Mail publisher DMGT grew revenue in 2023 as a strong performance from UAE-headquartered B2B events division offset falling income at its UK consumer newsbrands.

Online advertising revenue from brands including Mail Online fell 3% year on year to £166m for the year to 30 September.

Print advertising is now DMGT’s smallest revenue stream after a 16% year-on-year decline.

Similarly The Guardian has reported overall advertising revenue down 16% year on year for the nine months to December.

DMGT owns the Mail titles, i, Metro and New Scientist. Mail Online has just introduced a partial paywall, while at the i digital subscriptions overtook print last year.

Overall it made a pre-tax loss of £12.6m on turnover up 2% to £997m.

But when one-off costs and accounting charges like “impairment of goodwill” are removed from the picture the group made an adjusted pre-tax profit of £41m.

Growth of £63m in revenue from events and exhibitions made up for a £33m drop in revenue from consumer media and a £7m fall in income from property information.

Circulation, excluding print subscriptions, remains the group’s biggest revenue source on £247m despite a 4% year-on-year decline.

Year-on-year comparisons are exacerbated by the 2022 financial year being a week longer (53 weeks) than 2023.

Consumer media revenue fell by 5%, primarily due to reduced advertising revenues, but remained the biggest part of the group on £624.5m, versus £210.3m for property information and £162.6m for events and exhibitions.

The property information division includes US-based data and analytics company Trepp and UK-based hybrid estate agency Yopa, for which DMGT increased its stake from 45% to 74% in January 2023 before fully consolidating it as a subsidiary.

DMGT’s events division is headquartered in the UAE and covers sectors including energy, construction, coatings, hospitality, leisure and interior design. Its biggest events the Abu Dhabi-based energy show ADIPEC, construction event Big 5 Dubai and Gastech in Singapore and overall it said they had continued to recover in both exhibitor demand and visitor attendance since the Covid-19 pandemic.

DMGT said it has five revenue types:

• “subscriptions, notably in the US property information business and within consumer media
• “circulation from sales of the paid-for newspapers
• “advertising in the consumer media products
• “events attendance and sponsorship revenues, notably exhibitor fees
• “and revenues dependent on transaction volumes, notably of UK properties.”

‘Challenging advertising market’ hits DMGT

In total across DMGT, 28%, or £275m, of all revenues came from advertising (print and digital), down from 31% in 2022.

Some 11%, or £108m, of group revenues came from print advertising (down from 13%) while 36% came from print advertising and circulation together (down from 40%) and 16% from events (up from 10%).

Chairman Lord Rothermere, who took DMGT private at the end of 2021 after 90 years on the London Stock Exchange, said of the consumer media titles in the company's annual report: "Advertising prices were adversely affected by circulation volumes, which continued to decline as expected, as well as by a challenging advertising market, due to pressure on UK consumers’ real disposable income."

He added that revenue from sales of the Mail titles and i newspaper benefitted from cover price increases largely offsetting declining circulation volumes and that this "reflected an increased preference to subscribe to the titles". He alluded to "growth in print subscription revenues".

Lord Rothermere went on: "There was continued inflationary pressure on costs, with a notable increase in the price of newsprint, and increased investment in US-related editorial content.

"Consequently, given the reduction in advertising revenues, the profitability of the consumer media portfolio was adversely affected during the year and the adjusted operating margin reduced to 6% from 8%."

The consumer media division made a statutory pre-tax loss of £32.5m but an adjusted pre-tax profit of £39.4m.

In common with many media companies, DMGT made some job cuts as part of digital and seven-day restructuring in 2023.

The report said: "The board continued to review the consumer media businesses during the year. Matters considered included the impact on consumers of the increased cost of living, the long-term market conditions and the future outlook for business performance.

"It was decided that a restructuring of consumer media was necessary to reduce the operational cost base whilst also investing in US expansion to protect and enhance future revenue generation. Although the board sought to ensure that employee roles were relocated where possible, unfortunately a number of redundancies were necessary."

The consumer media division is the biggest at DMGT by headcount, making up 62% of the company. It had 2,608 employees on average in 2023 - down 1% from the previous year.

The total remuneration of DMGT's highest-paid director (unnamed but likely to be either Lord Rothermere or chief executive Tim Collier) was £6.5m, down from £8.4m in 2022.

More than three quarters (78%) of group revenues were made in the UK and 8% from North America. A year earlier the UK was higher on 84% but North America was the same, meaning a boost elsewhere in the world.

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DMGT‘s advertising business Mail Metro Media has claimed that it has enough data about its readers (3.5 terabytes) to be insulated from the expected end of publisher cookies on Google’s Chrome browser next year.

The advertiser upfront, which was attended by Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere and his son Vere Rothermere and featured sit-downs with celebrity couple Spencer Matthews and Vogue Williams, explained to potential clients how MMM’s ad infrastructure works – giving a unique look under the hood of the DMGT commercial operation.

Opening the showcase on Wednesday 11 October in Central London, MMM chief revenue officer Dominic Williams illustrated the company’s reach by noting that the publications it represents, which include Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist, collectively saw 188 million article views on the day of the coronation of King Charles. (The Daily Telegraph’s print advertising sales are also overseen by MMM.)

Managing director for digital, Hannah Buitekant, said advertisers with MMM should “fear not” the forthcoming death of third-party cookies, touting the “unique advantage” offered by MMM’s “3.5 terabytes” of first-party data.

MMM’s ad targeting capability, Buitekant said, had delivered “over 270 million clicks to merchant landing pages” in the prior 12 months and sold “over £180m worth of products on Amazon alone”.

“Our commercial content, written by journalists, shows product recommendations have an average click through rate of 30%.”

Qualifying purchases made via Amazon affiliate links in the UK typically return a commission of between 7% and 12% of the purchase cost, suggesting that in the last year MMM generated at least £12m from Amazon ecommerce sales alone.

[Read more: Independent set to hit four million online registrations after pivot to first-party data collection]

How a reader gets sorted into a Mail Metro Media advertising category

Buitekant proceeded to walk the crowd through how MMM uses its first-party data to make its readers targetable for advertisers.

“The user visits Mail Online. From the homepage they read an article about Holly Willoughby resigning from her ITV show, This Morning. The user has a high dwell time over a picture of Holly wearing a dress – and by high dwell time, I mean they’re hovering [their cursor] or they’re static on a mobile phone screen.

“They click on an affiliate link that we cleverly put in there so that user could find out where the dress was from, landing on the merchant website. The user comes back to the Mail Online app, as they do multiple times every day, and consumes a high volume of celebrity news content.

“They click on embedded links connected to female, fashion, beauty and parenting. The user also visits our discount code channel, seeking online codes for Asos and Very.co.uk.

“These touch points are categorised as ‘events’, and combining events creates a profile that ties into a targetable segment – in this case, the profile is: female, loves high street brands, interested in beauty, high propensity to purchase. The segment is our female fashion shopper.

“This is just one example of a profile built from 150 billion data signals that we are harnessing and making available for targeting.”

Speaking after Buitekant, the company’s insight director Luke Hand told attendees about Dream, a new dashboard MMM has launched to allow advertising partners to make use of the company’s data.

Hand illustrated how Dream would work by describing how a cruise holiday advertiser might use the tool.

“When it comes to data, a client could access our trends-plus dashboard and browse the pre-existing demographic, intent and contextual audiences that we already have, or challenge us to build a bespoke cohort for them based on all those touchpoints Hannah [Buitekant] talked about tonight,” he said.

“When it comes to effectiveness, they could search the 500 campaigns that we have in our archive, and 15 that are specific for cruise, to identify the key creative themes that drove effectiveness… they could use our audience planning tool to quickly identify which of our 13 titles and platforms are the best fit for the cruise brand.

“And finally, when it comes to media, a client could access our work which shows how newsbrands can and have influenced every stage of the purchase funnel, from inspiration through to purchase itself.”

Editorial and commercial ‘closely aligned’

Later in the event DMG Media‘s head of podcasts Jamie East chaired a panel discussion that saw editorial representatives from the i, Metro and Mail Online discuss for the benefit of advertisers what goes on inside their newsrooms.

Among the topics was an advert Metro carried, which East said probably “wouldn’t have happened if the newsroom weren’t so closely aligned with commercial”.

Metro executive editor Richard Hartley-Parkinson held up the paper’s front page for 22 March, saying: “This is from when Boris Johnson admitted that he misled MPs over lockdown bashes, but only accidentally. And we went with: ‘Boris: They weren’t proper whoppers.’

Hartley-Parkinson continued: “This was sent up to commercial, and they saw the opportunity and got in touch with Burger King, who went with their advert [on the front page], which here in very small writing says: ‘Home of the proper Whopper.’

“And that was celebrated across the internet. Just that moment itself went viral. And it’s going to be used in marketing courses in the future.” (You can see the ad here.)

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Mail Newspapers managing director Roland Agambar has been named the next chief executive of Harmsworth Media.

Harmsworth Media is the publisher of the i newspaper and New Scientist magazine.

Daily Mail and General Trust proprietor Lord Rothermere split the brands off into a separate division away from the Mail and Metro in 2021.

Nina Wright has been CEO of Harmsworth Media since then, having first become chief executive of the New Scientist from 2018.

DMGT said Wright had decided to step down from the day-to-day CEO role but will become chair of Harmsworth Media from October and continue to work closely with Lord Rothermere and Agambar to support the strategic growth of the business both in the UK and internationally.

Agambar’s transition into the CEO role will begin on 4 September and Wright will formally become chair in October.

Lord Rothermere said: “I am immensely grateful to Nina for all her hard work and dedication in leading both New Scientist and taking i under her wing with the formation of Harmsworth Media. She has done an excellent job of building the business to where it is today.

“Roland is a brilliant, innovative, and creative mind. With over 20 years working in the newspaper industry, combined with his instinctive understanding of our readers, he is ideally suited to champion Harmsworth Media and their print and digital products.”

Wright, who has also been chair of the Professional Publishers Association, said: “I have enjoyed my CEO role establishing Harmsworth Media enormously. It’s an absolute privilege to work on both New Scientist and i, two incredible brands that are very highly regarded, with an abundance of talent and outstanding potential.

“The time is now right for me to step back from the day to day running of the business and hand over the CEO reins to Roland. I can see how passionate, driven and thoughtful he is, added to his considerable experience and deep-rooted knowledge of our industry, I have no doubt that he will do an exceptional job.”

Agambar first joined Mail and Metro publisher DMG Media in 2010 as chief marketing officer, taking on additional responsibility for circulation, commerce and customer service in 2015. His last role before joining DMG was sales and marketing director of The Sun and News of the World.

Agambar said his appointment was a “tremendous honour”, adding: “I would also like to wish my colleagues on Mail Newspapers all the best for the future and will be watching with interest their continued success in the ever-evolving publishing business.”

Lord Rothermere’s DMGT has owned the i since 2019 and the New Scientist since 2021.

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Private Eye was the biggest-selling and biggest-growing print news and current affairs magazine in the UK and Ireland in 2022 according to new ABC figures.

The satirical magazine, which is available only in print, grew its circulation 5% year-on-year to an average of 238,322 (its highest total since 2017).

Last year Private Eye was the fourth-fastest growing print news magazine in the ABCs, coming in behind The Oldie, London Review of Books and The Spectator.

This year, though, it was one of only two publishers to record print growth, the other being the Alan Rusbridger-helmed Prospect magazine which was up by 2% to 18,510. Former Guardian editor Rusbridger’s first issue as editor was published in December 2021.

• Full breakdown of print and digital magazine ABCs for 2022
• Magazine ABCs 2022: Digital edition circulation up by 22%
• Magazine ABCs 2022: Slimming World only women’s interest title to see print growth

The Spectator saw a 16% increase in its digital UK/ROI circulation, and was the only title on this list to have increased it. Previously the biggest-growing print title on this list, this year it shed 9% of its UK/ROI print subscribers. The title is now the fifth-highest circulation publication on the list in the UK/ROI, with an average weekly readership of 60,298.

The highest print circulation overall remained The Economist, which boasts global circulation of 561,605. In the UK and ROI, that figure stood at 95,452, a 15% year-on-year decline.

Nonetheless, the magazine boasts by far the highest digital circulation of any publication on this list, having risen 2% to above one million for the first time. The publisher said in June last year it had hit 1.2 million subscribers.

The title with the next highest digital circulation, Time magazine, recorded a figure of 40,431.

The Week magazine scored the second highest UK/ROI print circulation, with 115,624 (a 5% year-on-year decline). Its sister title The Week Junior came fourth on the same list, declining 9% year-on-year to 80,197. The fastest decline on the list, meanwhile, was at The Week Junior Science and Nature, which dropped 16% to an average weekly circulation of 23,437.

Press Gazette’s sister title The New Statesman withdrew from ABC last year but did release unaudited figures on Tuesday saying its paid circulation has grown by more than 27% in the past year to 43,230, with a total average circulation (including free distribution) of 47,320 per issue. That circulation, which the publication said was its highest in 40 years, would put it between the New Scientist and The Oldie on the list below.

New Statesman marketing director Sam Fairburn said the title had “created consistent subscription growth” by developing its digital products alongside building up “enterprise subscriptions and the growth of our podcasts and app audiences”.

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Private Eye secured its position as the UK’s top selling news and current affairs magazine with a 1% year on year rise to an average of 227,039 sales per issue in the latest ABC figures.

The Spectator, London Review of Books and The Oldie also saw growth in their UK and Ireland circulations, compared to last year’s figures.

The Economist was the third highest circulation print current affairs magazine in the UK and Ireland, as well as far and above the UK-based current affairs title with the highest worldwide average print circulation (at 648,543).

The circulation data also included information on the number of print editions that were given away for free and the number that were actively purchased.

While almost all current affairs magazines included reported more than 90% of their print editions being actively purchased, for The Critic just 42% of its 18,062 domestic print circulation was accounted for by paying readers.

The last year saw a slew of changes to the leadership of the London Review of Books, with commercial director Reneé Doegar promoted to publisher and Jean McNicol and Alice Spawls becoming new co-editors of the magazine, succeeding Mary-Kay Wilmer. During Doegar’s total 11 years at the magazine circulation has risen by 55%.

Commenting on the latest ABC figures, Doegar said: “It’s fantastic to see our subscriptions on the rise for another consecutive year of sustained growth, particularly during the challenges we have faced during the pandemic.”

She went on: “The LRB started with just four people and now has a staff of over 60 amazingly talented individuals working not just for the paper, but supporting it through the business, the bookshop, the cake shop, published books, bespoke product lines, and our renowned author event series.”

The New Statesman announced this week that it was withdrawing from ABC – in common with numerous other titles which choose not to be audited by the body.

It announced independently that its print circulation had reached a 40-year high of 41,000, of which 37,000 were paid copies. Its last ABC-audited total was 36,591.

New Statesman Media Group marketing director Sam Fairburn explained the move, saying: “Each day we work with our clients and their evolving needs to create solutions that cover a multitude of channels, platforms and audiences, from podcasts and newsletters to print, and the time and resource put into the ABC hasn’t served the purposes of the business as it is today.”

Image: Private Eye

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Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere has announced the creation of Harmsworth Media, a new division of Daily Mail and General Trust that will house its two most recently-acquired publications, the i and New Scientist.

The new entity will have as its chief executive Nina Wright, currently chief executive of the New Scientist, with current i chief executive Richard Thomson as her deputy.

Oly Duff, the i’s editor-in-chief, will also be on Harmsworth Media’s board.

Harmsworth is the family name of the Rothermeres, as well as of Lord Northcliffe, the press lord who founded DMGT in 1922.

The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and freesheet Metro — all DMGT originals — remain part of its existing media division, DMG Media.

Rothermere said Wright “is a highly regarded media professional with institutional knowledge and experience in subscription revenues… particularly skilled at creating dynamic strategies that deliver accelerated growth.”

According to the i, Rothermere said the creation of Harmsworth Media was “a very exciting step for the wider company and an important part of our strategy to diversify revenues and accelerate growth”.

The i reported that it was itself “already managed as a separate business and exercises complete editorial independence. The latest move strengthens that arrangement”.

Rothermere said that Harmsworth Media “will be active in developing scalable and sustainable new products and in making targeted acquisitions”.

DMGT bought the i from JPI Media in November 2019 for £49.6m, although the takeover was not finalised until March the next year once regulator Ofcom had determined that it would not damage media plurality. The company pledged at the time to ensure the editorial independence of the i was preserved.

The company has invested significantly in the i, having funded the creation earlier this year of at least 20 new journalist roles.

DMGT bought the New Scientist for £70m in March this year.

Announcement of the new division comes on the back of an eventful few months for DMGT. After 89 years on the London Stock Exchange, in November Lord Rothermere offered DMGT’s shareholders more than £3bn collectively so he could take the company private. The offer was upped by almost 6% last week after some shareholders complained the company had been undervalued — meaning a price increase  of approximately £180m.

November also saw the departure of Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig after three years at the helm, the installation of Mail on Sunday editor Ted Verity as editor of both the daily and Sunday titles, and the surprise resignation last week of Martin Clarke, who cultivated Mail Online into one of the most-read English language websites in the world.

To top it off, Property Week reported last week that DMGT would be temporarily deserting its High Street Kensington home of three decades, Northcliffe House, because of refurbishments due to take place between 2022 and 2024. The building will be rebranded the Barkers Building, dropping the name of the Mail founder in favour of the department store originally located on the site.

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With lockdown restrictions in England ending on 19 July, business events are set to make a post-Covid comeback as we move from Zoom back to the room.

The Press Gazette British Journalism Awards will return as an in-person event this year, to be held in London on 8 December. The awards went virtual for the first time last year as a result of coronavirus restrictions.

This year’s ceremony will mark the tenth anniversary of the BJAs, which were set up in 2012 to celebrate journalism in the public interest.

When Press Gazette spoke to event organisers in January, “hybrid” was the word on the industry’s lips as it looked to capitalise on the gains made in the virtual space while delivering on-demand for a return to in-person events. The term describes an event with both elements.

Back then we found that cancelled events had costs publishers in the UK alone more than £2bn in 2020.

Six months on, we’ve spoken to eight media event organisers including Future, New Scientist and Informatech to find out how they’re viewing the return to physical events and what lessons they’ve learned from lockdown.

[Read more: The future of events: Hybrid is the buzzword as Covid costs UK publishers £2bn]

There’s a general view that this year will mark the definite return of in-person events albeit on a smaller scale than before the pandemic, and that it may take a year or two before revenues are back to full health.

Some publishers have been more cautious than others, postponing large events to next year as people show signs of anxiety about returning to crowded spaces.

There is also an expectation that different sectors will recover at different speeds depending on the impact of Covid on trade. Different countries will return to in-person events at different speeds depending on the success of their vaccination programmes.

‘Hybrid’ is still the approach, although some are avoiding the term. But now the focus is how to deliver quality digital content, not simply inviting everyone on to Zoom or Teams and hosting from the living room, with digital guests able to interact the same as those attending in-person, while networking at physical events might take on more prominence.

Read more (partner content): What the future holds for business events (and why this is a $1trn question)

Future: 'Long Covid' for events will see smaller return before back to full health

With the first lockdown in March 2020, magazine publisher Future first postponed its events then cancelled them altogether, deciding that it would not run any events in the UK or US until September 2021.

In a normal year, Future would run about 50 live events. This fell during the pandemic with events revenues down 75% at the group, according to global head of events Jonny Sullens. Like many others it increased its virtual events, running one-and-a-half-times as many as pre-pandemic.

Future is sticking to its timetable, with its first UK in-person event set to be the Music Week Awards on 14 September. Sullens said he expected guests would have to show a negative Covid test or proof of vaccination to gain entry, and that most adults will have had both jabs by then.

“We feel pretty positive about September,” said Sullens.

But he added: “We know that some of the large events won't be quite as large as normal, but a lot of our events are local market events, i.e. there's not that many companies or delegates travelling internationally to be at them, and I think those events will take longer to come back...

“I guess you could call it Long Covid for events – for a bit longer they're just not going to quite have the scale as previously, but it won't be long until we're at previous heights because the demand is there.”

Sulley said the return would present “lots of opportunities for businesses like ours because the landscape has changed, people have moved events around, some events don't run in quite the same format that they used to”.

He estimated 2023 for a full return, but said: "A lot of our events will get pretty close to previous revenues in 2022.”

[Sign up for Press Gazette’s must-read newsletters: Media Monitor (strategic insight every Thursday), PG Daily and Marketing Matters]

New Scientist: Research shows people not 'comfortable' returning to large events yet

New Scientist was forced to cancel its biggest annual event, New Scientist Live, during the pandemic. The event, which is hosted in London's Excel Centre, normally attracts some 40,000 visitors over four days.

Although the specialist title has increased the number of virtual events it runs, from 19 in 2020 to 36 this year, about half of its events revenue comes from sponsors and exhibitors which has been "very challenged", said head of events Adrian Newton.

[Read more: New Scientist editor Emily Wilson: 'We've completely changed our business, all from our bedrooms']

He said the brand, which was bought up by Daily Mail owner DMGT earlier this year, is tentative about returning to in-person events this year, with the full return of New Scientist Live pushed back to October 2022.

“Whilst according to the current Government roadmap, live events, large-scale events should be able to be run come this autumn, we recently did quite a large piece of research amongst both our exhibitors and our potential visitors just to really understand how they felt and what the appetite was,” said Newton.

“It was mixed, but there was a significant enough proportion that said they probably still wouldn't be comfortable participating in a large event yet, to the point where we've taken a decision that we don't think we could run something of the scale and attendance that we'd want to do for it to be a New Scientist Live.”

New Scientist will however host its first large scale event in January with New Scientist Live North in Manchester, which will be a “hybrid” event with a combined audience of about 5,000 people a day, split roughly in half between a virtual and in-person audience.

Said Newton: “It's overlaying what we've learned from the virtual process. So we will stream the content live from those stages and people watching will be able to interact, like pose questions in the chat in that same way that people on the show floor will be able to ask questions as well.

“But how we bring the two together is that we're going to have a single stage – if you imagine something a bit by like the way the Top Gear studio works, you are talking to a home audience but you still also have a live audience around you.

“That is how we're thinking of bringing the two events [virtual and in-person] together, because otherwise you're effectively [running] almost two separate events… So that's very much our model and we're working with our production partners on how we deliver that.”

Newton said virtual events had been broadcasting in almost “a studio-style televisual presentation”. Virtual tickets typically sell at about 30-50% of the cost of a live ticket.

“I think it's also important that you very much play to the strengths of different mediums,” said Newton. “The thing about live is that it's an opportunity for people to actually meet their science heroes, it's the book signings, it's the workshops, it's the interaction."

He said being clear on the difference between the two (in-person and digital) and "not trying to pretend it's the same thing" was also important.

“Where does a virtual, online, digital event, whatever you want to call it, sit? Is it really an alternative to a live event, or is it actually an alternative to watching something on Netflix or equivalent...

“If we just put an event that's a recording out on-demand, we'll sell a certain amount of tickets, not a huge amount. If we were to have pre-recorded it but said this is a live event taking place at this time, we'll get a much higher take-up.

“If ultimately the actual viewer experience is the same, but it's perceived as being a live event, that seems to have a very powerful impact on demand.”

Taking 2019 as a benchmark, Newton expects it will be “a couple of years before spend, industry levels get back to that”, but the recovery would vary by sector depending on how it has been impacted by the lockdown, with travel likely to take longer to rebound than technology, for example.

[Sign up for Press Gazette’s must-read newsletters: Media Monitor (strategic insight every Thursday), PG Daily and Marketing Matters]

Informatech: Covid-19 crisis led to innovation and swift change, China business back to 90% strength

Informatech, part of British publishing and exhibitions group Informa, runs more than 100 international events each year, among them the Black Hat information security series, the Game Developers Conference and The AI Summit series.

Its international outlook meant it was well-placed to spot the pandemic and its potential impact on business.

“When the pandemic first hit we were fortunate enough that we've got a huge business in China, so we could start to see how this was starting to materialise – the scale of it – and potentially what that might mean,” said Carolyn Dawson, MD at Informatech.

“We probably took the most cautious approach of many companies in the sense of 'right, let's look at what this means for our business if we run no events at all in 2020'. Initially, we said we'll just have to stall and run things later in 2020, but then we that quite quickly transpired that no it's not going to quite work out like that.”

Informa revealed in September that it had cancelled more than £1bn of physical events revenue for 2020. The group reported total revenues of £1.7bn for 2020, down from £2.9bn in 2019 – a drop of 41%. It has said 2021 will be a "transition year" for the return of physical events.

[Read more: Informa half-year 2020 results: £1bn+ cost of Covid-19 revealed as it books £801m pre-tax loss]

As well as the obvious difficulties, Dawson said the pandemic also brought opportunity for change.

“There were things we were wanting to do – we could see the integration of media and events, we could see the need for 365 engagement, we could see what our users and our people in our communities wanted. And actually, if nothing else, the crisis led us to be more innovative and faster in that approach.

“We had events people selling events, we had media people selling media. We wanted always to have people start to sell both, because actually our customers were starting to purchase both in an integrated way. In the pandemic, without anything else to sell, we were able to give our teams new opportunities to innovate and learn…

“We've very much had a kind of bunker spirit to us and just dug in and learnt from our media colleagues really quickly, and that actually really helped in our virtual journey.”

Informatech's events went digital, with physical shows that were free mostly staying free online and revenue driven by sponsorship. Dawson said they were getting “good paid-for revenues” as well.

Echoing Newton's comments at New Scientist, she said the important thing had been maintaining quality, saying “high-calibre speakers, but also production values and an engaging experience are absolutely critical”.

“You can't just turn something on and make it look like essentially we're all still in our lounges hosting events. You need to have an element of production values. We noticed that really early on, that keeps your engagement higher and ultimately that's really what people are looking for as well, so that was really important.”

Although “hybrid” is something of a banned buzzword at Informatech, Dawson said the company is thinking about “on-site” and “online” audience experiences and how these differ and come together.

She said the return to events would be staggered internationally, depending on international travel restrictions and vaccine progress.  The group’s business in China is “already back operating I would say nearly at 90% in terms of audience and behaviours on site in terms of distancing etc.,” she said.

“We have an event in Africa later this year, we've already taken the decision to make that virtual because their vaccine progress is a lot slower and it's also a very international event.

“We don't know, because I would say it still needs to be fairly fluid, but our expectation is that perhaps international travel will be a little bit more progressive in Q1 next year.”

She said it could well be sooner in the UK, but “it all comes down to Government regulations, and we only know about those when we’re told”.

As for what might be different with the return to in-person events, Dawson said: “We saw after the recession in 2008/2009 that there was a slight shift that events were always about events and networking, and suddenly experience became more important in the return.

“Not all events are going to return. There are going to be fewer of them in the market. I think this is interesting now to understand the dynamic of content consumption and networking at the physical events, and how to make that experience really meaningful.”

Centaur Media: 'Hybrid' future

Centaur Media chief executive Swag Mukerji said that the group’s initial decision was to postpone all events. Upon launching virtual events however, they discovered these “could be as accessible and popular as their face-to-face equivalents”.

The Lawyer magazine’s In-house Financial Services 2020 event received a Net Promoter Score of more than 45, similar to what it would have achieved if taking place physically.

Good attendance rates encouraged the group to switch the Festival of Marketing from a two-day physical event to 80 online sessions held over five days, attracting more than 3,900 delegates.

The group settled on hosting this year’s Festival of Marketing in a hybrid format and will be launching “two new wholly virtual fringe events, to capitalise on the increased demand”.

Mukerji said it was “very likely” that future events will be held in a mix of face-to-face and hybrid formats, as “many participants view digital events as more efficient and accessible than purely physical events”.

He concluded that Centaur’s challenge going forward will be to “retain and build on this digital format while maintaining the advantages of live event sessions that can also be held on a virtual platform”.

RELX: Events outlook 'uncertain'

RX, the exhibitions division of information giant RELX, is anticipating that its first live event in the UK this year will be drinks industry exhibition Imbibe Live, due to be held at the Olympia in London on 13 and 14 September.

In its own research, RX found that as of March 2021, the economic outlook is improving. “Businesses are feeling more robust, belief in the value of face-to-face events remains strong, and exhibitors and visitors are increasingly comfortable about attending live events,” it said.

It found that although users are becoming more comfortable with the digital world, they are also more discerning in what they choose to attend.

RX’s three largest business areas – STM (science, technical and medical), risk and legal – made up 95% of revenue in 2020 and have started this year well. But its exhibitions have continued to feel the impact of the pandemic.

“This year we have held 56 physical events, primarily in Japan and China, with one held in the US in March,” an RX spokesperson said.

“Government restrictions have prevented most events from taking place in Europe and the Americas and have constrained the scale of many events elsewhere.”

They concluded that the outlook for future events remained “uncertain” and was dependent on evolutions in the pandemic.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: Return to in-person conferences set for 2022

Stacey Cloney, director of digital and events at S&P Global Market Intelligence, quoted a 240% increase in webinar attendance between 2019 and 2020. The group plans to “return to in-person with a hybrid component” next year.

Cloney said that although there is a travel boom going on in the US at the moment, “the bigger question... is how willing companies will be to have their employees travel and attend events”.

The group is planning to return to in-person events for its 2022 conferences, but only following guidance from its global security team which tracks the latest restrictions in countries where they plan to host events.

During the pandemic, Cloney said S&P had found that although virtual events reach wider audiences, it is harder for them to capture the audience’s attention, due to Zoom fatigue, multi-tasking or distractions at home.

To counter the issue of engagement, their content strategy has therefore included on-demand replays, video snippets, transcripts and blog posts to give attendees multiple options for accessing events in their own time.

“When we do return to face-to-face events in the future, we will continue to share event content virtually, so we continue to engage with our clients who are unable to travel to in-person conferences,” Cloney said.

The Drum: Have to be 'relevant' to compete with rival online events

The Drum also intends to continue running a “hybrid approach”. Its events managing director Lynn Lester noted that the key to successful online events was understanding the audience’s motivations for attending, which can range from “inspiration to education or connecting with others to entertainment”.

To The Drum, online events have been a learning experience. “There are a lot of online events out there, so you have to be pretty good and relevant to compete”, said Lester.

The brand’s next B2B awards will be filmed in front of a small audience and broadcast live to the world. “Remote guests will also be able to get involved with interactions through our chat function and being invited to talk live during the show,” Lester went on.

She said this method “offers the best of both worlds - a face-to-face experience for a small group, whilst remaining inclusive, ensuring people, regardless of level in an organisation, can participate from anywhere in the world”.

Commercially Lester said The Drum’s pandemic events had “fared very well” with more competition entries and sponsorship partners.

She pointed out that “whilst in-person events mean you miss out on significant revenue from ticket sales, you are also saving a huge amount in terms of direct logistical cost”.

However, she added that “whilst you save theoretically on the time staff would be away delivering events, there is possibly more work that goes into running a virtual/hybrid event than that of in-person. It's a lot more complex than people think it is.

“As my mum used to say, you just learn to 'cut your cloth' accordingly.”

Springer Nature: Crisis offers chance for rethink on conferences

Global academic publisher Springer Nature said they “cannot reliably anticipate when full face-to-face events will resume” due to travel restrictions, the risk of new variant outbreaks and variations in vaccine access.

A spokesperson said the plan was to address what full face-to-face events would be feasible when it is “safe and responsible to do so for attendees, staff and organisers”.

They added that they believed the current climate should be used to rethink how conferences can offer a platform for debate, interdisciplinary engagement and networking “however attendees wish to join”.

Editorial illustration by Eloise Fabre

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The New Scientist has been sold to Daily Mail owner DMGT for £70m.

The weekly science magazine and website was owned by a consortium of individual investors led by Sir Bernard Gray.

Editor Emily Wilson told Press Gazette in October how the title had launched newsletters, a podcast, a Youtube series and explored new commercial opportunities online since the global pandemic hit in March.

It has 40 journalists and makes 75% of its revenue from subscriptions.

She said: “The two biggest stories in the world right now are climate change and Covid-19, and they’re both in our wheelhouse. So there genuinely has never been a better time to sign up for science mag.”

Wilson said today: “This is a brilliant next step in New Scientist’s 65-year-long journey towards global (science-related) domination. We are really excited about the new opportunities this move will offer us and we do of course remain 100% editorially independent.”

According to ABC, the New Scientist sells an average of 84,215 print editions per week and 50,111 digital editions (134,326 in total worldwide). About half of its readers are in the UK.

[Read more: Magazine print sales fell 21% year-on-year in 2020]

According to DMGT, the New Scientist is expected to make revenue of £20m this year and an operating profit of £7m.

DMGT chairman Lord Rothermere said: “New Scientist is a world-renowned publication loved by its readers, and we are both thrilled and proud to welcome it to the DMGT family.

“They are a specialised and talented team who showcase the best of science journalism, bringing integrity, curiosity and craftsmanship to their work. We are very much looking forward to supporting their exciting plans to grow as the go-to publication for anyone interested in the scientific world around us.”

New Scientist sold: ‘Well positioned for future growth’

DMGT CEO Paul Zwillenberg said: “The acquisition of New Scientist marks an exciting new addition to the DMGT portfolio and reflects our disciplined approach to acquisitions.

“It is a natural step in our consumer strategy to improve the quality of our revenues through building up subscriptions and digital capabilities. We are committed to supporting the talented team and their plans for the future and are confident that the business is well-positioned for future growth.”

New Scientist was bought by the Bernard Gray team in 2017 from Reed Business Information. The same team previously bought TES in 2005 for £235m from News Corp and then sold it two years later to Charterhouse Capital Partners.

DMGT owns the Mail titles, Metro and the i which it bought from JPI Media in 2019 for £49.6m.

The company has just announced investment to create 20 jobs at the i, which it has committed to keeping editorially separate.

DMGT reported underlying revenue down 10% to £1.2bn and pre-tax profits down 36% on an underlying basis to £72m for the year to September 2020 due to the hit from Covid-19, although revenues at Mail Online grew by 3%.

[Sign up for Press Gazette’s must-read newsletters: Media Monitor (strategic insight every Thursday), PG Daily and Marketing Matters]

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It may be a new year, but many of the challenges facing journalism in 2021 are not new. The question of how to make news pay remains, as do concerns over trust and truth, both of which have been eroded in the digital age.

In the US in particular, the battle to establish facts that can be agreed upon by both sides looks set to continue into the Biden administration, as popular support for Trump and his claims of “fake news” remains.

Adjusting to the pandemic (and then post-pandemic) work culture offers up yet another challenge for news organisations, while finding a sustainable business model for journalism is still top of everyone’s list.

We asked top journalists from the UK and US to respond to the question: “What is the biggest challenge for journalism in 2021 and how are you going to address it?” Their answers set out the key issues facing our industry.

[Sign up for Press Gazette’s must-read newsletters: Media Monitor (strategic insight every Thursday), PG Daily and Marketing Matters]

Marty Baron, executive editor at Washington Post:

“The biggest challenge for journalism is that facts aren’t accepted as facts any longer. Societies can’t agree on a common set of facts. We can’t even agree on what constitutes a fact. That’s a challenge for journalism, which traditionally has been an arbiter of fact, relying on expertise, experience, education and, above all, evidence to assess what’s true and what’s false.

“But expertise, experience, education and evidence are now routinely dismissed and denied. This is not only a challenge for journalism. It’s a challenge for democracy itself. What becomes of a democracy when large segments of the public inhabit an alternate reality – more bluntly stated, a world of myths and make-believe?

“It’s hard to know what to do about this, given that today it’s easy – and often rewarding – to disseminate falsehoods and zany conspiracy theories. We can certainly be more transparent, revealing more about how we go about our work. We can puncture stereotypes about ourselves because we are not the caricatures people have made of us.

“Finally, we can work harder to cover people in all corners of society, ensuring that they see themselves, their concerns and their aspirations accurately and sensitively reflected in our journalism. Will that work? I can’t be entirely confident, but I can remain optimistic.”

Roula Khalaf, editor at Financial Times:

“This will be the year of transition from Covid, and the year of uneven global recovery. Some countries will bounce back faster than others, and while some businesses rise from the ashes others will vanish forever.

“An overarching priority for FT journalism will be to continue reporting the Covid story with agenda-setting insight, original reporting and data analysis and to cover how leaders and businesses adjust to the new normal.

“My job in 2021 will be to sustain the effective remote newsroom we built at the start of the pandemic as we face new lockdown restrictions and pressures of prolonged home working for many of our global colleagues.

“The FT newsroom is built on solidarity and team spirit, but also constant innovation. I am confident that our resilience and flexibility will allow us not just to withstand but advance our strategic priorities, including in visual journalism and on diversity, during another disruptive year.”

Greg Williams, editor at Wired UK:

“The challenge for journalism in 2021 will be the same as it’s been since digital transformed the publishing industry: reaching audiences in new ways and finding ways to monetise that.

“At Wired the nature of our content means that we spend our days talking to innovators, founders and business leaders, which means that the team has a strong entrepreneurial outlook.

“At a time when media brands are competing with a firehose of content on a vast array of platforms, combining new initiatives such as newsletters or podcasts while ensuring that you have a clear identity and consistency across all channels is crucial to developing audience loyalty.

“My view is that, while it’s important to engage with as large an audience as possible – particularly on digital channels – the opportunities for growth depend on a core audience of loyal readers who are so invested in the brand that they will buy tickets to events, beauty boxes or access to members programmes.

“And, while affiliate marketing has proved to be a new and profitable avenue for many publications, the foundation of everything, naturally, will be the integrity, quality and authority of the journalism and storytelling. This remains true, whatever the platform. ”

Gina Chua, global managing editor at Reuters:

“With the rise of misinformation, the impact of social media and stark political divisions around the world, the erosion of public trust on the news industry will be a significant challenge to address in 2021.

“Fact-based and impartial reporting is more important than ever, and are core principles embedded in Reuters’ values that we remain committed to as we enter the New Year – and as we always have over the last 170 years.

“We’re also continuing to see challenges to a free press worldwide. It is critical that journalists are allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are.”

David Higgerson, chief audience officer at Reach:

“I think the biggest challenge still facing our industry is how to sustain it, and my worry is that too many people just write off advertising and instead charge towards shouting at readers ‘you must pay for this’ without doing the spade work to explain why people should pay for it.

“In fact, even telling people why they should pay for news is the wrong way of looking at it. If you believe that people will pay for news, you need to focus on making it so indispensable to their lives that it’s second nature to pay for it. The reality in the UK, especially in local news, is that there is yet to be proof people will pay for news in anything like the numbers needed to sustain it at the scale we have at the moment.

“The other risk with saying ‘make people pay for news’ is that it invites a rose-tinted view of the world back into our thinking, harking back to days when people bought a local paper six days a week and read every story, and it was only ever local news and sport which people read.  We run the risk of chasing a past which never really existed as we remembered it, and jettison our reach, and engagement, with a larger readership than we’ve ever had.

“I keep hearing that the advertising model is broken, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed – and that’s where the focus should be.”

Emily Wilson, editor at New Scientist:

“The biggest challenge is the same as it’s always been: to follow the facts in a steady manner, without being blown off course by hype, political-posturing, political-pressuring, Twitter storms, downright lies, and all the other noise and fury the world throws at you.

“Our plan therefore is simple: to remain steady, and follow the facts.”

[See more: New Scientist editor Emily Wilson: ‘We’ve completely changed our business, all from our bedrooms’]

Nicholas Carlson, global editor-in-chief at Insider:

“The biggest challenge for journalism in 2021 is also one for the world: The truth is not dead but it’s been beaten to a pulp by politicians, media personalities, and grifters – all for mere power and profit.

“These are all knowable facts: Climate change is real. The 2020 U.S. Elections were the most secure in history. Systemic racism exists. Covid-19 is killing people. The earth is round. And yet each of those demonstrable truths are somehow considered controversial.

“The challenge for Insider, and newsrooms all over, is to not just be a source of truth in a confusing world – but to investigate the attempted murder of truth in order to hold accountable those who are responsible.”

Lionel Barber, former FT editor (2005-2020):

“We can go further and deeper into understanding how the combination of the pandemic and technology will change the way we work, change economic behaviour and offer great challenges but also opportunities. I think that’s a very fertile area.

“And I also think that while we should hold the government to scrutiny, we should also contribute to a discussion about solutions – and that also applies to Brexit.

“There is a market not for sunshine news, but trying to contribute constructively to a debate and ideas about the future…

“If you look at the following [on Twitter] of people like The Secret Barrister [432,000] or David Allen Green [231,000] these people are writing specialist analysis and commentary in a sober way which is illuminating and they’ve got lots and lots of followers.

“So I think part of the answer is to go deep in certain areas so that your publication has a reputation for having expertise. And if you build around that some interesting voices, people who can write, then I think you’ve got the beginnings of a product that can thrive with quality.”

[See more: Interview: Lionel Barber says Financial Times ‘reinvented business model’ for journalism]

Nicholas Johnston, editor-in-chief at Axios:

“We’ve seen in polls about the pandemic and the election results that there can be massive gulfs between how people of different political persuasions view the world. A great challenge is creating journalism that can inform both sides to bridge those gaps.

“At Axios we’ll face that challenge by being calm and clinical in our reporting, judicious in our use of social media and as clear as we can be about the facts and why they matter.”

Richard Tofel, president at ProPublica:

“The greatest challenge for the American press in approaching 2021 and the Biden Administration, I think, is how quickly and effectively we can return to coverage of a normal government and more normal politics, and how much we can learn from the extreme abnormality of the last four years.

“One key aspect of this will be to avoid the temptation of distractions offered by Donald Trump from offstage, still tweeting and still influential in Republican politics, under investigation, but no longer with executive authority. But an even greater part will be to turn attention to long-neglected but critical subjects like government effectiveness and accountability…

“So much of our journalism in the last four or five years has been breathless and ephemeral. It is time, I hope, to put some of that aside, and return focus to the most compelling problems we all know our society faces.”

Polly Curtis, managing director at PA Media:

“In 2020, journalists from across the industry rose to an unprecedented challenge. We built whole new systems for reporting the news while telling the biggest story of our lives. The thirst for verified information grew and audiences turned to trusted news brands to guide them through the turmoil brought by the pandemic.

“The challenge for 2021 will be to sustain this excellence as the industry rebuilds for a post-pandemic future.

“At PA Media our mission is to help the news industry to mitigate these pressures and to be its greatest ally. As always, we will focus on providing the fast, fair and accurate multimedia reporting service that our customers rely on.

“We will launch new training products to help support journalists through their careers. We will expand our apprenticeship training programmes in response to unprecedented interest from across the industry, demonstrating that even in these times there continues to be an urgent focus on diversifying newsrooms.

“In 2020 we all had a tough lesson in disruption and change. In 2021, we will continue to make sure that everything we do helps our customers navigate this new world.”

Mark Allen, chairman at Mark Allen Group:

“I do so much hope that I’m wrong but 2021 is going to be a very hard year for journalism. For a start, our ‘industry’ is likely to be decimated with magazines and newspapers closing and journalists made redundant. The talent pool will get smaller.

“Then there is the existential crisis from which journalism will continue to face. The demise of our craft/profession as a result of the phone hacking scandal and the way that it has been undermined by Trump’s ‘fake news’ pronouncements have left it enfeebled. This, coupled with the increasing power of social media, where everyone can be a ‘journalist’, has exacerbated the situation further.

“The standards of newspapers, in particular, but also magazines, will continue to decline as publishers lose faith in print and look to cutting costs.

“There are two positive notes. Firstly, there will be some notable exceptions to the overall downwards spiral. Great journalism will always triumph but it is far less ubiquitous now than it ever has been. Secondly, journalism still commands immense popularity with young people, many of whom are tremendously talented and uncynical.

“The challenge for publishers like me is to give young people a chance. That is where the destiny of journalism finally lies. Surrounded by the detritus of journalism, can we find a place for the up and coming Young Turks? That is the question.”

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New Scientist editor Emily Wilson has been busy.

The popular science magazine has been forced, like so many publishers, to adapt and reform its business to the ‘new normal’ of life with Covid-19, which has put paid to in-person events and shut down offices.

The New Scientist team – including 40 staff journalists, nearly all of whom are based in the UK – has been working from home since 12 March, in line with government advice as part of lockdown restrictions.

Wilson says she was nervous about remote working at first, but describes this early anxiety as “cute naïve” in retrospect. “What was the problem? We’re all on the internet anyway,” she tells Press Gazette.

“Very early on we all said: ‘Well, the one thing you can’t do when you’re all [working] from home is innovate,’ and actually that was nonsense too. We’re starting loads of new businesses and products. We’ve completely changed our business, all from our bedrooms.”

This year alone the title has launched newsletters, a podcast, a Youtube series, and explored new commercial opportunities online.

Not that the change in working practice has been without its difficulties.

“We’ve been through the same journey as everyone: tech problems, working out how to sit comfortably, [ensuring] that you can actually work remotely,” she says.

“We’ve had to recreate all that interstitial creativity, all the meetings that we used to have when we would stand at what we call ‘The Wall’ looking at printed-out pages of the mag and sucking our teeth and arguing – we’ve had to recreate that on Microsoft Teams.”

Wilson, who joined New Scientist as editor in 2018, admits it’s been a “gruelling year” and there is still a lot more work to be done.

‘…we need to live in the now’

New Scientist Live, the magazine brand’s flagship annual event, welcomed 40,000 people to the London Excel Centre over four days last October. This year the Excel was turned into a Nightingale Hospital for coronavirus patients and remains on standby in case of a second wave.

For Wilson and her team it meant quickly creating a virtual events business where one didn’t exist before, which has led to the first subscriber-only online events run by the title and plans for more to follow.

“I didn’t know whether people would actually pay to go to online events, but they do,” says Wilson. “So the events team now does that.” The title has put on a mixture of free and paid on-demand events so far.

New Scientist Live has been officially postponed until October next year, but Wilson says digital events are likely here to stay.

“You can throw a virtual event together so quickly. We can go: ‘Yeah, let’s do an event for subscribers,’ we email them, book a slot with whoever we’re using [to run events], and then we can just all do it from our bedrooms with a hazy backdrop to hide our dirty underwear. The audience can just join us while they’re having a cocktail or cooking their dinner.

“So that’s tremendous and why would you give up being able to do that kind of thing? I’m sure at some point we’ll go back to having live events too because people love live events, but the reality is that we are years away from normality, we’re not a year away, so we need to live in the now.”

When it comes to new Covid working practices, Wilson doesn’t believe they will ever return to what they were pre-pandemic.

“We’ve proved that people can remote work brilliantly and still get the product out,” she says. But adds that it won’t stay “exactly like this “forever”, not least because the experience has been miserable for some.

She believes it will be 2024 before there is a return to “some kind of normality” even if a vaccine is found, because “it’s not going to magically fix anything and it’s certainly not going to magically fix anything quickly.”

She adds: “Everything is so precarious you cannot plan ahead. So I would predict that we will continue to be virtual for a while and certainly to keep that very strongly in our armoury.”

Ecommerce, podcasts and newsletters

Alongside its new online events business, the title has put its hand to ecommerce, opening an online shop selling books, bags, mugs and its new Essential Guides – hardback mags on key topics such as AI and health.

It also runs job ads for science professionals and even has a travel business selling science-themed tours – “currently more of a beautiful dream to look forward to,” says Wilson.

If it has something of the Guardian about it, that may be because Wilson previously served as assistant editor at the paper, and before that as editor-in-chief of the Guardian’s news operation in Australia.

Since August, New Scientist has been publishing weekly videos on Youtube explaining some of the biggest topics in science, hosted by social media editor Sam Wong. It also created a special edition app on the coronavirus – another first – which Wilson says “sold well and hit all its targets”.

Before the pandemic it launched a podcast, New Scientist Weekly, some 15 years after its first foray into the medium, which was killed off by previous owners. The title is currently owned by a small group of investors who bought it from Reed Business Information in 2017. (The same investors also bought the Times Educational supplement from News UK).

New Scientist has also started publishing its own free email newsletters this year, again before the pandemic hit British shores, and is “doubling down” on them now, with the approach being “very personal emails into your inbox from our writers”.

There are five so far, including a daily and weekly, with more planned. “It’s a wonderful way of asking our audience to segment itself for us… and it’s also a very personal way of engaging,” says Wilson.

The newsletters are “laying on thousands of new sign-ups”, she adds.

Yet another new string to the brand’s bow as it grows its digital revenue streams in the pandemic era will be online learning courses. Although still in development, Wilson describes it as a “boom business”.

She says the magazine is “quite perfectly positioned” to provide the service “given that we’re the number one science mag in the world, full of people who know lots about the brain and physics and stuff”.

For most of the new digital efforts, all roads lead to subscriptions.

“We are trying to grow our subscriptions through everything we do really, that’s our focus,” says Wilson. “So if we’re doing a podcast, we do count up how many subscribers will come from that podcast and the podcast team will say: ‘Hey, why don’t you subscribe?’

The bulk of New Scientist’s revenue comes from reader subscriptions. It sold more than 118,000 copies worldwide last year (ABC figures), of which 95,000 were from subscriptions.

“We are lucky in that the big chunk of our revenue has always been subscriptions. That is a really privileged place to be right now,” says Wilson.

“We’ve been growing our subscriptions for about four years now,” she adds, and figures are again up on last year. “But I think it’s not bullshit on any level to say we are going to end the year, fingers crossed, stronger than at the start of it,” she says, “although it’s been a hard year.”

Subscriber numbers did see a boost during lockdown, which Wilson says was expected. “If you’re ever going to subscribe to a science mag then this is going to be the year to do it,” she explains.

“The two biggest stories in the world right now are climate change and Covid-19, and they’re both in our wheelhouse. So there genuinely has never been a better time to sign up for science mag.”

New Scientist’s three biggest areas for subscriptions – its “deep markets” – are UK, US and Australia. There are two reporters in the US, one in Australia and the rest are based in Britain.

But despite its strong subscriber base, New Scientist has been no stranger to the commercial difficulties of the pandemic. It has had to restructure its business, particularly in the areas hardest hit by the crisis. Journalists have also been affected.

“It has been a hard year, so people have gone,” says Wilson. But she says there have been new hires in the newly developing parts of the business.

Newsstand sales have also held up better than expected. “We kept on being fully stocked everywhere. We predicted a massive fall off and we’ve had some fall off, although there are signs of recovery now, fingers crossed.”

Subscribers come through various channels and generally “like the content before they really think about the brand”, says Wilson.

The print mag remains a high priority, and is the focus for features, with a digital-first approach for news.

Digital subscriptions and bundle subscriptions are an increasingly large part of the business, but readers continue to enjoy and cherish the print edition.

Wilson says print is “a labour of love, but a massive hassle”, although she believes print still has a long-term future – “the readers like to have a mag” – and the title underwent a “gentle redesign” last year.

As for online traffic, it’s a case of “rising tide has lifted all ships” in news media. “It’s been a big traffic year,” says Wilson, who has grown the digital team since joining the title. “Our traffic’s been growing steadily. Obviously this has been a stellar year, but I mean you would expect that wouldn’t you – there’s quite a lot going on.”

Covering the pandemic

Covering the pandemic presented a new challenge for New Scientist, which is not usually competing to cover the biggest story of the day.

“There’s only so much competition for a story about neutrinos, however thrilling that might be”, says Wilson, but this all changed with Covid-19.

Wilson says that while The Guardian was “running four live blogs”, New Scientist decided its journalists were going to work on stories “that were going to survive a bit” – more in-depth and more analytical.

Wilson says she decided the team would “only go for things where we can really add some value for our readers… that isn’t just going to be still valuable in a week, but actually will probably still be valuable in a month’s time.”

Early on that meant stories about the “myth of herd immunity”, for example. Alongside this change to the pace of reporting came the decision to devote “quite a lot of our reporting firepower to the pandemic”, with New Scientist’s top writers pivoting to cover it.

And where normally the title would never do the same cover story twice in a decade even, since the lockdown it has done more than 13 Covid-19 covers.

‘All firsts are good’

Wilson’s editorship has changed New Scientist in one other important way. She may be its 11th editor, but she is the first woman to hold the role since the title began publishing in 1956.

“I think that all firsts are good,” she says. “They just are aren’t they.”

“Diversity is a really big thing for us at New Scientist. We’ve worked really hard on gender stuff, and we’re now working really hard on racial diversity,” says Wilson.

A diversity intern programme which began last year is being repeated again this year, “because if we can churn out fantastic young science journalists from BAME backgrounds into the market, that’s quite a big deal”, she adds.

“It’s important to see people in roles. It’s important for young girls and women to see people in different kinds of roles and it’s true in everything… It’s really hard if you can’t see anyone to model yourself on.”

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