Reach chief executive Jim Mullen has written to staff saying “I have kept my word” on job cuts at the group as parts of the business enact redundancies.

Mullen previously wrote to staff at the start of 2024 to say that, after making more than 700 job cuts in 2023, the business planned to end 2024 with “the teams that we have starting the year”.

However recent weeks have seen team restructures and consequent redundancies at titles including the Sunday Express, Scotland’s Sunday Mail and the Irish Sunday Mirror.

In each case the Sunday titles have been moved into a seven-day merged print and digital operation, with a resulting loss of jobs.

Sunday Express editor David Wooding has left Reach as part of the changes, The Guardian has reported, and Sunday Mail editor Lorna Hughes has also elected to leave according to an email seen by Hold the Front Page.

The NUJ Reach group chapel said the recent redundancies “concern more than two dozen talented journalists leaving the company”.

“Our members are mindful of Jim Mullen’s words as we entered 2024 about staff not having ‘one eye over their shoulder’ after a corrosive year of hundreds of lost journalists’ jobs.

“Yet that is exactly what is happening currently, particularly if you are in a print-facing role…

“The constant threat of cutbacks, particularly among the national titles, is a major source of demotivation and drain on morale. This group chapel calls on the company to make 2025 a redundancy-free, growth year at Reach.”

Separately on Friday, Daily Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston emailed staff saying the staff of the daily newspaper will be merged with that of celebrity magazine OK!. Waterston, who was previously editor of OK!, added the brands “will remain completely distinct” and that she did “not expect this change to result in any reduction in roles”.

Reach CEO says company will end 2024 with more staff than at conclusion of 2023 restructure

On Friday November 22 Mullen emailed staff saying “external commentary” on the company was “noisy, distracting and, to be honest, a bit lazy at times”.

His commitment for 2024, he said, “was about growth, that there would be no more large-scale cuts and that the size of the overall business was about right for the year ahead.

“I have kept my word and have not changed this commitment.

“And I’ve kept my commitment to being upfront with you all about the fact that our business will have to evolve, adapt and continue to change to better suit the changing preferences of our audiences, their chosen channels and our advertisers.”

Last month Reach announced it would be hiring 60 new editorial staff with a focus on “audience writers” and “general assignment journalists” who will cover breaking stories and trending topics. Mullen said this meant the company will conclude 2024 “with more jobs than we had at the conclusion of the 2023 restructure programme”.

“This is not to disparage or dismiss the feelings of colleagues whose roles have been impacted by changes that are part of the running of our business…

“As CEO, I understand that it is my role to make decisions that are not always popular but that I believe are right for the business. I recognise that, at times, it means I won’t win any popularity contests, but I will never shirk from being up front and honest with you.”

In its statement earlier in the week, the NUJ Reach group chapel said the 60 new roles were “of course welcomed.

“But our members cannot avoid the feeling that in some way sacrifices are being made in print – where three quarters of Reach’s revenue still comes from – to fund changes the company wants elsewhere. This is no reflection on anyone being recruited to Reach, but does lead to speculation on the wisdom of the actions being taken.”

There has been a move away from standalone Sunday editorial teams across the news industry. Last year News UK proposed a merger of the Scottish Times and Scottish Sunday Times and Mail Newspapers brought the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday “much closer together”.

Several dedicated Sunday operations continue, however, including The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, as well as FT Weekend and i weekend.

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“It was definitely targeted at me. Because I am a journalist and because I’m a woman.”

These words, spoken on a new campaign video issued today (Monday November 25) by South Yorkshire Police (SYP), will resonate with hundreds of women working in our industry who have been faced with online violence simply because of their gender and the job they do.

In this specific instance, a journalist for Reach, the UK’s largest commercial publisher, was sent unsolicited extreme pornographic content without her consent. The images, videos and gifs were paired with vile misogynistic language and appeared to have been sent with the intention of intimidation and sexual gratification. Such activities are now classed as criminal under the Online Safety Act, which came into force just over a year ago.

The Know More campaign, launched to coincide with International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women tackles the issue of Online Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), with the intent of not only educating the public around the impact and criminality of offences such as cyber stalking, threats and cyberflashing, but also with the intent to arm its officers with knowledge around application of the law through training and resources.

Earlier this year SYP approached me to ask for input from Reach into the issues faced by women working in journalism. Their campaign officers had seen the research we published in conjunction with Women in Journalism in 2023 which showed three-quarters of women had experienced some kind of threat to their safety in connection to their work as journalists and that 25 per cent had been subjected to sexual violence or harassment. Half of the respondents said they promoted their work less due to the threat of online harm and a fifth of the respondents said they had considered leaving journalism altogether.

The SYP campaign seeks to acknowledge the increased levels of online violence targeting women in public-facing roles such as journalists and politicians and they asked if we might be able to support by providing testimonies and guidance that could be shared with police officers and in the public campaign.

This push to highlight the criminal impact and potential police response to online violence of this nature should be lauded.

This year more than 100 media leaders signed a letter co-authored by Reach, Women in Journalism and Reporters Without Borders, which called for improved police response to online crimes against women in media industries and improved working relations between journalism and policing.

A month later, the Crime Reporters Association (CRA), the Society of Editors and the Media Lawyers Association issued a report and a series of recommendations setting out improvements that could be made to repair the relationship between police and journalism in the UK and improve the safety of journalists. 

That’s why the SYP campaign has to be spotlighted and celebrated.

To see South Yorkshire Police taking such an active stance on online crime that particularly impacts women, was refreshing and I intend to highlight their work as a bastion of best practice when talking to police leaders and representatives in government who are working to address violence against journalists and VAWG.

Our journalist who bravely shared her story is sadly one of many women who I know have been targeted by unjustifiable and revolting aggression and sent extreme adult content without consent. I applaud her too for highlighting the impact such actions can have and for standing up and refusing to allow such shameful and criminal abuse to stop her from doing her job.

However, what we now need to see is similar activity from other police forces and a joined-up approach to tackling the impact and potential consequences of online violence against women and girls. We also need to see investment and support for police to act upon the laws they have at their disposal and ultimately bring perpetrators of violent online crimes to justice.

Unfortunately in our reporter’s case, while police on her local force (not South Yorkshire) investigated, they were unable to gather enough evidence to identify the perpetrator due to the use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and because the crime was not considered to reach the threshold of threat into which further investigation was warranted.

This outcome is not unusual. Currently prosecution of anonymous online crime of this nature is low, often due to difficulties in gathering evidence.

Therefore, the important next steps have to include more collaborative work like that done by SYP. There also has to be more engagement in the issues beset by journalists and women who use online spaces for their work and there has to be greater investment in policing and resources.

Without these elements being put into place, we run the risk of the law being toothless, resulting in perpetrators continuing to escape prosecution for their crimes and potentially going on to commit more serious violence against women and girls.

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Google‘s smartphone-based content recommendation feed, Google Discover, has become the single largest traffic referral source for publishing giant Reach plc, its audience director (distribution and customer marketing) has said.

Martin Little told Press Gazette the rise in Discover traffic had compensated “and then some” for a decline in referrals from Google search.

Reach’s overall Google traffic has grown in the second half of this year, Little said, but there had been “a significant shift” in the contributions from different Google platforms.

What Little called “branded search” — traffic from people actively searching for Reach titles like the Daily Mirror or Cornwall Live — has remained “solid”, he said. But referrals from topic-based searches have been falling, contributing to an overall fall in the number of visitors referred via search. Visits from Google News have remained largely stable.

But Discover is “making up for that and then some on top”, he said, and “has become our biggest referrer of traffic”.

“Overall, almost 50% of our titles are on year-on-year growth now,” Little said, “and that is partly because of the shifts in Google.”

Google Discover promotes ‘soft lens’ content — but isn’t so good for news

Google Discover is embedded in the browsing experience for most users who browse Google Chrome on a smartphone.

Little said Discover “is almost like Facebook was… it’s algorithmically served, it’s based on what it thinks you’re going to like. It’s more of an escapism-type outlet”.

The increase in Google traffic at Reach has in part been driven by greater visibility into how Google Discover works. Previously, Little said, it had been “even more of a black box than Search”.

It is now much easier to monitor both your own and your competitors’ performance on Discover, according to Little. Two years ago it would not have been possible for a publisher to even split out their Discover and Search traffic, but now “you can get a far better lens on what’s working and what’s not”.

Little said 44% of Reach content gets picked up in Google Discover, but the platform is “very selective as to what it takes in and what it doesn’t… Google clearly wants Discover to be a safe environment, with brand-safe content within it”.

He described the type of content that does well on Discover as “soft-lens”: first-person pieces do well, as does lifestyle content and articles about niche interests and sports other than football.

“What is interesting as well is, for us as a commercial publisher, we don’t get a lot of news content into Discover,” Little said. “And by news, what I mean is traditional local news, or harder news.”

Reach’s news content is still holding its own in search, Little said, but there is “always a lag for content getting to Discover”. Although stories sometimes arrive on Discover within a day, “it tends to be 24 to 48 hours before content actually gets in”, which necessarily poses a problem for news content.

“You don’t get court content in there, there’s no crime getting in there, our council content doesn’t get in there as well. Stuff from our Local Democracy Reporters doesn’t really get into Discover.

“We need that content — it’s the staple of our regional brands, and it’s frustrating that we see the BBC’s version of that story get in every single time, but we never see any commercial publishers really getting that sort of content in. So it feels like Google is, on Discover, using the BBC to serve that out, but not actually being very pluralistic in its approach.”

[Read more: Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom]

Google Discover selects ‘curiosity gap’ headlines to show readers

Little said Discover has a notable preference for “curiosity gap” headlines. For every story a Reach journalist publishes, they have to write four headlines: one for Facebook, one for Search, one for the home page and one for newsletters.

“Each of those are written in different ways,” Little said. “Search will have some keyword focus within it and the homepage one will be quite brand-safe. Newsletter [headlines] tend to have a little more of a sell… to encourage them to click through… and then social has got to be quite brand safe as well.”

You can’t feed Discover a specific headline: instead the platform chooses “the one that it wants the most”, and Little said most often Discover looks “for the most alluring headline” or “the greatest emotive element”.

Little defined a curiosity gap as “telling the story as it is but withholding the need-to-know piece of information from that headline so that people still feel the need to go and find out more”. (Advocates of the curiosity gap argue it differs from a “clickbait” headline strategy because curiosity gap articles actually deliver the information trailed in the title.)

He gave as examples the following real Reach headlines: “ITV Loose Women’s Janet Street-Porter speaks out from hospital after major surgery”, “BBC Death in Paradise star quits after five years, but fans will be happy with exit” and “NHS symptoms of silent killer, which hits one in 20 but takes years to diagnose”.

In the latter case, Little said: “It’s a very straight, factual headline, but it makes you think: ‘Well, what are those symptoms?’… And as long as you provide them on the other side, Discover rewards you quite heavily.”

Reach uses newsletters and Whatsapp Communities to build topic-based audiences out of Google Discover traffic

Little said Reach did not want the proportion of articles getting into Google Discover to get too large.

“You won’t want to be too reliant on it,” he said, emphasising that “our portfolio is more diverse, in terms of the ways that we generate traffic, than it’s ever been”.

Tech platforms make for notoriously unreliable long-term traffic sources, and Little said Reach has been trying to turn its fly-by Discover visitors into loyal readers.

“A nice example on the Daily Express would be that the Daily Express does really well with Formula One content on Discover.

“We’ve built up a newsletter audience of about 32,000 people, and a Whatsapp community of over 3,000 people, by targeting the people coming in from Discover on F1.

“The Express doesn’t get the same cut-through on Formula One on any other platform [as] it does on Discover, so we know that the generation of that newsletter audience is connected directly to people coming through…

“We’re laser-focused on thinking about: ‘how can we make sure that that traffic is something that we own over a long period of time?’

[Read more: Whatsapp for publishers: How Reach is driving millions of page views via messaging app]

Little suggested Discover has been one way Google responded to the trend of news avoidance.

“Ultimately, for us as a publisher, in some ways Google Discover is a good thing, because it causes us to really think about — if that’s where the audience interest is, that’s what they’re engaging with, how do we start to diversify our content mix to get a broader range of topics across everything we do?

“And I think that’s actually a good thing because it makes us more diverse, it makes us open to new audiences that previously we wouldn’t have been, it makes us think about content in a different way.

“But all of our principles still stand — the content needs to be high quality, it needs to be well-researched, it needs to be written really well and have good imagery.”

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Gemma Aldridge, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, is leaving publisher Reach after 12 years.

Aldridge, previously a features editor and assistant editor at the titles, became editor at the two Sunday papers in April 2021.

In March this year she was appointed executive editor (weekends) of the Mirror with a remit covering all weekend content across the brand’s print and digital platforms under editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston.

Aldridge wrote on Twitter/X on Monday that after 12 years at the Sunday Mirror and People she had made “the tough but exciting decision” to leave the papers “for pastures new”.

“Huge thanks to my colleagues, contacts and freelancers for coming on the journey. It’s been a blast!

“Becoming an editor towards the end of the pandemic in 2021 was a whirlwind. Four PMs, two monarchs, two World Cups, two horrific wars, an Olympic Games, a Jubilee, two royal funerals, a coronation, the fall of the BBC’s anchor and ITV’s golden boy and the general election of a generation.

“I’ll be forever proud of the work we’ve done — pedophiles, con-artists and witch doctors jailed. Rot, wrongdoing and racism at the heart of government exposed. Voices of so many extraordinary and marginalised real people amplified… and a whole load of juicy showbiz scoops in between.”

Aldridge has previously written for Press Gazette about how journalism’s talent shortage can be fixed by getting more young people from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds into newsrooms.

Press Gazette understands Aldridge’s departure is unrelated to news of cuts at sister title the Sunday Express, which includes the departure of editor David Wooding amid a move to a seven-day operation.

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Some of the the Mirror’s best-known columnists are leaving in the latest cutbacks at the title.

Paul Routledge, Miriam Stoppard and Polly Hudson are all leaving the paper over the next few months.

Motoring columnist Colin Goodwin, who works on a freelance basis, is also understood to be leaving as his contract has been ended with publisher Reach.

Political columnist Routledge has been with the Mirror since 1998. Long-serving Mirror journalist Hudson has a full-page column in the Mirror on Wednesdays which carries the tagline: “Warning: may contain sarcasm… and cats.” Dr Miriam Stoppard is another long-serving Mirror contributor and writes a full-page weekly column providing health advice.

The feeling among insiders is that these popular print contributors have been cut because they are not driving sufficient digital traffic.

Mirror editor Caroline Waterston said in a note to staff: “As part of our planning for next year, I have been looking closely at where our priorities lie, what our audiences need from us, both digitally and in print, and what the Mirror needs to grow and thrive.

“With this in mind, I have made some changes to our external columnists as we focus more on how we continue to serve our readers, including attracting new audiences who are only just starting to discover us.

“I’ve already spoken to those who will be stepping down over the next few months. I want to thank Paul Routledge, Miriam Stoppard and Polly Hudson for everything they have given the Mirror – lending so much of their talent, humour and passion to our readers – for so many years. We wish them all well and my hope is we will still get the chance to work with them on their specialty topics when the opportunities arise.

“As you all know, we have a brilliant roster of columnists, including Kevin Maguire, Darren Lewis, Ros Wynne-Jones and many more, and I look forward to continuing to work with them all. I encourage you all to think about how opinion and comment works for your area and what else we could do to engage our audience.”

According to Ipsos iris the Mirror website reached 17 million people in September, putting it behind The Guardian, Mail Online, The Sun and The Independent. The Daily Mirror print edition sells just over 200,000 copies per day and is declining at a rate of 15% year on year.

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BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporters working at various publishers have complained of low pay and being asked to write stories outside their brief.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is an effort to fill gaps in the UK’s regional public service reporting. Under the current contracts, 18 media companies employ 165 LDRs to cover patches across the UK, producing stories that are distributed for free to the BBC and more than 1,000 other news titles around the country.

The BBC is due to retender contracts for the scheme next year.

Publishers who successfully bid for LDR contracts are provided approximately £38,000 (outside London) or £40,500 (inside) by the BBC annually to cover the expenses associated with employing each reporter, including salary, national insurance and management costs.

The contracts also stipulate minimum salaries for LDRs of around £24,000 outside London and £27,000 inside. The differences between the stipulated minimum salaries and the total sums allotted by the BBC have previously led to clashes between the NUJ and LDR contract holders: the union accused Newsquest last year of withholding BBC cash from its reporters, which the company and two peer organisations disputed.

Under the terms of the contracts LDR salaries are guaranteed to increase by either 1.5% or in line with the retail prices index — whichever is less. LDR partners may increase pay above this rate at their discretion, however, and indeed the largest LDR contract holder, local publishing giant Reach, was paying non-trainee LDRs outside London a £31,200 minimum last year.

The NUJ said in a statement following a recent Local Democracy Reporter summit there are “significant differences in rates offered journalists carrying out the same work across different locations.

“Employers are expected to pay, as a minimum, their own salary levels if they are higher than the BBC set minimum. However, the NUJ has highlighted an existing lack of transparency by many LDRS suppliers on approaches to regional and local pay.

“In some cases, LDRs have been given only the 1.5% uplift in April when their newsroom colleagues have received higher annual pay increases. LDRs of similar experience can be paid about £5,000 more than colleagues elsewhere in the same group.”

The union has called on the BBC to stipulate that LDRs “cannot be given less than the general pay increase enjoyed by their colleagues” and to make sure that “local minimum pay rates of suppliers are transparent to their workforce so LDRs can be assured contractual arrangements involving public money are being adhered to”.

Asked about the NUJ criticisms, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “The BBC is completely committed to the ongoing success and development of the LDRS, and we will shortly be announcing a new funding model for the 2025-2027 contract period.

“As part of that process, the BBC remains in discussion with industry partners to ensure increased funding is reflected in salary levels.”

Some Local Democracy Reporters report being pushed to do stories outside their contracted beat

As well as the pay issues, the union said it was “increasingly concerned” at reports from LDRs at the recent LDR Summit that they were being pushed to publish more than the maximum 40 stories a month they are contracted for, and that some had been used “as substitute reporters” to cover things that would typically be assigned to a non-LDR journalist.

Chris Morley, the NUJ’s northern and Midlands senior organiser, said in the statement: “The number of LDR members at our summit and their geographical and employer spread meant this was a representative snapshot of what is happening on the ground in the LDRS.

“It was tangible that many LDRs felt they were being unreasonably pushed around to do things that were of dubious relevance to the LDRS and its original brief. There was frustration that publishers were seeking to extract more and more from them to the obvious detriment to the founding principles of the scheme and other partners of the service.

“Our members feel the BBC is not doing enough to keep its contractual obligations adhered to and in reality are presiding over a laissez faire, permissive regime where the boundaries are being constantly pushed to the expense of the core duty to provide unique content public interest journalism.

“The upcoming retendering process is a golden opportunity for the BBC to reset the service to solve the pay anomalies for LDRs and to make sure the journalistic success of the scheme is not tarnished by any selfish opportunism of suppliers.”

What Local Democracy Reporters say

One Local Democracy Reporter, who works at a National World title, told Press Gazette they had been stuck near the minimum BBC-stipulated salary for years.

They said: “I’ve been ‘lucky’ in that usually I do have the time to pursue stories and haven’t felt pressured to do much outside of the LDRS remit. And when that has happened, I’ve usually stated that it’s not in the remit, and that’s fine.”

But they added that on papers such as theirs “where roles have been cut year after year, there is, I find, a pressure to not let the team down and sometimes that means writing up a press release that I normally wouldn’t have covered”.

A Reach LDR who spoke to Press Gazette said the situation described by the NUJ did not match their experience. They were not under pressure to write high-traffic stories and that they have been able to push back when editors have “overstepped the mark”.

“My only minor complaint is they could pay us more,” they said. “I have thought about retraining and doing something with a higher salary. But I enjoy the job quite a lot to be honest.”

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Press Gazette is honoured to announce the finalists for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

In order to make the shortlists work has to be revelatory, show journalistic skill and rigour and serve the public interest.

The winners will be announced on 12 December at a dinner in London hosted by Radio 2 presenter and journalist Jeremy Vine.

Details here about how to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year will be announced following a second round of judging. The winners of Journalist of the Year, the Marie Colvin Award and the Public Service prize will be announced on the night.

Chairman of judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Without journalism, Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, wronged postmasters would not have a voice and victims of the infected blood scandal would not have a chance of compensation.

“The 2024 British Journalism Awards shortlists celebrate the stories which would not be told without journalists willing to shine a light on uncomfortable truths and publications brave enough to back them up.

“Congratulations to all our finalists and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the British Journalism Awards.

“In a media world which is increasingly controlled by a few parasitic technology platforms it is more important than ever to celebrate the publishers willing to invest in and support quality journalism that makes a difference for the better in our world.”

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

Natasha Cox, Ahmed El Shamy, Rosie Garthwaite — BBC Eye Investigations

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• Missing from mainstream: Excluded children with nowhere to go
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision
• Hospital schools: On the mental health crisis frontline

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• The parents group at the centre of a rollback of trans rights
• ‘One day they may thank us for that “abuse”’: Inside the Bayswater Support Group

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans, Cate Brown, Ed McGown, Tom Stone, Ed Campbell, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Mariah Cooper, Reshma Rumsey — ITV News

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

• Taking the stand: Grace’s story
• Taking the stand: Emma’s story

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

• Level the Field
• Is there a problem with young farmer culture?
• Editor’s view: Facing hard truths about young farmer culture

Joshua Nelken-Zitser, Ida Reihani, Kit Gillet — Business Insider

• Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

• The last stand of the call-centre worker
• Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters
• Last love: a romance in a care home

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

• America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burned his initials on a patient’s liver

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

• ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward
• The life and tragic death of John Balson: how a true crime producer documented his own rising horror
• The Russell murders: is Michael Stone in prison for a brutal crime he didn’t commit?

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

• How Nigel Farage took over my hometown – and why Keir Starmer should be worried
• My battle to bring a predatory Met Police officer from the same unit as Wayne Couzens to justice
• ‘A court packed with those who know their way around already, and jails are too full to take them’

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

• My doctors insist it’s time I died – but I will fight them: Extraordinary case of 19-year-old woman suffering from Charlie Gard condition battling medics’ attempts to ‘condemn her to death’
• Sudiksha: ‘Condemned to Die in Secret’ – The Shocking Story of the 19-year-old’s fight to live

David James Smith — The Independent

• How did so many miss the sinister warning signs about James Bulger’s killer for so long?
• Is Lucy Letby innocent? I’m a miscarriage of justice investigator – and here’s what I think…
• The wife of this Murdoch executive has been missing since the Sixties – will her body now be found?

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

• Nottingham attacks: ‘We have no faith in the police. We want justice’
• ‘A horrible way to die … and no doctors can help you’
• Realising Sarah Everard got into a sex offender’s car was horrific

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

• Ghislaine Maxwell ‘was tortured in prison – now she’s ready for a comeback’: Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite pimp runs half marathons at low-security Florida lock-up and is now ‘focused and motivated’ for her appeal next week, her brother reveals
• ‘I shook Epstein’s hand and asked him what my daughter would be doing’: Virginia Roberts’s father describes dropping her off at paedophile’s mansion, meeting ‘despicable’ Ghislaine… and blasts Prince Andrew for showing ‘no remorse’
• Black Widow who ‘relished killing and had no regard for human life, even for children’: Griselda Blanco shot a child in the head when she was 11 and rose to be Miami’s drug kingpin. As she’s immortalised on Netflix, her son recalls his ‘fearsome’ mother

Local Journalism

Abi Whistance, Joshi Herrmann, Kate Knowles, Mollie Simpson, Jothi Gupta — Mill Media

• Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Investigation: The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Gurpaal Judge
• Exclusive: How did a semi in Harpurhey sell for £1.8m?

Richard Newman, Jennifer O’Leary, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Lough Neagh has become a scene of Biblical disaster, and Stormont was central to its destruction
• Killing Edgar podcast

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

• Building societies scandal: Yorkshire victims reveal shocking stories – and plead for action to be taken
• Philips Trust: FCA got ‘Ponzi scheme’ warning on firm at heart of £138m building society scandal – 18 months before collapse
• Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham Building Societies to pay tens of millions to Philips Trust victims

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

• Teacher’s ‘life blown apart’ in onslaught of hate as false racism claim goes viral
• The truth exposed about ‘secretive’ council meeting on equal pay crisis in Birmingham
• ‘Like a prison’ – the tower block for homeless families that has 8pm curfew and no visitors allowed

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

• Mental health patients ‘raped and sexually assaulted’ as NHS abuse scandal revealed
• Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for 10 years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
• Revealed: NHS regulator’s ‘culture of fear’ that leaves rogue nurses free to abuse patients

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Science for sale: Philip Morris’s web of payments to fund tobacco research
• Inside the strategy doc Philip Morris never meant you to see
• Tobacco state: why Japan was the perfect testing ground for Philip Morris

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

• The trauma ward
• The Cass Review into children’s gender care should shame us all
• Hundreds of doctors are challenging the BMA’s stance on puberty blockers

Robbie Boyd, Eamonn Matthews, Steve Grandison, Ian Bendelow, Sophie Borland, Katie O’Toole, Islay Stacey, Ali Watt, Frances Peters — Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 Dispatches

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

Ellie Pitt, Cree Haughton, Justina Simpson, Ellie Swinton, Patrick Russell, Liam Ayers — ITV News

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth
• Urgent warning amid fears cosmetic fillers could cause immune system problems

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying ‘allowed me to mostly forget’ fears, says Aussie man hit by brain tumour
• Dame Esther’s assisted dying petition delivered to Prime Minister’s doorstep

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie, Joel Moors, Winifred Robinson, Dan Clarke, Philip Sellars, Tom Brignell, Mom Tudie — BBC

• To Catch a Scorpion
• How we found Europe’s most wanted migrant-smuggler
• Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

• Millionaire’s ‘sex worker immigration scandal’
• Hamish Ogston: millionaire accused of exploiting women ‘set up charity to help win knighthood’
• Hamish Ogston: tycoon asked Met to arrest woman who accused him of sex trafficking

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

• ‘Distraught’ Holly Willoughby under police guard after man is arrested over terrifying ‘kidnap plot’
• Police chief faces ‘Walter Mitty’ probe after being pictured wearing Falklands medal despite being 15 at time of war

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Family Court Files: mother ‘devastated’ after rapist father granted contact with child
• Family Court Files: Psychologist’s evidence used to ‘ramp up’ allegations of parental alienation
• Kristoffer White: TBIJ wins court battle to publish name of sex offender

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• Lawsuit accuses Abercrombie & Fitch of funding sex-trafficking operation
• FBI investigate after ex-Abercrombie boss sex claims

Isobel Yeung, Alex Nott, Esme Ash, Nick Parnes, Alistair Jackson, Matt Bardo, Sarah Wilson — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

• Israelis and Palestinians must start to listen
• Wes Streeting’s lessons from Richard Nixon and China
• Here’s the Keir Starmer I’ve known for decades

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

• When I was at school a teacher could call me the P-word. We’ve come so far
• The storm is gathering, and Europe is still dithering on defending itself
• Locked in by language, we are freed by music, poetry, painting … and love

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

• The most pointless job in Wales
• The worst political leader in the UK
• Bluster, fluster and ‘word salad’ nonsense: Vaughan Gething ducks and weaves like a boxer at the Welsh Covid Inquiry

Kitty Donaldson — i

• Part political update, part group therapy: inside Starmer’s Cabinet meeting
• Grenfell is a tragic reminder to the Tories that regulation is not a dirty word
• The winter fuel row is a painful wake up call for new Labour MPs

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

• A summer defined by men killing women and girls. This can’t go on
• Think of this: a plan to ‘warehouse’ disabled people. What kind of nation is Britain becoming?
• Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

• Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
• The narcissism of minor differences, Labour Party edition
• British boomers are losing out for the first time

Specialist Journalism

Peter Blackburn — The Doctor (by the British Medical Association)

• Nowhere left to turn
• Fears for patient care due to shortages of chronic alcohol misuse treatment Pabrinex
• Not the only failing

Lucinda Rouse, Emily Burt, Ollie Peart, Louise Hill, David Robinson, Rebecca Cooney, Andy Ricketts, Nav Pal, Til Owen — Third Sector

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

• Revealed: Water firms dumped sewage 5,500 times in a year ‘illegally’
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• Toxic water, debt and sewage dumping: How Britain’s rivers got so bad

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

• Inclisiran: the ‘extremely unusual’ political influence behind the novel drug’s approval
• Galleri promises to detect multiple cancers—but new evidence casts doubt on this much hyped blood test
• Inclisiran: Government’s strategy to promote cholesterol lowering drug after Brexit was “spectacular failure,” says insider

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

• Revealed: the racehorse owner fronting an illegal bookmaker with more than 1,000 customers
• ‘People don’t want to provide bank statements. We’ve got so many people betting with us’

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• The rise of the parent activist
• AI’s allure is proving hard to resist for the UK’s learners
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

• Over 30 sepsis deaths linked to ‘systemic’ failings, investigation reveals
• Revealed: Doubling of average waits for critical stroke treatments
• Midwives call women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ amid ‘hostile’ environment fears

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

• Prince Harry at 40: ‘All he does is spend time looking back’
• The hospital heart-to-hearts that brought Kate and King even closer
• Prince William to build houses for homeless on his land in Cornwall

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
• First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head
• ‘Who will protect us?’: Christina Lamb on the Yazidis’ dangerous journey home

Alex Crawford — Sky News

• Libya floods: Child’s voice heard under rubble as rescue teams search desperately in Derna for survivors
• Warning of Islamic State’s growing resurgence – as Sky News gets rare access to terrorists’ families
• Report from Lebanon

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

• Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russia’s invasion
• ‘I have buried more than 50 friends’: My life as a British soldier fighting on Ukraine’s bloody front line
• The families of hostages taken by Hamas are desperate – but can Israel get them back?

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

• The secret city of tunnels where hundreds live below Vegas glitz
• Claudia Sheinbaum: Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
• Stand-off at Eagle Pass: welcome to the epicentre of the US border crisis

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

• Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
• Myanmar military forces victims to fight in brutal civil war

Gesbeen Mohammad, Brad Manning, Nechirvan Mando, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, Esella Hawkey, Tom Giles, Hafez — ITV

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Stuart Ramsay, Dominique van Heerden, Toby Nash — Sky News

• Haiti gang boss will take part in talks if invited – but warns foreign forces will be treated as ‘invaders’
• Aboard ‘The Beast’: What do migrants face travelling through Mexico on way to US?
• Shocking scenes in Gaza hospital as IDF moves into Khan Younis | Israel-Hamas war

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Life and death in Putin’s gulag
• Death and destruction in a Russian city
• Life and fate (podcast)

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

• Ransomware attacks hit record level in UK, according to neglected official data
• UK government urged to get on ‘forward foot’ with ransomware instead of ‘absorbing the punches’
• Exclusive: UK to propose mandatory reporting for ransomware attacks and licensing regime for all payments

Marianna Spring — BBC News

• The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots
• Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
• X takes action on deepfake network smearing UK politicians after BBC investigation

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

• ‘Pig butchering’ scammers target BBC reporter
• Sextortion warning: In six hours, my son was dead
• Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

Cathy Newman, Job Rabkin, Emily Roe, Sophie Braybrook, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker — Channel 4 News

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Apocalypse Neagh: The source of 40% of NI’s water is ‘dying’
• Watch: Sam McBride’s in-depth look at Lough Neagh’s blue-green algae crisis

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Backroom deals, mystery companies and a ‘killer lake’: inside DRC’s gas and oil auction
• HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge
• Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

Esme Stallard, Becky Dale, Sophie Woodcock, Jonah Fisher, Libby Rogers — BBC News

• Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days – data suggests
• BBC uncovers 6,000 possible illegal sewage spills in one year

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

• The Watershed Pollution Map
• Landfills across England could be leaking harmful toxic ooze, warn experts
• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Guy Grandjean, Patrick Fee, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight Northern Ireland

• Spotlight – The Lough Neagh Monster
• Hundreds of environmental breaches by Moy Park

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

• ‘If we can’t fish any more, we’re going to die’: the volunteer sea patrols protecting precious Philippine waters
• From sea to plate … to sea! Hong Kong puts oyster shells to new use
• ‘It smells so bad’: glut of wild salmon creates stink in Norway and Finland

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

• Trojan Horsepower – Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby
• F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

Mark Daly, Mona McAlinden, Shelley Jofre, Jax Sinclair, Karen Wightman, Hayley Hassall — BBC Panorama

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?
• Ridley Scott: I didn’t need historians to make my Napoleon epic
• Olly Alexander on Eurovision: ‘I was trying not to have a breakdown’

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘At the start you get molested and by 45 you’re too old to work’ – the secret misery of women working in TV
• Fresh crisis at ‘toxic’ Strictly as ex-staff claim they faced sexualised comments and cruelty
• ‘The outrageousness of what Louis CK did is totally lost’: the film about the backlash faced by his accusers

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

• BBC’s Huw Edwards scandal teen breaks silence in first interview – ‘I felt groomed’
• Huw Edwards scandal teen: Why I first tried to protect BBC star but now feel shame
• Paul O’Grady’s beloved dog nuzzled star’s shoulder as devoted husband battled to save him

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out
• The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?
• ‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

• Strictly pro Giovanni Pernice probed over serious complaints by 3 ‘traumatised’ contestants as BBC ‘gathers evidence’
• Strictly Come Dancing bosses make huge changes to show after Giovanni Pernice quits
• Strictly bombshell as Amanda Abbington demands backstage footage of her and Giovanni as she is diagnosed with PTSD

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

• The British Museum’s missing gems
• Painting stolen in art heist more than 30 years ago returned to Glasgow museum

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• ‘I felt used and abused’ on Arthur: alleged Russell Brand victim speaks

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

• Labour loses Muslim support over stance on Israel-Hamas ceasefire
• Reform UK’s unusual structure with Nigel Farage in the middle
• How Post Office lawyers pushed boundaries in UK sub-postmasters scandal

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

• ‘We’re going to see people dying on the streets’: homeless refugee crisis grips Liverpool
• ‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis
• Met police agree six-figure payout to student hit by baton at protest

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

• Whistleblower reveals corruption and collusion inside Wandsworth Prison
• The fraud scammers putting people out of pocket by cloning phone numbers

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

• Everyone is on their phones. But is it really phone addiction we’re experiencing?
• The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs
• He was shot in the throat. Now he saves gun victims as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Santander arranged billion-dollar oil bond after making green pledge
• Santander weakened fossil fuel policy after raising billions for gas projects

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

• Anxiety drug pregabalin killed my son — and hundreds more are dying from it
• The company taking refugees out of Gaza — and ‘making millions’
• After the earthquake: how Morocco is rebuilding

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

• Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides
• Dodging Israeli rockets with Ghana’s UN peacekeepers
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon: Attacks are causing wildfires across south

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

• London mayor election: Bots, misleading URLs cause voter confusion
• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined
• Ulez: More than 300 cameras damaged or stolen in four months

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

• Special report: Newcastle United sponsor Noon and shocking allegations of worker mistreatment
• Saudi Arabia investigates worker mistreatment allegations after The Athletic report on Newcastle sponsor Noon
• Special report: ‘Disturbing’ safety issues at Hillsborough 35 years after disaster

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

• Angela Carini was sent unforgivably into harm’s way by gutless IOC cowards
• After my grandfather hugged Jesse Owens, the Nazis told him: ‘Never embrace a black man again’
• Michael Vaughan: If I had gone through this racism ordeal at 80, I would have wanted to be shot

Simon Lock, Rob Davies, Jacob Steinberg — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / The Guardian

• Abramovich’s hidden football deals during Chelsea’s time at the top (TBIJ) and Chelsea FC face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success (Guardian)
• ‘I worked for Abramovich?’: footballers were owned by oligarch via offshore deals (TBIJ) and Revealed: Abramovich, the super-agent and the footballers owned as ‘commodities’ (Guardian)
• Leaked documents reveal Abramovich is still connected to Vitesse (TBIJ) and Abramovich loans fund owner of Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest (Guardian)

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

• Drifting through life without gold medals, tortured by his past, and now claims of bankruptcy… How did petulant Wiggins fall so spectacularly from his golden bike?
• Seb Coe explains why he’s HAPPY to break 128 years of Olympic tradition by handing out cash for gold… and reveals Roman Abramovich’s unlikely role in athletics
• The curious case of Jade Jones’ drugs test and why the Chinese might be quick to ask questions, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

• Looting and rioting, setting fire to police officers and hunting down English fans… fearful European clubs are turning a blind eye to shadowy leaders of their untouchable ultras
• Thirty-five years after horror of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mail Sport can reveal that incredibly the stadium is still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel
• Grubby, classless, the five-year legal battle over plane crash victim Emiliano Sala takes us into football’s sewers… where players are pawns and chronically inept clubs desperately try to save cash

Matt Lawton — The Times

• Man City launch unprecedented legal action against Premier League
• ‘The horror is everywhere’ – inside Lord Coe’s secret trip to Ukraine
• Russian athletes should be allowed at Olympics, says government

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

• How does endometriosis affect women in sport?
• USA cricket teen on tackling social media trolls, South Asian heritage and 2028 Olympic goals
• Um-E-Aymen Babar ok Tiktok

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

• Thousands dead, 40 years of cover-up: time for justice for infected blood victims
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims
• Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal

Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday, John Domokos — The Guardian: Unpaid Carers

• Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules
• ‘Injustice’: 92-year-old with dementia told by DWP to repay £7k in disability allowance
• I’m under attack and fighting back: the scandal trapping carers

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

• Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know
• Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban
• Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled ‘unachievable’ as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

• Boys, porn and the alarming way they talk about girls – a special investigation
• School pupils tell how they are victims of sexual harassment every day
• Show some respect: Standard launches campaign with £500k to tackle sexist abuse in schools

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

• Save Britain’s Rivers: i challenges all parties to commit to election manifesto
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• National Trust signs up to i’s Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto

Hanna Geissler, Giles Sheldrick — Daily Express: Give Us Our Last Rights

• My assisted dying petition proves Brits are compassionate – now Rishi Sunak must act
• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying debate must move on to how law will change, MND campaigner says

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

• Revealed: 16 years in prison for stealing a bike and no hope of release – as 7 trapped in jail kill themselves
• ‘He looked like a starving dog on the floor’: Prisoner trapped on indefinite jail term driven to hunger strike
• Father imprisoned for 12 years for stealing mobile phone under ‘cruel’ indefinite jail term reunited with son

Martin Bagot, Jason Beattie — Daily Mirror: Save NHS Dentistry

• Dentists warn ‘rescue plan’ will fail to end crisis as 60,000 people sign our petition
• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

• Ed Davey: ‘Being a carer is harder than being a politician’
• Peter Kyle: It was 5am. A woman said, ‘Your partner is dead ’
• Emma Barnett: ‘The pain was so bad, I was losing the will to live’

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• ICC prosecutor: UK didn’t blitz the IRA — Israel needs that restraint
• The president’s daughter (and Instagram star) wanted by Interpol
• David Cameron: ‘Why did I take the job? Rishi Sunak asked!’

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

• Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
• How Can We Protect Our Children Online?
• Inside No 11 with Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

• ‘You asked me questions I’ve never asked myself’: Keir Starmer’s most personal interview yet
• ‘Dismissing global warming? That was a joke’: Jeremy Clarkson on fury, farming and why he’s a changed man
• ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind

Nick Ferrari — LBC

• Labour leader Keir Starmer joins Nick Ferrari to take your calls
• Champagne and caviar: Esther Rantzen reveals plans for final moments as she pushes for assisted dying law change
• Nigel Farage joins Nick Ferrari

Samantha Poling — BBC

• How I confronted Emma Caldwell’s killer
• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell
• Who Killed Emma?

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey
• Kevin Spacey Breaks Down As He Faces Debt Of MILLIONS
• Piers Morgan vs Rishi Sunak Round 2 | Prime Minister Discusses Israel-Hamas War, NHS, Rwanda & More

Paul Brand — ITV News

• Interview with Rishi Sunak
• Interview with Ed Davey
• Interview with Keir Starmer

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

• Keir Starmer accepted £76,000 of freebies including tickets to over 20 football games
• Keir Starmer faces backlash over early failure to disclose £16,200 in donor-funded clothing
• Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

• Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff
• Rishi Sunak aide placed bet on election date days before announcement
• Tories putting party reputation before sexual assault claim, says alleged victim

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• ‘No room for the Indians?’: Tory donor Frank Hester suggested staff climb on train roof
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

• Election exit poll
• The Battle for Number 10: A Sky News Leaders’ Special
• How Reform fares on Thursday will also determine the Conservatives fate

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

• Commons worker arrested after allegedly spying for China
• My MP husband Andrew Bridgen was captured by antivax ‘cult’
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims

Jane Merrick — i

• Thousands of disabled people died after ‘Covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe
• ‘My daughter was allowed to die of Covid because she had Down’s syndrome’
• Labour manifesto missing pensioners’ winter fuel and bus pass pledges

Steven Swinford — The Times

• Britain and US launch airstrikes on Houthi targets
• Jeremy Hunt looks for £9bn to balance his budget
• Teachers and nurses should get above-inflation pay rise, ministers told

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

• Fujitsu boss lives on ‘blood money’ with £2m mansion as we suffer, says Post Office victim
• Provider boasting of ‘compassion’ threatens daughter with court action over £50k care bill for her 93-year-old amputee mother with dementia
• Mirror tracks down former Post Office IT chief that Horizon inquiry insisted couldn’t be found

Ed Conway — Sky News

• Surge in sale of UK-made cars to Russia’s neighbours shows how it’s beating sanctions
• British firms’ exports are almost certainly bolstering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, Sky data analysis finds
• How British financial services aid sale of Russian gas on European market | Ukraine War

Tom Bergin — Reuters

• Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

• Chinese state banks are lenders to Thames Water’s parent company
• Thames Water owners pile group with debt
• Thames Water shareholders backed away over regulator’s debt demands

Siddharth Philip, Benedikt Kammel, Anthony Palazzo, Katharine Gemmell, Sabah Meddings — Bloomberg News

• Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Faked Employees Too
• Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
• UK Fraud Cops Make Arrest in Fake Airplane Parts Scandal

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

• Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings
• Nuclear Narnia: why is Sellafield Europe’s most dangerous industrial site?
• Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

• Mike Lynch: Flown to the US in chains, now he is free … and talking
• Inside Mike Lynch’s last stand as $11bn fraud trial looms
• The app that promised an NHS ‘revolution’ then went down in flames

Online Video Journalism

Alex Rothwell, Alastair Good, Yasmin Butt, Pauline Den Hartog Jager, Jack Feeney, Federica De Caria, Kasia Sobocinska, Stephanie Bosset — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse | Investigation
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation
• ‘Illegal’ conspiracy theory school exposed | Times Investigation

Andrew Harding — BBC News

• BBC tracks down smuggler behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

Mohamed Ibrahim, Owen Pinnel, Mouna Ba, Wael El-Saadi, Feras Al Ajrami — BBC Eye Investigations

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

• Has the man who killed Jill Dando finally been found?
• Jill Dando murder: Man wanted for questioning matches features of Serbian assassin
• Jill Dando murder: Key witness identifies Serbian assassin

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Clancy Morgan, Amelia Kosciulek, Matilda Hay, Liz Kraker, Dorian Barranco, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna — Business Insider

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey

Ben Marino, Joe Sinclair, Veronica Kan-Dapaah, Petros Gioumpasis, Greg Bobillot — Financial Times

• Chinese brokers launder hundreds of millions for global crime groups | FT Film

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

• Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’
• Huw Edwards used position of power to groom young people for 6 years even sending pictures from BBC desk to impress them
• We’re still suffering, say parents at centre of Huw Edwards scandal as they slam BBC for lack of answers after he quits

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, Esella Hawkey, Imogen Wynell Mayow, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Ian Bendelow, Victoria Noble, Alistair Jackson, Sarah Wilson, Geraldine McKelvie — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions, Channel Four Dispatches Investigations Unit

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• Russell Brand: In Plain Sight

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

• I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks
• My son died in HMP Bedford. I never felt he was safe there
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation

Ruth Evans, Oliver Newlan, Leo Telling, Sasha Hinde, Hayley Clarke, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Holly Bancroft, May Bulman, Monica C. Camacho, Fahim Abed — The Independent and Lighthouse Reports

• At last! Afghan special forces heroes set for sanctuary in UK after government U-turn
• MoD accused of burying admission that UK special forces had power over Afghan sanctuary claims
• Murdered, tortured or in hiding from the Taliban: The special forces abandoned by Britain

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Isabel Alderson-Blench, John Ray — ITV News: The Post Office Tapes

• New secret tape reveals top Post Office lawyer was warned of ‘wrongful’ convictions decade ago
• Secret tape shows Paula Vennells was told about problems with Horizon and warned not to cover it up
• Paula Vennells’ ‘smoking gun’ email reveals Post Office ‘cover-up’

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Samantha Poling, Eamon T. O Connor, Anton Ferrie, Shelley Jofre — BBC Disclosure

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches

Huw Edwards Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’ — The Sun

Naked photos sent in WhatsApp ‘phishing’ attacks on UK MPs and staff— Politico

No 10 pass for Labour donor who gave £500,000 — The Sunday Times

Labour will add 20% VAT to private school fees within first year of winning power — i

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

Harry Lewis-Irlam, Stephen Matthews, Darren Boyle, Rhodri Morgan — Mail Online: Deep Dive

• Anatomy of a loveless landslide: How Labour won on apathy and division
• Hour by hour, how D-Day unfolded…
• How China could seize Taiwan and spark WW3

Laura Dunn, Katie Lilley-Harris, Ellie Senior, Sherree Younger, Scott Nicholson, Jamie Mckerrow Maxwell — KL Magazine

• Rocky Bottoms
• Johnny Cave’s Asparagus
• Archangel Distilleries

Niels de Hoog, Antonio Voce, Elena Morresi, Manisha Ganguly, Ashley Kirk — The Guardian

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

Alison Killing, Chris Miller, Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner, Sam Joiner — Financial Times

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

David Dubas-Fisher, Cullen Willis, Paul Gallagher, Richard Ault — Reach Data Unit

• DWP Cold Weather Payment postcode checker – map shows where households are due £25, £50 or £75 boost
• Enter postcodes in this map to see average house prices in your area
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Despite the fact it’s clinging on by a thread, ‘journalism Twitter’ proved it is still alive (though perhaps not well) when a story broke online earlier this month. As Press Gazette and Hold the Front Page reported, Reach PLC journalists are being asked to write up to eight stories a day – prompting a storm of criticism of the move.

Defending the move in an email seen by Press Gazette, the editorial director of Reach’s Live network said its sites cover major breaking news events by making sure “every possible crumb of audience interest has been spun out into a breakout that finds readers by doing every angle, for every platform”.

I spent two years as deputy digital director for OK!, a brand owned by Reach since its Express and Star takeover in 2018. In the months before I decided to leave, quitting in March last year to take my chances as a freelance, a similar push was ongoing. I had my own misgivings and was, on reflection, struggling with burnout from trying to keep up.

When a major news event occurs, there is obviously a huge appetite for the latest updates and yes, there are usually multiple angles to explore. But flooding a website with tens of stories on the same topic certainly doesn’t do your readers (or staff) a favour.

The constant push for fresh articles is hard to contend with and often makes previous pieces, which could be performing well, out of date. This could mean work completed just hours before is essentially redundant and removed from a homepage. In this situation, a ‘new’ piece is often anything but, as the first couple of lines will contain the latest update while the rest is a rejig of background information. Duplicated content becomes inevitable, which (as no editor should need telling) is a huge no-no.

Putting your audience first means thinking about what they want and need. Do 25-plus articles on one news event fit the bill? Or would they be much better served by two or three breakout pieces and a round-up of the key moments?

There are other questions to ask yourself when commissioning, which get slowly pushed down the list when volume is a priority:

• “Is this story right for our audience?
• “Why is it performing well elsewhere?
• “How could we move it on and do something original?”

And there’s no time to reflect on what hasn’t performed well. Could you make tweaks to improve SEO? Is there a better quote for the headline? Would a different lead image make it more enticing?

Standing out online is tough, but it’s even harder if you’ve created a deluge of repetitive articles across multiple websites. As an editor, it’s also incredibly frustrating when your team does land a brilliant exclusive only to see competing versions pop up on other sites within your network minutes later.

I’ve been a journalist for over a decade and mostly on staff for digital-first publications or ones trying to focus on building an online audience. I’ve worked through plenty of industry-wide shifts, most notably the now-infamous ‘pivot to video’ of 2015, various scrambles for traffic from social media platforms, the podcast boom and the ongoing rise in popularity of newsletters.

During many of these, as both a budding reporter and then an editor, I managed to expand my own skill set, from gaining experience in front of the camera and hosting live events to launching new verticals, video franchises and newsletter products. But a pivot to ‘more, more, more’ gives early-career journalists none of these opportunities.

As one former Reach journalist tweeted, “a 7-3pm shift means writing at least a story an hour, sometimes more… Sometimes I didn’t take a proper lunch break as I felt pressure to hit 8 stories and was consistently stressed about page views”..

Most stories on a shift like this will be rewrites of news lines already out there. There is very little time, if any at all, to think creatively or strive for originality – two skills that have always been important in journalism, but are even more so as we face up to the rise of AI. Brilliant writers – who are capable of going out and finding news, or thinking of fresh approaches – are left trudging through burnout-inducing shifts, as are their editors.

With no digital sub-editors and reams of content to check, I felt my own standards slipping. I know I published stories with headlines that could have been ten times better, and dropped the ball on picking the best angle for something because the strategy was to commission multiple pieces and hope some of them performed well.

I didn’t have time to give proper feedback or pass on knowledge. As toe-curling as they were when I was a twenty-something reporter desperate to impress, frank conversations with my editors about which of my stories hadn’t worked provided some of the most valuable feedback I’ve ever received. They also prepared me well for my articles and comment pieces being discussed, scrutinised and debated online.

Both reporters and editors stuck in the churnalism cycle will inevitably leave and seek out more fulfilling opportunities. Because, despite the strategies some legacy media operations are determined to stick with, it is possible to do things differently and succeed.

Tortoise, founded in 2018 and dedicated to producing “slower, wiser news”, has won multiple awards for its podcasts and recently entered talks to buy The Observer. With local news at a crisis point, in July the Guardian highlighted the work of journalists determined to revive it – and other independent outlets, often publishing in newsletter formats, have sprung up since.

It is possible to do better by being more ambitious, and thinking differently can achieve results. But it’ll never happen if staff aren’t given time to try.

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Reach has said it is hiring 60 new editorial staff which will include “audience writers” and “general assignment journalists”.

The journalists will work across websites including the Mirror, Express, Manchester Evening News, Daily Record, Birmingham Live and Chronicle Live.

The new roles will also include social video journalists working in newsrooms including the Mirror, Express, Daily Star, Daily Record, Liverpool Echo and Wales Online.

According to Reach, these video journalists “will be tasked with turning the day’s biggest stories into social video, as well as helping to shape the news agenda daily with newsroom leaders”.

The move follows a major re-organisation in March which saw 300 journalists (out of a company total of around 2,000) move into the Reach Content Hub. These journalists write traffic-driving content which is shared across multiple sites covering trending stories, wellbeing, money and other subjects.

The hub is focused on creating “mainstream popular content” rather than news targeted at particularly local audiences. Reach said more production journalists will now be added to this team with a focus on money, travel and health.

The Reach Distribution Hub will also expand, sharing content on channels like Whatsapp and via email newsletters.

Reach is also creating a new team of 20 “general assignment” journalists whose role will be to cover breaking stories and trending topics when required across the group.

Reach chief digital publisher David Higgerson said: “The new roles we have created reflect our determination to serve audiences where they are, and be experts in the topics which they tell us matters to them most.

“When we launched our Content Hub earlier this year, it represented a new way of working for us and the results so far have been very encouraging. As we hoped, the team has been able to use data to focus on topics we know readers love – for example like TV/film, which often works well across the portfolio, or like gardening and DIY, which we know are particularly popular for a handful of brands.

“This early success has prompted us to continue to think more creatively about how central teams can nimbly support our brand teams, which is how the General Assignments team came to be. With a strong mix of brands and more journalists than any other commercial publisher in the country, it’s empowering to see that we can be greater than the sum of our parts.”

Earlier this month it emerged that Reach journalists were being encouraged to write up to eight stories per day in order to increase online page views (and so advertising revenue).

Reach cut at least 700 jobs last year as it reported revenue down 5.2% year on year in 2023 to £265m. It has struggled with falling online page views largely caused by changes made by Facebook to devalue news publishers on the platform.

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Update 18 October 2024: The Nottingham branch of the NUJ has issued an open letter hailing the Nottingham Post’s IPSO win over Nottinghamshire Police as “a victory for the free press”.

The letter, addressed to Nottingham Post editor Natalie Fahy, can be found in full at the bottom of this article.

Original story, 19 September 2024: The Nottingham Post has been vindicated after publishing articles about a “non-disclosable” police briefing relating to a stabbing attack that rocked the city last year.

The Reach-owned title reported in February and March that Nottinghamshire Police had held a “non-disclosable briefing” for press about contact they had with Valdo Calocane before he committed a triple murder spree.

In June last year Calocane stabbed to death two university students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley, and school caretaker Ian Coates.

The Nottingham Post and its website Nottinghamshire Live published the headline: “Police don’t want us to tell whole story of attacks investigation / Police ask Post not to publish details around June 13 attacks.”

It said of the briefing, which 35 reporters attended remotely under the agreement that the information was non-reportable: “We believe this unprecedented step is an attempt to prevent reporting.”

They then followed up with: “Reported twice for ‘stalking’ before he went on to kill / Flatmate twice told police he was being stalked by Calocane who, within a year, became a killer.”

And: “Why the Post is publishing details from police briefing with non-disclosure clause,” along with associated social media posts.

Nottinghamshire Police billed it as ‘non-disclosure briefing’

Nottinghamshire Police had argued it was inaccurate to report it had asked the publication to sign a non-disclosure agreement because no legal document had been drawn up or signed.

However the publication was able to provide an email it had received with the subject: “Non-disclosure briefing with the Chief Constable.”

The email read: “The following non-disclosure briefing will be taking place today with the Chief Constable. You will need to confirm in writing that you agree that this is a non-disclosure briefing, none of the information in this briefing is for reporting.

“You won’t be invited into the meeting unless you can confirm and accept the above with an email.”

The editor responded to confirm the attendance of a reporter, who sent their own email which read: “Thanks for sending over the link to register – I confirm to abide by the non-disclosure briefing agreement.”

After the briefing the editor sent a further email asking: “Would you be able to explain please why this briefing was subject to a non-disclosure agreement?”

In a follow-up email the police said: “The reason we can’t talk about some of the information in the public domain is because it could prejudice the independent investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and the review being conducted by the College of Policing.”

In its ruling, IPSO said: “In circumstances where the publication was required to commit in writing not to report the information which was disclosed at the briefing as a condition of attendance, the Committee did not consider that it was significantly inaccurate to describe the arrangement in the terms used by the newspaper.”

The police force took issue with the suggestion it was keeping information from the families of the victims and the public and argued that background briefings with “off-the-record” information have long been held – the only difference in this case was the scale of it with so many journalists attending.

IPSO said in response that the publication was entitled to use its own characterisation of the briefing as “unprecedented” especially as it could not remember a previous time in the past decade where it had to confirm in writing the terms of a “non-disclosure” briefing.

“In addition, this was supported by the complainant’s own submissions – that the Nottingham Attacks and the high level of media interest was unprecedented in itself, so that it held a large off-the-record briefing, which it had not done before,” the complaints committee said.

Nottinghamshire Police also complained about a post claiming the Chief Constable was “hiding away” from the victims’ families but IPSO said this was presented as a quote, having come from a son of one of the victims, so it was not inaccurate.

The force had also complained about the fact it had not been asked for comment but IPSO said it had been alerted by Nottinghamshire Live to the fact that it was planning to publish information from the briefing and that there is no obligation to offer a right of reply, especially considering the article “did not include any inaccurate, misleading or distorted information”.

Editor: ‘I just knew something wasn’t right’

Nottinghamshire Police had wanted a front page print and online correction and apology but ultimately the complaint was rejected.

Nottinghamshire Live editor Natalie Fahy said: “I’ve worked as a journalist for nearly 20 years and I just knew something wasn’t right about the way we were being asked to commit to a promise in writing before being allowed to attend this briefing with Nottinghamshire Police.

“We increasingly find that various institutions try to curtail our freedoms as an independent press and it’s important to take a stand when any of them go too far.

“I hope no police force tries to do something like this again to any other news team and that the communications team and the National Police Chiefs’ Council use this ruling to improve their working practices moving forward.”

Read the full IPSO ruling here.

Nottingham NUJ branch open letter to Natalie Fahy hailing the NUJ decision

“Dear Natalie,

“The Nottingham branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) was pleased to learn of the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s (IPSO) decision not to uphold a complaint against the Nottingham Post, filed by Nottinghamshire Police earlier this year.

“We were disturbed to learn in February of Nottinghamshire Police’s attempt to use a “non disclosure briefing” to prevent reporting of information vital to the public’s understanding both of the case itself, and, crucially, the many interactions between Valdo Calocane, the police, and local mental health services in the months and years prior to the attacks.

“Unequivocally, a fact backed up by IPSO’s ruling, it was in the interest of the people of Nottingham and the grief-stricken families of the victims of the Nottingham attacks to make that information known. It is to your credit that you stuck to this public interest duty.

“The ruling is also a victory for freedom of the press, a principle at the very core of the NUJ. Journalists serve a number of vital functions in a democracy, not least in holding public servants, politicians, and powerful people to account. If journalists and media outlets are prevented from reporting information in the public interest, the public suffers.

“We thank you for fighting for the principle of press freedom, and hope that lessons will be learnt from this incident. Above all, serving and protecting the public must be the top priority for everyone in the privileged position to do so, public servants, officials, political representatives and the free press alike.

“Regards, the Nottingham branch of the NUJ.”

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