Update: On 21 November Essex Police said it had dropped its investigation into Allison Pearson’s tweet.

The force said: “We investigate crimes reported to us without fear or favour.

“We’re sometimes faced with allegations of crime where people have strong opposing views.

“That’s why we work so hard to remain impartial and to investigate allegations, regardless of where they might lead.”

Original comment by media law expert David Banks: Before Essex Police embarked on their journey to knock on Allison Pearson’s door they might have been well-advised to check on the number of successful prosecutions of journalists for inciting racial hatred.

I am not aware of any, of what we might call mainstream journalists. Social media blowhards, sure, members of extremist organisations, yes, some of them. National newspaper columnists – I’m scratching my head very hard to find one.

And that is a good thing, because having police officers turn up at a journalist’s door for something they wrote is a bad thing in a society that values freedom of speech.

The need to protect freedom of speech means there is a high bar for prosecution under the Public Order Act for inciting racial hatred, and any such prosecution has to be authorised by the Attorney General – who must be absolutely delighted at the prospect of this hot potato heading towards his desk.

So let’s look at what Allison Pearson wrote and try to see whether or not this gets anywhere close to getting over that high bar.

Pearson was not told what post prompted the complaint to police. But The Guardian has spoken to the alleged complainant and Press Gazette has posted a screengrab of the message which appears to be at the root of the issue, taken from a website which archives web pages.

The words which appear to form the crux of the complaint are “Jew haters” which Pearson used in a post on X about a group of police officers posing with a group of demonstrators. This she compared negatively with the Met Police’s refusal to pose with a group supporting British Friends of Israel. It would seem that in doing this she had mistaken a group of people demonstrating in support of a Pakistani political party with pro-Palestinian protesters, and this is apparently why the post was deleted.

The law says an offence is committed, as the Crown Prosecution Service puts it, if “someone says or does something which is threatening, abusive or insulting, and the person either intends to stir up racial hatred, or make it likely that racial hatred will be stirred up.”

I don’t think there is the remotest possibility of showing that Pearson had any intent to stir up racial hatred, so to prove this offence the police and CPS are relying on that second phrase “make it likely that racial hatred” will be stirred up.

Let’s go back to Pearson’s words. In her post she made no reference to race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin. It would seem she thought they were pro-Palestinian protesters, and as we know from the demonstrations that have taken place across the UK concerning Gaza, the crowds have included people from many different ethnic backgrounds. It is, in my view, obvious that her tweet was not rooted in any reference to racial or ethnic identity, but that she, mistakenly it would seem, thought they were part of the pro-Palestine demonstrations and she had reportedly confused the flag they were holding with that of Hamas. Those mistakes, if she did make them, do not in any way make this a racial incident.

I think the police ought to have spent more time considering the material that had been reported to them and whether its content could bear any sort of criminal meaning. Before they turned up to knock on Allison Pearson’s door, a view should have been sought from the CPS and from the AG’s office as to the wisdom of this course of action.

The worrying thing is the chilling effect such police action can have.

Allison Pearson is a seasoned journalist and has the backing of the Telegraph, but what of those on smaller titles, without recourse to expensive lawyers and unable to muster the sort of support the Telegraph can call upon? The effect of action like this is to discourage columnists and editors from being outspoken for fear that they will open the door to the police who want to talk to them about something they wrote.

Without even bringing a prosecution the police have lowered the bar of how we define incitement, and that is something we should all worry about.

The post Essex Police drops ‘misguided and chilling’ action against Allison Pearson appeared first on Press Gazette.

Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has made a “significant investment” in Prorata.ai, a generative artificial intelligence platform that plans to share revenue with publishers each time their content is used to answer a user query.

The deal gives Prorata access to DMG Media’s content, which includes the archives of the Mail, Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist.

Guardian Media Group and Sky News all also announced on Wednesday that they have made their content available to the start-up, and they were joined on Thursday by magazine Prospect.

The Financial Times reports that the DMG Media investment values Prorata at about $130m (£100m). Press Gazette understands Sky News is also considering investing in the start-up.

DMG Media on Prorata: ‘It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news’

Prorata has not yet launched any public-facing products, but has already signedsimilar content-sharing deals with the Financial Times, Fortune, Axel Springer and The Atlantic.

The company has previously told Press Gazette that it has created a mechanism that lets AI platforms determine “the value of contributing content” in a generative AI response and as a result “calculate proportional compensation” for the originators of that content. It has said it will make the technology available to license to other AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Prorata says it will share half the revenue from its forthcoming subscriptions to its licensing partners.

The business hopes to provide a solution to publishers who don’t want to be left behind should consumers move toward generative AI-powered search, but who have been burned by other AI companies who have ingested their content to create their large language models without providing any compensation.

[Read more: News Corp seeks massive damages from AI firm Perplexity for stealing content]

DMG Media vice chairman Rich Caccappolo said its deal with Prorata made the company “the first UK news publisher to invest in an equity stake in this industry-leading platform”.

“The rise of large language models and real-time content scraping represents a material threat to the news industry. There is a critical need to attribute content used by LLMs to generate answers and compensate all content creators for their work.

“ProRata’s platform is a vital first step toward advancing accurate and fair attribution and promoting transparency. It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news publishers, giving them the incentive to continue investing in high-quality, informative journalism.”

David Rhodes, the executive chairman of Sky News, said: “Global audiences trust Sky News to give them the full story, first. ProRata’s solution helps advance that high-quality, impartial journalism across AI platforms and publishers.

“With all our partners today we’re securing our company’s massive investment in fair and accurate news reporting – now, and well into the future.”

Guardian Media Group chief executive Anna Bateson said: “The trusted, quality journalism for which The Guardian is world-renowned must be fairly credited and valued when used by AI platforms. Prorata respects and promotes these fundamental principles, and we are pleased to be partnering with them.”

And Prospect chief executive Mark Beard said: “In this age of disinformation, we respect and warmly approve of Prorata.ai’s approach. We share Prorata.ai’s belief that fact-checked, authoritative journalism is critical and will not only survive but thrive, if the publishers who produce it are credited and fairly rewarded alongside the technology companies that surface it.”  

Prorata’s chief executive Bill Gross told Press Gazette in August: “Current AI answer engines rely on shoplifted, plagiarised content. This creates an environment where creators get nothing, and disinformation thrives…

“Our technology allows creators to get credited and compensated while consumers get attributed, accurate answers. This solution will lead to a broader movement across the entire AI industry.”

The post DMG Media invests in publisher-friendly generative AI start-up Prorata appeared first on Press Gazette.

Former Express online editorial director Tom Hunt is now editor-in-chief of the brand.

In recent months Gary Jones has left the Express after six years as editor-in-chief and subsequently Sunday Express editor David Wooding also departed.

Jones was the second editor-in-chief of a Reach national newspaper to leave their post this year after six years: Alison Phillips stepped down from the Mirror at the end of January and was succeeded by Caroline Waterston.

Also this year London free business newspaper City AM, which is expanding its remit nationally, has appointed its former editor Christian May to return to the role.

Press Gazette has put together a round-up of the UK’s national newspaper editors as they stand (in no particular order). We will keep this list updated.

UK national newspaper editors

The Times

Tony Gallagher was appointed editor of The Times on 28 September 2022 following the resignation of John Witherow the day before.

Gallagher was promoted from deputy editor, and had already been acting as caretaker editor for several months while Witherow was on medical leave.

Gallagher joined The Times in February 2020 from fellow News UK title The Sun where he was editor for five years. He has also previously edited The Daily Telegraph between 2009 and 2014.

The Sunday Times

Ben Taylor was named editor of The Sunday Times on 19 January 2023, stepping up from deputy editor after news Emma Tucker would be leaving to lead The Wall Street Journal from 1 February.

Taylor was previously executive editor of the Daily Mail, where he worked for 22 years, before joining The Sunday Times as deputy editor in 2020.

Daily Mail

Ted Verity has edited the Daily Mail since November 2021, having previously been at the helm of the Mail on Sunday since 2018 and deputy at the daily paper before that.

He is editor-in-chief of Mail Newspapers, meaning he has overall responsibility for the Mail brands in a seven-day operation.

Mail on Sunday

Following Verity’s promotion, David Dillon was appointed to be Mail on Sunday editor in December 2021. He was previously Verity’s deputy.

Dillon first joined the Mail on Sunday from the Daily Express in 2001, working as news editor for a number of years before being promoted to executive editor.

The Sun and The Sun on Sunday

Victoria Newton has been editor-in-chief of The Sun since February 2020. She had been editor at The Sun on Sunday since 2013 but took over from Gallagher when he left The Sun for The Times.

Newton has maintained responsibility for the Sunday title in her editor-in-chief role.

Daily Mirror

Caroline Waterston, previously editor-in-chief of Reach magazines and supplements, has edited the Daily Mirror since the start of February 2024 – initially on an interim basis before she was made permanent on 30 April.

Waterston first joined Reach (then Trinity Mirror) in the mid-1990s and her roles have included deputy news editor and features editor of The People, features editor of the Sunday Mirror, head of features and deputy editor on the Sunday titles, deputy editor-in-chief across the Express and Star titles after their acquisition by Reach, and editor-in-chief of the national magazines including OK! magazine.

Waterston took over from Alison Phillips, who had edited the Daily Mirror since March 2018 and was editor-in-chief of that title plus the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People from February 2020 with the move to a seven-day operation.

The Daily Telegraph

Chris Evans has been editor of The Telegraph since January 2014 after the sacking of Tony Gallagher. He has been with The Telegraph since 2007, with previous roles including news editor and head of news, after joining from the Daily Mail where he spent 11 years.

The Sunday Telegraph

Although Evans has ultimate editorial responsibility at The Telegraph, Allister Heath has edited The Sunday Telegraph since 2017, having previously been Telegraph deputy editor.

Daily Express and Sunday Express

Tom Hunt, formerly Express online editorial director, was named editor-in-chief of the brand on 20 September.

At the Daily Express he succeeded Gary Jones who stepped down after six years in the role, which he used to detoxify the brand. Sunday Express editor David Wooding departed his own role about two months later as the Express becomes a seven-day operation without a dedicated Sunday Express team.

Before that Hunt had been with the Express for more than eight years, including as video news editor, leading its first team dedicated to video, and head of news.

Hunt said: “There is a huge opportunity here which I’m excited to take further, both digitally and in print, particularly as we cover Labour’s first months in office and see out a Conservative leadership contest.”

The Guardian

Katharine Viner has been editor-in-chief at The Guardian since 2015, when she was voted by staff to take over from Alan Rusbridger. She was previously editor-in-chief at The Guardian’s US edition.

The Observer

Under Viner’s leadership, Paul Webster edits The Observer. Viner appointed him to the role in 2018, after 20 years as deputy at the Sunday paper.

i

Oly Duff has been editor-in-chief of the i since June 2013, when he became the UK’s youngest national newspaper editor aged 29 – a title he maintains today.

Financial Times

Roula Khalaf has edited The Financial Times since January 2020, when she succeeded Lionel Barber who spent 14 years as editor.

Khalaf had been Barber’s deputy since 2016 and her previous roles at the FT included foreign editor and Middle East editor. She first joined the business newspaper in 1995.

Daily Star

Jon Clark has been seven-day editor-in-chief at the Daily Star since March 2018 after the paper was bought by Reach (then Trinity Mirror). He was previously associate editor at the Daily Mirror from 2013.

Daily Star on Sunday

Under Clark’s leadership, Denis Mann edits the Daily Star on Sunday and is a deputy on the daily. He has similarly held the role since March 2018.

The Independent

Geordie Greig was appointed as editor-in-chief of the digital-only The Independent in January 2023, just over a year after being ousted from editing the Daily Mail. He has previously edited the Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard and Tatler.

He took over at The Independent from David Marley, who had been acting editor since October 2020 when Christian Broughton was promoted to managing director.

Free newspaper editors

Metro

Deborah Arthurs is editor-in-chief of Metro in print and online, having taken the lead on a new combined operation in March 2023.

She had been editor of Metro.co.uk from 2014 and a “gentle refresh” of the brand aligning print and online marked the beginning of her tenure as overall editor.

Arthurs has taken over from Ted Young, who had been editing the print newspaper for eight years.

Evening Standard

Former GQ editor of 22 years Dylan Jones was appointed editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard following a brief period as editorial consultant.

Jones began in the role on Monday 5 June 2023, becoming the news outlet’s first permanent editor in more than 18 months.

Before him, Jack Lefley was acting editor from July 2022 and Charlotte Ross had previously been acting editor from October 2021.

The last full-time editors were Emily Sheffield, who left in October 2021 after 15 months, and former chancellor George Osborne, who was in post between May 2017 and July 2020.

City AM

Former City AM editor Christian May is returning to the free business title after almost four years away at the end of August 2024.

He succeeds Andy Silvester, May’s former deputy who took on the role himself, whose last day was Thursday 18 July.

May described his previous five-year stint as editor as “the happiest and most rewarding years of my life”, adding: “I couldn’t be more excited to rejoin the team at City AM as it gears up for an ambitious era of growth and innovation.”

The post Who are the UK’s national newspaper editors? appeared first on Press Gazette.

Essex Police has said it is investigating Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson under a possible breach of the Public Order Act over a year-old, now-deleted post on X.

The force has faced criticism that its tactics amounted to an attack on press freedom after officers visited Pearson at home on Remembrance Sunday. She said she was told officers could not tell her what the offending post was or who had made the complaint against her and was asked to attend a police station for a voluntary interview.

[Read more: Essex Police action against Allison Pearson is misguided and chills press freedom, writes media law expert David Banks]

But the force since said it has complained to press regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation, claiming Pearson’s original claim in the Telegraph last week that she was visited over a “non-crime hate incident” was inaccurate.

On Saturday morning, 16 November, the force said it had shared a transcript of video footage with IPSO which includes an officer saying: “It’s gone down as an incident or offence of potentially inciting racial hatred online. That would be the offence.”

The force said: “A complaint of a possible criminal offence was made to the police and this is why we called; to arrange an interview”.

The Guardian reported on Friday that it had found the deleted message at the centre of the complaint and has spoken anonymously to the person who appears to be behind the Allison Pearson complaint.

Pearson is alleged to have re-posted a picture showing two police officers standing next to a group of people holding a flag associated with a mainstream Pakistani political party.

A deleted message, retrieved from online archives by Press Gazette, sent by Pearson on 16 November 2023 said: “How dare they @metpoliceuk. Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.”

The message was viewed more than 400,000 times according to X. Context added to the message by other X users noted that the picture appeared to be from a protest which took place in August 2023 in Mancheseter relating to a Pakistani political party and said the event had no relation to Palestine, Israel or Hamas.

The complainant is not one of the people in the photograph. The person told The Guardian: “Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different.”

Press Gazette reproduces the excerpt from the website archive.is below. The image has been altered by Press Gazette to obscure the faces of those appearing in it.

What is the Public Order Act and how can journalists breach it?

For an offence to be a committed under the Public Order Act 1986 the language used must be “threatening, abusive or insulting” and “intended to or likely in all the circumstances to stir up racial hatred”.

Journalists can fall foul of the act when reporting on extreme political statements.

Crown Prosecution Service guidance states: “In deciding upon the public interest of charging these offences it is essential that prosecutors keep in mind that in a free, democratic, and tolerant society people are able to robustly exchange views, even when these may cause offence. However, the rights of the individual to freedom of expression must be balanced against the duty of the state to act proportionately in the interests of public safety, to prevent disorder and crime, and to protect the rights of others.”

What does Allison Pearson have to say?

Writing on X on Saturday, in a post which has been viewed more than three million times, Pearson said:

“The story so far.

“1. I am not a racist.

“2. I didn’t post a racist tweet.

“3. My tweet did not incite violence against any protected characteristic.

“4. My fairly innocuous tweet was deleted a year ago.

“5. Senior lawyers say my tweet does ‘not come near the threshold for criminal prosecution’.

“6. But Essex Police upgraded the accusation from Non-Crime Hate Incident to offence under the Public order Act. Why?

“7. Essex Police visited my home but refused to specify either the accusation or the accuser.

“8. Under pressure, Essex Police deployed the terrorist-fighting Gold Command to investigate a solitary Welsh journalist 5ft 4 inches who still believes in freedom of speech. Weird, I know.

“9. This is all nonsense. Deeply sinister, frightening nonsense and wholly disproportionate police over-reach if you ask me.

“10. Last night, I realised I no longer feel safe in my own country.

“A terrible moment. As Elon Musk said, ‘This must stop.’ It really must.”

Non-crime hate incidents

Feminist Julie Bindel, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said she was also visited by police on a Sunday over an allegation of committing a “hate crime” over a message she had posted on X. She said she was given no further details and asked to attend a police station voluntarily to make a statement. Bindel refused and said she was told the investigation was being dropped.

Police forces around the UK are believed to be keeping records of thousands of “non-crime hate incidents” which are often based on social media posts and occur when no criminal offence has been committed but when a complainant believes a statement was motivated by hostility or prejudice.

Telegraph calls for change in the law

In a leader column The Sunday Telegraph warned that “overzealous police officers” are “choosing to focus their effort on policing thoughts and speech rather than cracking down on violent crime or theft”.

It said: “Many overseas are watching, and appear horrified that in a supposedly free and democratic society journalists and politicians can face criminal investigation for expressing strongly worded opinions…

“Until we get a government willing to change the law, a small minority of activists will retain the ability to comb wording for offence and abuse police procedure as a means to intimidate opponents.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer was asked about the Pearson case yesterday. He said: “There is a review going on of this particular aspect but I think that as a general principle the police should concentrate on what matters most to their communities.”

The post Telegraph calls for change in law after Allison Pearson accused of Public Order offence appeared first on Press Gazette.

Telegraph Media Group director of technology Dylan Jacques talks to us about the title’s ambitious plans to roll out a new generative-AI powered feature every month for 12 months.

It has already rolled out AI-written summaries and various internal tools which are helping journalists use AI to improve content, increase reader engagement and so sell more subscriptions.

How to subscribe to Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast

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And if you sign up for our Future of Media newsletter you will receive an email link to the latest show every Thursday.

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Or search for Future of Media Explained wherever you get your podcasts.

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If you have an Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod smart speaker, ask it to “play the latest episode of the Press Gazette Future of Media Explained podcast”. The same command also works with virtual assistants on mobile devices.

The post Podcast 78: Generative AI in the newsroom at The Telegraph appeared first on Press Gazette.

The Telegraph set out in March to launch 12 significant uses of AI in its newsroom over 12 months.

The tools include newsroom workflow aides, consumer-facing AI services and internal data discovery tools. They are packaged together in an internal tool called Pulse AI so staff have a one-stop shop for the new services.

The Telegraph‘s director of technology Dylan Jacques told Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast he had found it more valuable to “learn through doing” instead of getting bogged down in policy questions over AI.

“What we decided to do at the beginning of this year was really make a concerted step change and a bit of commitment to the organisation that we’re going to see through a practical set of tools in practice. We didn’t want it to be ‘this is coming, this is coming’ and it drag on too long.

“We essentially pulled together a bit of a mission statement, if you like, that said we need to understand this in practice quite soon. We didn’t want to be spending six months or 12 months on a concept that then turned out to not be that valuable or hard to achieve.”

‘If you can improve engagement, all boats rise with that tide’

Jacques said the new products, which are using a “whole range of tools from across a multitude of vendors”, are already providing “real business value” and “definite investable opportunity”.

He explained: “So far it’s been tied into improved customer engagement. If you can improve engagement, then all of the boats rise with that tide really, and subscriptions will flow from that.”

The Telegraph has been running a subscriptions-first strategy since 2018 and it ended last year with 1,035,710 subscriptions, including more than 200,000 added with the company’s acquisition of the Chelsea Magazine Company.

Jacques said AI-generated summaries at the top of email newsletters have led to a 20% increase in click-through rates. These summaries are not used on every email – some are still human-written – but Jacques noted that as personalised content grows and people are sent different articles depending on their interests, journalists will not be able to write a version for each reader, whereas gen AI can.

Telegraph readers may also have noticed AI-generated summaries appearing at the top of some articles with a disclaimer.

Jacques said: “There was a lot of internal debate as to whether or not this is something that actually really adds value to the consumer, and points can be made either way. Obviously, our journalism is our product. It’s what we’re all here to do. And using AI products to summarise that, it might help certain people, whether they’re time poor on their commute, but if it detracts from people really spending the time to fully examine the journalism, it’s not necessarily the best thing for the organisation and journalism in the long term.”

Swedish daily Aftonbladet said last year that people were spending longer on articles with AI-generated summaries at the top. Jacques said this has not proved the case at The Telegraph but that page views per sessions tend to go up when people are given these summaries.

“We quite quickly understood that the dwell time did dip, but actually that’s not the end of the world.

“We’ve A/B tested showing summary points on articles at a fair amount of scale and we’re reasonably confident that page views per session goes up by a fairly clear, statistically significant number.”

Modern gen AI technology has meant ‘big leap forward’

The Telegraph is also looking at using generative AI to translate its flagship Ukraine: The Latest podcast which has an “enormous international audience” including Ukrainian and Russian speakers.

“One of the things that gen AI has enabled us to explore is translating our podcasts in a way that is usable and digestible in those native language,” Jacques said, adding that previously the tech meant it could be done but “in quite a robotic way”.

“I think they rely on sort of translating it to text and then reverse translating it back,” he said. “And actually what some of the more modern gen AI services have enabled us to do is create translations that are quite true to the voices of the presenters… and it does it in quite a seamless and impressive way. And actually it’s maintaining the cadence of voice and the fluidity of the discussion much better than the previous, much more robotic services could do. So that’s been a big leap forward.

“And I think that’s going to be a really interesting one because that’s another area where while we would love to have journalists and audio presenters in all sorts of languages, it’s not realistic to expect that we would ever be able to extend our model to ever achieve that. So this is us being able to achieve something, broaden our audience and really get to a much bigger market than we previously were able to purely by the gen AI tech.”

Other products rolled out so far include an SEO headline generator and a localisation tool suggesting changes to language and context for audiences in the US, for example by telling journalists that they might want to add a quick explanation of Remembrance Sunday.

Jacques said that “giving some context is very helpful as clearly you want there to be the minimum amount of obstacles in the consumer’s reading of something, and if it immediately feels like they’re reading something that they clearly just don’t understand or don’t have context from, we’re not going to see great engagement through it”.

Staff can also use an editorial research tool based on all of The Telegraph’s previous content to help them more easily add context or find past quotes. And they have a new AI data assistant helping them quickly get the answers to analytics questions like “how many subscriptions did we get yesterday?” or “what was engagement like in the money section of the website in the US last week?”

Jacques said that previously “you would have to get through quite a bit of comparative analysis and dashboard comparisons. This is now available at people’s fingertips quite instantly.”

Telegraph AI tips: ‘Learn through doing, be agnostic, invest in the capability’

Also potentially in the pipeline is a customer-facing search chatbot for the site based on its own archive, similar to functions rolled out this year by the Financial Times and The Washington Post.

“We have internal services that do that already and we’re just contemplating whether or not we want to extend that into the consumer-facing realm,” Jacques said.

“We’ve got a very ambitious multi-strand expansion plan for more of this next year. We’ve seen some real successes so lots of reasons to invest, and we really want to establish ourselves as a market leader in the gen AI space.”

Asked for his tips for other news publishers that may not be as far through their journey rolling out generative AI products, Jacques said: “I would say if you feel you’re being bogged down with policy type stuff, I would try and move to a model where you’re learning through doing rather than doing too much academic evaluation of whether you should.”

He added that it is best to be “quite agnostic” with the technology: “There are lots of tools out there, they change all the time, different models get released all the time which suddenly makes a use case that was unfeasible last month this month totally feasible. So you need to be quite across the technology and trying different things all the time. Hitching your flag to one vendor or another is probably a mistake in this area.”

Jacques added: “You want to invest in the capability within your organisation as much as you want to invest in the use cases.” The Telegraph has around six people dedicated to working on generative AI. The questions to ask when deciding on staffing, he noted, include “what would they be doing otherwise?” and “what are the development priorities within the organisation?”

Jacques continued: “You might find that, you know, all of a sudden you want to turn something off and spin something else up that’s new and you can do that easily… providing that you’ve got the people and the capability – the use case specifically maybe is a bit more transient.”

Hear more from Telegraph of technology Dylan Jacques about the news publisher’s generative AI rollout on Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast.

The post Telegraph is launching an AI-driven newsroom tool every month appeared first on Press Gazette.

A fresh auction looms for The Telegraph as Dovid Efune has failed so far to secure funding for his £500m-plus takeover bid.

Efune is the owner of The New York Sun, a once famous brand but now a fairly obscure news website. The Telegraph itself describes him as a “little-known entrepreneur” in today’s newspaper.

The title reports that $200bn US investor Oaktree Capital has left talks to fund the deal, leaving questions over how Efune will finance it.

Efune has been in exclusive talks to buy The Telegraph from Redbird IMI since mid-October and is understood to have two weeks left to get his financing in place.

A spokesperson for Efune told The Telegraph that Oaktree’s proposal for debt financing was “not competitive, so we have decided not to proceed with them”.

The spokesperson said: “We are progressing on debt financing with a number of reputable institutions and have high confidence in our financing path.”

Abu Dhabi-backed Redbird IMI has been forced to sell The Telegraph by new legislation banning state ownership of newspapers. The fund paid £600m for the Telegraph and Spectator titles in December last year and sold The Spectator to Paul Marshall for £100m in September.

Other possible bidders for the Telegraph include DMGT, National World and Lord Saatchi although Mail owner DMGT has previously pulled away because of the new legislation and advertising mogul Lord Saatchi had a bid rejected in August.

The ownership of The Telegraph has been in limbo since June 2023 when it was seized by Lloyds Banking Group to recoup the Barclay family’s unpaid debts.

Telegraph Media Group revenue grew 5.4% to £268m in 2023 and operating profit rose 35% to £54m.

Although the Daily Telegraph print edition is in long-term decline, selling fewer than 200,000 copies per day, the group claims to have more than one million subscribers (70% of which are digital) including those of the Chelsea Magazine Company which it acquired last year.

The post Fresh auction looms for Telegraph as Dovid Efune yet to secure financing appeared first on Press Gazette.

With Dovid Efune reportedly in exclusive talks to acquire The Daily Telegraph Press Gazette has taken a closer look at his current title, the New York Sun, an illustrious title which now has a relatively small online audience.

Since acquiring The New York Sun Efune, a British-born former editor of the New York-based, Jewish-focused newspaper Algemeiner Journal, has set about turning it into a digitally-focused subscriptions business not unlike The Telegraph.

And he appears to have had some success building it up – though it remains a far smaller business than the one he’s now seeking to take over.

What is The New York Sun, and how widely read is it?

The New York Sun models itself as the successor to The Sun, a historic New York City broadsheet which was published between 1833 and 1950 (and should not be confused with Rupert Murdoch’s UK Sun, which also has a presence in the city). Charles A Dana, one of the original Sun’s most prominent editors, is one of the people (along with Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe) often credited with originating the classic “man bites dog” adage about what makes a news story.

The modern New York Sun was launched in 2002 with the backing of a group of investors that included Conrad Black, who was the proprietor of The Telegraph at the time. Black now contributes a column to the Sun approximately once a week.

That iteration of the Sun too shuttered in 2008, but continued publishing intermittently online until it was bought by Efune in a cash and stock deal from editor Seth Lipsky in November 2021. The terms of that deal have not been made public, but Lipsky has remained on as editor in chief.

Efune’s version of The New York Sun, which has remained online only, launched the following February and appears to have seen some success. Similarweb data indicates its website, nysun.com, received a monthly average of 134,200 visitors in the fourth quarter of 2021, which by the third quarter of this year had increased by 485% to 785,100.

The title still appears to be relatively obscure in its home market, however. Its monthly visits in September 2024 (678,640) are still well behind those of other New York City websites such as Gothamist (3.32 million), NBC New York (4.35 million) and the New York Daily News (5.66 million).

Nationally and internationally focused giants the New York Post and New York Times, meanwhile, far outstrip the whole group for visits.

Anecdotally, too, The New York Sun does not yet appear to be a mainstay of the New York media scene. Among ten New Yorkers Press Gazette spoke to – four of them journalists – none could remember encountering a New York Sun story over the past few years.

One journalist said: “I can say with certainty I have never read anything from The New York Sun or seen it in the wild – I thought that was the made up paper Carrie writes for in Sex and the City.” (That fictional paper is The New York Star.)

The New York Sun's content is not just New York-focused. At time of writing, the top stories on the front page covered military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, Hunter Biden re-filing a lawsuit against Fox News and Israel launching new airstrikes on Lebanon.

Who reads The New York Sun, and how does its business work?

The New York Sun said at launch that it wanted to draw 80% of its revenue from subscriptions, and in a statement to Press Gazette company spokesperson Jonathan Marder said "the vast majority of The Sun's revenue comes from our subscriptions business".

Marder did not disclose how many subscribers the Sun has, but said they "number in the tens of thousands" - a figure that Efune wrote in February this year had increased "500%" since he took over.

Readers must register to access any content, and registering provides readers with two free articles before they hit the paywall.

A basic “Sun Reader” subscription provides full access past the paywall and an ad-free reading experience and costs $120 a year. The site also offers two premium subscription offerings: a “Sun Member” subscription tier which costs $250 a year and also includes “podcasts, member forums and VIP livestreams” and crossword access and a “Sun Founder” tier, charged at $2,500, which adds into the deal “weekly briefings from senior editorial staff” and “monthly invitations to exclusive VIP events”.

The site takes advertisements and runs in-person events that are often held at its offices at 300 Madison Avenue. Despite its relatively small web traffic, the publisher attracts well-known figures for its events: most recently they have included interviews with the likes of former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, as well as a brunch with the now scandal-engulfed mayor of New York Eric Adams.

Marder told Press Gazette the site achieves most of its distribution through two daily newsletters that "carry the news to over 1.4 million subscribers on weekdays". The site's advertiser page claims the Sun's newsletters have an average open rate of 55%, although it should be noted that email open rates are significantly inflated by the large number of people who use iPhones because Apple’s email client automatically makes it look as though an email has been opened.

The same page provides some insights into the make up of nysun.com's audience at the time it was acquired by Efune. The readership appears to skew older, with 60% of the audience aged 45 and above. (This may account for why so few of the New Yorkers Press Gazette asked, who were all younger than 40, had encountered the Sun.)

Like The Telegraph, New York Sun readers are also reputedly wealthier than the average American: the website says 25% of its readers make between $100,000 and $200,000 a year (versus 23% in the US at large in 2020, per the site) and 15% of them make more than $200,000 (versus 10%).

They are also more likely to be homeowners (95% versus 65% of Americans), more likely to be college educated (68.5% versus 37.5%) and more likely to hold a graduate degree (35.4% versus 13%).

The New York Sun names 32 editorial contributors on its about page, of whom eight are listed either as staff reporters or correspondents and 13 have editor titles. The remainder are largely identified as contributors, columnists or critics, including figures such as Fox Business host Larry Kudlow and Conrad Black. A further eight people are identified on the Sun’s Linkedin page as holding commercial roles at the business, for example account managers and sales assistants.

In his email to Press Gazette, Marder emphasised a continuity between the old 19th century newspaper and the publication as it exists today, saying The New York Sun "has a special place in the hearts of many Americans".

"The Sun played a central role in shaping modern American journalism in a wide variety of areas. The Sun hired the first paperboy on its second day in print. The Associated Press was founded in our offices. We introduced crime reporting and fashion coverage. We hired Emily Verdery Battey, the first woman reporter in American journalism, in 1875. In 1897 we published the most reprinted editorial of all time, 'Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.' The Sun has also been awarded Pulitzer Prizes, including, famously, for its dogged coverage of crime at the Brooklyn docks that later hit the silver screen in 'On the Waterfront,' starring Marlon Brando."

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Commercial staff at leading publishers have told Press Gazette they’re still set on transitioning to first-party data despite Google’s landmark decision in July not to proceed with its long-promised deprecation of third-party cookies.

Although the tech giant’s about-face caused grumbles in the news industry, executives at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference agreed the threatened death of cookies on Google‘s dominant Chrome browser provided the impetus necessary to get their houses in order on user data.

That change, they added, appears to already be reflected in increased ad sales.

‘I definitely used the word bastards’ when Google made cookie announcement, says one executive

Asked by Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford how he had reacted to Google’s July cookie announcement Morgan Stevenson, the digital transformation director at Newsquest, said: “I definitely used the word bastards.

“Simply because we put a lot of work in, preparing. I think it was a good industry kick up the arse to better prepare for leveraging our first-party data.”

But he said he felt Google had at least been “trying to create a solution to the challenge, unlike Safari and Mozilla, who just said ‘see you later, publishers’…

“I think there was a part [of me that] would have liked to just carry on with it, pull the plug, let’s see what happens. But there is so much still within the consent challenge to truly be confident that, if they pull the plug, we know what’s going to happen.”

Cookies are packets of data that give websites information about their users. If a website knows about its users it can sell ad space for higher prices, so Google’s planned deprecation of third-party cookies left publishers scrambling to develop strategies to get users to hand over their data directly.

Ultimately, Stevenson said, “it was a bit of reprieve, actually, just to get a bit more time with so many challenges to be ready for it if they really do pull the plug”.

Kyle Vinansky, the senior vice president of global sales at Forbes, had a similar view, saying: “I think everyone on our team really groaned when we heard that news. It was just one more thing in that saga.

“But I think what Google did, and others that were focused on this cookieless future, is they really got us thinking more about our first-party solutions, about the way that we could better understand our audiences…

“The biggest thing for us is it put focus on an issue where, ten years ago, despite our size and our scale, we didn’t know that much about our audiences. Now we know an awful lot.

“We’ve been investing more, even outside of first party data, and looking at ways with research panels and other levels of engagement that really allow us to dive into those groups that are most core to the advertising partners that are spending with us.”

Gareth Cross, the senior director for digital solutions at The Telegraph, said he had been less shocked: “To say it wasn’t the biggest surprise of the year is probably an understatement.

“I think the good thing from the Telegraph perspective was it hasn’t really affected the way we go about day to day, or our strategy, in any way. We were always doubling down on our first party data.”

Newsquest sees success with subscription model for advertisers

Despite their frustrations, the publishers said things appeared to be going in the right direction on ad sales.

Stevenson said Newsquest had “done very well pushing our direct sales with lots of local businesses. That’s predominantly what the Newsquest model focuses on”.

Although most of its concern was with its digital direct-sold advertising, he said “we’ve done significantly better this year at holding on to print revenues.

“One of the diversifications that we did six to seven years ago was to start introducing digital marketing services, as a reseller of those, to the same businesses that we sell our direct audiences to. That’s helped us become much stickier, for customers to stay with us.”

Services offered within that package included “SEO advice, PR copywriting, website building as well – so a whole one-stop shop and helping them to really navigate how they better improve the marketing of their own brand”.

He said Newsquest had “invested very heavily” in metrics like view time that help prove the value of their services to small business owners, and that they have improved client retention by rolling out a subscription model for ad sales.

“We looked at the best-performing campaigns for different industry styles and turned them into such good value you can’t afford to turn them off,” he said.

“You need to give three months’ notice if you want to turn it off, effectively… I’d say probably now 16 or 17% of our ad revenue is coming from a subscription model for advertisers.”

Nuno Brilha, the CMO of attention management platform Insurads, said they were looking into a similar ad subscription service as part of a recently-launched strategic partnership with Mather Economics and its content and analytics platform, Sophi.

Telegraph: Direct-sold advertising revenues up and ‘they will grow again this year’

Cross, from The Telegraph, said that over the last year “we have seen our areas of focus, our direct-sold, grow. We’ve seen our partnerships grow, and digital revenues, from an advertising perspective, are up. And they will grow again this year”.

He said the “beauty” of a subscription-first business was that “the things that come with that are all the things that help you face some other challenges” around advertising.

“So there’s a hell of a lot of first-party data – whether it’s declared, inferred – and the way we use it, we no longer need to rely on third-party data sources for our direct-sold.”

More broadly, he said, “we do things now that we would never have done before. A good example of that is if an ad format isn’t working, we remove it.

“Often what would have happened in the past – you [wouldn’t] lose that yield, you’d just add something else, and before you know it you’ve got something incredibly cluttered, diluted…

“One of my colleagues says the ad experiences are designed to engage, not enrage.”

Forbes ‘creates scarcity’ on sponsorship opportunities to add ‘exclusivity’ for partners

Forbes executive Vinansky also said he was pleased with the year – but sounded a note of caution.

“From an audience standpoint, I think we’re doing better than ever: almost 100 million users on a monthly basis, consistent growth from that regard,” he said.

“From a revenue standpoint we’re pacing ahead of last year, but Q4 for us is an incredibly important time of the year. We’re expecting a lot of information in the next month or so that’s really going to decide where those numbers fall on an annual basis.

“And we’re still up against a very challenging political landscape, as we all know. There’s a lot of economic uncertainty still, and it’s a question for us of whether or not our largest advertising partners are in a position where they want to be a part of those conversations, or they want to wait and they want to stay out of the market.”

Forbes has a partial paywall, but Vinansky said “the majority of our traffic” does not come through it.

“We continue to grow our registered users, but we view that as multifaceted – it’s people that attend our events, it’s people that subscribe to our newsletters, it’s people that subscribe for digital or print access.”

He said that direct-sold advertising is “our largest business segment”, with ads sold via the open exchange second.

Forbes SVP of global sales responds to revelation the site had been running ads on a low-visibility subdomain

Press Gazette editor Ponsford also asked Vinansky about a story that broke in March which revealed that some ads Forbes had been paid to run had appeared not on the main site but on a subdomain that could not be accessed through regular site or search engine navigation. (Forbes has denied that it had been running a so-called “Made for Advertising” or “Made for Arbitrage” site.)

“I think it’s really caused us to think about transparency in a different way,” Vinansky said.

“From a data compliance standpoint, and some of the verification partners that they were using, we taught our partners how to actually identify any advertising that ran with us on that subdomain. It just wasn’t something that they were looking for.

“The primary issue that we were dealing with there… was a matter of the page templates that we were using, and them being gallery-style templates.” (The ads on the subdomain appeared while a user clicked through slideshow-format content.)

He continued: “Once we had that conversation with our partners about why these pages existed, the way that we were using them, the way that they supported some of our most deeply-reported editorial, it had a very different outcome than the article alone that really put us in a spotlight and had us on our heels in a pretty negative way.”

A specific change following the incident, he said, was that Forbes now provides “a templated lookbook of every single page design that we use on Forbes and every single place that an ad could theoretically run.

“It was nothing that we had done before. We’ve provided screenshots before after a campaign went live, but now we’re getting to granular detail as to where your ads might run before a campaign happens.

“From a reporting standpoint, we are dialed into all of the ad verification partners and have direct relationships with them ourselves. So we encourage our partners to use that data. We encourage them to use our first-party data. We encourage them to use third-party data segments that are outside of those.

“It’s the mixed approach to making sure that everyone feels the highest levels of confidence in that reporting and where the sources are coming from and being able to tell a more complete story with it.”

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Telegraph journalist David Knowles was just 32 when he died suddenly whilst on holiday in Gibraltar on 8 September. But his death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from hundreds of listeners worldwide to his daily Ukraine war podcast. Family and friends have remembered him as a “kind” and “cheerful” man with a “ceaseless curiosity”.

Knowles joined the Telegraph’s social media team in 2020, but made a name for himself with podcast Ukraine: The Latest, which he launched on Twitter Spaces after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Created, produced and hosted by Knowles, it has become the Telegraph’s most popular podcast and is the UK’s only remaining daily audio offering on the conflict, broadcasting nearly 700 episodes so far to a global audience, including on Youtube.

In a brief but emotional broadcast on 9 September, Knowles’ podcast co-hosts shared the news of his sudden and unexpected death with listeners. In response, more than 1,800 messages have been posted below a Telegraph report on his death, which serves as a digital book of condolences, and yet more have appeared on social media and podcast apps.

Podcast inspired listeners to help Ukraine

Listeners, from as far afield as Australia, Canada and Japan, have paid tribute to Knowles. Among them were those who shared how the podcast had inspired them to act in support of Ukraine and its people in their struggle against the Russian invasion.

“Your podcast encouraged me to become political and outspoken on the war on Ukraine,” said listener Peter Behrends from Germany. “Last week friends of my son asked me to accompany them driving… to [Lviv] to give to medics (as I have a background in mechanics). Would I have done that without your podcast? I doubt it. Thank you for inspiring me, David. Thank you for giving me a sense of what is right and of what is wrong.”

UK listener Alison Carragher said Knowles was “an inspiration to us all”, adding: “I sponsored, through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, a lovely young couple – the husband was Ukrainian and his wife was Russian. This was a direct result of listening to the podcast and wanting to do my bit.”

Many of those posting messages of condolence mentioned Knowles’s voice – well-spoken with a tone of authority – which was often the first thing they heard as he delivered his “solemn introduction to the podcast”, as one listener put it.

“For more than two years my mornings in Melbourne, Australia, started with ‘I’m David Knowles and this is Ukraine, the latest’,” said listener Christiane Stehmann. “It seems impossible to believe I will never hear David’s voice again,” said listener Jane Edwards. “I have heard it almost every day for over two years. It feels like I have lost a friend.”

For others, the podcast offered more than just a way to catch up with the latest news on the conflict in Europe, but membership of a community. “At the centre of that community there was always David Knowles,” said listener Andrew Potter from Canada.

Family ‘astounded’ by outpouring of messages from around the world

Knowles’ mother, Kaye, told Press Gazette the family had been “astounded at the outpouring of messages” and were unaware “he had touched so many people around the world”. She said her son had a “calm, measured timbre when speaking which was simply pleasant to listen to” and an “intuitive ability to know the ‘right’ questions to ask”.

“So often, as I listened (while making the evening meal), he would make enquiries about people’s lives in a gentle, humane, way and they were often what I wanted to know. This was clearly recognised by those who listened to the pod on a daily basis,” she added.

Knowles comes from a long line of journalists. His father, Peter Knowles, was controller of BBC Parliament and is now Westminster correspondent for US TV network C-SPAN. Knowles’ grandfather was a journalist with BBC Manchester and his great-grandfather was a print setter on the Bolton Evening News.

Although he studied theology at Durham University, Knowles went on to complete a masters in Interactive Journalism at City University in 2015/16 and later regularly returned to speak to students. “His last visit, to talk to our MA Podcasting students, was as witty, insightful and erudite as ever,” said journalist and lecturer Adam Tinworth, who taught Knowles.

Knowles had a “ceaseless curiosity” and an “infectious enthusiasm” that could sometimes be “overwhelming for those on the receiving end of it”, his mother said. An avid reader, he would eagerly share what he had learned with friends and family, be it about the Aztecs or Napoleon, or his love of military history and the Master and Commander books.

His interests were many and varied, ranging from classical music (playing a number of musical instruments and singing in Geneva’s Holy Trinity Choir) and the performance arts (taking part in the Durham Revue and the National Youth Theatre) to learning languages (Czech and Hebrew among them) and playing cricket.

‘The happiest and most curious person I’ve ever met’

Journalist Marie Le Conte, Knowles’ friend and ex-girlfriend, said: “David may genuinely have been the happiest and most curious person I’ve ever met.

“He loved football and cricket; playing the viola and the mandolin; books about military history and books about everything else. He spoke a dizzying array of languages, some extinct and others rare, and couldn’t really explain why he’d learnt them. He was endlessly fascinated by life and all it could offer.”

She added: “Journalists are a famously cutting bunch, but I don’t think I ever heard anyone say anything even vaguely negative about him.”

Friend and former Telegraph colleague Ben Gartside, now senior reporter at The i newspaper, described Knowles as a “wonderfully talented renaissance man” and a “natural broadcaster”, having appeared as a guest on the Ukraine: The Latest podcast.

It was with Gartside that he set up the Larkhall Wanderers cricket team, bringing together some 50 players “none of [whom] would have been friends if it wasn’t for him,” said Gartside, who added that while Knowles’ enthusiasm was greater than his skill on the pitch “he became one of our most important and best players”.

Knowles was also keen on football, and, despite his “plummy west London voice”, supported Bolton Wanderers. “I remember going up to him at work and he had a Bolton Wanderers mug at his desk,” said Gartside. “I said: ‘Why have you pulled that out of the work cupboard?’ He said: ‘I really like Bolton,’ and was regaling me with stories of their players from 15 to 20 years ago, and I was like: ‘Okay, you really know your stuff!”

His fascination with lower-league football also took him on his holiday to Gibraltar, where he went with a friend to watch the tiny territory take on Lichtenstein in the UEFA Nations League, although he never made it to the match.

Family believe ‘foul play’ will be ruled out

While counter-terrorism police are investigating Knowles’ death, the family believe foul play is likely to be ruled out. Knowles was banned from entering Russia due to his reporting of the conflict in Ukraine. While police are investigating his death they have said they have no specific concerns as yet.

Gartside said Knowles was “humble” about the success of his podcast, adding: “David was doing it because it was something that was important to do, and any ego or any personal acclaim that he could claim from that he shrugged off.”

Ukraine: The Latest has had nearly 100 million listens overall since it began in 2022, with a large segment of its audience based in the US. It averages around four million plays per month.

Colleague and podcast contributor Colin Freeman said: “Many current affairs podcasts fizzle out after a few weeks or months – Ukraine: The Latest went from strength to strength.

“These days I bump into people all over the world who tell me they listen to it, including many in Ukraine itself. Sometimes it has even opened doors for interviews that might not otherwise have happened.”

Podcast gave ‘hope and strength’ to Ukrainian listeners

Knowles made a number of trips to Ukraine himself for the podcast, including a visit this summer when he travelled to Bucha and reported on how people there were rebuilding their community after the illegal Russian occupation left the town in ruins.

Knowles’ work won him plaudits from Ukraine itself. On hearing of his death, the Ukrainian Embassy in London tweeted: “We are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of the Telegraph journalist of ‘Ukraine: The Latest’ podcast @djknowles22. His dedication to reporting the truth about the war in Ukraine and his commitment to telling the stories of those affected by it will never be forgotten.”

Ukrainian listeners also shared messages of condolence online. “I live in Ukraine and I have been listening… for 1.5 years,” said Serhii Fartushnyi. “David’s voice has been a constant companion for me through these difficult times.

“For the past 1.5 years, his dedication to bringing the truth about Ukraine to the world gave me hope and strength when it was hard to find any. His empathy, intelligence, and unwavering commitment to telling our story made Ukrainians feel less alone in the world.”

Listener Ben Skolozdra added: “David’s legacy will be that of an English language voice for a free, independent, and democratic Ukraine. The Ukrainian diaspora across the world is mourning as one at this tremendous loss.”

In Ottawa, Canada, anti-war protestors put up pictures of Knowles on what’s called the Freedom Pole, which sits outside the Russian embassy, with the message “eternal memory”. “You taught us so much and gave inspiration to carry on our daily protests,” tweeted one protestor in tribute to Knowles and the Ukraine: The Latest podcast.

A pleasure to work with because he had no ego

It was through the podcast that Knowles met girlfriend Adélie Pojzman-Pontay, who produced reportage episodes in her role as narrative podcast producer at the Telegraph, accompanying him on a trip to Ukraine in February.

“David had no ego, so it was a pleasure to work with him,” said Pojzman-Pontay. “I’m not an expert on Ukraine… when we travelled to Ukraine it was the first time I would be going out there [but] he never made me feel that any of my questions were stupid, he was just so happy to share absolutely everything he knew and explain everything to me.”

She said she was struck by how many people Knowles knew in Ukraine. “Most of his sources were his friends,” she said. “Whenever we met someone, he was just so caring in the way he approached people, and so patient as well. He really had a sense of how to engage with people and I think that’s just because he’s incredibly honest in himself all the time. I’ve never seen someone who’s so true – he’s always 100% himself.”

She revealed Knowles had decided to learn Ukrainian after becoming a full-time audio journalist and presenter at the Telegraph this summer – “the first time in two years that his job title matched what he spent the majority of his days doing”.

She said the podcast came about “very organically” because “David absolutely loved history – his flat is covered in history books everywhere and most of these books are about war. Colleagues and I would sometimes tease him that he had the hobbies of a 55-year-old dad, you know, reading and war and naval battles and talking about Master and Commander and Hornblower all the time. And so that’s definitely a subject he was really interested in.”

Remembering Knowles, Pojzman-Pontay said he was “incredibly warm and happy” and “was never in a bad mood”. “He was incredibly cheerful and always making a joke, and if you weren’t in a good mood, he was always trying to cheer you up by being silly or extremely caring. So he would often, for example, leave chocolate bars on people’s desks,” she said.

“He was always joking and being silly or he would come and tell you about some nerdy obsession of his… He really loved Napoleon. I’m from France and I honestly have never heard as much about Napoleon since I started being friends with David.”

Although short, Pojzman-Pontay said their relationship had been “incredibly serious” and “within a few weeks we were talking about marriage and children”. She added: “I’m just really sad we only had six months together, when we were meant to have 60 years.”

A funeral will take place at St Bride’s Church, where a candle has been lit for Knowles, on a date yet to be determined. Knowles will be buried on the island of Islay in Scotland.

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