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What publishers can learn from The Independent’s Bulletin app

James Martin from The Independent shared the strategy behind Bulletin, a new short-form, audio-led, AI-supported news app built for time-poor users. The thinking behind it offers clear takeaways for publishers navigating changing habits and user behaviour.

16th December 2025

At the Pugpig Customer Summit, James Martin, Executive Director at The Independent, shared the thinking behind Bulletin – a new, AI-enabled news brand and app built specifically for busy audiences who still care deeply about trust, verification and quality journalism.

While Bulletin is still early in its lifecycle, the strategy behind it offers several important lessons for publishers navigating changing consumption habits, rising distrust in information, and the rapid adoption of AI.

We’ve distilled the key takeaways below, or you can watch James’ session in full. You can also check out the Bulletin app on iOS and Android below:

1. “Busy” does not mean disengaged or indifferent

One of the strongest themes from the session was the rejection of a common assumption: that time-poor users no longer value trusted journalism.

As James put it: “Just because you don’t have time to read a 700-word page lead or listen to a 30-minute podcast, it doesn’t mean you don’t care about trusted and verified news.”

Bulletin is designed for people who don’t have time for long reads, long videos or long podcasts but still want to stay informed by a brand they trust. Short-form, bullet-led stories and audio updates are not a dilution of journalism; they are a reframing of it for modern consumption habits.

Takeaway for publishers

Speed and credibility are not opposing forces. Products that respect users’ time can still be deeply editorial, provided the journalism remains human-led and verified.

2. Audio works best when it is integral, not bolted on

Audio in Bulletin is not treated as a secondary feature. Almost every piece of content has an audio component and the app is designed around listening as much as reading. Dynamic audio playlists allow users to consume curated or personalised news while commuting, cooking or multitasking.

“It’s not like audio is a feature,” James explained. “It is integral to the app.”

Crucially, this required rethinking how journalism is written and structured. The team learned that converting text to audio at scale demands changes to spacing, pacing and language so that content sounds natural when listened to, not just when read.

Takeaway for publishers

If audio is part of your strategy, it needs product-level thinking. Simply adding “listen” buttons to existing articles rarely delivers the same engagement as designing editorial workflows specifically for audio consumption.

3. AI is most powerful when it supports re-versioning, not replacement

James was clear on this point: “This is an editorial product that just so happens to use AI. Bulletin makes extensive use of AI, but not in the way many headlines suggest. AI is used to re-version content across formats (text, audio, video) and to support scale and efficiency, not to generate journalism independently.

Every story starts with human journalism from The Independent, is commissioned by editors, and is reviewed before publication. AI tools such as text-to-audio and summarisation sit inside clear editorial governance, rather than operating as standalone systems.

Takeaway for publishers

The most effective AI use cases today are often the most pragmatic ones: re-formatting, re-packaging and distributing trusted journalism in ways that better fit user behaviour.

4. New brands can unlock freedom to experiment

Rather than folding Bulletin into The Independent’s core app, the team launched it as a standalone brand. This created space to experiment with tone, design, formats and workflows that might have been harder to test within a flagship product.

Early results from the Bulletin website showed month-on-month growth and strong onward journeys into The Independent’s wider ecosystem, helping justify further editorial investment.

Takeaway for publishers

Launching a focused, standalone product can be an effective way to explore new ideas without disrupting your core experience, while still feeding learnings back into the main brand.

5. Trust becomes more valuable as AI reshapes discovery

As AI tools increasingly summarise and surface the news directly, Bulletin is positioned as a trusted destination for confirmation and context. James highlighted that “there was a core group of readers coming to The Independent almost as a fact checker.”

In an environment where convenience is abundant, trust becomes the differentiator.

Takeaway for publishers

As AI-driven discovery accelerates, trusted news brands have an opportunity to become the place audiences go to verify, understand and feel confident about what they’re consuming.

Why this matters for publishers building apps

Bulletin demonstrates how publishers can rethink mobile apps as products designed around real user behaviour, not just containers for existing content. By combining short-form journalism, personalised audio and pragmatic AI use within a strong editorial framework, The Independent has created a new way to serve busy audiences without compromising trust.

For publisher apps, the Bulletin demonstrates how the strongest app strategies combine product design with editorial clarity and responsible AI adoption rather than any single feature in isolation.