- Arc XP Learning Center
- Products
- Ask the News
Ask the News
Ask the News Introduction
Meet Ask the News
Ask the News helps publishers capture reader intent, answer questions with trusted journalism, and turn moments of curiosity into audience value, across the CMS and digital experiences they already use.
Readers can ask natural-language questions and receive answers grounded in a publisher’s reporting. Every answer includes source citations and links back to relevant coverage, helping audiences explore topics more deeply while staying within publisher-owned experiences.
Because Ask the News is platform-agnostic, publishers do not need to be on the Arc XP CMS to use it. It can be deployed across publisher sites and apps as a branded answer experience that integrates with existing content, workflows, and audience strategies.
Ask the News is built around three core capabilities:
Capture reader intent
Turn articles, homepages, section fronts, and apps into intent-capture surfaces.
Suggested questions, follow-ups, and conversational exploration help publishers understand what audiences are trying to learn and where curiosity is leading them.
Answer with trusted journalism
Deliver cited answers grounded in publisher reporting.
Instead of sending readers to a list of links, Ask the News helps them quickly understand a topic while connecting them back to the journalism behind every response.
Turn intent into publisher value
Every reader question is a first-party intent signal.
Publishers can use those signals to drive deeper engagement, activate archives, support subscription strategies, strengthen monetization opportunities, and inform editorial decision-making.
Key Capabilities
Natural Language Questions: Readers ask questions in plain language, just like they would ask a colleague
AI-Generated Answers: The system provides concise, factual answers based on your articles
Source Attribution: Every answer links back to the original articles, maintaining journalistic transparency
Multi-Site Support: Manage multiple news properties from a single interface
Content Safeguards: Built-in moderation prevents inappropriate queries and protects sensitive information
How Ask the News Works
Understanding the basics of how Ask the News operates can help you configure it effectively. This section provides a high-level overview without technical details.
Article Processing
When articles are published to your Arc ecosystem, Ask the News automatically processes them:
Content Extraction: The system reads the headline, description, and body text from each article
Breaking into Segments: Long articles are divided into smaller segments. This allows the AI to find specific relevant passages rather than entire articles
Creating Search Indexes: Each segment is indexed in a way that allows the AI to understand its meaning, not just match keywords
This processing happens automatically — you don't need to take any action for new articles to become searchable.
Finding Relevant Content
When a reader asks a question, Ask the News searches your articles in two ways:
Meaning-Based Search: Finds articles that are conceptually related to the question, even if they don't contain the exact words used
Keyword Search: Finds articles containing specific terms from the question
The system combines results from both approaches and ranks them by relevance. Recent articles receive a slight boost in ranking to ensure timely content surfaces first.
Generating Answers
Once relevant articles are found, the AI reads through them and composes an answer:
Answers are written in a neutral, objective tone appropriate for journalism
The AI uses only information from your published articles — it doesn't add outside knowledge
Answers typically run 4-6 sentences
The AI always attributes information to your content by including source links
Built-in Safeguards
Several layers of protection ensure quality and safety:
Content Policy: Queries are checked against content policies before processing
Your Blocking Rules: Custom rules you create can prevent specific types of questions
Response Guardrails: The AI is instructed to decline requests outside its purpose (generating code, creative writing, revealing its instructions, etc.)
Source Requirement: The AI will not invent information — if it can't find relevant content in your articles, it tells the reader it couldn't find an answer