Just over a fifth of US adults now regularly get news from influencers on social media, a new Pew-Knight Initiative survey has found.

An analysis of who those influencers are indicated few of the most popular accounts for news online have ever formally worked in journalism and that they are more likely to lean right than left.

The findings come as the US media grapples with the result of the the 2024 presidential election and what it means for the reach and influence of professional journalism.

The survey, published on Monday, canvassed 10,658 US adults this summer and was weighted to be demographically representative of the US population.

Of those surveyed, 21% said they “regularly” get news from influencers. That figure rose to 37% among US adults aged 29 and below and 26% among those between 30 and 49.

Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans were more likely than the average US adult to regularly get news from influencers, at 27%, 30% and 29% respectively. Lower income Americans (26%) were the most likely socioeconomic bracket to get news this way and women (23%) were more likely to do so than men (19%).

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans who said they got news from news influencers rated the content positively, saying it “helped them better understand current events and civic issues”.

About a quarter said it made little difference to their understanding of the world while 9% said it made them “more confused”. About six in ten (58%) said they follow or subscribe to at least one news influencer.

There was little difference between right-leaning (21%) and left-leaning (22%) people in how likely they were to get news from social media influencers – even though the influencers themselves were more likely to create right-leaning content.

[Read more: From James O’Brien to Joe Rogan — Rise of news influencers and alternative voices]

Top US news influencers are mostly male and lean right

As well as the survey, the Pew researchers looked at a sample of 500 “news influencers”, defined as individuals who had used news-related keywords in early 2024 who had a minimum of 100,000 followers. across X (formerly Twitter), Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok or Facebook.

Figures captured within the research included the likes of podcasters Joe Rogan and Felix Biederman, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, psychologist and Trump family member Mary L Trump, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, journalists Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly and Katie Couric, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and actress Alyssa Milano.

Less than a quarter (23%) of the news influencers sampled had ever worked for a news organisation. On X (formerly Twitter) the proportion of news influencers with ties to a news organisation rose to 26%, whereas on Youtube it fell to 12%.

Most of the 500 news influencers did not self-identify as right or left. Of those that did, 27% explicitly identified as Republican, conservative or supportive of Donald Trump and 21% as Democrats, liberal or Kamala Harris supporters.

The influencers who had worked in news were less likely to explicitly disclose a political orientation (with 64% staying unaligned, versus 44% of those without a traditional news affiliation), but those who did articulate a position were more likely to be right-leaning (25%) than left (9%).

Instagram was the most explicitly political platform for news influencers, with 55% of the creators there disclosing an orientation (30% right, 25% left). Although Facebook had a higher proportion of ostensibly unaligned news influencers, it also had the biggest proportion of right-leaning news influencers (39%, compared with 13% who were left-leaning).

Tiktok was the most left-leaning platform, with 28% of news influencers explicitly identifying themselves as left-leaning compared with 25% right-leaning.

Most (63%) of the news influencers assessed were men. Tiktok was the most gender-balanced platform, with 50% of the news influencers there men and 45% women. Youtube was the least balanced: 68% of the news influencers on the video platform were men versus 28% women.

X was the most used platform among news influencers, with 85% of the 500 assessed present there. Half had an Instagram account, 44% posted to Youtube, 32% to Facebook, 30% to Threads, 27% to Tiktok and 12% to Linkedin.

Of the 500 news influencers, 59% were monetising their presence. The most common way of doing this was through subscriptions (49%), with 29% accepting donations and 21% selling merchandise. The proportion monetising their accounts rose to 74% on Tiktok, 77% on Facebook and 80% on Youtube.

A third (34%) of the influencers also host a podcast and 22% have a newsletter.

The Pew research incorporated ChatGPT into its methodology. The chatbot was handed text and transcribed audio from the influencer accounts and asked to analyse the content to determine whether the influencers identified themselves, for example, as left or right. A human researcher then spot-checked 1% of the results to check they were accurate, and the error rate was included in the research.

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A new podcast called Mag Hags pays homage to 50 years of women’s magazines by examining classic editions of famous brands like Cosmopolitan, Tatler, Woman’s Own and Marie Claire.

Hosts Franki Cookney and Lucy Douglas, both journalists who have worked on magazines, answer Press Gazette’s questions about what they see as a golden era for print magazines running from the 1970s to 1990s. They explain what made magazines great in this period and what current magazine editors could perhaps learn from their forebears.

Q: What is it that made magazines such a big part of female culture?

Lucy: “I think there’s a very historic sense of needing a safe space and a safe way to pass information down between women, down by generations. I think magazines are the 20th century iteration of that.

“Magazines of this time were a really powerful vehicle for informing women about issues like women’s health, sexual freedom, feminist movements, domestic violence and lots of big social issues…

“There’s lots of shame and lots of stigma surrounding these topics and women’s magazines were a safe space to get that information. That information was coming from a context that was speaking to young women in a friendly, entertaining, lighthearted, trustworthy way, but also being authoritative and insightful. “

Franki: “They were doing something that mainstream media at the time was not doing, which is managing to bridge that gap between being really fun and lighthearted and entertaining, tapping into the things that women were enjoying in their lifestyles while also doing serious reporting on issues that affected women.”

What were some of the less good things about magazines in the period you were looking at?

Lucy: “One difference is some of the expectations around relationships. Looking at a 1988 edition of Good Housekeeping there was this idea that you you need to be careful about how many friends you have because they could really get in the way of your marriage. That’s something that feels probably quite unhealthy.”

Franki: “We can’t not talk about the fact that absolutely everybody in these magazines was white. All of the features are very much written for a white audience in a way that does actually feel sort of noticeable. The language that’s used is just assuming a complete racial homogeneity.”

What were some of the good things about magazines in the era you were looking at?

Franki: “There’s a lot of fun being had in these magazines. I mean, we found that the writing is really punchy, really creative, often a lot more irreverent than you get today. In one of our episodes, we looked at an issue of Tatler from 1980. All of the writing in that is just so good. And it’s hard to know where you would find writing like that now.

“Looking at New Woman, the whole tone of that, we just found it so joyful.”

Lucy: “Looking at Marie Claire from 1998 and New Woman from 1997, and most of the titles we looked at, there’s a noticeable lack of moralising in them and that is something we go in for in quite a bit way in 2024.”

Franki: “It’s also giving quite a lot of credit to the reader, isn’t it? Because it’s sort of not laying out, here are all the ethical sides. It’s presenting the story and letting the reader make their own mind up about it, which as a reader in this context feels really refreshing, actually.”

Magazine circulations have slumped in recent years. Is there anything the industry can learn from these golden era editions?

Franki: “I’m not sure if there’s a way to compete with social media now when it comes to sort of lifestyle content. And so maybe the way is to go back to this route of being a bit irreverent and trying something different. Making it fun.

Lucy: “There was an acerbic, irreverent, very funny humour that was in that kind Tina Brown era, Tatler. I think that’s the kind of thing that will get people reading magazines again.”

The post Less moralising and more fun: What we can learn from the golden era of women’s mags appeared first on Press Gazette.

TV was the most popular way to consume news and information during the summer’s UK general election, Ofcom has found.

This is despite another finding by the telecoms regulator that, away from the election period specifically, online is now as popular as television as a way for Britons to get their news.

Among Ofcom’s 8,000 respondents, who were surveyed in four waves of 2,000 across the general election campaign period (23 May to 4 July), 49% reported using television to follow election news this summer.

That compared against 26% who used social media, 24% who said they used news apps, 24% who used radio, 19% newspaper websites, 17% news sites not associated with newspapers and 16% word of mouth.

A large majority of people, 87%, reported using at least one source to follow news and information about the general election.

Terrestrial television scored highest for trust, accuracy and usefulness among respondents, with 52%, 53% and 57% of those surveyed rating TV positively on each of those criteria respectively.

Social media did much worse, with 7% of people describing it as trustworthy, 6% accurate and 30% useful. This was similar to the responses for news received via word of mouth, which 7% of people said was trustworthy, 5% accurate and 21% useful.

Newspapers (both in print and online) were described as trustworthy by 28% of people – higher than other online news sources, which scored 17%.

Election news avoidance: Working class, older people and women most likely to switch off from coverage

In another finding Ofcom said that working class people, older people and women were among the groups most likely to switch off from the news during this summer’s UK general election.

Each group reported having less interest in news and current affairs during the 2024 campaign compared with their general level of interest in news.

Across all 8,000 respondents, people reported similar levels of interest during the election as during a non-campaign period. Asked to rate their interest in news and current affairs from one to five, with one being “not at all interested” and five “very interested”, 48% said they were interested in news and current affairs during the campaign and 50% said they were interested “in general”.

In contrast, 21% of all respondents said they were not interested in news and current affairs in general, and 28% reported not being interested specifically during the election.

Among C2DE respondents (those who work in, for example, skilled or unskilled manual occupations) 28% reported being not interested in news and current affairs generally – a proportion that rose to 36% during the election.

Among those aged 50 and up, similarly, 19% reported being uninterested in news generally versus 30% during the election. Among women those figures were 23% and 32%, respectively.

Ofcom said that the most common reasons cited for a lack of interest was that people “felt like nothing will change”, which was cited by 51% of those who reported being uninterested, and that “it brings their mood down” (44%).

In a related finding, 49% of Ofcom’s respondents said they felt that “people like me” do not have a voice in society.

“The perception of not having a voice increased with age,” Ofcom said, “and people from C2DE households were also more likely than average to feel this way.”

Younger people became more interested in news during UK general election

Young people were the most likely age demographic to report increased interest during the election period, with 39% of respondents aged 18-24 saying they were interested in news generally and 58% saying they were interested during the general election specifically.

Conservatives and Reform UK supporters were the most likely voters to report being uninterested in news during the election. Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters reported being more interested in the news during the election than they were in general.

Whereas 45% of people said they felt well informed about news and current affairs generally, 43% of people said they felt well informed about the news during the election specifically. Another 11% said they were “not at all” informed about the election, greater than the 7% who said they were not at all informed about news generally.

A little under half of respondents, 46%, agreed with the statement “it is important to engage with lots of different news sources” compared with 22% who agreed with the statement that it is instead “better to stick to one news source that you trust”. Ofcom said the latter view was more popular among C2DE households.

Ofcom also asked respondents about misinformation, finding 46% of adults were “confident” they could spot misinformation in the media – but 21% thought they could identify a deepfake.

Six in ten people said they had seen claims they thought may have been false or misleading at least once in the prior week, which Ofcom said “included one in ten who said they saw such information several times a day”. A comparatively small proportion, 27%, said they had encountered a deepfake in the prior week.

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Microblogging platform Bluesky may still be a relative minnow among the social media giants, but several news publishers appear to see potential in it as an alternative to Twitter/X.

Bluesky says it has 1.8 million monthly active users – far short of the 200 million monthly active users claimed by Meta’s product Threads and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), which was reported in March to have 174 million active users every day.

But numerous publishers post daily to Bluesky, varying in size and reach from commercial powerhouses like The New York Times and CNN to independent or local titles such as The Intercept and Alaska Beacon.

Press Gazette spoke to publishers using the platform to find out if it might be a possible replacement to X/Twitter, which many see as an increasingly toxic environment populated largely by trolls, extremists and bots.

Click here to Press Gazette’s other Platform Profiles, covering services including Youtube, Snapchat, Whatsapp and more.

What is Bluesky?

From a user’s perspective, Bluesky is a simpler version of X: it presents users with an infinite scrolling feed of short posts (300 characters maximum) from accounts they follow. Users have some control over how they are presented with those posts, but in its most basic form Bluesky gives the user a reverse-chronological feed showing more recent posts first.

The main difference is on the backend. Bluesky is a decentralised, federated platform, which means the accounts you see there can be hosted on different servers. This differs from traditional social media networks where all the accounts and posts would be hosted entirely on, for example, the servers of Facebook or Twitter. The idea is this gives users greater control over their content and audience, allowing them to move to another federated platform without abandoning everything they had built up on the first site.

(Being decentralised has other implications for the platform – for example it is possible, using a free website, to look up who has blocked any given user.)

Another difference is that whereas Threads or X automatically present users with a single feed that is either chronologically or algorithmically ordered, Bluesky allows users to subscribe or create feeds that bring together posts from particular accounts: a user could follow, for example, a news-focused feed, a comedy feed, a fishing-related feed or a feed that surfaces the most recent posts from the least-active accounts they follow.

For now Bluesky lacks some features present on competitors. It added direct messages for the first time in May, and does not yet host video natively. It also lacks post-scheduling capabilities, although third-party services like Buffer are compatible with the platform. Bluesky does not maintain its own post management platform like Twitter’s old Tweetdeck, but another third-party service, deck.blue, is free and functions much the same.

Originally invite-only, Bluesky is now open to whoever wants to join. It has seen a recent influx of users in the UK: a spokesperson for Bluesky told Press Gazette on Tuesday 20 August that it had seen about 36,000 British users join in the preceding two weeks, possibly prompted by concerns that misinformation shared on X helped stoke summer rioting in the UK.

For now at least, Bluesky seems more eager to work with the news industry than some of the social media giants. A spokesperson for the platform, Emily Liu, told Press Gazette: “Newsrooms and journalists are some of the key communities that bring any social platform to life — so many people use social media specifically for news, so we'd love to support newsrooms in making Bluesky home, and are always open to feedback!

“This is a platform where newsrooms can actually own their relationship with their audiences, and thus their distribution.” Liu also has a blog post on the site making the case for how newsrooms can use Bluesky for election coverage."

This attitude may be a tick in its favour compared with the other major possible Twitter successor for news publishers, Threads. The platform's boss, Adam Mosseri, has previously said that while "politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads... we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals".

Mastodon, another decentralised Twitter alternative, does not appear to have taken off among publishers, although it has recently said it wants to become "the go-to place for journalism".

How to succeed on Bluesky

The first step for publishers hoping to set up a trusted, professional presence on Bluesky is to get verified. But Bluesky does not verify accounts in the same way that Twitter once did, and nor does it have a paid verification system like X or Threads do today. Instead, Bluesky allows users to self-verify by setting their web domain as their account handle.

Setting your domain as your handle proves that you really are who you claim to be because it is only possible to do so if you control the domain in question. Making @pressgazette.co.uk your name on Bluesky, for example, would require you to add a particular string of text onto the domain registrar for pressgazette.co.uk. (Bluesky provides a more technical explanation of this process on its website.)

Once verified, publishers can ask to be included on Bluesky’s largest news feed, which can serve as a useful way to reach interested audiences. (Unverified accounts are not eligible for the feed.)

The feed is maintained in a personal capacity by Ændra Rininsland, a senior data journalism engineer at the Financial Times.

Asked how she thought publishers could do well on Bluesky, Rininsland told Press Gazette: “The audience on Bluesky is much different than on X. It is composed primarily of people who left X.

“In general, it's important to treat Bluesky like a serious platform instead of a fallback for X's diminishing audience; engage with the audience on Bluesky, and have journalists treat that audience as seriously as they do X's.

“If you put effort into creating a solid presence on Bluesky, you'll be rewarded with plenty of engagement despite the platform's vastly smaller size.”

She described the audience there as "very vibrant and extremely diverse in composition, generally tacking more to the centre-left than to the right.

"Understanding your audience is important no matter where or how you're doing journalism, so it's worthwhile spending some time trying to understand the needs of that audience."

What publishers are saying about Bluesky

Although its journalists are well-represented on Bluesky and it publishes regularly to the platform, the FT told Press Gazette its involvement is limited for now: “At the moment the FT has an autofeed and another for our journalists that people can follow. But generally we’re keeping an eye on how the platform performs before investing more resources.”

Emma Krstic, Politico’s director of engagement, Europe, told Press Gazette the publisher’s dabbling on Bluesky is “experimental”.

“I think with social in general… you need to try and be at the forefront of new platforms and see whether they're worth investing your time and resources in… When it's a new platform, you never quite know if people are going to really jump on it and it's going to take off.”

Politico is not a mass-market publication, gearing itself instead toward “people who are purely interested in politics and policy… so we’re trying to find spaces where those people congregate and we can reach them”.

Asked whether the brand was finding those people on Bluesky, Krstic said: “We’ve found a quite engaged audience, I'd say, for the size of our following at the moment.”

But a lack of audience analytics made it difficult to say for sure who they’re reaching.

She said: “Something we've in general found with jumping on new platforms is it can take a while for the analytics side of things to catch up… it's still in a way experimental, because you're just throwing things on there and seeing what data you can get back, or feedback from the audience to make a judgement call on.

“So it's still to be determined, I'd say, whether it's going to become a truly useful audience for us.”

Krstic’s comments echo those of other publishers. Asked about Bluesky earlier this year, The Washington Post’s deputy director, social, off-platform Travis Lyles told Press Gazette “​​it’s always important to keep tabs on up-and-coming social media platforms so you can make the right decision for your newsroom and meet readers where they are”.

The New York Times’ off-platform director similarly told Digiday: “We wouldn’t continue being on the platform and maintaining it every day if it wasn’t something that we thought was promising for the future but also currently delivering on the audience.”

For her part, the FT engineer and news feed maintainer Rininsland suggested Bluesky could represent a more profound shift around the way content is published and consumed online.

She said: “Bluesky is effectively two parts: AT Protocol, an underlying decentralised technology intended to facilitate publishing in a variety of formats, and Bluesky, a microblogging platform that's the flagship product of that technology.

“Attempting to understand how the protocol works and how that results in Bluesky working differently than traditional centralised social media platforms should be a priority task for any journalist seeking to seriously cover Bluesky.

“It's very easy to see it as a less-functional Twitter clone, but that really misses much of what makes Bluesky exciting as a piece of technology; in many ways, it resembles late 90s Internet, with much concurrent innovation and experimentation happening with many different individuals and groups — not just the Bluesky team.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Two news publishers have 20m+ Instagram followers: Leading UK and US titles ranked appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Washington Post ‘third newsroom’ creation gets underway appeared first on Press Gazette.

Three journalism organisations have proposed a list of 26 recommendations they say will help fix the “broken” relationship between police and the media.

The recommendations – which have been drawn up by the Crime Reporters Association, the Society of Editors and the Media Lawyers’ Association – have been submitted to the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing.

The proposed fixes include requests that forces take journalists into their confidence to avoid needless speculation, as in the case of Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, and that police press officers answer their phones. The report also urges greater transparency by police forces about crimes committed in their areas (currently only a tiny minority of incidents are revealed publicly).

Police forces asked to provide phone numbers, pick up the phone and take more reporters into their trust

The recommendations were made in a report titled “The Police and the Media: Repairing the Relationship” written by Crime Reporters Association chair Rebecca Camber.

In September Camber gave a speech at the Police Superintendents’ Association’s annual conference during which she argued police could have avoided a “circus of conspiracy theories” around the disappearance of Nicola Bulley had they trusted reporters enough to brief them off the record.

A College of Policing report into Lancashire Police’s handling of the case that was published in November issued a similar assessment, saying “the failure to brief the mainstream media on a non-reportable basis on this information, or to adequately fill the information vacuum, allowed speculation to run unchecked”.

The report published on Friday argued: “If officers take journalists into their confidence, there are real benefits for policing…

“The Crime Reporters Association has been in existence since 1945 and to our knowledge there has never been a case where a member has breached the terms of any briefing.

“If officers don’t know or trust the media present, they can request journalists to sign legal waivers in the same way forces currently proceed in a pre-trial briefing.”

The report also said that the Bulley investigation review “exposed the perils of not identifying the difference between bona fide news reporters and third parties such as social media influencers or bloggers”, and argues only accredited journalists should be allowed to attend press briefings.

The report observes that, “in the event of a terror attack, the current media protocol appears to be to direct media to ‘check on the force Twitter/X’…

“In the hours after a terrorist attack or critical incident, getting accurate information to the public is vital, yet social media platforms can allow false narratives to spread causing confusion and panic.

“If a national mechanism for informing the media was established, guidance to reporters could be quickly disseminated to prevent falsehoods being repeated in online reports.”

But at a more basic level, the report also notes that “since the pandemic, there has been a worrying trend of police press officers being unwilling to speak on the phone about cases”.

“Police forces must advertise their press office phone number and email address clearly on their website,” it advises, adding that forces “should be prepared to answer the phone to respond to press queries…

“A default response of ‘can you just email in’ will do nothing to build relationships or engender trust.”

Among its other recommendations the report asks forces to permit their press officers to discuss “all crimes, regardless of seriousness” with reporters, including “cautions, fines, out-of-court disposals, [single justice procedures] and other fixed penalties”.

At present, it said, these crimes “are often not being released or confirmed”.

“These may be regarded as lesser crimes, but they remain offences and the public have a right to know how they are being dealt with in the criminal justice process.”

The report acknowledges that “many in policing don’t trust the media and increasingly, journalists feel the same about the police. Officers at even the most senior level are nervous about engaging. The prevailing message throughout the ranks appears to be that officers should avoid the media who cannot be trusted. The walls have gone up”.

It argues the media, too, has “a large part to play” in rebuilding trust.

“But with the support of police leadership in changing the narrative, we believe rebuilding this relationship is vital for public confidence.”

Society of Editors executive director Dawn Alford said that “urgent action is needed to re-set and rebuild the relationship between the police and the media”.

“Our joint report offers some key recommendations that would help restore trust and a better working relationship between officers and journalists for the ultimate benefit of the public.

“We now look forward to the College’s response to our recommendations which we hope they can endorse with a view to working together to drive forward much-needed change.”

Full list of recommendations from the Society of Editors, Media Lawyers’ Association and Crime Reporters Association to the Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing:

1. Police forces should advertise their press office phone number and email address clearly on their website, including any out-of-hours provision if applicable
2. All forces should be prepared to answer the phone to respond to press queries
3. Press officers should identify themselves by name on the phone so that professional relationships can be forged with the media
4. Press officers should be empowered to provide as much guidance as possible to reporters. There should be provision in the APP [College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice] to allow press officers to make their own ‘reasoned judgements in individual cases’ when confirming details of investigations
5. Forces should continue to use emailed press releases as a primary form of communication with the media rather than simply placing information online
6. Consideration should be given to a mechanism for informing the national media about stories, whether this is a simple contact email list or software that can deliver email alerts
7. Police should consider providing guidance in major incidents (on a reportable and non-reportable basis) to prevent panic caused by social media speculation, misinformation and rumour
8. Police should be able to discuss case details where people have been dealt with by cautions, fines, out-of-court disposals, SJP [single justice procedure] and other fixed penalties
9. The NPCC, College of Policing and staff organisations need to work together on training for all ranks to promote a better professional relationship between police and the media
10. The police and press must work together to ensure that officers feel more confident and comfortable speaking to the media.
11. The current College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidelines around counter-corruption are damaging officers’ perception of the media and are in urgent need of revision
12. Police must be prepared to act when threats are made to journalists’ safety including online threats and in-person stalking
13. It is essential that press conferences are for accredited media only
14. Officers should seek to have a trusted dialogue with journalists and aim to provide regular updates in major investigations providing both reportable and non-reportable background briefings
15. Forces should endeavour to provide the media with charge details as soon as possible. The media should be afforded advance notice of cases to allow them to attend the defendant’s first appearance at magistrate courts
16. Forces should consider pre-trial or pre-verdict briefings to help the media to understand a prosecution and inform reporting at the end of the case
17. Press offices should endeavour to release pictures and video material shown in court on the same day as shown to the jury throughout a prosecution
18. Press releases containing mugshots and other relevant information should be sent out as soon as possible on the day of the verdict, not after a sentence
19. Police should release mugshots for all custodial sentences. Forces should be aware that releasing mugshots, CCTV, body worn video or other picture material from the case such as images of the weapon or exhibits heightens the chance of publication. Without images, some stories won’t be published
20. The CRA, MLA and Society of Editors would like to work with the NPCC and the College of Policing to understand how we could improve the handling of media approaches to victims and relatives
21. It should always be the choice of the victim or relatives whether to speak to the media. If families do wish to speak to the media, providing as much information and photographs as possible can increase the prominence of reporting about their case and provide opportunities for follow-ups which may be useful publicity in cases such as a missing person or a manhunt. If families do want to speak, don’t wait for sentencing
22. Interviews by police press officers of witnesses and victims should be discouraged, they are no substitute for an independent interview by an accredited member of the media
23. Policing needs to consider a robust strategy to tackle some of the risks to investigations posed by social media
24. Reporters face challenges in verifying information appearing in real time on social media and we anticipate that the relationship with the police will prove ever more crucial in establishing the truth. Forces must understand the need to move quickly to respond with guidance in the face of speculation, misinformation and correct information posted by witnesses
25. In recent times there has been a series of cases where members of the public have posted footage from arrests and police searches which have led to highly critical commentary of the officers involved. Forces should consider providing more guidance about the circumstances of incidents and/or the release of police body worn footage to ensure that the public has a balanced view of what happened
26. We would like to work together with the College of Policing and the NPCC in a review of the Authorised Professional Practice to reflect the recommendations above.

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News consumers across the world are increasingly far more likely to access news via social media than they are by directly accessing publisher websites and apps.

The 2024 Reuters Digital News Report surveyed news consumers in 47 leading markets around the world with over 2,000 respondents in each territory (big exclusions included China and Russia).

Across all leading global media markets, social media is the main gateway to news for 29% of people (up from 23% six years ago, but slightly down compared with last year).

Search (dominated by Google) remains important, with 25% citing this as their main access point to news, compared to 24% in 2018.

There has been a sharp decline in the proportion saying that direct access to publisher websites and apps is their main access point for news, down from 32% six years ago to 22% in the latest survey.

Looking at UK sources of news, social media is now cited by 37% of respondents as the main way they came across news in the last week versus 14% for print. TV has declined from 79% to 50% over the last decade.

In the UK there has been a sharp fall in the number of 18 to 24 year-olds accessing news websites or apps directly, from 53% to 25% over the last decade.

The fall amongst 25 to 34 year-olds has been less sharp, down from 53% to 34%. For those aged 35 and above, publisher websites and apps have remained important, with 51% saying they used them over the last week, a figure which has remained level.

Looking at 11 leading media economies, the survey asked which social media networks people have used to access news over the last week.

Facebook remains the most popular source of news, but it has declined from 36% in 2014 citing it to 26% in the latest survey.

Youtube has grown from 16% to 22%, Whatsapp is up from 7% to 16% and Instagram is up from 2% to 15%. Twitter/X is steady on around 11% and Tiktok has grown sharply after emerging four years ago to be used by 8% for accessing news.

Looking at particular newsbrands and sources of news, the survey underlines the dominance of the BBC over the UK media scene. The BBC is also the only UK brand cited by a significant number of US survey respondents as a source they access on at least a weekly basis.

Looking at TV/radio/print, the BBC is twice as popular (48%) as second-placed ITV News. Looking at online it is nearly three times as likely to be cited (44%) as the second-placed Guardian website.

In the US, opinionated right of centre brand Fox News is the most likely to be cited as a weekly source for both online and looking at just TV/radio/print. Overall, US newsbrands are far more evenly split in terms of popularity.

The report found that in the UK mainstream news brands are most likely to be cited as a source of news by social media users, versus alternative news outlets and influencers.

Online native brand Politics Joe made the top five most-referenced outlets in the UK survey behind legacy brands BBC News, Sky News, The Guardian and ITV News.

When survey respondents to ask individual news accounts they pay attention to for news on social media, partisan and outspoken voices dominated and in both the UK and US all the named social media accounts cited by survey respondents were men.

See more on this phenomenon of “news influencers” from Digital News Report author Nic Newman here.

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Open publishing and newsletter technology has “opened the market” for journalists to launch new publications according to the co-founder of a new title targeting personal finance.

Substack will be used as the content management and newsletter publishing system for MoneyIn2 which will offer personal finance advice to new investors and young people.

Co-founded by Julian Childs, former international revenue chief of Business Insider, the outlet will offer newsletters with two minutes worth of information per day.

Other co-founders include editor Jim Edwards (formerly editor in chief of Business Insider) and Kathryn Tuggle who will head up marketing. Jim Edwards is a paid contributor to Press Gazette.

Childs told Press Gazette: “I really love the newsletter model, it’s had a bit of a resurgence, and that’s been accelerated by platforms like Substack.

“That model of open CMS for newsletters has really opened the market for journalists to publish, in the same way that the internet and social media did 20 years ago.”

He added: “With newsletters, you’re more in control of building a relationship with your audience and you’re not reliant on models like Google who at any point can decide to switch things.”

Childs said that MoneyIn2 will respond to two information gaps in the current personal finance news service. The first is information catered to young people and those who do not already have money. The second is an emphasis on growing money, not just saving it.

Subscribers can receive the newsletter for free and paid subscribers receive access to extra posts and the full archive. The cost is £7/month or £65/year. The title will also carry advertising.

Substack offers journalists a free CMS but takes 10% of the revenue via subscriptions. Publishers on Substack keep all their direct-sold advertising revenue. Substack does not run its own advertising.

US-based entertainment industry title The Ankler is run entirely on Substack and is predicting revenue of $10m this year.

Childs explained where the initial funds to launch came from: “We’ve got some money from friends and family, we’ve individually put money in, we have a small amount of investment, and we expect to raise more later this year to accelerate our growth.

“But at the moment, we’re bootstrapping because we feel that it’s important for us to get out there.”

He added: “It’s interesting because so much of our audience target is now starting to take financial advice from social media which is great but also super risky.”

Of those who follow financial guidance from social media, 74% lose money or experienced an undesired outcome, according to research by Capital One.

Childs said: “We’re a credible source aiming to help people with smart advice, not ‘get rich quick’ schemes.”

“There’s also less competition for this type of media in the UK, unlike the US where there are some great newsletters which do similar projects to us.”

The outlet will start with three newsletters a week but hopes to increase to daily frequency and being expanding the editorial team.

The post Former Business Insider execs launch personal finance brand on Substack appeared first on Press Gazette.

Publishing giant Reach has disputed a report that it plans to replace journalists with influencers following its announcement on Wednesday that it will make more than 10% of its staff redundant.

The cuts, which are the third triple-digit layoffs announced at the Daily Express, Mirror and Manchester Evening News publisher this year, have prompted emotional reactions both in and outside the company, with some staff demanding on a company-wide call that chief executive Jim Mullen resign.

Reach says it is making 450 staff redundant, an estimated 320 of whom will be in editorial roles. The company intends to close some of its regional “Live” websites, combine its print and digital teams and ultimately deliver a 5-6% reduction to costs in 2024.

[Read more: Reach restructure – 450 jobs to go, websites to close, print and online teams to combine]

Has Reach said it will replace journalists with influencers?

Speaking to The Telegraph about the restructure on Wednesday, Mullen said that although he would avoid calling them influencers, Reach had “brought in people who have a following and what we do is put them through our formal training to make sure they can write things in the right way, make sure they know how to edit copy, make sure they don’t get into trouble”.

But Reach chief digital publisher David Higgerson wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday that “there is no plan to replace journalists with social media influencers”.

Mullen’s comments, he said, “were referring to work we have been doing since last year when we launched Curiously, our social media brand aimed at reaching younger audiences, and also new teams we have hired around the country for existing brands”. Curiously is a social-first, somewhat experimental Reach brand staffed in part by content creators.

Nonetheless, Mullen’s quote in the Telegraph provoked an angry reaction from staff during a company-wide address on Wednesday afternoon, which was delivered via web stream.

In public comments visible to all on the call, one anonymous staffer wrote: “If this information [about the redundancies] is supposed to be delivered by our local leaders, why are we learning about your plans via The Daily Telegraph?”

Another said: “Why are staff finding out your plans through an interview with The Telegraph before you speak to your own employees?” Several others called on Mullen to resign.

‘He has no business running our newsrooms’

One Reach journalist told Press Gazette that morale “is at rock bottom”.

“I’d say the mood now is more one of anger than upset,” they added. “Three sets of redundancies in ten months doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence in the leadership.”

Another said Mullen “has no business running our newsrooms”.

“The strategy under Jim Mullen has been all trial and all error,” they said. “In some places, we lost the trust of readers who, by the way, can’t overcome our terrible UX [user experience]. He hasn’t listened to our feedback. He has created new news deserts and should surely now have to consider his position.”

Reach’s share price remained flat across most of Wednesday and Thursday suggesting investors had already ‘priced in’ the cutbacks.

One former Reach employee, let go in a previous round of cutbacks, told Press Gazette: “There has never been more resentment of the company than right now. Many people with families and mortgages, who have dedicated much of their career to a Reach title, are really worried about their futures.

“Any journalist working at Reach for a few years is well-accustomed to the ceaseless toll of consecutive rounds of mass redundancies, but this latest announcement is particularly hard to swallow.

Why? Because the wounds are entirely self-inflicted, and because the management has so openly conceded that propping up the share price will always take priority over journalism. After Jim Mullen’s email went out to deliver the bad news, there was total incredulity at the line, ‘What will not change is our commitment to quality journalism’. It came across as totally preposterous.

“The reporters and writers on the paper are furious because the online output to which Mullen has tied his reputation is often the polar opposite of quality. It’s more likely to be an embarrassment.

“For a long time now, it has been clear that the so-called customer value strategy isn’t working, with the focus on bringing eyes to the completely unnavigable websites through clickbait instead of producing high-quality content. 

“Reporters take pride in their work and find that it’s almost impossible to read on the website because of all the pop-up ads and distractions. 

“In the meantime, management keeps putting up the cover price of the print editions, making the ads bigger and reducing the length of news stories and features, even though print accounts for nearly 80% of the total revenue. 

“It’s a completely bonkers formula, and everyone knows it, and yet somehow Mullen and the board keep going, at the expense of hundreds of jobs. There is widespread fury about the sums of money he has taken from the company while so many who worked hard on relatively low wages are being let go.”

MPS concerned about future of Scottish media

Outside of the company, the redundancies prompted some criticism from politicians and other journalists.

SNP MP Owen Thompson filed an Early Day Motion to Parliament on Thursday noting “with dismay” the cuts and urging Reach “to immediately make a realistic substantive commitment to the future of journalism in Scotland”.

Conservative West Midlands Mayor Andy Street said it was “depressing news… it’s these reporters – the ones left fearing for their jobs – who hold those in power to account better than anyone. I hope Reach can find another way to make its savings.”

The Bureau Local editor Gareth Davies, a former Reach (then Trinity Mirror) journalist who has in the past been publicly critical of the company, wrote: “My timeline is full of young reporters, some only a few months into their careers, announcing they’ve lost their jobs in the latest round of Reach redundancies. None are responsible for the position the company finds itself in but, as usual, they have to pay the price…

“I wish there were public figures willing to speak up and make protecting local journalism as big an issue as it should be.”

Ed Keeble, a former Reach employee most well-known for running the “Lizzy Lettuce” stunt that sent the Daily Star viral last year, said on Twitter: “A reminder to everyone to look after the mental health of your colleagues. I don’t know how some people sleep at night to be honest. Solidarity with my former colleagues at Reach. If you can, leave.”

In response to complaints about the usability of Reach websites, which can appear overloaded with adverts, Higgerson told one commenter on Twitter that the company is working on a redesign. But he said that “the challenge we have to juggle is generating the revenue to keep going, while at the same time keeping people on the sites themselves. But I do get what you’re saying”.

Mullen is scheduled to present a second “town hall” on Friday at 4:30pm, at which he will answer questions lodged in advance. Higgerson will separately run seven town halls for different brands within the Reach business on Thursday and Friday next week.

A reader writes

One reader and contributor to the Teesside Gazette, Guy Bailey, shared his views on the latest Reach cutbacks with Press Gazette,

He said: “From being one of the most respected and effective dailys of the North, now it is little more than a glorified Facebook page printing press releases verbatim, relying on the Local Democracy Service and rehashing local Facebook group content instead of employing reporters to report. 

“I fear that by the time the owners properly resource and commit to restoring the brand, or new owners do, then it will be too late and an area the size of Teesside will have lost its most prominent voice.”

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