Former Washington Post and Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee will join Reuters next month as its news editor for the US and Canada.

Reporting to global managing editor for politics, economics and world news Mark Bendeich, Buzbee will oversee all Reuters text and visual journalists in North America, although financial journalists will continue reporting into global managing editor of business news Tiffany Wu.

Reuters said Buzbee was “one of the world’s most distinguished editors”.

“During her three years at The Post, Sally expanded the Post’s international investigations work, oversaw the creation of new consumer-facing election-night features and built out coverage of wellness and climate. She oversaw coverage that won several Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2022 public service award for an examination of the Jan 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and the 2024 national reporting prize for a visually told investigation of the AR-15’s role in US mass slayings.”

Buzbee said she was “honoured to join Reuters, an organization renowned for its commitment to journalistic excellence. I look forward to working with the talented team to deliver compelling and impactful stories and scoops to our clients, readers, and viewers”.

Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni commented: “I have admired Sally for years, and I am so excited that she will be joining the Reuters family in this key role.

“Her journalistic chops, her management experience, her global understanding, and her positive and pragmatic approach are just what we need in this time of upheaval for the world and for the news industry.”

Buzbee starts in her new role on 11 December. She succeeds Kieran Murray who Reuters said “is moving on to a new role focused on planning, creating and executing newsroom conferences and other events at Reuters”.

Buzbee stepped down as top editor at the Post in June, prompting an ultimately abortive attempt by proprietor Jeff Bezos and chief executive Will Lewis to install Telegraph deputy editor Robert Winnett as her successor.

The post Former Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee joins Reuters as news editor appeared first on Press Gazette.

The decision by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential election could cost the paper more than $20m a year in lost digital subscriptions revenue.

The financial hit would mark a notable setback in Bezos’ attempts to make the paper profitable, which have already seen the title cut 10% of its workforce — some 240 roles — through voluntary buyouts.

NPR reported on Monday that 200,000 Post digital subscribers had cancelled since the publication’s chief executive, Will Lewis, wrote on Friday that the Post would not be making an endorsement. That figure “continued to grow on Monday afternoon”, the US public broadcaster added. The Post has not confirmed the figures.

On Tuesday evening NPR reporter David Folkenflik said the number of cancellations had risen to 250,000.

The cheapest Washington Post subscription, All-Access Digital, costs $40 annually under a promotional discount, but would typically cost $120.

If all 200,000 of the cancelled subscriptions cost that much that would represent an absolute minimum of $8m a year in lost reader revenue and $24m at the full rate onto which the publisher would ultimately try and graduate subscribers. (This does not take into account that some of those subscribers would likely naturally cancel or churn out regardless.)

Lewis told Post staff in May that the Post had notched a $77m loss over the prior year and that its audience had declined 50% from its 2020 peak.

The Post does not disclose its subscriber numbers, but The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2022 that it had 2.5 million digital subscribers, a figure which had itself fallen by 500,000 in about two years. The same report said the Post had been on course to generate $600m in revenue in 2022.

Subscriptions have been central to Amazon founder Bezos’ plans to turn The Washington Post around. Lewis, who was hired by Bezos to oversee the Post in November, previously ran Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones during a period that saw the business paper’s subscriber figures nearly triple in six years to two million.

Lewis told Post staff earlier this year that he hoped to introduce two new subscription tiers, Post Plus and Post Pro — the latter targeted at businesses — to bolster reader revenue, alongside a foray into micropayments.

A Post report this week said subscriptions had been “ticking up ever so slightly” prior to the endorsement announcement.

[Read more: Spiked Washington Post election leader leaves CEO Will Lewis in a deep hole]

Why did The Washington Post not endorse anyone in the election?

The Washington Post’s editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris when they were informed on Friday that the paper would not endorse either Harris or Donald Trump.

In a note published to the Post website, Lewis pitched the decision as a return “to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates”. The title did not endorse any candidates prior to 1976, when it endorsed Jimmy Carter following the Watergate scandal, but has thrown its support behind a candidate at each election after 1988, when it declined to endorse Michael Dukakis.

Despite the note, Lewis and Post opinion editor David Shipley had earlier “privately made a case not to abandon the tradition so close to an election” to Bezos, according to The New York Times.

In an opinion article published to the Post website on Monday evening, Bezos added to Lewis’ explanation: “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

He also dismissed accusations that he had made the decision to protect his other business interests, Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin.

“While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important.”

What have staff said about the Bezos endorsement decision?

As of Tuesday, three members of the Washington Post’s ten-person editorial board had resigned, according to The New York Times, although all three are remaining at the Post in other capacities. Columnists Michele Norris, Robert Kagan and Danielle Allen have resigned from the paper altogether, and the opinion section has published a brief letter, signed by 21 of its columnists, calling the decision not to endorse “a terrible mistake”.

The publication has covered the story as it would turmoil at another paper: the non-endorsement was discussed in a news story about billionaires and chief executives “hedging their bets” ahead of a possible Trump win next week, and it has been the subject of a video by senior video reporter (and so-called “Tiktok guy”) Dave Jorgenson.

Here’s why some billionaires are going soft on Trump. pic.twitter.com/fn5jBsu5hF

— Dave Jorgenson (not JD Vance) (@davejorgenson) October 28, 2024

Former Post executive editor Marty Baron said the decision meant Bezos was “yielding to Trump’s pressure”, and Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the former Post reporters who reported out the Watergate scandal, accused the owner of ignoring “the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy”.

Other staff have pleaded with the public not to abandon the Post’s journalism over the actions of its proprietor. One, columnist Karen Attiah, said on X: “Cancelling Washington Post subscriptions hurts journalists, editors and staffers, not our owner… Please don’t give up on us.”

White House economics reporter Jeff Stein, similarly, wrote on the platform that “there are precious few publications still doing the coverage — however incomplete; however still in need of improvement — aimed at serving the broader public at large. I believe The Washington Post is one of them”.

The post Washington Post’s non-endorsement could cost title $20m+ in lost online subs appeared first on Press Gazette.

Throughout his newspaper career, Will Lewis (now Sir William, courtesy of Boris Johnson) has displayed an extraordinary knack of getting on with bosses.

It served him well as a business reporter, when he broke a succession of stories, having received several of them first-hand. Then as the Financial Times global news editor and when hired by Rupert Murdoch to run the Sunday Times’ Business News and subsequently as the youngest ever editor of The Daily Telegraph in 2006 at the age of 37.

There, the pinstripes supported him as they withstood enormous pressure from politicians and others to fire him, following his purchasing of the stolen computer disk detailing MPs’ expenses claims in 2009. And, back with Murdoch, as the executive charged with clearing up the mess caused by the hacking scandal. Lewis, it was, who led the Managements and Standards committee which handed millions of internal emails to the police which saw 16 journalistic sources jailed and 34 journalists arrested. While that hardly endeared him to fellow hacks, the move helped stave off a corporate prosecution and an impressed and grateful Murdoch made him CEO of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal in 2014.

Now Lewis can be accused of doing his master’s bidding again, this time at the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and the title’s owner, is fearful, probably rightly, of what a victorious Donald Trump would do to his business empire should the Post endorse Kamala Harris. So Lewis, the CEO, has announced the paper will be staying neutral.

Given the Post’s Democrat historic leanings, not to mention its vocal criticisms of Trump, that is being hailed by Republicans as a victory for their man and a blow to Harris. Predictably, the Post’s newsroom, already opposed to the choice of Lewis, has taken the news badly. According to NPR, the Post has been hit by a tidal wave of cancelled subscriptions (some 200,000).

Deciding who to back in an election is one of those moments in charge of a newspaper that feels imbued with power and influence. Often the leader is penned by the editor themselves, such is the regard in which it is held.

In reality, of course, they are usually following the same political line as the paper has always followed and the same as that of the owner. In truth, as well, just how impactful the decision is open to doubt.

During the last UK election, the Telegraph and Mail, unsurprisingly swung behind the Tories and devoted acres of space, not to mention their leaders, to promoting Rishi Sunak, only for Sir Keir Starmer to enjoy a landslide.

Back in 1992, The Sun may have claimed “It’s The Sun Won Won It” across its front page, the morning after the Conservative victory, but that was typical, cheeky hyperbole. Doubtless The Sun’s opposition, represented by a pre-election banner picture of Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader as a light bulb and inviting the last person leaving the UK, should he win, to turn off the lights, helped, but that is all.

Readers are perfectly capable of making up their own minds, they do not need to be told how to vote. Indeed, to say otherwise is to insult their intelligence. Listing the strengths and weaknesses of the main candidates and inviting them to form their own opinion is surely a better, more grown-up approach.

Unfortunately, proprietors tend not to see it like that. For them, selecting who to support is a moment in the spotlight when they can appear omnipotent. In today’s frequently loss-making world where newspapers are concerned, it is one of the reasons they own a newspaper at all.

They enjoy the wooing by the main parties, sometimes made more out of hope than expectation. Even a less-than-full-hearted endorsement of the candidate they were always going to support can be claimed as a victory by the other side. Therefore, remaining impartial when they were definitely only going one way will be seen as a triumph by Trump supporters.

It leaves Lewis in a deep hole. It’s not true to say it will have lost him the newsroom – he never had it in the first place.

The Post’s reporters did not take kindly to a Brit being imposed upon them. Lewis had paid for a story, something forbidden under US journalistic ethics – the fact the British public had a right to know what their MPs were claiming and how much they were paying did not wash. His role in the post-hacking clear-up was also held against him. Then, came his appointment of Rob Winnett, a former Telegraph mucker, as editor of the Post. Winnett’s subsequent decision not to take up the new job, weakened Lewis still further. Whether Lewis survives remains to be seen.

There is another loser in this and that is the Post. The brand, built on the back of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers and the fierce courage it took to get them into print, has sustained a heavy blow.

Once the proud possession of a newspaper-owning family, it’s clearly reduced to playing a bit part role in its current proprietor’s universe. Bezos has got much bigger interests to concern him more than the venerable Post. It might give him kudos but not if it imperils his other investments.

Of course, Bezos will claim different. He will try to cling to the belief that the Post’s slogan, ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ is still intact.

To an extent he is right. All the Post did was not endorse, everyone knows how they feel, really. It’s not as if they’ve never done it before. What’s the big deal?

First, it could have been handled better, trailing in advance its likely impartiality. Second, this is the one election above all elections that the Post had to come out for the Democrats. Bezos has handed a PR gift to a man the paper’s staff and readers could never countenance.

The post Spiked Washington Post election leader leaves CEO Will Lewis in a deep hole appeared first on Press Gazette.

Could old-fashioned SMS texting be a more reliable alternative to fickle social media algorithms for publishers?

That’s the theory of Subtext, which was founded in 2019 within US publisher Advance Local’s tech incubator Alpha Group. This year it will send an estimated five billion text messages.

What is Subtext?

Subtext operates in 200 countries and works with a variety of media companies, artists, political candidates and sports brands.

US publishers using Subtext include: the New York Post, Forbes, Washington Post, Axios, Conde Nast, Gannett, The New Yorker, Page Six, CNET, Punchbowl News, The Hill, CBC, Hearst Newspapers, Buzzfeed, Pitchfork, Vox, PBS, McClatchy, Morning Brew and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

They use the platform to drive traffic, engage subscribers, reduce churn and even drive affiliate revenue.

In the UK the platform is less well-known, although Subtext chief executive and co-founder Mike Donoghue told Press Gazette: “You’ll see a fair amount of international expansion for us in the media space in the not too distant future.”

“When we conceived of the idea of Subtext, we took a look at – for media companies and artists and creators – the amount of time and money and love and effort and resources that went into building up these big audiences on social channels only for a lot of those same companies to come to the realisation that they were renting the relationship with their audience, as opposed to owning a really meaningful direct line of communication,” Donoghue said.

[Previous Press Gazette platform profiles have included: Bluesky, Whatsapp Channels, Snapchat and Factiva.]

Subtext versus email newsletters

Alpha Group initially looked at email but decided it was “already really crowded”, with Donoghue pointing to the likes of Beehive, Ghost, Substack, Lead and Tiny Letter (which closed down earlier this year).

In addition, he said, email “doesn’t feel all that personal” compared to texting and its efficacy recently “has been waning”.

“Click through rates are down, open rates are down. The ability to monetise them subsequently is down. So we have a lot of clients that will use text as an alternative to email newsletters, with the added benefit – and I think this is cool – of leveraging the bilateral nature of the communication, meaning you can send a message to all of your subscribers and ask a question.

“So like who is your favourite political candidate, or who’s going to win the football game this weekend, or whatever it’s going to be, your audience can respond to you one on one, and you can pull them, you can create participatory experiences for them.”

Donoghue also said email could be affected by AI assistants providing summarised versions of people’s inboxes. He described an “AI-driven distillation and race to the bottom in terms of quality of content”.

Conversely, Donoghue said, texting still has an average open rate of 98% and Subtext has a 32% clickthrough rate which he called “markedly better than email”.

Subtext versus Whatsapp

Meta-owned rival Whatsapp is still a smaller player in the US messaging market, where it hit 100 million monthly active users (almost a third of the population) in July.

But in the UK Whatsapp is the most popular messaging service according to Ofcom, which said in a report last year it had been used by 76% of adults in the previous three months and that it was the main online communication service of 65%.

As a result some publishers have been driving engagement using its Channels and Communities functions which, respectively, allow publications to broadcast articles to any user who subscribes to their feed or to set up groups of up to 2,000 members to share stories and information.

Mirror and Manchester Evening News publisher Reach last year claimed an open rate for messages shared through Communities of around 90%.

Donoghue argued that Subtext has “a couple of meaningful differentiators” from Whatsapp.

Whatsapp’s Communities tab, he said, is “relegated to the back end of the app itself because it creates a lot of static and I don’t even really think that Meta knows how they want to use it at this point”.

In addition, he said, Subtext users own all of their data and can take it to another platform or plug it into another use case whereas Meta owns user data gathered on Whatsapp.

Donoghue said: “Meta, at any time, could change the rules and decide you spent all this time and money to build up this audience in Whatsapp and now you can only talk to 10% of them or you can only talk to 5% of them. So it’s a reskinning of any other social algorithm.

“The other thing I would say, and this is based on real world experience, but Whatsapp if you do it at scale can be a very expensive proposition. SMS isn’t cheap, but Whatsapp messaging at that sort of scale tends to be pretty pricey.”

How Subtext works

Sending SMS messages at scale is “deceptively complicated”, according to Donoghue. Delivering thousands of messages at once requires a relationship with the phone networks and the phone number sending them needs to be registered.

Subtext has a dashboard through which clients can compose messages and add emojis, links, audio and GIFs and choose who to send them to, meaning potentially just a particular zip code or country. It also means people can reply to the messages, with their responses appearing on the dashboard, without creating an unwieldy group chat situation.

“Let’s say the alternative is building up a really big list of phone numbers and then from your phone trying to send a text message to all those people,” Donoghue said. “It turns into a group chat where you have 10,000 people talking all at once and it’s hard to follow the thread.”

Subtext offers two revenue models: publishers are more likely to pay a licensing fee to use the platform with additional costs relating to the total number of messages sent in a month. This model is scalable, Donoghue said, meaning large publishers pay more than tiny outlets with a low number of subscribers.

The second model, which is more popular with creators or other sole practitioners like individual journalists, is a paid subscription model like newsletter platform Substack. For example the personality might charge $10 a month and share a cut of that revenue with Subtext. This is a similar model to Substack, which UK local long-read publisher Mill Media has just decided to leave because the platform’s 10% revenue cut would mean the publisher losing more than £100,000 next year.

“It’s proven to be really popular with creators because it creates a financial annuity and an audience that they can own versus having to monetise social platforms through, like, brand sponsorships, which could be really fleeting, and it has a drag on your community,” Donoghue said.

Subtext has done a deal with News Revenue Hub, a US non-profit that works with newsrooms to help them develop sustainable revenue models without paywalls in an attempt to keep quality information free and accessible to all. The deal gives a 50% discount on use of Subtext to more than 100 newsrooms that are in a paid relationship with News Revenue Hub, whether through the use of their fundraising software or their consulting services.

News Revenue Hub chief of staff Sarah Bishop Woods, who previously used Subtext when she worked at Vox Media, told Press Gazette why texting is attractive to their publisher partners: “News means something different today. It’s much more engaged in a person’s life. It’s much more a service than just a broadcast…

“We know that traffic declines to websites have been ongoing and there’s some expectation that changes with artificial intelligence and SEO declines that it might be more difficult for people to discover news in the same habit that they’re used to discovering news over the last decade. But habits change, and we need to change with the times, instead of against them. And we’ve always encouraged our newsrooms to develop a deep and loyal relationship with the people they serve. A lot of that product can be, you know, newsletters or events, really smart and strategic social media distribution, but increasingly, it also means literally going reaching someone where they are.”

But she also warned: “When we’re thinking of audience diversification, SMS texting with tools like Subtext is really important but it does not diminish the importance of doing on the ground, community engagement as well.

“It’s something that creates a whole picture, but it’s certainly not something that you can remove something else and expect to have success. So we’ve really been encouraging our newsrooms to develop a whole strategy instead of piecemealing ideas.”

How news publishers are using Subtext

Caitlin Petrakovitz, senior digital editorial manager and director of messaging experiences at Gannett, told Press Gazette the USA Today Network is using Subtext in different ways “from SMS sports focused groups to local weather alert groups and beyond”.

This year USA Today launched Your Vote, a free text group via Subtext that promises to “help you cut through the noise of TV ads and spam calls and talk about how this year’s elections will impact you”.

Petrakovitz said: “With nearly 5,000 current subscribers, we aim to inform people in a more personal and authentic way, answering questions in real time directly from our reporters and receiving feedback from readers that helps improve our coverage.”

Here are some specific use case examples:

Driving traffic and getting stories out quickly

Donoghue noted that many people do not sit all day in front of a computer and might miss breaking news updates.

“If you wanted to break that news on X [formerly Twitter] or something, you can share that, but it means, one, that user needs to be on X, two, the algorithm needs to decide that it gets delivered immediately, and, three, they need to be part of that audience cohort that’s actually going to see the message,” he said.

“Whereas with text messaging, for example, it’s going to get delivered to 100% of the audience within less than a minute.”

Public service information

Texting is a resilient tool that can be used to get information out even during internet and power outages, according to Donoghue.

More than 8,000 people signed up to receive updates on curfews, food and school openings from McClatchy titles Miami Herald and Bradenton Herald or Gannett’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune when millions were left without power due to Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022.

Donoghue said: “SMS is a really vital communication tool to those users and because it operates without an internet connection, it can be a really important way to keep people safe and keep them informed. Whereas email newsletters would not be able to do that. The general website, social, would not be able to do that.”

Donoghue also raised the example of LA Taco journalist Lexis-Olivier Ray who primarily covers the unhoused population in Los Angeles and has a text group of about 100 people sharing information about services they might need.

“He doesn’t have 100,000 subscribers, and it’s not a commerce use case, not making a ton of money off of it. But what he does is communicate really crucial updates…” Donoghue said.

Subscription strategies

Of the potential for subscription-based businesses, Donoghue said: “In this scenario, maybe you have a paid digital offering and the ability to text with individual journalists or to receive texts on a subject that is really of interest to you is a value add, and the goal there for media companies, for publishers, is to differentiate their paid subscription offering.

He added: “It’s also meant to engage what we would call normally zombie subscribers, so people that sign up for a subscription, they don’t come to the site every day and read stories, so they’re not getting the requisite value, and it’s really only a matter of time until they remember that they’re paying for it, and then they cancel. So it’s a churn reduction effort. It’s a subscriber engagement effort.”

The Washington Post told Press Gazette its longest project on Subtext has been Texts with Tumulty (pictured, top), through which opinion columnist Karen Tumulty shares updates with her most engaged readers (dubbed Tumultexters) while she’s on the 2024 US presidential election campaign trial, and occasionally answers their questions.

A Post spokesperson said: “We’ve seen great success by building a solid core community in the thousands of ‘Tumultexters’, with a high engagement rate of people opening and engaging in these snackable updates. Highlights from Karen include her insights on Super Tuesday and on-the-ground at the conventions, with updates continuing through the election.”

According to Subtext, USA Today newsletter The Short List sends a headline and link to the full read each day and found that text message subscribers spend longer on the articles.

It can also be used to help with acquisition: Donoghue said for example media companies could make it free to sign up for updates about big tentpole events like the Olympics or the US election in the hope of converting users into paying subscribers.

Affiliate revenue

Donoghue described e-commerce as an “emerging popular use case”.

The likes of Wirecutter at The New York Times, Forbes and CNET which have large affiliate businesses put out messages like daily product round-ups and flash sales, he said.

A Buzzfeed case study on the Subtext website states: “Buzzfeed Shopping used Subtext to great effect during the holiday shopping rush, learning from subscribers about what products were on their holiday wish list. Subtext helped them gain valuable audience feedback and increase final conversions and overall customer satisfaction.”

The post The joy of text: Publishers use old tech to reach new readers appeared first on Press Gazette.

Many leading UK news publishers saw a bump in website traffic during the Paris Olympics, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows.

US sites meanwhile saw a drop in visits compared to the previous fortnight, likely because the weeks before the event saw the Donald Trump assassination attempt and news Joe Biden was standing down as president.

But in both the US and UK the year-on-year traffic trends were strongly up and publishers reported far more interest in the Paris games than the covid-impacted 2021 Tokyo event.

Among top UK news sites, the publishers that saw the largest bump over the 18-day Olympic period this year were the BBC (visits up 5% on the 18 days immediately before), The Independent (10%) and the Birmingham Mail (12%).

Publishers say they saw as much as double their 2021 traffic for 2024 Olympics

Mail Sport said it received double the average daily page views at the 2024 Olympics versus Tokyo, which had been scheduled for summer 2020 but was postponed because of the Covid pandemic and took place without spectators.

The Sun, similarly, told Press Gazette it saw 70% higher site traffic on Olympic articles this summer, and The Guardian’s total page views were 44% higher than during the Tokyo Olympics and 52% higher than Rio de Janeiro’s. Daily page views were “up every single day except one compared to previous Games”, a spokesperson for The Guardian said.

Independent editor Geordie Greig said in a statement that site traffic was “33% higher than forecast” over the Paris Olympics and that the title’s reporting on Imane Khelif, a female boxer subjected to online backlash over her gender, “generated 20% of our overall Games traffic”.

“Gymnast Simone Biles, sprinter Noah Lyles and British tennis hero Andy Murray also captured our readers’ imagination,” he said, “with millions of people reading our industry-leading commentary from our correspondents in Paris.”

Mail Sport said it saw more than 100 million page views on Olympic-specific stories. The publisher added that it saw its third-most daily page views in the last four years on Tuesday 6 August, a day that featured the finals of the men’s 1,500 metre and the women’s 200m runs.

The Guardian said the fourth day of the games, 30 July, saw its greatest traffic, “with Simone Biles and the USA winning gold in the gymnastics team final, while other top stories included the Guardian’s medals table, the opening ceremony live blog and news stories on Imane Khelif, ‘floating surfer’ Gabriel Medina and Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification”.

A spokesperson for The New York Times Company said its sports title The Athletic saw “two of our ten biggest weeks” ever during the Paris Olympics.

The Washington Post, similarly, said the three weeks of the games “were among The Washington Post’s top five weeks of the year in terms of reach, across site, app and off-platform”.

The title’s most-read reporting included live event coverage and “pieces reporting on issues in the spotlight”, including the backlash against Khelif.

A spokesperson for the publication said an animated Instagram post about gymnastics moves originated by and named for Simone Biles “had a reach of 8.5 million and was a great example of our unique coverage that went beyond the medal counts”

Sun head of digital sport says Olympic traffic no longer driven by social media

Alex Peake, The Sun’s head of digital sport, told Press Gazette there was “much more of an even split” in where that traffic was coming this year when compared with in previous Olympics.

“Direct traffic was up, search traffic was up, and it’s just a bit more of a balanced picture as opposed to what it was three years ago when Facebook was nearly 50% of the page views we drove during Tokyo,” he said.

“The Olympics, I suppose, is different to pretty much everything else we cover. When you look at the sports we do day in, day out, like football or boxing, everything follows a pattern.

“The great thing about the Olympics, which makes it quite special to cover, is the fact that a lot of the people we’re writing about, we don’t know anything about, that we’ve probably never heard of them before.”

Press Gazette looked at daily traffic over the period for the top 20 publishers on Press Gazette’s June rankings of the most-visited news sites in the US and the UK. (Daily traffic data was not available for certain sites: in the UK, ITV, Money Saving Expert, The Times, Healthline, Global, GB News and the Daily Record, and in the US USA Today, Forbes, CNBC, Newsweek and The Guardian.)

[Read more: Advertising blocklists unfairly targeted coverage from Olympics and Euros]

In the US, meanwhile, only two top-20 sites — news.yahoo.com and people.com — saw more traffic over the Olympics than the weeks leading into the games.

However, most news sites analysed by Press Gazette did see US traffic growth when compared against the same set of dates last year. Fox News, The New York Times, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and BBC.com all saw growth of between ten and 20%, while People.com saw a 46% rise in traffic and the Associated Press 63%.

The same was true in the UK, where four sites — Sky News, The Telegraph, Metro and the Birmingham Mail — all saw average daily page view growth of at least 30%. The Birmingham Mail saw an increase of 72% on last year.

Top stories in search during the Olympics

Similarweb also carried out an analysis for Press Gazette looking at which news publishers performed well on Google searches for the words "Olympic", "Olympics" and the names of various gold medal winners.

Among the winners on search in the US were Yahoo.com (1.35 million search clicks), USA Today (1.3 million) and NBC News (1.2 million).

In the UK Mail Online secured the most Olympic search traffic, with 644,010 domain clicks. It was followed by The Guardian (462,450) and the BBC (395,110).

The data also reveal the top-ranked URL for each site in the analysis, showing which stories did best on search.

In the UK, the top article at half of the 16 domains assessed covered Imane Khelif or Lin Yu-ting, another boxer whose gender became a focus of abuse online. Other well-performing stories covered the men's tennis finals and a red card for Brazil's all-time leading women's goalscorer. In the US only four of the top stories at the the 18 domains analysed concerned Khelif or Lin: other successful coverage recapped the opening ceremony, covered gymnast Simone Biles or simply tracked the US medal count.

The post How Paris Olympics led to traffic boost for leading news publishers appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette has ranked the biggest UK and US news publishers on Instagram with four achieving follower-counts above ten million.

We looked at the news publishers from our top 50 UK and US website rankings to compile our new research.

Two publishers – BBC News (27.8 million) and CNN (20 million) – are above the 20 million mark. When Press Gazette last ranked publisher Instagram accounts (in June 2023) BBC News had 7.4m followers on the platform and CNN 4.2m.

The top two on Instagram are followed by the New York Times (18.2 million) and People (13.6 million).

In comparison, only one news publisher (Daily Mail) from the two top 50 lists has topped ten million on Tiktok, the newer platform.

Ladbible does not feature in the latest ranking because it has it has fallen out of the list of the top 50 news websites in the UK. It currently has 14.1 million followers to its biggest Instagram account. Cosmopolitan, The Daily Wire, The Verge, NME, Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit similarly have fallen out of our top 50s so do not eapp

Excluding the impact of Ladbible’s removal, the top seven remain the same – but The Guardian (5.8 million followers) in eighth place has overtaken Buzzfeed and Unilad (both 5.7 million).

The fastest-growing Instagram account over a two-year period was the New York Post, increasing by 74.7% since 2022 to 1.2 million.

It was followed by Healthline Media (up 60% since 2022 to 1.3 million) and UK tabloid the Mirror (up 57% to 441,000).

Four news publishers on our list saw their Instagram followings decline since June 2023: Buzzfeed (down 7%), sister publication Huffpost (3% to 3.2 million), Unilad (down 2%) and The Daily Beast (down 2% to 452,000).

Since June 2023 only, the Mirror was the fastest-growing (up 45%) followed by ITV News (up 34% to 512,000) and the New York Post (up 32%).

But the follower count for BBC News increased the most in absolute terms (2.1 million) since last year - almost double the next largest growth seen by Fox News (up 1.2 million to 9.4 million).

Four added at least one million followers to their counts - also including the New York Times and People.

The percentage of people saying they use Instagram for news has risen from 2% in 2014 to 15% this year in 12 key markets surveyed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (UK, US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Ireland.

It remains behind Facebook, Youtube and Whatsapp in importance but has overtaken Twitter/X and is still ahead of Tiktok and Snapchat.

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Five of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US have increased their core Tiktok followings by more than two million people in just over 18 months.

Press Gazette has updated our ranking of the biggest and fastest-growing news publisher Tiktok accounts, having last done so in January 2023.

The analysis features the 70 news publishers from Press Gazette’s most recent lists of the 50 biggest UK and US news websites that were found on Tiktok. 

Nineteen of the publishers are not included in the growth comparisons as they were not included in our previous analysis – with some of those likely to have been more recent sign-ups to Tiktok. 

The rankings look at each publisher’s main account only but it should be acknowledged that some news outlets create separate accounts for different verticals.

Reuters and The New York Times saw by far and away the biggest percentage increase in their Tiktok following during the period, but this is due to their small followings at the start of 2023.

Among those with over 100,000 followers at the time of our last update, the 371% growth seen by BBC News was the largest.

CNN (238%), GB News (221%), Yahoo News (218%), CNBC (205%) and The Independent (204%) were the other larger accounts to more than triple their follower count.

There was also some impressive growth for local news sites such as the Liverpool Echo (204%) and the Manchester Evening News (193%), though Newcastle’s Chronicle Live (464%) remains small (6,200 followers) despite that growth.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Washington Post (13%) and The Telegraph (14%) took the least advantage of TikTok’s growth.

In terms of absolute growth, there was no matching the Daily Mail, which added 5.6 million new followers over the period. This was more than two million more than any other news publisher in our analysis.

Insider, a section of Business Insider, was a distant second place, adding a still impressive 3.5 million new followers in the period.

CNN (3.1 million), Sky News (2.9 million) and BBC News (2.9 million) also added more than two million followers each since the start of 2023.

The New York Times added almost 750,000 followers from a starting point of under 5,000, while Reuters added over 175,000 from a base of less than 1,000.

Who are the biggest news publishers on Tiktok in the UK and US?

The Daily Mail, which was in third place behind ABC News in January 2023, is now leading the way at the top with nearly ten million followers for its main account on the platform at the time of writing. (Between our data collection and time of publication, it has now surpassed ten million.)

One of its smaller accounts, Daily Mail UK, which has 980,800 followers, would still place comfortably in the top half of the outlets considered. It celebrated surpassing ten million across all its accounts, which also include a global news account and others dedicated to crime, sport, royals, showbiz, the US and Australia, in January this year.

It does have a smaller Tiktok following than Ladbible (13.8 million followers on its main account), but although the younger brand was top of the ranking in 2023 it was not included in our latest update as it is not currently ranked in the top 50 news websites in the UK.

Of the 70 newsbrands covered in this analysis, 21 were followed by more than a million people. This was more than the number (19) who had followings below 100,000.

This increased reach comes off the back of further growth for TikTok, which is now used for news by 8% of people in 12 key markets including the UK and US according to the 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report - up from 1% in 2020.

Across all countries surveyed where Tiktok operates, it is now used for news by 13% of people - overtaking X/Twitter (10%) for the first time - and 23% of 18 to 24-year-olds, the report found.

However 27% of Tiktok users said they struggle to detect trustworthy news on the site, the highest of all social media platforms covered. And only 34% of Tiktok users said they pay attention to journalists or news media, preferring online influencers and personalities. By contrast, on X 53% of users say they pay attention to journalists or news media.

Note: This article was updated after publication to add Channel 4 News, which we discovered had been wrongly missed off our list of the UK's top 50 publishers and therefore met the criteria for inclusion on this ranking.

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The Washington Post’s planned creation of a “third newsroom” has taken a key step with one of its managing editors assigned to the task.

The third newsroom, first announced by Post chief executive William Lewis last month, is intended to help the legacy news title reach new audiences – especially those who might currently only see its work off-platform including on social media – and find new revenue streams.

It will be distinct from the Post’s news and opinion operations and the aim is that it will be operational by the third quarter of the year.

Krissah Thompson, who has been at the Post since 2001 and a managing editor since 2021, has been assigned away from her day job to “run the newsroom process building the third newsroom”.

She is currently creating a task force that is expected to be in place this week and will field input from commercial colleagues.

Executive editor Matt Murray said in a note on Monday she was “uniquely qualified” for the job because in her current role she has overseen “hiring and recruiting, diversity and inclusion efforts, features, audio and climate coverage and numerous initiatives”.

At the start of June Murray was announced in the top job of executive editor to replace Sally Buzbee, who left with immediate effect. It was intended that Murray would stay in the role until after the US presidential election in November at which point he would move to oversee the third newsroom.

However his planned replacement as executive editor, Telegraph deputy editor Robert Winnett, decided not to join the Post following criticism in US media relating to allegations he published stories based on illegally obtained material.

A spokesperson for The Washington Post would not clarify on Monday whether Murray is still expected to take over the third newsroom in November or if he will now stay in the executive editor job.

What will The Washington Post’s ‘third newsroom’ do?

The third newsroom proposal comes amid a period of intense financial pressure for the Post. Following a boom time during Donald Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post saw a tail-off in subscriptions and traffic: Lewis disclosed to staff earlier in May that the paper lost $77m last year.

Questions remain over how exactly the third newsroom will address that crisis. Lewis told staff last month it is “core” to the Post’s “Build It Plan on a page to reach more, and make more out of the audiences we currently don’t serve — our untapped audience. You could say that it’s us matching our structure to our strategy.”

The Post said last month the new operation will focus on social media and service journalism and use tools like video storytelling, embracing AI and flexible payment methods like micropayments.

In his note on Monday, former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Murray described the project’s focus as “properly structuring ourselves for a rapidly and regularly changing news ecosystem”, something the Post intends to do by “developing new products and formats” and putting its content in front of “different audiences, especially off-platform users who consume Washington Post journalism but are less likely to subscribe for our traditional offerings”.

Similarly, in 2022 Thompson told Press Gazette the launch of a dedicated wellness department staffed with 20 journalists was intended in part to reach new audiences with “utility” or “service-oriented” content, relating making conventional science reporting more relevant to people’s everyday concerns.

Despite their popularity among consumers, news publishers have generally been sceptical of micropayments. Small payments for individual articles have been proposed as a useful way of bringing in revenue amid an unstable advertising market, but publishers have tended to determine they are not worth the effort nor the risk of cannibalisation.

There have been suggestions the third newsroom may take after The News Movement, a social-first, youth-focused news outlet founded in 2020 by Lewis, Kamal Ahmed – who also left the business this year to become director of audio at The Telegraph – and former Dow Jones executive colleagues of Lewis.

The News Movement attempts to solve the problem of monetising news on video platforms like Tiktok, mostly by striking paid partnerships with larger news organisations and media agencies in need of social news expertise.

The model is as-yet unproven. Adweek reported in November that The News Movement was on track to net more than $1m in revenue after its first year operating in the US, but that news came shortly after the business made layoffs on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ahmed told Press Gazette in November that despite the cuts, the company was on a “path to profitability”.

The News Movement has since attracted some attention amid scrutiny of Lewis himself, with the Post itself reporting in June that the paper had struck a deal with TNM while Lewis continues to hold equity in the start-up.

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Update, 21 June: Telegraph deputy editor Robert Winnett will not take up his planned position as editor of The Washington Post after his appointmentwas followed by a storm of critical coverage in US media, including from the Post itself.

Winnett had been hired to the role by Washington Post publisher Will Lewis, who was previously Winnett’s boss as editor of The Telegraph.

But on Friday afternoon Telegraph editor Chris Evans emailed staff saying: “I’m pleased to report that Rob Winnett has decided to stay with us.

“As you all know, he’s a talented chap and their loss is our gain.”

Winnett’s appointment prompted scrutiny in US media, with headlines focusing on his work at the Sunday Times in the early 2000s. Concerns were raised that Winnett published stories based on material obtained illegally by blagger John Ford.

Lewis was himself facing alarm among staff over his work at News International cleaning up the hacking scandal in the 2010s and over the sudden departure of executive editor Sally Buzbee.

Lewis wrote to staff at The Washington Post following Evans’ announcement to confirm the news on their end.

In a note seen by The New York Times, Lewis said it was “with regret that I share with you that Robert Winnett has withdrawn from the position of editor”.

“Rob has my greatest respect and is an incredibly talented editor and journalist…

“We will immediately launch a new search for editor of our core coverage. We will soon announce both the recruiting firm and process we will utilise to ensure a timely but thorough search for this important leadership role.”

Original story, 3 June: Robert Winnett, who has been deputy editor at The Telegraph for ten years, has been named the next editor of The Washington Post.

Winnett will join his former Telegraph editor William Lewis, who is now chief executive of the Post, after the US election is held in November.

His appointment came as it was announced Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee stepped down on Sunday night. Buzbee will be replaced by former Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray until Winnett’s arrival.

Winnett said: “After almost 17 years at The Telegraph, it has been an emotional decision to leave, as I am incredibly proud of all our journalism every day and love being a part of this organisation. The Telegraph is a brilliant place with brilliant people and what we publish is truly world-beating.

“I will miss being a part of the exciting times ahead as The Telegraph continues to lead the way digitally. But I will continue to read, watch and listen to everything the Telegraph publishes with great interest.”

Winnett has been The Telegraph since 2007 and worked on the agenda-setting MPs’ expenses scandal investigation under Lewis. He later became political editor before taking on his current deputy role ten years ago.

Telegraph editor Chris Evans said: “Rob is the most tremendous journalist and has been at the heart of all that is best about The Telegraph. We owe him a great deal. The Post has made a fine choice in appointing him its next editor and he leaves with both our gratitude and our best wishes.”

Before joining The Telegraph Winnett also worked with Lewis at The Sunday Times, as personal finance writer and business editor respectively before Winnett became an investigative reporter.

Washington Post editorship and new ‘third newsroom’

The Washington Post said Winnett will be “responsible for overseeing our core coverage areas, including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features” and begin his transition into the role in the run-up to the US presidential election.

The Post praised him for overseeing “the introduction of Britain’s first fully integrated 24-hour, seven-day news operation covering digital platforms and The Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers”.

After the election, Murray will become the leader of a new “third newsroom” with a service/social function based around new focuses like video storytelling, embracing AI and flexible payment methods.

It will be run separately from the core news operation and the opinion division, which is led by editorial page editor David Shipley, and be operational by the third quarter of the year.

“The aim is to give the millions of Americans – who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed –compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want,” the Post said of the new division.

It added that this will also mean the core news division can focus on growing the Post’s subscriber base and building a new suite of Pro, Plus and Membership professional products.

Lewis said: “By creating three, strong, journalism functions – Core, Service/Social and Opinions – we are taking a definitive step away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach and moving towards meeting our audiences where they are.”

Buzbee joined the Post as executive editor in June 2021 to succeed former long-time editor Marty Baron. The newsbrand said she led the newsroom through the Covid-19 pandemic and expanded its service journalism including climate and wellbeing.

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Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron has said the newspaper “over-expanded” amid an advertising collapse and failed to match up to The New York Times on the bundle.

Baron, who led the Post from 2013 until his retirement in 2021, was asked to discuss the state of paywalls during a Q&A session at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

The Washington Post does not report its subscriber numbers but is believed to have around 2.5 million, down from a peak of three million at the end of 2020.

Giving his analysis, Baron said: “The situation at the Post is they invested heavily in hiring a lot of staff. They way over-expanded at a time that digital advertising was collapsing. So that was a problem.”

Marty Baron on Washington Post failure to win bundle war

He said that when Jeff Bezos acquired the Post in 2013 he “talked immediately about reconstituting the bundle, like what newspapers used to be as a place where you got information on all sorts of things, things that you could use in your daily life, et cetera, not just news.

“But the reality is The New York Times did a better job of reconstituting the bundle. They did reconstitute the bundle… and we didn’t do it adequately.

“I mean, we soared on the basis of coverage of politics, investigations, a lot of other things that helped drive that coverage. But when Trump left office, there was a collapse in interest in political news, Biden wasn’t nearly as interesting, and people started taking the press for granted again.

“Before, they weren’t taking the press for granted. They felt that there were very few institutions that were going to hold Trump accountable. They didn’t have confidence that Congress would do it. They didn’t have confidence that the courts would do it. And so they were looking at the press and when they looked at the press in the United States, they looked at two institutions, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

“But in terms of subscriptions, yes it’s true that a lot of people have dropped their subscriptions, partially for economic reasons, partially through a lack of interest, partially because for us, for the Post, politics was less interesting.

“I think there are a whole range of issues. There’s always a lot of churn and so you offer people discounts, and then when you want to charge them full price, they drop it. We faced this in the newspaper industry for decades, lots of churn of that sort. So getting past that is, I think, a huge challenge.”

Baron pointed out that news subscriptions are “not that expensive” compared to “what people spend for a bottle of water”.

He cited a conversation with interns when he was still at the Boston Globe, where he was editor between 2001 to 2012, after it launched its paywall in 2011.

They said “we’re college students, we can’t afford a subscription” and he responded: “Is that true?… Well, how much do you spend on beer every week?”

He told them: “You choose to spend your money on something else. What we need to do is we need to persuade people and demonstrate to people, day in and day out and all day long, that we are providing concrete value to their lives, not just in terms of the coverage of news…”

The New York Times has been successful, he said, by insinuating itself into people’s daily routine through the games they play in the mornings through to checking Wirecutter when they need to buy something.

“So they have demonstrated their value and they’re seeing the benefits of that. And what all news organisations need to do, from the biggest to the smallest at the local level, is demonstrate that you’re providing absolutely essential reading, or if you’re a broadcast outlet, same thing, something that people really value.”

Marty Baron: News industry facing ‘radical reinvention’

Baron also commented on the “turmoil” facing news organisations with at least 8,000 journalism jobs cut in the UK and North America in 2023 and 1,700 in 2024 so far and put it down to the fact the industry is being “radically reinvented”.

He also noted the media industry is not the only one making large-scale layoffs, pointing to the tech industry.

“We’re going through a radical reinvention of our business in every way, in terms of our internal processes all the way to how we tell stories,” Baron said.

“The way we tell stories is changing. What you need to do, I mean, it’s not necessarily us [the Post], but others are telling stories on Tiktok in ten seconds and 15 second videos and we may not like that, but the consumer does. And so the question is, how do we change the way that we tell stories?

“I think there’s no question that storytelling will become much more visual, that we will have to incorporate in every story we do whatever tool happens to be the best way to tell the story, whether it’s an interactive graphic or whether it’s a video, or whether it’s audio, or whether it’s actual text, or some combination of that in a story, and then that has to become sort of a routine in our business and that’s very much in mind that people have shorter attention span these days, and how do we adapt to that?”

However Baron noted that there are younger media organisations “that are doing quite well, and we should look at those and try to understand why are they succeeding?”

He cited technology publications The Information, 404 Media and Platformer as well as non-profit outlets Chalkbeat, which covers the education sector, and Spotlight PA, which publishes news and investigations for Pennsylvania.

‘If we act as combatants, we should give up on incurring public’s trust’

On Trump, Baron said the ex-president and his allies want the press to be the opposition and journalists must ensure they don’t fall into that trap or they will lose public trust.

He said: “There’s no question that various governments and politicians and political parties… are at war with us. But I think it’s very important that we not see ourselves as combatants – that we see ourselves as professionals, and that we behave like professionals. The minute that we start acting like combatants, we should just give up on incurring the public’s trust.

“At the beginning of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon, who was then the aide of his who’s now back in the campaign, said that the press is the opposition party, he wants the press to act like the opposition party. And if the press does behave like the opposition parties, then it just falls into the trap that they are setting for us and it gives them an opportunity, it gives them ammunition, to say they’re just the Democratic Party, there’s no difference between the press and the Democratic Party. So it’s important that we maintain our standards, that we behave appropriately, we behave as professionals and that we maintain our institution.

“The institution of the press is fundamental to a democracy. We will actually help end up eroding and destroying the institution of the press if we don’t have institutional standards, if we don’t have standards of behaviour for ourselves, then what makes us different from anybody else? What makes us different from an activist? What makes us different from an advocate? They’re all respectable roles in society… But you’re journalists.

“Now, we’re not stenographers, okay, we’re not stenographers. That’s a different thing. We’re journalists. So that means that we need to look behind the curtain and we need to look beneath the surface with the goal of getting at the truth and giving that to the public in a fearless and direct and straightforward way. Not false equivalence, not false balance, none of that. It’s an open mind. Go find the truth, look at the evidence as it is, and then evaluate honestly and honourably and all that, and then tell people what you’ve actually found.”

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