So, I don’t underestimate the cultural aspects that come along with making such significant change.
Raju Narisetti: What are some ways you’re convincing this organization to make that cultural shift?
Daisy Veerasingham: We talk a lot about the operating environment. The organization needs to always understand what is changing around them to understand why we’re having to adapt to that change. The other thing that really helps us as an organization is that we’re mission driven. Everybody who works at the AP is very committed to the mission of what we do, and that is about the independent, nonpartisan news that feeds the overall ecosystem. People understand that they need to move that journalism into new environments. For us, that does help.
The other thing I would say about helping our culture understand the need to change is how we’ve had to diversify the income that supports the AP. Once upon a time, our biggest customer base was newspapers. Today, they are an important customer base, but they are relatively small—under 10 percent. Now that speaks to the story of diversification, because now 90 percent of our income comes from other sources. But that also helps people understand the need for change, because the customer base has changed so dramatically.
Raju Narisetti: You came into this role from a very strong commercial background. But you’ve also been with the AP now for 16 years. How has that shaped how you think about running what is still a very newsroom-led organization?
Daisy Veerasingham: A couple things. I spent most of my career in the news industry, obviously very early on at The Financial Times. One of the things I have always been fascinated with is the economic model that supports and sustains really high-quality journalism. So, creating that connection between the economic model and our journalism is something I’ve been comfortable with doing from quite an early part of my career. That’s really what we continue to do today: to help our organization understand the economic model that fundamentally supports the journalism that we do and why that is so important.
Raju Narisetti: What’s something that you’ve tried to change and that has met more resistance than expected? And why was that?
Daisy Veerasingham: That’s quite a tough question to answer, because I guess some days I feel like every change I’m making can feel tough. I think the biggest area of resistance you get sometimes is the pace of change. You referenced earlier about us being a digital-first news organization. I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues and they were asking me again to explain why that was important. And I have to say: Look, I have to be honest with you—for me, that’s table stakes now. I think pace is probably my biggest learning, and helping people understand the pace of change that is going on around us.
Raju Narisetti: And I tend to have an approach that not everybody needs to be at the same pace to continue to move ahead.
Daisy Veerasingham: I agree with you. That’s OK. And sometimes you do need that in an organization, because sometimes the people who don’t want to change as fast are actually providing a more stabilizing influence in the organization. I do think pace has been the biggest learning I’ve had in the time I’ve been in this job.
Raju Narisetti: In most news media companies, the newsroom and the resources it takes is usually the largest single cost center. When you think about the newsroom of the future, let’s say five years or even ten years out, what looks fundamentally different from what you see today?
Daisy Veerasingham: I think it’s going to become more decentralized. I think there will be fewer major hubs as it’s easier to work in a more decentralized environment. Think back to when newsrooms were created because you had to take the story back and file it and produce it. You don’t have to do that anymore. You can file direct from a camera these days—a really good thing in terms of eyewitness journalism. About 70 percent of our cost base is our newsroom staff.
I will always foresee that news will be the dominant area of where we invest in resources. I don’t think that’s going to change. I think the skill sets are going to change somewhat.
We are going to need more data journalists and data scientists to help us with storytelling than we probably have had before. We are also likely to need more engineers than we have had in the past. So I think the skill base of what we’re going to have in the newsroom is going to have to change.
I think data and its importance across a number of fronts is probably the biggest area of development for the organization. Data has become really important in how we run our business and make choices, because all businesses have to make choices.
The second area is the opportunity that comes from taking our journalism and converting it into data. And, in all honesty, I probably didn’t see that four years ago. I could see the benefit of data for choice and decision-making, but I didn’t foresee how we could take our journalism, deconstruct or restructure it, add an intelligence layer across it, and provide it as input to other industry sectors.
Making AI work for journalism
Raju Narisetti: I’m going to jump into AI, because it’s clearly the topic of the moment. You’ve leaned into partnerships. You’re one of the earliest. It comes out of a long history of licensing.
Daisy Veerasingham: Yes.
Raju Narisetti: And a belief that people should reimburse you for the economic value of what you’re doing. Is it your view that AI will become the primary interface for news and content consumption going forward?
Daisy Veerasingham: It is certainly going to become or has become a dominant way in which people use or access news. Go back in history. We went from newspapers to radio, radio to broadcast, broadcast to platforms and social media. This is the next frontier. It isn’t that they become the only way, but they become a dominant way. That’s part of how you have to evolve.
Raju Narisetti: When you think about these partnerships, what does a fair and sustainable value exchange look like to you? Not just now, but also in the next few years?
Daisy Veerasingham: Value is going to change. I will be very honest about that. I hope value will change to the positive. There are two principles we established. The first is that AP’s intellectual property must be protected. We put journalists on front lines every single day.
It costs a lot of money. But also they put their lives on the line at times to report. Look at our journalists in the Middle East at the moment. You have to respect our intellectual property from that perspective. The second area is it must gain fair value. Because we’re a licensing business, we had a framework. But those two things have been really important to me. Now what I would say, though, is value has got to change. Fundamentally, models are being trained on content that we all put journalists on the front line to produce. When that doesn’t receive fair value, that’s where there is an imbalance in the overall ecosystem.
Raju Narisetti: So these, I assume, are short- to medium-term multiple-year deals?
Daisy Veerasingham: They are generally deals that range from one to three years. So you’re not locked in for long periods of time. That’s been a deliberate strategy as well, because the market and the value is going to change. We recognize that. Look on the other side, the tech platforms understand that as well. So we’re all trying to navigate what is a changing landscape at the moment.
Raju Narisetti: When you’re a first mover like you’ve been, what is the decision framework you use to say, “Am I capturing enough value by moving quickly?” Or should you wait a little longer, because it’s an evolving, uncertain space? What anchors your judgment in making those calls?
Daisy Veerasingham: For us, it was the fact that we had a licensing framework.
Raju Narisetti: So you could use the template.
Daisy Veerasingham: We were able to value size of audience and distribution and reach in a way that probably a lot of organizations would still find quite complex to do. That’s what helped guide us in being an early mover. The other thing is you can be an early mover or you can wait and see. For us, we felt that we would learn, as an organization, a lot more by being an early mover. So there were two reasons: We had a solid foundation for valuation, and we understood that, as an organization, we could learn by being an early mover as well.
Raju Narisetti: If AI platforms become one of the ways audiences consume news and they’re being powered by AP, is there a risk of becoming invisible? How do you think about that?
Daisy Veerasingham: To a certain extent, the AP has always been fairly invisible. We’re a behind-the-scenes provider of eyewitness journalism. Most people probably don’t even realize that what they see on their broadcast outlet or on their digital channel is coming from the Associated Press. To a certain extent, we have always been behind the scenes. So that probably gives us a little bit more comfort.
But I would go broader than that and say that we firmly believe that if models are not trained on fact-based journalism—being able to recognize misinformation from what is factually correct—then that is a much harder position for society to be in than whether our brand is really dominant in this environment.
Raju Narisetti: As part of these deals, do you also try to seek a brand or a labeling framework as well?
Daisy Veerasingham: We haven’t done that to date, but as I said, these deals are going to change. I can well see that becoming part of what we would want to build into future deals or as we come up to renegotiate deals with our existing customers.
Raju Narisetti: We’ve been talking about AI in an external context, but you’ve also been deploying it. You’re one of the early ones in transcription, translation, summarization, headlines—with some friction, obviously. Where else do you see AI being able to help the creation and distribution of journalism?
Daisy Veerasingham: Where we’ve deployed AI and where I see future deployment of AI is really going to be in the production capabilities of what we do. We believe that journalism starts with a human being and it finishes with a human being. But AI can give huge effectiveness capabilities to you in terms of speed and the volume of content you’re able to get across. Those are benefits ultimately to customers and to audiences.
So I see AI playing a bigger and bigger part in the production capabilities that we have across all formats. We produce journalism every day in text, in photos, in video, in audio, and increasingly in data. AI tooling has huge benefits across all of those storytelling formats.
The structure of the AP could—or may have to—evolve. I’m completely open to that.
Raju Narisetti: Because of AI or otherwise, do you see the AP evolving to less of a news content company and more of something of a foundational data layer?
Daisy Veerasingham: I think two things can be true at once. I think fundamentally, we will always be a news and journalism organization. But increasingly, we are taking our journalism, the way in which we tell stories, and we are converting that into data, because, obviously, you understand we have huge amounts of data that goes into our stories. We also have a huge amount of unpublished data that I think is valuable.
And that’s where I see part of our next diversification, which is taking journalism and converting that into structured and unstructured data for use by both humans and machines. And I think that’s quite a distinction. We have always been set up to provide journalism for human beings. And I see us now providing journalism for machines and human beings.
Raju Narisetti: What’s AI doing to cost structures as you shift toward more visual output? Do you see AI ultimately as margin enhancing? How do you see the cost structures evolving because of AI?
Daisy Veerasingham: The hope is that it will become margin enhancing. The reality is it’s not today, because it takes investment. That’s additive investment. So today, it probably isn’t margin enhancing. However, it does allow you to move faster and also move into new market spaces probably faster than ever before. So the benefits, you hope, are going to be a few years down the line.
From newsroom to information infrastructure
Raju Narisetti: Let’s talk a little bit about metrics in that context. Obviously, in a world of infinite content, what does success look like for AP beyond saying we reach four billion people on this planet? What kind of new metrics are coming into place to drive and support the change?
Daisy Veerasingham: Let’s break it down a little bit, because there are metrics around journalism content and there are metrics obviously around the business.
On our journalism and content, it is about the data that supports the stories: how they’re engaged with, how long people stay with those stories. They help us make choices every single day in terms of our journalism. So we know we’re deploying resources against the most important stories and we’re staying with them or spinning them back down again at a time where the audience engagement has moved on from that story and on to the next story. Then we have metrics against our content from a direct-to-consumer perspective. Obviously not a very big piece of what we do, but an increasingly important piece of what we do.
We look at things like our live video streams. YouTube is a really important channel for our video content. So that’s another indicator of engagement. There are lots of different metrics that we use from a content perspective, both B2B from our customer perspective, but also direct to consumer.
Then you move into the commercial aspects of the business. That’s along the lines of: Are the businesses that we’re investing in and diversifying revenue meeting the metrics and expectations that we would expect? We have heavily invested in building out our elections business. Actually, the AP plays a very unusual role, because we essentially count the vote in a general election, up and down the ballot here in the United States. Then we declare the winners. That has been an area where we have really leaned in. It’s taken a lot of investment to get there.
So, is that business meeting the business metrics that we established for it? We do that across all of the different types of businesses that we’re diversifying into—for example, sports rankings. We talked a little bit about taking our journalism and moving that into data. How is that business developing? Are we getting the number of customers, the different types of customer segments that we would expect to be reaching?
Even though we’re a not for profit, it just means that no individual or company or shareholder benefits from our profit. Making a profit is absolutely important to us, because that’s how we reinvest back into our journalism every single day. That is a really important part of how we continue to develop the organization.
Raju Narisetti: Does that constrain your ability to move more rapidly in what’s a very dynamic market? Or does it actually give you an advantage in some places?
Daisy Veerasingham: It’s both, I would say. But from a journalism point of view, being a not for profit, I cannot think of a better structure for it, because we are accountable to our values and principles. We’re not accountable to a parent company or shareholders. So from a journalism point of view, that is an absolutely wonderful structure for us.
On the other side, making investments, leveraging off-grade infrastructure—we don’t have any of that. We are completely independent. There’s constant need to be able to invest. There are areas that all of us have taken on investments in cybersecurity, digital infrastructures, data infrastructures. That’s all something the AP has to be able to continue to compete in. Organizations today are doing much of this at scale, whereas we’re still a small, independent news organization trying to compete against that. So that can be challenging sometimes.
Raju Narisetti: Do most people, perhaps even inside AP, still misunderstand what it takes for a news organization to be economically sustainable?
Daisy Veerasingham: Most people misunderstand what it takes to be economically sustainable. We talked a little bit about our footprint. We maintain people across [about] 100 countries and across the United States. It is not just the people. It is about the equipment, the gear, keeping our people safe and secure—one of our biggest priorities every single day. It is about how you gather the content, how you have to produce it in so many different formats now, and then how you distribute that to your audience or customer base.
Yes. Running a news organization is very expensive. That’s why the valuation of journalism and content is so important, because if it isn’t properly valued, then that gets pulled back. That’s not a good thing for anybody.
Resilience as a core competency—for AP and its people
Raju Narisetti: AP has been around for 180 years. What are the leadership lessons from that kind of longevity that you think still apply?
Daisy Veerasingham: I think the fact that we’re 180 years old is really interesting, because I think that speaks to resilience and adaptability. And I think those are two of the most important things organizations need as we move forward.
We’ve managed to keep adapting to a completely changing environment. We talked about this earlier—first, we started with newspapers; then radio; then broadcast; then digital and social.
And now we’re moving into a data-driven world. That speaks to the adaptability that we have had to have. And that adaptability has come from income sources that support our independence, which are really important.
The other thing I think is really important about being that old, if you like, is resilience. And resilience, I think, is a really important part of the environment that we’re operating in, where decisions are tough. You don’t always have all the answers.
You’re stepping into the unknown sometimes. And you have to have an organization that is able to be resilient, because you won’t always get it right. But you’ve also got to be able to say, “We didn’t get it right. We need to reverse course.”
And you see that in so many ways. You see that in our reporters in the field who cover, you know, things that human beings shouldn’t have to bear witness to. And yet, they go back every single day and they cover the story again until it is told. And then they move on and do something else. That speaks to the resilience that people in the organization have. And you see that in the way we report and you see that in the business end as well.
Raju Narisetti: At McKinsey, we talk a lot about resilience being a muscle that you need to constantly exercise and build. Personally, how do you go about thinking about resilience as it applies to how you operate?
Daisy Veerasingham: Let me talk a little bit about the organization, because we have a team that works a lot on building resiliency within the organization. Journalists do difficult jobs on front lines. They see things no human being should really have to bear witness to.
And increasingly today, there are a huge number of psychological impacts on journalists. Think about social media and people who don’t necessarily agree with your reporting and how difficult that environment has become. So we spend a lot of time now training and preparing our whole staff to be more resilient.
We’ve set up a peer-to-peer network. So if I’m having a bad day, I know there is a group of peers that I can email, Slack, or call and just have a conversation about the fact that I’m not having a good day, or something’s really difficult, or I need just a listening ear.
A lot of this has come out of the fact that we cover very difficult and dangerous topics. But I think it’s also evolved to an understanding that all people—whether you’re a journalist or a tech person or a revenue person—need resilience built into their daily lives.
Raju Narisetti: AP, the institution, has obviously outlasted generations of leaders. What have you learned about building on that kind of institution that will be resilient beyond one CEO?
Daisy Veerasingham: I am very focused on the longevity of this organization, and succession, and developing the next generation of leaders that takes this organization into its future.
I am temporary. I will be CEO for a period of time, and then it will be time to hand over to the next generation. And I want to leave it in the very best possible condition so that next generation can build on what this generation has managed to achieve.
Look, we don’t get it right every day. I can probably look back and think, “Gosh, I wish we’d done this earlier,” or done something else earlier.
We don’t all get it right every day. I’m sure the next generation will look at me and say, “Why didn’t we do this a bit sooner?” or “Why did we do that?” My belief is that leaders make the right decisions with the set of circumstances they have in front of them at that moment in time.
Raju Narisetti: Five years from now, what would have needed to go right for you to feel you really moved AP forward?
Daisy Veerasingham: That its role has remained and been protected, number one. That the journalists that we pull into difficult situations every day have been well protected and taken care of from a physical and psychological standpoint. The diversification of the business—that it has a broader set of customers, broader distribution, and broader income streams that help support this independent, mission-driven organization.
What the new competitive landscape looks like
Raju Narisetti: What do you increasingly see as AP’s real competitors today? And are they even traditional content creators?
Daisy Veerasingham: It would be so simple to say it’s this company or that company. I don’t think we look at competition like that anymore. The competition is the changing environment and whether we will be able to find our place in that changing environment.
Yes, there are other news agencies in the environment. We’re competitive on a daily basis. But we also work together really closely. At times of trouble, when we’re managing wars and trying to keep our journalists safe, we’ll work together.
I don’t know what the future holds. I’m very ready to put my hands up and say that. But I am hopeful for the role that the AP can play. And I think that’s the best way of categorizing it. Because of the work that we do, because we are fact based, because we bear witness to what’s going on, I think those are really important facets of what’s important to society moving forward.
Our job is to convince the platforms that that is the case, and also that value has to be put against people who create content, because they also have a societal role to play. They are responsible as well for the information society is going to see, interact with, and, in the end, make decisions on.
And I think it is our job and their job to find the commonality in what we’re both trying to do. I am hopeful that we can do that. I’m hopeful for the AP because of our history, because we’ve adapted, because we’ve been resilient, because we’ve moved as the world has interacted with information across different platforms.
A flexible future, a non‑negotiable core
Raju Narisetti: You’ve talked a couple of times about being relatively small and being independent. What role might you see AP playing in any future industry consolidation?
Daisy Veerasingham: That’s an interesting question. And I don’t know if I could give you an answer for that at the moment. What I am very clear about is AP’s role as an independent, nonpartisan, fact-based organization is absolutely paramount. Protecting that is absolutely essential.
Whether consolidation on technology or product development is possible, I don’t know. But at our core, protecting that independence is absolutely essential to our organization.
Raju Narisetti: Is there any scenario in which AP is part of a major television consortium or a company, or part of something like Getty, for example?
AP’s role as an independent, nonpartisan, fact-based organization is absolutely paramount. Protecting that is absolutely essential.
Daisy Veerasingham: I would say that in today’s environment, you can’t take anything off the table. And I don’t take anything off the table. The most important thing to me will be to protect the independence of our reporting. And that will always be paramount.
Raju Narisetti: Daisy, if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying that protecting the ability for AP’s content creation to be independent is much more important than worrying about what structure this might be going forward?
Daisy Veerasingham: Yes. Absolutely. Given where the industry is today, I think that independent, fact-based reporting is absolutely essential for all the reasons we’ve talked about—not just for journalism, but for what it does and how it feeds a data- and AI-driven environment.
The structure of the AP could—or may have to—evolve. I’m completely open to that. But protecting its independence of reporting would always be paramount.
Leadership, trade‑offs, and real life
Raju Narisetti: It feels like a lot more women tend to be in roles that are actually a lot more challenging and in industries that are dramatically changing. Does that make any difference, you think, in perspective or approach to how you think about running companies?
Daisy Veerasingham: I don’t know if gender makes a difference in how you think about running companies, because in the end we’re all measured against the same criteria. There are probably differences at times in approach.
Let me give you an example. I understand what it’s like to build a career while bringing up young children. So when members of my team explain to me that they have a conflict, my first reaction is, “Of course you should be at the piano recital.”
I hope I bring an understanding to the organization not just for women, but for why family life is an important part of your working life, because I believe if you provide an environment in which both things are supported, you get more loyalty, more continuity, and more commitment out of the people who work for you.
Raju Narisetti: And for you, it’s a lived experience as opposed to a theoretical understanding of it.
Daisy Veerasingham: Yes. Because I’ve been a mother who’s managed a career with a husband who had a very demanding career as well. So I was the one who was taking on the piano recitals and children who would get suddenly sick at school. I do understand what that feels like.
But so much can be done remotely now that it isn’t something you have to worry about in the same way. So I think the environment for that has changed as well.
Raju Narisetti: At McKinsey, we spend a lot of time talking about the importance of taking care of yourself first before you take care of your job and your organization. How do you go about that?
Daisy Veerasingham: I’m not sure I do it very well, to be honest. I think there are other things that are a very important part of my life. I talked about having children. Even though children grow up, they still provide big amounts of diversion in terms of other things you need to focus on as well.
My youngest son is about to go to college. So I’m focused on that transition. I try to walk, because I think that gives me head space. And I have a very important family and set of friends who provide diversions for me.
It’s very tough today. I run a 24/7 news organization. Things happen every moment of the day. Some things you have to be involved in. Some things you can trust that your team has got. So I wouldn’t say I’ve got it right.
AP’s next chapter
Raju Narisetti: What is the one thing that you want people to understand better about AP?
Daisy Veerasingham: The AP is a very different business from the one that most people probably understand it to be. Today, we provide elections coverage and data. We go direct to consumer. We convert journalism into data to help organizations with decision-making.
We have a philanthropic arm. We have radically changed the organization from being a newspaper cooperative, which is what it was for much of its history. And I think that’s a really important part of who we are today.
The other thing I would say is that if you want an accurate indication of what’s happening in a world where there’s a lot of misinformation or a lot of opinion, the AP reports the facts.
They all take our journalism every single day. We don’t change it and we don’t nuance it in any way. And yet they all use it—but they deploy it in different ways. That, to me, speaks to the heart of who we are, which is independent and fact based and nonpartisan.
And that is the other thing I would leave your audience with: the role that we play not just for media, but the role that we can play in broader information distribution as the world we operate in is changing.
Raju Narisetti: And if somebody has a fairly big ambition to really help sustain journalism in the US, in particular, or in the world, I hear you saying, “Come talk to me”?
Daisy Veerasingham: Absolutely come talk to me. And equally, if you’re an organization that wants to ensure that you’ve got good, quality infrastructure and data points coming into your organization, come and talk to me, because that’s something the AP can do.
