2023 was a brutal year for the journalism industry, with at least 8,000 job cuts in the UK, US and Canada, according to Press Gazette’s analysis.

The tide continued in 2024, with around 1,000 people affected by closures and rounds of redundancies in January alone.

August saw several publishers making layoffs including Gannett, Time, Axios, Tampa Bay Times, NYPR and Hollywood Reporter.

As of 27 September, Press Gazette estimates there have been at least 2,500 jobs cut in the UK and US media this year so far.

All types of publisher features on the below list: from legacy newspaper brands to digital natives, and from commercial operations to non-profit newsrooms.

Many of the cutbacks at the start of this year have affected US media outlets but April saw a ramp up in the UK with GB News, Open Democracy, the Mail and The Times all facing redundancies of various numbers alongside The Wall Street Journal stateside.

Other UK job losses have come at Pink News, i-D Magazine and Design Week, and as part of international cuts to the likes of Vice and Business Insider.

Press Gazette will keep this page updated, with the latest additions at the top, as the definitive guide to job announced media job cuts made throughout 2024.

The list excludes any job cuts announced in 2023, which featured in our round-up of last year’s redundancies.

We will also add any significant hiring rounds to this page.

Journalism job cuts in 2024: Up-to-date list

November 2024

Associated Press – 8% of total staff

The Associated Press is planning to make cuts affecting 8% of staff, of which less than half would impact news staff, Press Gazette understands. Most of those affected are expected to be in the US.

As part of this, the AP has reached a tentative agreement with the News Media Guild to extend a voluntary buyout offer to some union staff in the US. According to a note from the AP News Guild first reported by New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin, this offer applies to 121 staff aged 54.5 and over.

The Guild note said: “The company said a decline in revenue necessitated cuts company-wide among guild-covered, administrative and international staff. For Guild staff, the company said reductions could be fully achieved by offering voluntary buyouts.”

It added: “The company maintains that the buyouts are necessary to avoid layoffs and have told the Guild that reductions will be made throughout AP’s global bureaus administrative staff.”

An AP spokesperson told Press Gazette: “The Associated Press has informed the world through accurate, nonpartisan journalism for nearly two centuries – enduring not by chance, but by being intentional about adapting to industry changes. We are taking proactive steps, including making some staff reductions, as we focus on meeting the evolving needs of our customers.

“This is about ensuring AP’s important role as the only truly independent news organization at scale during a period of transformation in the media industry.”

Dotdash Meredith – 53 people

Dotdash Meredith is laying off 53 people or about 1.5% of its staff, mostly affecting those working on print products.

As reported by Axios, chief executive Neil Vogel told staff: “While we are incredibly proud of our print products and our subscriber bases are stable (or in some cases even growing), the print advertising business remains challenged. Today’s actions are directly in response to this.”

He added: “We are not closing any print magazines, nor do we anticipate doing so, and we will continue to invest in our print assets.”

G/O Media – Two people

Two writers were laid off from G/O Media’s gaming website Kotaku on 7 November, according to Aftermath.

Managing editor Carolyn Petit wrote on Bluesky: “G/O Media’s management is once again punishing workers for its own bad decisions. Management mandated that some writers stick to ‘service’ posts, and now that the numbers aren’t panning out (surprise, surprise!), two of those writers have been laid off. Cruel and misguided.”

National World – Nine people

UK regional publisher National World plans to cut nine journalist jobs in Sunderland and Manchester, according to the NUJ, although two other roles will be created.

It said two of five journalists’ roles in Sunderland would be cut under current proposals, along with one of two reporter roles in Manchester.

In addition six editor roles across eight websites would be cut, the NUJ said. Two new Metro editor roles would be created for the sites which cover Blackpool, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Preston, South Shields and Sunderland.

Chris Morley, NUJ Northern and Midlands Senior Organiser said: “Journalists at the titles are already overstretched due to inadequate staffing levels, and these proposed cuts in Sunderland and Manchester would place intolerable strain on those that remain.

“National World has justified these severe cuts by saying that page views are down, but without saying how fewer overworked journalists with less time and more stress are expected to produce more of the quality local journalism that these communities want to read.

“The proposed cutback in the number of editors who serve National World websites throughout the North of England would inevitably reduce responsiveness to local issues and concerns.

“We will be strongly supporting our members through this process and call on the company to immediately rethink the insufficient time for consultation that has been given.”

The National World group chapel passed a motion on Thursday 7 November which stated: “This chapel is dismayed at proposals by National World to cut reporting roles in Sunderland by 40%, cutting reporters in Manchester by 50%, and the effect it will have on local reporting. It also notes with concern proposals to reduce local editors, and the effect of stress on already overworked journalists at the titles producing local journalism.

“This has been exacerbated by inadequate time for consultation. The chapel calls upon the company to rethink the proposals and the effect on quality local journalism and calls for proper consultation with the NUJ and local staff about the effects of these cuts.”

City AM – ‘Small number’ of people

Free London business newspaper City AM is proposing axing its Monday print edition and putting a small number of staff at risk of redundancy.

A City AM spokesperson said: “We will continue to build the City AM brand through digital and social channels, not least through the new City AM Studios in London, while focusing print publication on the midweek days which attract the greatest footfall amongst our target audience.”

Read the full story here.

October 2024

Fandom – Unspecified number

A round of layoffs has taken place at digital publisher Fandom, which owns brands like Metacritic, GameFAQs, Screen Junkies and TV Guide. Market changes were reportedly blamed and one staffer said they believed it was the fourth set of layoffs at the publisher since 2022.

GovExec – 16 people

Sixteen people are being let go from four divisions at GovExec media group, which owns titles including US state and local government publication Route Fifty and Government Executive.

Route Fifty reporter Dan Vock said he had been laid off, adding: “It’s a shame; I had some pretty good elections stories in the works.”

Oahu Publications – 13 people

Hawaii news group Oahu Publications, owner of the island’s biggest newsbrand the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, is cutting 13 employees, including a reported six in editorial.

Hawaii News Now reported that the cuts include the Star-Advertiser’s last two staff photographers.

The Pacific Media Workers Guild said: “These losses cut deep at our ability to continue serving communities across Hawaii.”

Oahu chief executive Dennis Francis said: “On Friday, OPI made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our workforce to strengthen the company’s financial future and better position us to continue serving our readers and advertisers. OPI employs 254 people, and out of our entire workforce, 13 team members will be departing between now and November 15.

“While job loss decisions are always difficult to make, the evolution of newspaper journalism has hit everyone in the industry hard, and OPI is no exception. For local journalism to succeed and for OPI to remain the Hawaii-produced paper our community relies on, we must maintain a resilient financial business.”

Oahu was bought by Carpenter Media Group earlier this year which has made cuts at other newspaper groups across the US soon after buying them including Pamplin Media Group and Sound Publishing.

Variety – Three people

Three journalists were laid off from Variety including longtime deputy editor Meredith Woerner.

Woerner said on 17 October: “Yesterday was my last day at Variety. I was included in a round of layoffs and… I’m heartbroken. Working at Variety for the past seven years has been a privilege and an adventure.”

She added: “I am tremendously grateful to the many Variety colleagues I’ve worked with over the years. But special attention must be paid to Variety’s web team. I’ve worked in several newsrooms nationwide, and this group stands out as the most passionate, collaborative, kind, and brilliant collection of people I’ve ever seen.”

It came two months after at least four layoffs were made at Penske sister title The Hollywood Reporter, and just over a year after a further four job cuts at Variety.

BBC – 210 people

BBC News is planning to cut 185 jobs and create 55 new roles, making a net reduction of 130 roles.

The broadcaster is proposing to end interview programme Hardtalk and “flagship” tech show Click as well as the Asian Network’s bespoke news service and the 5.30am News Briefing on Radio 4.

The cuts would also mean domestic BBC radio stations would begin airing World Service summaries between midnight and 5.30am, the merging of four “On The Day” newsdesk divisions to create a “single, story-led structure” and BBC 5 Live no longer producing its own overnight news programme.

Another 25 post closures are proposed in the media operations team which supports the production of the BBC’s news, radio and some sport services.

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

NBC News – A ‘handful’ of people

Semafor media editor Max Tani reported that there have been a “handful” of layoffs across the NBCU News Group including at CNBC.

ABC News – 75 people

About 75 people at Disney-owned ABC News in the US are being laid off, as first reported by Variety.

The layoffs are believed to be split evenly between ABC’s national newsgathering operation and its local stations but no current programming will cease as a result.

ABC News president Almin Karamehmedovic told staff in a memo: “Across the various ranks of ABC News, a limited number of our colleagues are being impacted by staff reductions. As you know, this has been happening across the broader company and the industry at large in recent weeks and months.

“For us, it means shaping a team that embraces the new media landscape and evolves along with it, which we must do to continue serving our viewers.”

September 2024

Scripps – More than 200 people

US broadcaster Scripps has told staff it plans to shut down its national linear TV news business, resulting in the loss of more than 200 jobs.

CEO and president Adam Symson told staff that Scripps News’ 24/7 national news programming will wind down from 15 November although it will continue to produce output for streaming and digital platforms with live weekday coverage.

“A core reporting team, based primarily in Washington DC, also will serve Scripps’ local stations’ news operations with national and international journalism,” he said.

Symson explained that revenue in linear TV has not followed audience growth.

“Over the last two years, Scripps News’ live anchored coverage and documentary programming have grown its linear television audience, but the prospects for the necessary revenue growth haven’t materialised, despite our sales teams’ efforts. Scripps News’ current financial position is what has led me to the decision to scale back our approach to 24-hour news and over-the-air coverage.

“Amidst an already difficult linear television advertising marketplace, many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the polarised nature of this country, no matter the accolades and credentials a news organisation like Scripps receives for its objectivity. I vehemently disagree, but it is hurting Scripss News, along with every other national linear and digital news outlet.”

Symson said about 50 Scripps News staffers will remain to cover local news and produce the streaming and digital content, prioritising “field reporting, our strong political coverage, investigative reporting and our digital and social media presence”.

The national Scripps News network was launched in January 2023 through a relaunch of Newsy, which the company acquired in 2014 and later took it through several evolutions including a streaming network and a free 24/7 linear network.

Gamurs Group – 30 people

Gaming media publisher Gamurs Group has cut 30 staff, blaming “unprecedented shifts” in the industry and in particular “the release of Google’s helpful content update and the decline in Google search and Discover traffic across all websites”.

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

Lee Enterprises – Around 20 people

US local news publisher Lee Enterprises is cutting ten roles from The Buffalo News, which has a newsroom of 55, according to the Investigative Post. The cuts include five buyouts or layoffs, and five vacant positions being eliminated.

Not long before that, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch laid off six members of staff while the managing editor and enterprise editor of the Missoulian was laid off and the Richmond Times-Dispatch cut two veteran sports writers.

Future – Unknown number

Job losses are undergoing a consultation process at Future plc amid the closure of titles including iMore, 3D World, All About Space and Total 911.

The titles, plus some events and Future’s external video production unit, were deemed “low to no growth assets”.

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

Daily Mail US – Up to 20 people

Up to 10% of the more than 200 editorial staff based at Mail Online in the US have been cut, with the publisher calling the redundancies “difficult but necessary”.

The publisher said it would “enable us to continue to invest in areas where we can grow our audience”.

The Sun US – Unknown number

A number of editorial staff at The Sun US have been cut. The number of jobs affected was not confirmed but Press Gazette understands more people were laid off than in the Daily Mail US cuts made on the same day (above).

The publisher, which launched its dedicated US website for The Sun in late 2019, said it needed to “reset the strategy and resize the team to secure the long term, sustainable future for The Sun’s business in the US”.

News Corp’s recent financial results cited “lower digital advertising mainly driven by a decline in traffic at some mastheads due to platform-related changes”, although this was not referring to The Sun alone.

BBC – 115 people

The BBC is planning to cut up to 115 editorial and production jobs in the Nations and Regions.

The cuts affect 40 to 45 jobs at BBC Local in England, about 25 to 30 each in Wales and Scotland, and ten to 12 in Northern Ireland.

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

August 2024

Gannett – 74 people

Gannett announced on 26 August it planned to shut down its product reviews site Reviewed.

State filings later revealed by Mass Live showed the company intends to lay off 74 employees based in Cambridge, Massachusetts – where Reviewed is headquartered – by 14 November.

A spokesperson for Reviewed told The Verge: “After careful consideration and evaluation of our Reviewed business, we have decided to close the operation. We extend our sincere gratitude to our employees who have provided consumers with trusted product reviews.”

They added: “The closure is a business decision influenced significantly by the fact that Reviewed relies heavily on search traffic and Google’s constant algorithm changes have degraded our current business model.”

Time – 22 people

Time is cutting 22 jobs across editorial, technology, sales, marketing and Time Studios, chief executive Jessica Sibley told staff on 20 August.

In an email first shared by Semafor media editor Max Tani, Sibley said: “This decision was not made lightly, but it is necessary to build a sustainable company in order to further Time’s mission.”

She said Time is facing “significant challenges from heightened competition for decreased advertising budgets to drastic shifts in consumer behaviour, changes to search and social algorithms, and overall economic uncertainty”.

Sibley said Time will put more focus on the climate, AI and health “areas of leadership where we are having success today”.

Meanwhile it is transitioning to a B2B revenue strategy with a focus on direct-sold advertising sponsorships and strategic partnerships as well as events.

The Hollywood Reporter – At least four people

The Hollywood Reporter laid off four people on Friday 16 August: executive managing editor Sudie Redmond, deputy editor Degen Pener, copy editor and film critic Sheri Linden and video editor Colin Burgess, according to The Wrap.

It follows a “small number” of editorial layoffs made in June (see below).

All Your Screens reported in July that at that point The Hollywood Reporter had “lost 11 full and part-time employees since September 2023,” many of whom were long-term employees, “while adding 15 full and part-time employees over the same period”.

The TV website claimed The Hollywood Reporter is considering changing direction from covering the industry to a “more entertainment lifestyle direction”.

There have also reportedly been an unspecified number of layoffs on parent company Penske Media Group’s product and business development side.

New York Public Radio – Around 30 people

New York Public Radio, which owns local news website Gothamist and public radio station WNYC, is aiming to lay off at least 8% of staff to help with a forthcoming $10m budget deficit, staff were told on Wednesday 14 August.

This is estimated to mean around 30 people, and staff are being asked to come forward as volunteers for layoffs before compulsory ones come into play.

It comes less than a year since New York Public Radio cut about 20 jobs and cancelled two podcasts.

NYPR president and chief executive LaFontaine Oliver told staff in a memo, reported by NYC news site Hell Gate, that: “While we have continued to control what we can control to avoid this moment—including the staff cuts in the fall of 2023, re-introducing a hiring hold, eliminating senior executive roles, forgoing annual increases in 2023, and keeping our paid internship program on hold—it hasn’t been enough to outpace increased expenses and declines in revenue.

“Our deficit continues to climb, and with our Q4 reconciliation complete and the books closed on FY24, we are now projecting a deficit for FY25 that is on course to once again reach more than $10 million by the end of the year.”

Oliver made the point that NYPR is not alone in this difficulty, saying: “For profit, nonprofit, and public media outlets alike are continuing to sustain losses wrought by declines in advertising, shifting audience behaviors, disruptions in the tech space, stubbornly high interest rates, and overall uncertainty in the markets.”

He said advertising at WNYC and classical music station WQXR has seen a “rapid decline” while “competition for philanthropic support is stiff, not only from our peers in nonprofit news outlets who are accelerating their pursuit of these same dollars in the face of increased challenges. Membership, long the hallmark of the public media model, is being strongly impacted by shifts from legacy media to digital platforms.”

Axios – About 50 people

Axios is planning to lay off about 50 people, or 10% of the company, it told staff on Tuesday 6 August.

In a memo leaked to The New York Times, chief executive Jim VandeHei said: “We’re making some difficult changes to adapt fast to a rapidly changing media landscape.”

He broke the news of the 50 positions being cut in an Axios smart brevity style “why it matters” section, explaining it was “to get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology and reader needs/habits.

“This is a painful but necessary move to tighten our strategic focus and shift investment to our core growth areas.”

VandeHei said Axios will grow revenue and audience year-on-year in 2024 but “we need to stay steps ahead of changes unfolding fast across American media”.

VandeHei took full responsibility for the move, saying: “This decision is mine. It’s difficult to make, but exponentially more difficult for our departing colleagues. This isn’t a reflection on anyone’s work – it’s because of changes in the media business. If you’re understandably upset by the decision, please direct your frustration at me.”

He also described now as “the most difficult moment for media in our lifetime,” pointing to “shifting reader attention and behaviour” across platforms.

He added: “AI is pushing us to a technological inflection point where models can summarise news, at the same time Facebook, X and search are faltering as reliable traffic standbys.”

VandeHei promised “thoughtful severance packages” and said the last day for most laid-off employees would be Friday 9 August.

Tampa Bay Times – 20% of payroll (potentially up to 50 people)

Tampa Bay Times, a for-profit news title owned by the non-profit Poynter Institute that has won 14 Pulitzer Prizes, has told staff it wants to reduce its payroll by 20% and is offering buyouts.

The newsbrand has about 270 full-time employees, of whom 100 are in the newsroom. They were told layoffs will follow later in August if targets for savings are not met.

Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty told staff he is cutting his pay by 20% until the end of the year while other senior executives are taking temporary pay cuts of 10%.

He added: “While sharing this news as we mark our 140th anniversary is disappointing, we are committed to ensuring the Times can continue its dedication to robust local journalism.

“I am confident we will emerge from this challenging period as a more focused and sustainable company.”

National World – Five people

Five jobs are expected to be cut at The Scotsman: three specialist writers, a feature writer and a business reporter.

A National Union of Journalists organiser said: “National World management claim they are trying to turn the company into a ‘premium content business’, but these job cuts fall on those same talented, award-winning journalists who consistently produce excellent Scottish journalism.”

Read our full story here.

July 2024

Newsquest – Two people

Two journalists have been made redundant from We Are Sunderland, a dedicated site for news and analysis about Sunderland FC launched by Newsquest’s The Northern Echo in January.

One of the two journalists affected, Matty Hewitt, wrote on X: “Bitterly disappointed to say I’ll no longer be working for @WeAreSunlun after being made redundant… We’ve given it our all since launching back in January and covering #SAFC again has been a blast. It’s never dull.”

Newsquest told Hold The Front Page the site was not closing but did not share details about how it would operate going forward.

On Thursday 25 July, the day after Hewitt’s post, the We Are Sunderland X account told users: “Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for free to stay up to date with all the latest #SAFC news and podcasts.”

Newsquest previously launched two other dedicated club websites, Rangers Review and The Celtic Way both in Glasgow, which have seen success and built subscriber bases.

Portland Tribune – Unknown number

Carpenter Media Group laid off an unknown number of staff at former Pamplin Media Group titles in Oregon which it bought a month earlier. The titles included the Portland Tribune and about two dozen other newspapers.

BDG – Nine staff

Bustle Digital Group (BDG) is laying off nine people, Adweek reported on 12 July.

The editors in chief of Romper and The Zoe Report were reportedly among those affected amid a consolidation of BDG’s parenting and lifestyle units.

More layoffs are expected to follow in the commercial teams.

LAist – 21 staff

LAist, a nonprofit newsroom that also houses Los Angeles radio station KPCC-FM, has cut 21 staff through layoffs and buyouts, The Wrap reported on 11 July.

The organisation’s chief content officer Kristen Muller told staff in a note in May that the cuts were aimed at lessening a $4-5m budget shortfall predicted for the next two years.

“Our efforts to reach and engage people on digital channels are succeeding. But the revenue is not following pace,” Muller wrote.

LAist earlier cut 12% of its workforce in June 2023.

CNN – Around 100 jobs

CNN chief executive Mark Thompson told staff on Wednesday 10 July that the organisation will cut around 100 jobs, equivalent to approximately 3% of its total workforce.

As well as the layoffs, Thompson explained some of the changes he plans to make at the organisation, saying he wants a subscription offering up and running before the end of the year, that the newsroom will be reorganised to integrate CNN’s domestic and international operations, and bringing more video products to the web. The Hollywood Reporter published Thompson’s letter to staff in full.

The cuts come a year and a half after the last round of major cuts at CNN under the tenure of previous chief executive Chris Licht.

Carpenter Media Group – 62 people

Carpenter Media Group has laid off a reported 62 people across local news publisher Sound Publishing, which it bought months earlier.

Reports from March indicated Sound Publishing parent Black Press had about 1,200 employees in the US and Canada. The acquisition represented Carpenter’s first move outside of the South East US and Texas.

The Everett Post, a rival to Everett Herald which was one of the affected newspapers, reported on 5 August Herald staff went on a two-day strike and while the company “refused to spare any jobs” they secured ” optional buyouts, increased severance packages and raises for remaining staff”. Ultimately 12 positions at the newspaper were cut, described as roughly half the newsroom.

The cutbacks reportedly amounted to 25% of staff in Washington State, a stronghold of Sound Publishing.

June 2024

The Daily Beast – At least 25 people

The Daily Beast has implemented voluntary buyouts accepted by 25 unionised staffers, or almost 75% of union members in the newsroom.

According to The Wrap those taking buyouts include media reporter Justin Baragona, political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery, senior national reporter Pilar Melendez and senior reporter Emily Shugerman. The outlet reported that senior staffers are heavily represented in the departures.

A further round of layoffs for non-unionised journalists is expected to follow.

A Daily Beast spokesperson said: “With such a generous severance offer, we anticipated a large number of employees would take the voluntary buyout. We are not at all surprised.

“These numbers allow us to move forward with our plan to secure the financial future of the Beast and rebuild a newsroom that will thrive in the current landscape. It’s always difficult when dedicated employees choose to step away. We thank them and wish them the best in their future endeavors.”

Evening Standard – 150 jobs

About 150 jobs are expected to be cut as a result of the Evening Standard’s planned closure of its daily newspaper edition and relaunch as a weekly title. A date for the changes and end to the daily paper has not yet been set.

The proposed redundancies reportedly include 70 editorial roles. The Standard newsroom is currently made up of around 120 full-time journalists, meaning it would be more than halved.

The cuts are also expected to affect more than 40 back office jobs and around 45 roles in its printing and distribution operations, according to The Telegraph.

The Hollywood Reporter – ‘Small number’

A “small number” of editorial layoffs were made at The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday 13 June, according to The Wrap.

Those affected included longtime TV editor Lesley Goldberg and senior editor of diversity and inclusion Rebecca Sun.

Goldberg said on X: “To the next generation of THR ‘legacies’, continue to know your worth and do your best to find work-life balance and listen to the words of wisdom of those you respect most. As for me, I’m holding onto two of the most valuable things I’ve learned in my time at THR: good things will always follow bad situations, and Henry Winkler really is as wonderful as everyone who has ever met him says he is.”

Informa Tech – Unknown number

Informa has closed two long-running B2B titles: Digital TV Europe and Television Business International.

Informa would not confirm the number of jobs affected but a farewell message from TBI editor Richard Middleton referenced several staff members including a deputy editor, senior sales manager, marketing chief art director and product manager.

Digital TV Europe staff at the time of the closure appeared to include an associate editor and a strategic account manager.

EO Media Group – 28 people

EO Media Group, an Oregon-based publisher of 15 newspapers and two magazines, said it planned to cut back the publication of several titles in July and lay off 28 employees.

It also planned to cut the hours of 19 other staff members, Oregon Live reported.

May 2024

Wall Street Journal – At least 8 people

At least eight journalists have been laid off amid further cuts at the Wall Street Journal amid a change in how it covers US news “and how we write about the big subjects that grip America”.

US news will no longer be a standalone coverage area and the East Coast, mid-US and West Coast regional bureaux are closing.

“Many” of the US news reporters are moving into other teams in the newsroom “in which they are natural fits: real estate moves to finance and economics; reporters covering state and local politics join the politics team; education moves to life and work. And some reporters will move to a new National Affairs team that will take on big topics – abortion, immigration, land use, guns, race,” editor Emma Tucker told staff.

The “speed and trending” desk is converting into a new breaking news desk and the layoffs come from this team as well as the US news team. NPR reported that at least eight people’s jobs are affected.

Journalists stuck post-it notes on the windows of Tucker’s office in protest at the job cuts.

A WSJ spokesperson said: “Our editor-in-chief is reshaping our newsroom with an eye towards digital growth, subscription growth and high-quality journalism. While we recognise change can be difficult, it is necessary to ensure we have the right structure in place to support our objectives.”

April 2024

Reader’s Digest – Unknown number

Reader’s Digest magazine has closed in the UK, its editor-in-chief of six years announced on 29 April.

Eva Mackevic said: “Unfortunately, the company just couldn’t withstand the financial pressures of today’s unforgiving magazine publishing landscape and has ceased to trade.”

The number of full-time jobs affected has not been confirmed. Mackevic told freelance writers waiting to be paid that they should be hearing from insolvency practitioners.

GB News – More than 40 people

GB News is aiming to cut 40 roles, initially via voluntary redundancies. Staff are being offered up to two months’ salary and possible payment in lieu of notice to entice them at the initial stage.

Update: The FT later reported that more than 30 volunteers came forward, meaning GB News cut its headcount from 295 to “well below 250”.

Wall Street Journal – At least 11 people

At least 11 people have been affected in the second round of layoffs at The Wall Street Journal so far this year, including four producers on the visuals desk, two social media editors, two video journalists, a senior video journalist, a video producer, and one reporter, according to The Daily Beast.

It was reported that some of the video employees were laid off as a result of the end to a Google partnership that funded the development of Youtube channels based around individual journalists or subject matters.

Open Democracy – Around 10 people

Several Open Democracy journalists announced on 10 April that they were being made redundant – including its head of news, news editor, political correspondent and two reporters.

Press Gazette understands the cuts are also affecting the commercial side of the non-profit organisation.

Chief executive Satbir Singh and editor-in-chief Aman Sethi said Open Democracy has been hit by “wider industry trends that include rising inflation and an uncertain funding environment” and which have been exacerbated by the end to some of its funding.

The business expects to return to a break even position once the redundancy round is complete.

Mail Sport – Up to 15

Mail Sport journalists were told on 10 April of an upcoming “significant restructuring” as the brand’s transition to prioritising digital continues.

Mail Newspapers global publisher of sport Lee Clayton told staff, in a memo seen by Press Gazette, that there need to be “changes in how we are set up as a desk with a digital team leading the commissioning process, supported by newspaper experts who can publish print editions to tight deadlines.

“With that in mind, we will be embarking on a significant restructuring of the department over the coming weeks.”

Press Gazette subsequently reported that the restructuring was believed to affect up to 15 sports staff including cricket correspondent Paul Newman, racing correspondent Marcus Townend, Spanish football reporter Pete Jenson and chief sports reporter Matt Hughes, as well as several production staff.

The Times – At least one person

Times chief football writer of eight years Henry Winter announced on 10 April he has been made redundant.

At the time of writing Press Gazette has not yet been able to confirm if Winter was the only person affected or if other roles have been made redundant at the same time.

March 2024

i-D Magazine – 8 people

Redundancies have been made in the UK at fashion title i-D magazine, which was saved from a struggling Vice Media by model and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss in November.

Eight staff in editorial or social media were let go, as first reported by Puck News fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and confirmed by Press Gazette.

The magazine is said to be moving towards a reliance on contributors and five of those eight people have accepted a contributor role, Press Gazette understands.

Around 19 people remain on staff in the UK, including about eight in editorial and social plus the publishing director. There are plans for i-D to return to print in the autumn.

Kloss formed Bedford Media to run i-D. Bedford Media announced on 28 March it is also relaunching Life magazine under an agreement with Dotdash Meredith on a regular, but unspecified, schedule.

Deadspin – Around 11 people

G/O Media has sold sports blog Deadspin to European start-up Lineup Publishing.

All staff have been laid off as a result of the sale as Lineup plans to go with a “different content approach”. Around 11 people are affected, according to Adweek.

A memo from G/O Media chief executive Jim Spanfeller, reported by Dailymail.com, said: “I do want to make it clear that we were not actively shopping Deadspin.

“The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector, and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site.”

He added: “Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand.

“While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadspin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage. This unfortunately means that we will be parting ways with those impacted staff members, who were notified earlier today.”

Center for Public Integrity – Around 11 people

US non-profit news organisation the Center for Public Integrity, founded in 1989, reportedly laid off staff on 8 March.

The Center’s union said 11 people were being laid off, “more than half” the union’s unit. The New York Times later said less than half the overall staff were affected.

The NYT reported about a week earlier that the newsroom fell about $2.5m short of its budget goal of around $6m in 2023 and it was considering merging with a competitor or shutting down.

TalkTV – Unknown number

An unspecified number of redundancies were expected at TalkTV as News UK pulled the plug on its linear TV format to focus on cross-platform video content.

Update: TalkTV staff later began tweeting about their redundancies with TalkTV’s last day on linear on 26 April.

February 2024

Cord Cutters News – Three people

Cord Cutters News, a US-based website centred on streaming services and devices and largely funded by affiliate links, has laid off three people.

Editor-in-chief Roger Cheng announced on 23 February he and two reporters were leaving after their positions were “eliminated amid the company’s shift in focus to Youtube”.

“I had fun learning about the ins and outs of the streaming world, and proud of some of the bigger stories I wrote,” Cheng said.

The site’s owner Luke Bouma, who launched Cord Cutters News ten years ago, wrote on the website on the same day that they plan to “give a renewed focus on helping people know all their options to save money on TV, phone, and related product and service reviews” and “focus more heavily on our YouTube channels, including our main Cord Cutters News channel and our second channel The Breakdown with Luke, where you can find reviews of a range of products”.

WAMU – 15 people

Washington DC’s NPR affiliate WAMU is laying off 15 people and shutting down local news site DCist, Axios revealed on 23 February.

Ten new positions are being added at the same time as it invests in and priorities audio.

Chief content officer Michael Tribble told Axios: “We feel like this is the best way for us to engage and build loyalty.”

Vice – ‘Several hundred’ people

Vice told staff it was “eliminating several hundred positions” on 22 February and will no longer publish content on vice.com.

Vice chief executive Bruce Dixon said in a memo it was “no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously” and they will instead “look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model”.

Engadget – Ten people

Yahoo-owned tech site Engadget is laying off ten people and restructuring into two teams: “news and features” focusing on traffic growth and “reviews and buying advice” reporting to commerce leaders.

Editor-in-chief Dana Wollman and managing editor Terrence O’Brien announced that they were among the departures. Wollman noted: “To its credit, Yahoo has a decent severance program.”

A spokesperson told The Verge on 22 February: “Engadget has played a vital role in tech journalism for 20 years and we’re confident that these efficiencies will support future growth and set us up for the long-term as we continue to deliver the best experience for our readers.”

Buzzfeed – 16% of staff (possibly up to 190 people)

Buzzfeed is planning to cut 16% of staff, Axios revealed on 21 February, making savings of $23m. The plan follows the sale of its entertainment brand Complex for $108.6m to livestream shopping platform NTWRK, after acquiring it for $300m in 2021.

At the end of 2022 Buzzfeed had 1,368 employees. It laid off about 180 people in April 2023 with the closure of Buzzfeed News, so these latest layoffs may have affected up to around 190 people.

Now This – At least 26 people

US-based social media news publisher Now This made redundancies on 15 February, although the total is not yet known.

The journalists laid off included Mike Madden, who led the Now This Tiktok team, senior writer PJ Evans, and senior producer Jasmine Amjad.

The Now This journalists’ union said 26, or 50% of their members, had been affected.

The Intercept – 15 people

US investigative non-profit The Intercept, which was co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, laid off 15 people on 15 February. Editor-in-chief Roger Hodge left in the changes.

A memo to staff said it was “facing significant financial challenges” like other media outlets and needs to make changes to become sustainable.

It said: “With the board’s approval, the leadership team has a plan that we believe paves the way for a more sustainable financial foundation for The Intercept so that we can continue to produce high-quality investigative journalism.

“We have also implemented other cost-saving measures, including significant salary cuts for the leadership team and the flattening of the management team, to minimise the impact as much as possible.”

CBS News – Around 20 people

Around 20 people have been laid off at CBS News in Washington DC, New York and Los Angeles as part of wider cutbacks at parent company Paramount Global affecting 800 people.

The CBS News staffers made redundant reportedly include chief national affairs and justice correspondent Jeff Pegues and senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge.

Bustle Digital Group – 16 people

Adweek has reported that seven editorial staff at Bustle Digital Group title Fatherly have been laid off and that the site will “significantly decrease” its output.

Adweek also revealed that nine full-time employees across the Bustle, Romper and Elite Daily brands were let go in January but this had not previously been reported.

Wall Street Journal – Around 20 people

Sixteen reporters and one columnist were let go in a shake-up of the Wall Street Journal’s Washington DC coverage on 1 February, according to the Daily Beast. An unspecified number of editors are also thought to have been affected.

Editor-in-chief Emma Tucker told staff: “The new Washington bureau will focus on politics, policy, defense, law, intelligence and national security. Damian Paletta, our new Washington coverage chief, starts next week and will focus our efforts in these areas to deliver work that serves the readers and stands out from the competition.

“This means the Business team in Washington is closing as is the Washington-based U.S.-China team. Stories covered by these groups will be driven by various teams in the newsroom. We are also changing the editing structure in the bureau and are closing the D.C. News Desk; those editing functions will be handled elsewhere in the bureau or on the news desk in New York.”

Journalism job cuts in January 2024

The Messenger – About 300 people

Jimmy Finkelstein’s digital news start-up The Messenger abruptly closed on Wednesday 31 January, with many staff finding out from New York Times, Semafor and Axios reporting rather than management.

Editor Dan Wakeford reportedly told staff he was “not in the loop” on Slack minutes before the channel shut down.

The website was wiped less than four hours later. Staff have spoken out about being left with no severance and no health insurance.

Tech Crunch – About eight people

Tech Crunch reportedly laid off about eight people on Monday 29 January, with Adweek reporting it plans to “refocus its coverage around the investors, founders and startups of Silicon Valley”.

Tech Crunch is also winding down its paid subscription product, which first launched in 2019 and was rebranded to its current guise in 2021. It aimed to provide “advice and analysis to help startups” with interviews, newsletters, weekly coaching sessions, ad-free access to Tech Crunch, and more.

Altfi – Up to 15 people

London-based fintech news website Altfi announced on Friday 26 January it was closing down after ten years.

In a farewell note, the team told readers: “Whilst our purpose, journalism and brand following has never been in doubt, we have faced severe headwinds over the last 18 months.”

The Evening Standard reported that Altfi listed 15 members of staff on its website.

Forbes – Less than 3% of staff (which could be up to 15 people)

Forbes staff were told on Thursday 25 January – the same day as union members were on their first day of a three-day walkout over contract negotiations – that it planned to reduced staff by less than 3%.

Forbes has 500 employees worldwide, according to its website, meaning the layoffs could affect up to 15 people.

Forbes Media chief executive Mike Federle told staff: “Over the past few years, we’ve continued to find ways to diversify our business and revenue streams, and we’ve seen significant growth as a result.

“As we continue to position ourselves to fully align with our 2024 business strategy, we have had to reprioritize some resources so that our organization can meet those goals. These changes have resulted in the difficult decision to reduce staff in certain areas.”

Business Insider – 8% of staff (which could be up to 70 people)

Business Insider told staff on Thursday 25 January it planned to make 8% of staff worldwide redundant.

It came less than a year after the Axel Springer-owned title, which then had a headcount of 950 worldwide, laid off 10% of staff in the US.

Chief executive Barbara Peng told staff that while Business Insider “closed out last year [2023] with a plan in place, a clear target audience and a vision”, 2024 would be about “making it happen and focusing our company”.

“Unfortunately, this also means we need to scale back in some areas of our organisation.”

Time magazine – Around 30 people

Around 30 people were laid off from Time magazine on Tuesday 23 January, including about 13, or 15%, of its union-represented editorial employees, according to CNN.

The union reported that the layoffs included the majority of staff at the publisher’s news publication for children, Time for Kids.

Time chief executive Jessica Sibley told staff: “We have worked to manage expenses in other areas of our business aggressively to minimize the impact of this decision on our employees. All of these actions have moved us considerably closer to being a profitable company, an achievement we must reach to realize Time’s full potential.

“While this was not an easy decision to make, it is the necessary step we must take in order to drive our business forward and improve our financial position as an organization.”

Pink News – Nine staff at risk

LGBTQ+ publisher Pink News put nine roles at risk of redundancy in its editorial, brand and people teams. The roles at risk include news editor, entertainment editor, weekend editor, head of brand, and marketing manager.

The UK-based publisher blamed an “unpredictable financial year… which has necessitated strategic changes to our growth priorities”. The company is leaning into video, it said.

Los Angeles Times – 115 people

The Los Angeles Times announced it was laying off at least 115 people, or more than 20% of the newsroom, on Tuesday 23 January.

The title’s owner Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong said the cuts were necessary because it could “no longer lose $30 million to $40 million a year without making progress toward building higher readership that would bring in advertising and subscriptions to sustain the organization”, the newspaper reported.

The Washington bureau, photography and sports departments and video unit were particularly hard-hit, it added.

Soon-Shiong has owned the Times for almost six years, after buying it from Tribune Publishing along with the San Diego Union-Tribune for $500m.

It came just six months after Los Angeles Times cut 74 roles in the newsroom, or about 13%.

Mediahuis Ireland – Around 50 people

Mediahuis Ireland is seeking voluntary redundancies with the aim of cutting costs by €4m annually. Compulsory redundancies could follow if there is not enough staff uptake.

The publisher of newspaper titles including the Irish Independent, Sunday World and Belfast Telegraph, as well as regionals such as The Kerryman and Wexford Times told staff on Tuesday 23 January it was seeking to reduce headcount by around 10%.

Around 549 people work for Mediahuis Ireland – 338 in journalism roles and 211 in areas like technology, HR and finance, according to the Irish Independent. Around 50 jobs are therefore expected to go, with 30 in editorial.

Chief executive Peter Vandermeersch told staff: “I am convinced that our strategy is the right one: to restructure our business to make this a leaner, more streamlined news organisation with the most efficient processes and systems possible, while continuing to produce the highest quality journalism and diversifying our revenues to build a sustainable future for our company.”

It comes less than a year after a previous round of voluntary redundancies. Its current headcount is already down by about 35% from when Mediahuis bought Irish news publisher Independent News and Media in 2019.

Sports Illustrated – Most, if not all, staff

Most, if not all, of Sports Illustrated’s staff were laid off after the publisher’s failure to pay a licensing fee saw the licence revoked.

The exact numbers of job losses are unclear but it was a heavy hit to the 70-year-old magazine. The Sports Illustrated Union said it had been told of plans to lay off “a significant number, possibly all”, of its members, who work in editorial, on Friday 19 January. According to NPR, the union represented 82 Sports Illustrated employees, or 80% of staff.

Sports Illustrated owner Authentic Brands Group said it had ended its licensing agreement with The Arena Group, with Front Office Sports reporting this was because Arena missed a $3.75m payment three weeks earlier.

Authentic Brands Group bought Sports Illustrated’s IP for $110m in 2019 and soon began licensing it to Arena in a ten-year deal.

Union members were reportedly given 90 days’ notice, during which time there is a chance the licensing deal is resolved, but non-union members were let go with immediate effect.

Update: Minute Media, which took over publishing Sports Illustrated in March, reportedly hired back more than 90% of editorial employees who worked for it under The Arena Group.

Design Week – Three people

Centaur Media closed Design Week on 19 January. Three editorial roles were lost as a result.

The 38-year-old online magazine told readers that Centaur was shifting strategy to its “core audience of marketers, and focuses on training, information, and intelligence”. It had closed in print in 2011.

Pitchfork – At least 12 people

Conde Nast folded the operation of music website Pitchfork into men’s title GQ, with chief content officer Anna Wintour saying: “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company.”

Pitchfork editor-in-chief Puja Patel left the company as a result on Tuesday 17 January, along with at least 11 other employees according to AP which reported that ten of those were journalists, leaving an editorial staff of eight.

Pitchfork, which launched in 1996, had been owned by Conde Nast since 2015.

Univision – Around 200 people

Televisa Univision cut around 200 jobs at Univision, a Hispanic network broadcaster in the US, on Wednesday 17 January.

The company said in a statement: “The evolution of the media landscape has required us to implement efficiencies and cost-cutting measures to meet existing demands and in turn, strengthen our business for the future. As a result, Televisa Univision has made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of positions in the US across various business units.”

Cuts affected on-air personalities in news and sport as well as roles in departments like production, sports, digital, and communications.

NBC News – 50 to 100 people

Around 50 to 100 people were laid off at NBC News on Thursday 11 January, with a 60-day notice period and severance packages.

NBC News and its news channel MSNBC made a similar round of redundancies a year ago in January 2023, with about 75 people affected.

The Messenger – Around 24 people

Digital news start-up The Messenger, which was launched by former owner of The Hill Jimmy Finkelstein in May last year, cut about two dozen jobs at the start of the year.

The New York Times said it was a cost-cutting measure as a result of dwindling cash reserves, blamed on a difficult advertising market.

Major journalism launches/new job roles in 2024

The Lever – Nine people – April

US reader-supported investigative news outlet The Lever has expanded with the addition of nine journalists.

It began life as a two-person newsletter in April 2020 and now has a team of 19.

Managing editor Joel Warner said: “We’re thrilled that our reader-supported news outlet continues to grow and to attract high-caliber journalism talent that is breaking open huge stories week after week.

“This is a difficult time for the media industry, but our subscribership and our commitment to accountability journalism are making this expansion possible.”

The new additions include a senior investigative reporter, senior enterprise reporter, three general reporters, a senior podcast producer, a contributing news designer, a social media and marketing producer, and an editorial fellow.

The Digital Frontier – 20 people – February

A new technology newsbrand, The Digital Frontier, is launching in London with a 20-strong team, of which nine are editorial roles producing a website, twice-weekly podcast and daily newsletter.

The post News media job cuts 2024 tracked: Dotdash Meredith lays off 53 people while AP plans buyouts appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

What is Subtext?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subtext versus email newsletters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subtext versus Whatsapp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Subtext works

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How news publishers are using Subtext

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

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

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

Here are some specific use case examples:

Driving traffic and getting stories out quickly

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

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

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

Public service information

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

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

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

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

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

Subscription strategies

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affiliate revenue

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

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

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

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

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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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.

News publishing bosses from the UK, US and Australia have shared predictions, in the form of their biggest challenges and reasons for opitmism, for 2024.

Five chief executives, four editorial leaders, four digital bosses and three revenue leaders were among those to answer Press Gazette’s call for predictions for the coming year.

This year has proved tough for many publishers, with growth in the advertising market failing to make its way to trusted news providers and changing priorities at the tech giants meaning referrals from Google, Facebook and other social media platforms have fallen for many.

Will next year have the same challenges? We asked our panel:

What is your biggest challenge for 2024, and how will you deal with it? And what are your reasons to be cheerful?

We have started by pulling out four recurring themes from the answers we received, before sharing them all in full. You can find quick links to skip to each contributor below:

1. Kamal Ahmed, The News Movement editor-in-chief and co-founder
2. Anna Bateson, Guardian News & Media chief executive
3. Jenny Baird, EVP and MD BBC Global Digital News
4. Julia Beizer, Bloomberg Media chief digital officer
5. Michael Booker, GB News editorial director
6. Wendy Brundige, senior vice president of content strategy CNN Digital Worldwide
7. Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider global editor-in-chief
8. Christine Cook, chief revenue officer, Bloomberg Media
9. Rachel Corp, ITN chief executive
10. Nick Flood, Future global ad product & revenue operations director
11. David Higgerson, Reach chief digital publisher
12. James Lamon, Footballco EVP content & operations
13. Almar Latour, CEO Dow Jones and publisher Wall Street Journal
14. Will Payne, The Sun director of digital (editorial)
15. Sherry Phillips, Forbes chief revenue officer
16. Scott Purcell, Man of Many co-founder
17. Justin Smith, Semafor co-founder and chief executive
18. Katie Vanneck-Smith, Hearst UK chief executive

1. Building direct relationships as search and social referrals fall

As Bloomberg Media chief digital officer Julia Beizer noted, referrals from search engines and social media platforms have “hit some of their lowest lows, driven by massive changes at the platforms.

“We can choose to see this as yet-another-blown handed to the industry by big tech – or we can see it as an opportunity,” she said.

But publishers can take this moment to pursue a much-needed shift in priority to loyalty, Beizer believes. “The search and social era gave us many gifts of audience, but it also robbed us of loyalty. The biggest challenge for the news industry this year and in the years to come is to figure out how to earn that back in a time where consumers are picking up new news consumption patterns and habits that will stick.”

This shift may include certain publishers “remembering you don’t want to be a publication for everybody”, Business Insider global editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson said.

“Because there are news aggregators built into every phone, that path can be tempting. But it leads to generic and predictable journalism at best.”

It’s a similar story at other business publishers. Forbes chief revenue officer Sherry Phillips said: “We’re seizing new opportunities to build stronger and more meaningful direct relationships with our global audience. For example, the focus on our Forbes Vetted product as part of our broader e-commerce and consumer strategy ensures the delivery of curated, trustworthy content tailored to unique interests.”

And Semafor co-founder and chief executive Justin Smith said: “The biggest challenge for news publishers is also our biggest opportunity – how to build and grow an audience during the decline of social media… We’ve worked since day one to grow the Semafor audience mostly off-platform and cultivate direct one-to-one relationships with our readers.”

Others may prefer to balance a drive for loyalty and engagement alongside their existing scale models. The Sun’s director of digital (editorial) Will Payne described the changes at the likes of Google and Facebook as its “biggest challenge” for 2024 but said “we are seeing this challenge as an opportunity and our objective for the coming year is to drive deeper engagement with readers, employing new, multi-format content strategies, to complement our scale model”.

And at Reach, chief digital publisher David Higgerson said the platform changes make “direct relationships with readers much more important, yet is only part of the story. We need to avoid at all costs turning journalism into a service for the naturally hyper-engaged, so need to find ways to reconnect with the upwards of 30% of people who claim to be regular news avoiders”.

2. Responding to advertising headwinds and death of cookies

Press Gazette reported at the end of October that the UK ad market was expected to grow, but the good news is reserved for the tech platforms with legacy media suffering declines. A similar pattern is understood to be taking place in the US.

The Guardian’s chief executive Anna Bateson said these continued headwinds mean it is crucial to showcase a publisher’s “unique formula” where it has one – at her company that is “scale, influence and integrity”.

Footballco’s EVP content and operations James Lamon said revenue diversification is key: “All publishers have seen advertising spending fall this year, Footballco included. We projected a down year after the blockbuster World Cup in 2022, but 2023 brought unwelcome surprises with the war in the Middle East and economic uncertainty. We were able to lessen this impact via growth in revenue diversification, specifically affiliate which grew 300% in 2023 and subscription revenues from the re-launch of Mundial magazine.” The sports publisher has also invested in regions where the ad market is growing quickly, with Lamon citing Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile Google aims to phase out third-party cookies for all users of the Chrome browser in the second half of 2024 and said it will begin testing a new feature that limits cross-site tracking from 4 January.

Future’s global ad product and revenue operations director Nick Flood said this means “agencies and advertisers are going to struggle to find their target audiences across the open web” and a “key question for us next year will be how we can help to best reach audiences online and deliver results.

“As a result, in 2024 publishers will increasingly look to build their own sophisticated targeting solutions to address both advertiser needs and audience demands through first party solutions such as Future’s Aperture and contextual solutions.”

3. Acting on challenges and opportunities of AI

It has been just over a year since ChatGPT went live and shocked the world with its popularity and potential. Since then, news publishers have spent a large amount of time and effort exploring the possible uses of generative AI technology in their workflows. Many are also keen to highlight the potential harms of AI, including via the creation of misinformation, and believe this means trusted news providers have an even more important job to come.

Scott Purcell, co-founder of Australian men’s lifestyle site Man of Many, suggested AI will pose a “significant challenge” to publisher traffic: “With AI’s growing presence, there’s been a deluge of content in the market, much needing more quality. This makes it challenging for publishers like us to compete and stand out. However, we view this as an opportunity to double down on what we do best – creating quality, original, and people-first content. As Google’s systems evolve to detect better and highlight such content, we believe there’s immense value in the insights and originality offered by experts, something that AI-generated content, often based on existing knowledge, cannot replicate.”

ITN chief executive Rachel Corp said the broadcast news company will be “continuing to closely monitor the commercial impact and opportunities presented by AI. Over the past year there has been a significant focus on large language models and at ITN we are focused on how video models are developing. It is really important that policymakers are alive to the potential impact AI could have on the financial viability of journalism going forward, whether that’s through our copyright being infringed or search results incorporating our journalism without credit or re-direction to our websites.”

The Sun’s Payne described AI as a “great opportunity” as well as “an industry disruptor”. “…by using it to improve newsroom workflows, we can free up our journalists up to produce more high-quality, trusted content,” he said. “In a world of mass AI-produced, low-value content, quality journalism will be at even more of a premium than it has ever been.”

Similarly Hearst UK chief executive Katie Vanneck-Smith said: “We also need to encourage our editors to be braver, focusing on the exceptional content AI can’t replicate.”

Generative AI can also help behind the scenes, as Phillips at Forbes emphasised. “While many are understandably cautious about implementing emerging technologies such as AI, at Forbes, we believe that AI has the power to redefine how businesses operate, power growth, and redefine how brands are perceived. There is so much to be gained from experimenting with AI as a tool to enhance our work without ever replacing the role of individual contributors.”

4. Highlighting trusted and accurate information in a key election year

In 2024 the UK will (most likely) hold its next general election with other major polling days in the US, Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan, South Africa and the European Parliament.

The News Movement editor-in-chief Kamal Ahmed said: “Our challenge is to help our audiences understand the issues and defeat misinformation,” while ITN’s Corp said: “Elections are a really exciting time for any newsroom, but we need to ensure that technological developments such as generative AI don’t negatively impact the trusted and impartial reporting that we know audiences turn to us for.”

GB News editorial director Mick Booker said the UK election provides an opportunity for a differentiated brand: “It’s the authenticity and honesty of GB News that makes us stand out from the rest. We can’t lose sight of that and that is going to be particularly important in the next 12 months with an election campaign where politicians will be queueing up to honk on about why they should be in charge.”

And Reach’s Higgerson suggested this was a good reason (of several he shared) for the UK Government to press ahead with the Digital Markets Bill. “Where platforms actively deprioritise accurate journalism, such as Meta, the Government must look at the impact on society of such a decision, especially in an election year.”

Keep reading to see the full answers from all 14 participants.

What’s the biggest challenge for you in 2024, and how will you deal with it? And conversely, what are your reasons to be cheerful?

Kamal Ahmed, The News Movement

Editor-in-chief and co-founder

As a young business, 2024 is all about building on our record growth in audiences and revenues. We know that as an industry we need to do more to serve audiences where they are, and that often means social media first. To see The News Movement and many others flourish with new types of content creation for ever-bigger audiences is very heartening.

What we have loved about 2023 is that it has proved once again the importance of trusted, accurate journalism. Whether that is Israel/Palestine, the war in Ukraine, climate change, the cost of living crisis, better mental health or immigration – people need the facts delivered by professionals in an engaging way.

Next year 3.2 billion people will go to the polls – from the US to South Africa, India to Indonesia, the UK to Mexico. Our challenge is to help our audiences understand the issues and defeat misinformation. I know we are well set to do that.

Jennie Baird

EVP and MD BBC Global Digital News

As if our industry hasn’t seen enough disruption already, I think 2024 is going to be perhaps the most disrupted ever. The pace of GenAI development and integration within the platforms where consumers bump into news will hasten. As such, volume of content on those platforms will increase, while the quality of information in those places will continue to decline – but most consumers who have been raised on a steady diet info bites, misinformation, and disinformation, won’t even notice. While this is a scary prospect for society and democracy, it’s also an opportunity for news publishers to double down on serving – and expanding — our core audiences with content that is high quality, trustworthy, and valuable.

So, my forecast is:

• A difficult transition year for publishers as they grow their owned user base and lean into what differentiates them
• A year of deep and sustained creativity: The major anticipated news events of the year ahead – particularly elections in the U.S. and UK, will drive some of the most exciting innovations in the engaging presentation of news and information ever
• More coordination and collaboration among publishing industry peers to solve key business problems at scale, be that scaled advertising solutions, sustainable business models vis a vis LLMs, or endeavors that increase consumer trust in the very institution of journalism.

Anna Bateson, Guardian News & Media

Chief executive

In a year of conflicts, mass protests, strikes and growing calls for climate action, the importance of fair and fact-based journalism is more evident than ever. As an organisation, this means focusing on what sets the Guardian apart – we are open to all, funded by many and beholden to no one – and we must continue to evolve and innovate.

The challenges ahead are similar for many publishers, from reporting in multiple warzones to tough market conditions for media. However the Guardian’s award-winning global journalism, documentaries, podcasts and newsletters – helping us collect news provider of the year at this year’s British Journalism Awards – and our pioneering reader revenue model means we have a strong platform for growth, with well over one million regular recurring digital supporters. Understanding Guardian readers better and cultivating even deeper relationships will be key for 2024.

This year, we launched a new Europe edition engaging Guardian readers with the stories and issues that matter to them most from the continent, and we celebrated our unique position as a wholly independent media organisation in our bold new marketing campaign, ‘Not for Sale’. This independence enables us to place purpose and sustainability at the heart of our strategy. We increased our B Corp certification score with progress in almost every category, and became one of the first organisations to conduct a biodiversity audit.

We have evolved our advertising proposition across 2023 – and with headwinds set to continue in 2024, it’s key to showcase the unique formula the Guardian offers to advertisers – ‘scale, influence and integrity’. As a trusted media brand our integrity is key – making decisions based on our values, such as rejecting fossil fuel advertising and banning gambling ads. We have also set out a considered company-wide approach to how we will respond to AI, publishing a set of principles that lay out how we will and won’t use genAI tools.

While the outlook is challenging, in 2024, we will strive to reach even more readers, advertisers and partners who believe in the Guardian’s mission, launch new products, and continue to break more era-defining stories.

Julia Beizer, Bloomberg Media

Chief digital officer

The game changed for news publishers in 2023. Social and search referrals hit some of their lowest lows, driven by massive changes at the platforms. We can choose to see this as yet-another-blown handed to the industry by big tech – or we can see it as an opportunity.

The search and social era gave us many gifts of audience, but it also robbed us of loyalty. The biggest challenge for the news industry this year and in the years to come is to figure out how to earn that back in a time where consumers are picking up new news consumption patterns and habits that will stick. This will start, of course, with trusted journalism that answers questions for users they didn’t even know they had and helps them navigate their worlds. But it will be bolstered by great user experiences, new useful delivery formats and opportunities to connect deeper with fellow readers.

The challenge in front of us is great this year. But the fundamentals of knowing our audience and working day in and day out to meet their needs never changes. As an industry, we must rise to meet it.

Michael Booker, GB News

Editorial director

The toughest task for us in 2024 is to keep up the momentum that we’ve built up this year.

We’ve had a decent 12 months in terms of growing audience on TV and radio – viewers and listeners in old language – but we are always striving for our main target, and that’s to be Britain’s biggest news channel.

Digitally we’ve seen some truly amazing growth too but – again – we need to stay focused on what we do best.

I think that is being reflective of the people of Britain and staying in touch with what they are thinking and saying.

It’s the authenticity and honesty of GB News that makes us stand out from the rest.

We can’t lose sight of that and that is going to be particularly important in the next 12 months with an election campaign where politicians will be queueing up to honk on about why they should be in charge.

It’s time to let the people have their say.

As well as highlighting where there are problems, we seem to be the only TV news channel that wants to be positive about how great this country is and how it can get even better.

We’ve made great strides in the past year – among other things we kicked off 2023 with the launch of The Camilla Tominey Show in January which is now regularly flooring the political TV opposition in the ratings battle.

Jacob Rees Mogg has become a primetime TV star, our man Nigel Farage has led the agenda with his de-banking scandal and has also been de-jungled recently, and a former Prime Minister with a shock of blonde hair is warming up on the side-lines ready go.

On and off screen our brilliant staff have worked tirelessly to prove our critics wrong and will keep it up this year too.

There have been some challenges this year – some more high profile than others – but we always strive to get things right.

We have a loyal audience that gets what we do and it’s getting bigger by the day.

Watch out… 2024 might look like a tough opponent but it’s going to be worth the fight.

Wendy Brundige

Senior vice president of content strategy CNN Digital Worldwide

More than 80 journalists were killed while doing their jobs this year, and we need better protections for journalists to keep them safe – including from prosecution and imprisonment. We are headed into a presidential election year in the US, one that promises to present its own complicated choices around how to fairly cover a highly polarised political climate. No one seems to know what’s going to happen with the global economy – some indicators point toward recession, others don’t – but people have real concerns about how they’ll make ends meet and we need to tell their stories as much as we are focusing on Wall Street. And we do that against the backdrop of a challenged business environment, with softness in the ad sales market expected to continue (at least at the top of the year), and a fractured media ownership landscape.

All that said, I always find hope – I guess you could call it a reason to be cheerful – in our mission, and in the incredible people I am lucky enough to work with day in and day out. When times are tough, people need trusted news outlets more than ever, and I feel grateful to be part of helping people better understand the world they live in, especially now. We’re also entering a new phase at CNN with a renewed focus on telling stories across multiple platforms and products, and I plan to spend as much time as possible in 2024 innovating in that arena.

Christine Cook

Chief revenue officer, Bloomberg Media

The biggest challenge in 2024 will be staying prepared to pivot our advertising business solutions to meet quickly changing client buying patterns. We are dealing with it in two ways related to data and insights:

1)we will continue to provide thought leadership extracted from proprietary research conducted by our data and insights team to help our advertising clients more deeply understand the changing business dynamics.

2) We will focus on teaching broader departments beyond front-line sales about each of our clients key verticals to tailor our offerings and how we service the post-sales. We do this in many ways, but primarily harnessing direct client feedback front-line sales receives and improving communication flow more broadly through the organisation.

Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider

Global editor-in-chief

The challenge for news organizations like Business Insider is remembering you don’t want to be a publication for everybody. Because there are news aggregators built into every phone, that path can be tempting. But it leads to generic and predictable journalism at best.

At worst, it can mean your shop gets shuttered. You have to be for a particular group of people who feel seen and heard by your work, who learn to love it, and who seek you out by bookmarking your homepage, downloading your app, or subscribing to your newsletters.

That’s why we’re Business Insider again, and we’re focused on people who want to grow professionally and personally, and who believe business and innovative thinking can drive positive changes in the economy, their careers, and their lives.

Rachel Corp, ITN

Chief executive

It feels right to end the year paying tribute to all our talented colleagues in the field who have been covering conflicts around the world, whether in Israel and Gaza, Ukraine or elsewhere. We should be grateful for their bravery and determination in telling the stories of those affected by war all year round. We must remember too the toll of conflict reporting on all our journalists, ensuring there are continued mental health and well-being measures in place to support them.

Despite the obvious challenges, I remain optimistic about the role of broadcast journalism. Our newsrooms continue to see growth, whether that’s Channel 4 News reaching younger audiences on YouTube and elsewhere or the successful launch of the ITV News service on ITVX, while 5 News continues to buck trends with year on year growth for the 5pm bulletin. Our court reporting has also continued to benefit from the filming of sentencing, after many years of lobbying by ITN along with the BBC, and Sky, including on high profile cases such as the trial of Lucy Letby. And, following another lively year in politics, including the UK’s first Coronation in 70 years, COP28, it is clear there will be no let up on the demand for political journalism in 2024.

We are already beginning to think about how best to cover the numerous elections that will be taking place around the world next year, including in the UK. Elections are a really exciting time for any newsroom, but we need to ensure that technological developments such as generative AI don’t negatively impact the trusted and impartial reporting that we know audiences turn to us for. It is why we wrote to the DCMS requesting journalism roundtables to discuss the issue and consider what guardrails may be needed, and we look forward to these cross-industry conversations taking place in the New Year.

We will also be continuing to closely monitor the commercial impact and opportunities presented by AI. Over the past year there has been a significant focus on large language models and at ITN we are focused on how video models are developing. It is really important that policymakers are alive to the potential impact AI could have on the financial viability of journalism going forward, whether that’s through our copyright being infringed or search results incorporating our journalism without credit or re-direction to our websites.

And, with the Media Bill now in Parliament we are entering a new phase of UK public service broadcasting where the current ecosystem could be enhanced online through this new legislation. I am really pleased that the new system has commitment from all political quarters. Next year will bring Ofcom the challenge of filling in the detail of the framework that the Media Bill will create. The UK’s PSB system has ensured viewers have access to impartial, regulated news and it has helped production companies to grow and flourish, contributing enormously to the creative economy. UK audiences need to be able to continue to find the news that Parliament is now mandating as necessary to UK society in the future.

Nick Flood, Future

Global ad product & revenue operations director

With the deadline for the depreciation of third-party cookies approaching in January, agencies and advertisers are going to struggle to find their target audiences across the open web. The vast majority are already preparing for the post-cookie world, but a key question for us next year will be how we can help to best reach audiences online and deliver results. As a result, in 2024 publishers will increasingly look to build their own sophisticated targeting solutions to address both advertiser needs and audience demands through 1st party solutions such as Future’s Aperture and contextual solutions.

We are, therefore, expecting a rise in demand for contextual targeting solutions and first party audience activations as it allows for greater accuracy and speed in categorising content, making it instantly targetable for advertisers. We see ‘time-to-target’ as critical, especially during retail moments like Black Friday which are increasingly competitive landscapes. We know from our audience behaviour trends that consumers are spending more time researching very specific products, and so with contextual targeting advertisers can reach shoppers as they research and browse our expert product reviews.

David Higgerson, Reach

Chief digital publisher

Biggest challenge

The biggest challenge facing any publisher is awareness and making sure that your content gets in front of your audience. It cuts through everything which should matter to a publisher, from revenue which funds journalism through to the relevance of journalism. And in a world where there is no shortage of people happy to discredit anything they disagree with, the best route to relevance is to know your audience, and know how to engage your audience.

Practically, this has become a distribution challenge for many publishers. We all know Facebook’s position on news, and it seems happy when given the choice to showcase un-checked misinformation over verified journalism, based on its actions in Canada for example. Google too, while still committed to working with the industry, is increasingly making life harder for publishers in organic search, with some worrying trends emerging in core updates this year. And, as publishers big and small have called out, the BBC’s flexible interpretation of its own charter so it can justify putting more and more resource into text-and-images news online threatens to further endanger existing news offering from long-standing commercial publishers.

This all makes direct relationships with readers much more important, yet is only part of the story. We need to avoid at all costs turning journalism into a service for the naturally hyper-engaged, so need to find ways to reconnect with the upwards of 30% of people who claim to be regular news avoiders.

How we’ll deal with it

At Reach, this means spending even more time next year using the information shared with us by 13 million registered customers to understand how we can be more relevant to them in more areas of their lives. News journalism will always be at the heart of what we do, but readers are telling us through their actions online that it, alone, isn’t always enough to warrant visiting over other online activities.

We are increasingly changing the ways we tell stories, as well as changing the topics we choose to cover. In 2023, we saw significant growth in followers and video streams on TikTok, for example, for our established brands such as the Mirror, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News. The Mirror found its voice on TikTok for politics, while the Express grew quickly for Royal coverage on TikTok. Our new social brand, Curiously, has shown us where to engage, how to engage and the topics most likely to resonate.

Overall, Reach entered Q4 with the number of under 35s reading our websites going up, thanks to work done in all of our newsrooms, showing that the idea that under 35s won’t consume news in a conventional way is wide of the mark – it takes effort from us to understand the right way to pitch stories, and which stories to choose.

Relevance is also the reason why our work in diversity, inclusion and belonging is so important. Publishers can wave goodbye to relevance if target readerships don’t see themselves represented in what they read, or represented in the newsrooms which claim to be serving them. Our Belonging Project, which sees newsrooms work more closely with under-represented communities on their patch, will focus on socio-economic representation in 2024.

As we deepen relationships, we will find new opportunities to supplement advertising revenue with new revenue lines too. We expect a number of these to become significant in 2024, using our scale which opens many doors as a chance to build on the 13 million deeper relationships we’ve created.

But…

We need help as an industry. The Digital Markets Unit has been long promised but has yet to materialise as it should. It really shouldn’t be this hard. You will find few people who disagree that verified journalism makes communities of all shapes and sizes, better places to be in. So the Government needs to legislate so that more of the advertising revenue which goes to the distributors online finds its way back to the creators, be that publishers like Reach, or independent hyperlocals which do such a good job.

Where platforms actively deprioritise accurate journalism, such as Meta, the Government must look at the impact on society of such a decision, especially in an election year. Financially supporting reliable information creation must be part of the deal when building platforms which grab so much of peoples’ time online. Simply being allowed to say ‘we won’t take news if we have to pay for it’ as Meta has, simply isn’t on.

The Government also needs to take action on the BBC’s attempts to push commercial publishers out of digital news. From national stories which the BBC simply wouldn’t haven’t previously covered, through to its expansion into local news online at the expense of much-loved local radio stations, the BBC talks about being a collaborator with the industry, but is increasingly a threat.

In local in particular, if it goes unchecked, its creation of 100 or so new online jobs, covering local communities to a greater depth than it has previously cared to do online, could be the tipping point which leads to many more job losses than it has created in online – even without allowing for the local radio jobs lost to fund this expansion. The BBC will say otherwise, but the data emerging from the BBC around huge audience growth in local, at a time when the overall local news market is, at best, static, paints a very bleak picture which should alarm anyone who cares about local journalism.

James Lamon, Footballco

EVP content & operations

Challenges

All publishers have seen advertising spending fall this year, Footballco included. We projected a down year after the blockbuster World Cup in 2022, but 2023 brought unwelcome surprises with the war in the Middle East and economic uncertainty. We were able to lessen this impact via growth in revenue diversification, specifically affiliate which grew 300% in 2023 and subscription revenues from the re-launch of Mundial magazine.

Reasons to be cheerful

We’ve made investments in several areas that mean we can approach 2024 with optimism, such as improvements to our products, audience targeting technology, and editorial content, specifically video.

Football is growing in regions where we’ve made significant investments. In Saudi Arabia, Kooora and GOAL Arabic put us in a dominant position in one of the fastest-growing advertising regions in world football. In the US, interest in the football has never been higher. Next year we will continue to invest in GOAL’s US offering, following the recent appointment of Jason Wagenheim as our CEO of America.

In Europe, we have Euro 2024. Landmark tournaments move the needle for our business. We expect all our brands to see the benefit, such as GOAL, SPOX (Germany), Voetbalzone (Netherlands), and Calciomercato (Italy). Our audience research suggests this Euros marks a return to the familiar for fans with football in the summertime and in Europe. Our fans are looking forward to the joy of this tournament more than any recent tournament. We’re excited that our product, publishing, and partnerships will be stronger than ever to entertain them.

Almar Latour

CEO Dow Jones and publisher Wall Street Journal

It’s clear that the contours of a new era are taking shape all around us. This will continue into 2024 as the world grapples with two unfolding wars, geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, political uncertainty and new technologies including generative AI which could further blur the lines between what’s real and what’s not.

So, the challenge facing all of us in the news media industry is how do we navigate the confluence of these forces. How do we build resilient, dynamic business models; how do we invest in distinctive, exclusive journalism; how do we get the right value for our IP when it comes to AI learning models; and how do we use AI to better serve our customers.

Reliable information has never been more important in our increasingly complex world. At Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, we see a surge in demand for our products and services during times of great uncertainty. We are really built for this moment and we take seriously our responsibility to provide people with trusted information to help them make informed decisions, be it in business, policy or at the kitchen table.

Will Payne, The Sun

Director of digital (editorial)

The last year has been one of unprecedented volatility. In the early months of 2023 The Sun drove record traffic across our four sites – .co.uk, .com, Scotland and Ireland. Our US team had a particularly impressive start to the calendar year and our .com site was named the fastest growing newsbrand in the US in February, April and May by Press Gazette. But the latter part of the year has seen distributors of digital content change their models to the detriment of online publishers.

That direction of travel looks set to continue into 2024 and presents our biggest challenge. But we are seeing this challenge as an opportunity and our objective for the coming year is to drive deeper engagement with readers, employing new, multi format content strategies, to complement our scale model.

There are so many innovative new ways to reach audiences, both on and off platform, and 2024 will see us prioritising new formats, particularly in the video space. We also have an increased emphasis on more sophisticated reporting to enable us to maximise every page view. Lots of publishers focus too much on top level page view numbers, despite the fact a page view’s business value can vary dramatically depending on a variety of factors. In a world where site visits are harder and harder to drive, maximising every single site visit in a variety of ways has never been more important. Our new reporting metrics will enable us to do that. Offering a genuinely personalised on site experience, serving users with content they want, is another way to maximise every visit. Improving our personalisation functionality is a key priority for 2024.

And finally, we are making great strides in developing our AI capabilities. AI is without doubt an industry disrupter, but it is also a great opportunity and by using it to improve newsroom workflows, we can free up our journalists up to produce more high-quality, trusted content. In a world of mass AI-produced, low-value content, quality journalism will be at even more of a premium than it has ever been.

Sherry Phillips, Forbes

Chief revenue officer

What is the biggest challenge for you next year, and how will you deal with it?

This year has been dominated by rapidly changing developments in technology, particularly with the acceleration of GenAI and Web3. Over the last 12 months, most media companies have been working to keep pace with a hugely dynamic tech landscape, understand the implications of new technologies and consider whether they present a risk or opportunity for their businesses, journalists and, most importantly, audiences.

While many are understandably cautious about implementing emerging technologies such as AI, at Forbes, we believe that AI has the power to redefine how businesses operate, power growth, and redefine how brands are perceived. There is so much to be gained from experimenting with AI as a tool to enhance our work without ever replacing the role of individual contributors.

We’ve worked this year to better understand how AI comes into play with our partnerships, which has been built around our long-standing communities and relationships with C-suite leaders and our goal has been to cultivate multi-platform conversations on how companies can accelerate positive business, cultural and societal outcomes through the application of AI. Our partnerships span across original Forbes research surveying our C-suite audiences, live events, and platforms for our partners to develop and amplify their own thought-leadership narrative.

Forbes Research specifically uses proprietary survey data to provide rich, actionable insights into the mindset, challenges and opportunities that face our audience of the world’s top C-suite leaders, small business owners, affluent individuals, boards of directors and entrepreneurs. By focusing on AI’s unprecedented potential, the insights we’ve gathered serve as a guide for executives to develop a thoughtful, enterprise-wide approach to their adoption – leading to a culture of collaboration and innovation, and position their organizations for lasting success.

We know that 2024 will present a whole new slate of challenges and opportunities, and as an industry we will have to continue to anticipate, plan and react. But instead of shying away from possibilities, we believe that the future is shaped by those who dare to explore the unknown – it’s a core belief that has shaped our 106-year history.

And conversely, what are your reasons to be cheerful?

I’m encouraged by the continued interest we are seeing for meaningful, real-world connections and experiences within our community. Looking ahead to 2024, we have reason to be excited about the deeper, more authentic connections our audiences are demanding. Heightened awareness of the importance of trustworthy, quality journalism has strengthened the bond between media organizations and their communities.

At Forbes, communities like ForbesBLK, 30 Under 30, and 50 Over 50 are not just franchises, they’re pivotal relationship-building platforms. The events side of our business is now thriving at full capacity; we hosted 115 live events across six countries this year.

We’re seizing new opportunities to build stronger and more meaningful direct relationships with our global audience. For example, the focus on our Forbes Vetted product as part of our broader e-commerce and consumer strategy ensures the delivery of curated, trustworthy content tailored to unique interests.

In 2024, we have the privilege and responsibility to lead with purpose, embracing change, championing innovation, and above all, driving impact for our audiences. There are myriad reasons to be cheerful, and I am excited to see what the future holds for our dynamic industry.

Scott Purcell, Man of Many

Co-founder

Reflecting on the challenges and opportunities that 2023 brought to us at Man of Many and looking ahead to 2024, the landscape of digital publishing and content creation is certainly at a crossroads, particularly with the advent of AI and the ongoing evolution of search algorithms like Google’s.

One of the most significant challenges we foresee is AI’s impact on traffic flow to publishers. With AI’s growing presence, there’s been a deluge of content in the market, much needing more quality. This makes it challenging for publishers like us to compete and stand out. However, we view this as an opportunity to double down on what we do best – creating quality, original, and people-first content. As Google’s systems evolve to detect better and highlight such content, we believe there’s immense value in the insights and originality offered by experts, something that AI-generated content, often based on existing knowledge, cannot replicate.

Expanding on the impact of AI, particularly with Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI, it’s crucial to understand that these advanced technologies fundamentally rely on pre-existing sets of knowledge. This means that the content they create, while seemingly new, doesn’t genuinely contribute to the body of knowledge meaningfully. This presents a unique challenge for Google and other search engines: they are now tasked with crawling and indexing an exponentially growing volume of content, much of which doesn’t offer real knowledge gain or substantive improvement to users. This situation incurs significant costs for search engines and potentially dilutes the quality of search results. Recognizing this, there’s a pressing need for search engines to refine their algorithms to identify better and elevate content that offers insightful, new information – the kind of content that expert publishers provide. This is where the true value lies for both users and the search ecosystem.

Another challenge is competing against legacy media publishers, especially in the Australian market where they have benefitted significantly from funding under the News Media Bargaining Code. This presents an uneven playing field, as these established players gain more leverage and resources. Our approach here is to leverage our uniqueness and agility as an independent publisher to create content that resonates more deeply with our audience.

Conversely, AI also presents a huge opportunity. By utilizing AI for administrative tasks – such as social media management, content formatting for various platforms, and organizing information – our journalists and content creators can focus more on producing high-quality, original content. This shift towards leveraging AI in administrative roles allows us to enhance our efficiency and maintain our commitment to delivering top-tier content.

2023 has indeed been a challenging year, but it has also been a year of remarkable achievements for Man of Many. Being crowned as B&T Media Platform of the Year and receiving multiple accolades at the 2023 Mumbrella Publish Awards, including Website of the Year and Best Engagement Strategy, are testaments to our commitment to excellence in digital publishing. Our recognition in various international fashion film festivals and our pioneering stance as Australia’s first 100% carbon-neutral digital publisher for men’s lifestyle, further highlight our dedication to innovation and sustainability in the media landscape.

As we navigate the challenges and embrace the opportunities that lie ahead in 2024, we remain steadfast in our mission to deliver exceptional content that empowers people to make positive investments in themselves and their communities, that resonates with our audience and sets new standards in the digital publishing industry.

Justin Smith, Semafor

Co-founder and chief executive

We’d like to think we’re the exception! We had an extraordinary first full year in 2023, breaking hugely consequential scoops and exclusives. We’ve also built a powerful global opinion leader audience of nearly half a million newsletter subscriptions, 3-4 million monthly readers, while quadrupling our global advertising partners.

The biggest challenge for news publishers is also our biggest opportunity – how to build and grow an audience during the decline of social media. At Semafor, we are one of the only global news platforms to launch during a time that my partner Ben Smith (Semafor Editor-in-Chief) and I describe as the “Post Social Era.” At a time when the primacy – both in terms of trust and user experience – of the social platforms has diminished, but when sophisticated readers expect multiple voices and credible perspectives on any given issue.

We’ve worked since day one to grow the Semafor audience mostly off-platform and cultivate direct one-to-one relationships with our readers. It’s working for us, and we’ve built our news ethos and journalistic approach around the notion that if you try to limit readers to one perspective on a global story or big issue, they’ll go hunting for news elsewhere.

Another major opportunity – live journalism. I spent years creating some of the biggest events platforms in global news media and it’s been so encouraging to see the increased appetite from both consumers and advertisers in the live journalism space. We built our events business before Semafor had even launched with a mission to create differentiated live offerings that actually broke news and yes, were profitable from the start. I’m glad to say we succeeded with over 50 global events and countless headlines. Next year will be even bigger.

I’m going into next year full of optimism for the future of news and I’m so proud of our entire 70+ team around the world from Lagos to London, New York, DC and the West Coast – who are proving every day that there is a future for news and a sustainable way forward for our industry.

Katie Vanneck-Smith, Hearst UK

Chief executive

As we head into 2024, publishers can’t be dependent on one platform or one revenue stream. We need to continue to identify growth opportunities and focus on those. I’m particularly excited about accelerating our membership propositions, driving digital subscriptions and building our diversified revenues.

We also need to encourage our editors to be braver, focusing on the exceptional content AI can’t replicate.

Most importantly, we need to stop apologising for the word ‘magazine’. It’s not a dirty word, and it needn’t imply legacy. ‘Magazine’ is a format, as at home online as it is off.

The post How can news media bounce back in 2024? 18 leaders share their insights appeared first on Press Gazette.

Chatbots based on publishers’ own content archives pose “a lot of revenue opportunities” according to the chief digital and information officer at Forbes.

Forbes is among the publishers trying out generative AI tools trained on their own archives, having launched AI-powered search tool Adelaide at the end of October.

Both Google and ChatGPT owner OpenAI have this year made technology available to allow people create their own generative AI tools using their proprietary content and data, mitigating the copyright issues – although hallucinations and other inaccuracies may still pose a risk.

OpenAI began rolling out customisable versions of ChatGPT for paying ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users in November, promising that no coding was required.

Google had already launched Enterprise Search on Generative AI App Builder, which lets organisations easily create custom chatbots and semantic search applications. It said in a blogpost in June: “Customers can combine their internal data with the power of Google’s search technologies and generative foundation models, delivering relevant, personalized search experiences for enterprise applications or consumer-facing websites.”

Forbes used Google’s Enterprise Search feature to build Adelaide and chief digital and information officer Vadim Supitskiy told Press Gazette it took just two weeks to create a prototype and two months to release it.

Adelaide, named after the wife of Forbes founder B.C. Forbes, allows people to search for Forbes content. Answers to specific questions are provided in a more conversational way than a traditional website search bar, with relevant links signposted underneath. Currently, the tool is trained on 12 months of Forbes content only but it is planned that this will eventually roll out to the whole archive.

Supitskiy said they would not have created Adelaide if Google’s tool had not allowed them to exclusively use Forbes content rather than bringing in a whole database of information from across the internet.

“That was the number one concern for us so we wouldn’t have released it until that kind of functionality was readily available,” Supitskiy said. “We only want to provide our users with our trusted journalism, right? We don’t want any outside content.”

Forbes ‘didn’t want to jump in without any safeguards’

Supitskiy explained that Forbes “usually in general try to innovate as much as possible” – for example in the metaverse and with NFTs – and that generative AI has been no exception.

“We’ve done a lot with AI in the past. AI is core to what we do in general, but gen AI is new and it really was exciting for us to look at all the capabilities that were available. But we also wanted to make sure that when we started using it, it was safe, it was trained and grounded on our content only.

“So we didn’t want to just jump in without any safeguards… we worked with Google to collaborate on that and make sure that the products created in a specific way that it’s only our data, it’s trained on our content, and so forth.”

They then looked at which areas of the Forbes website could benefit from the addition of the tool, potentially driving engagement and loyalty.

“And one that came up kind of right away was search because traditional search on publishers’ websites has been the same for so many years,” he said. “We always kind of looked at it and thought okay, how can we innovate on that particular product… but in general, it’s pretty straightforward and not the most engaging experience. So we thought gen AI could be a good solution here.

“Not only does it become interactive for the user – they can engage, talk to that particular experience, create a conversation – but also get very relevant content to dive deeper into it.”

Since 26 October Adelaide has been in beta testing with 5% of the Forbes audience seeing its answers when they search for something on the website. In addition anyone can go to the dedicated Adelaide page.

Speaking at the end of November, Supitskiy said: “So far what we’ve seen is good engagement when people come to that page, so actually people are engaging really well there and are coming back to it. They like the experience. What we’re working on right now is how to get more people into the experience…”

Ultimately, Supitskiy said the aim is to boost engagement but said monetisation could come down the line, suggesting paying users could get an exclusive element.

“I think there are a lot of revenue opportunities in the future but I think it starts with a good product. A product that people like, that they will come back to and want to use more.

“Of course, you can monetise it with display advertising, but also we’re thinking about what experience would be valuable to our members as well, right? How can we have potentially different tiers of something that’s exclusive to our members…”

The main tech challenge posed so far has been the model not always identifying the most recent information, but Supitskiy said “we figured out how to optimise some of that”.

Other publishers have raised concerns around chatbots stating false information as if it was true, a phenomenon known as hallucinating, even when the tech has been trained on their own content.

But Supitskiy said: “We’ve seen it in the beginning, and this is still kind of a concern in general, but I think so far Google has optimised it and grounded it to the point that it’s doing very well,” he said.

Money Saving Expert has created its own “MSE ChatGPT” module in its app for users to ask questions and receive answers based only on the outlet’s own archive of hundreds of thousands of articles.

Editor-in-chief Marcus Herbert told Press Gazette in September the bot was “giving some really, really interesting results” but the results were not yet “sufficiently accurate” especially when attributing and recommending relevant MSE articles. He was also concerned about the risk to trust from hallucinations, if they mislead people about MSE content.

‘The key is to build something that’s valuable for your audience’

Supitskiy expects more gen AI-powered products to be launched by news publishers soon.

“I think a lot of people will have something with gen AI because it’s such a powerful technology, right?” he said.

“I think the key is to build something that’s valuable for your audience and, you know, it could be different for different publishers, they have different angles. So focusing on your main goal is important in my opinion, but because the technology is so powerful, I do think that more and more publishers will get into the game and will create some experiences, either internal or external.”

Metaverse industry professional Tom Ffiske has seen similar pros and cons on a chatbot he built on his tech newsletter and website Immersive Wire.

Ffiske, who prefers the term “chat companion” as he feels “chatbot” carries stigma from bad customer service experiences, created the Immersive Wire tool last month after OpenAI launched custom GPTs.

The Immersive Wire Chat Companion is based on a mixture of OpenAI’s latest natural language model GPT-4, which contains information from the wider internet up to April 2023, and Ffiske’s own content archive of several years. It is currently only available for paying ChatGPT Plus users.

Ffiske told Press Gazette using his own archive means it is “pre-curated… it’s not shit information. It’s not just, like, 1,000 press releases which are unvetted. It’s stuff which I think is important, curated by me, and it only pulls the relevant information.”

Ffiske acknowledged that all of the data he is inputting to the GPT via a spreadsheet of his content will become part of OpenAI’s training dataset at some point when it does its next major model update (although it is possible to switch this off). But he said this would only bother him if OpenAI managed to make its model totally up to the minute.

“Since it’s using information which is out of date, I become more relevant because people come to me for the literal latest.”

He has seen similar problems to Forbes so far, with the tech struggling to work out what the latest update is.

He did find a workaround in his spreadsheet, but said that initially “even when I used the word ‘latest’ and even when I was categorising data on dates, it’s still coming up with information which is out of date”.

Chatbots can help news publishers ‘become a hub of relevant and good information’

He has also had to learn how to best categorise and tag the data and stories so that the right type of information is surfaced in queries – for example so it knows whether to share news or a recommendation.

“The challenge publishers will have with all their news stories is what are they tagging each article with so that it meets the majority of users using the tool?” Ffiske said. “Based on my own website data I’ve got an understanding that people are interested in what Apple’s been up to… which is why I’ve categorised stories in a particular way to try to meet some of those people. But I know that there may be inquiries coming up which I can’t predict.”

Overall however Ffiske believes it can be a significant opportunity for publishers to “become a hub of relevant and good information which people can seek in their own time”.

He added: “I think for news websites, it’s less relevant because when you go on the homepage, the user intention is to find the latest news on what’s happening that day. I think this is a more of an opportunity for websites that provide curated information or reviews and such like because it’s more evergreen, you’re not going there each day, you’re going in there to get some expert opinions. So Which? might be a really good website to do this for example, just to source relevant things.”

He also suggested that one revenue opportunity could be offering brands the opportunity to sponsor certain types of inquiry and receive a link to their product in the results.

Future’s tech brand Tom’s Hardware was one of the earliest to create a chatbot, dubbed the “Hammerbot”, based on its content archive allowing users to ask for recommendations and advice and get answers in the form of text and links to relevant articles on the website.

Other tech websites have since created their own versions, including Macworld, PCWorld, Tech Advisor and Tech Hive, all owned by Foundry and all using a tool trained on their content portfolio called Smart Answers.

Future chief executive Jon Steinberg told Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference in September that the Tom’s Hardware Hammerbot has “no hallucination, there’s no false data. It’s read expert content and it’s coming up with a result from that.”

Indeed a post in the Tom’s Hardware forum in September about the “known issues” with the bot since its May launch mentioned some other issues, but not hallucinations or inaccuracies.

It said answers were sometimes out of date, recommending older products, similar to the issues seen at Forbes and Immersive Wire.

In addition the top link in the search result was not always the one most directly related to the answer given by the Hammerbot, most of the answers were “fairly short” and “a bit terse”, and they “may express opinions that aren’t necessarily those of Tom’s Hardware”.

The post How publishers are using AI chatbots to boost engagement appeared first on Press Gazette.

Update 21 November 2023: Forbes is no longer being sold to US billionaire Austin Russell after he failed to close the $800m deal on time.

Forbes Media chief executive Mike Federle told staff on Tuesday that the magazine’s parent company had cancelled the transaction with an investment group led by Russell as it “couldn’t deliver the closing”.

Axios reported that Russell was “blindsided by Indian investment firm Sun Group and others who didn’t wire the money they were contractually obligated to send on the day the deal was supposed to close”.

Federle said: “The cancelation of this sale does not affect our day-to-day operations or business goals. In fact, we are well positioned to continue delivering strong results and enhance the value of our incomparable global brand.”

A spokesperson for Russell’s family office said: “The Forbes acquisition was all about impact, and to further the philosophy of business-for-good and philanthropy with the next generation of capitalism. At this juncture, it was determined that it was in the best interest of the parties that the contract be terminated. We wish nothing but the best to the Forbes team.”

Original story, 15 May 2023: Austin Russell, once dubbed “the world’s youngest self-made billionaire“, will acquire a majority stake in Forbes.

Russell, who was previously a Forbes cover star and a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni, will hold an 82% interest in Forbes Global Media Holdings when the deal closes later this year.

The deal values the 106-year-old media company at almost $800m (£641m) – up from an estimated $630m (£504m) in 2021.

Russell is the 28-year-old American founder and chief executive of self-driving car technology company Luminar, which listed on Nasdaq after a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in December 2020. He was recognised last year on the Philanthropy 50 list as the 36th largest charitable donor in America.

In 2021 Forbes dubbed Russell the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. The following year Forbes named AI entrepreneur Alexandr Wang, 26, as the new youngest self-made billionaire.

Forbes family out in Austin Russell acquisition

Forbes’ current owner, Hong-Kong based Integrated Whale Media Investments, has retained a minority stake in the company.

IWM purchased 95% of the company, with the remainder kept by the Forbes family, in 2014, and it will now keep one board seat. Although the remaining Forbes stake will be acquired by Russell, Forbes Media chairman and editor-in-chief Steve Forbes will remain involved in the company.

Russell said he was “honoured to be selected by the owners as the new steward” of Forbes. He will not be involved in its day-to-day operations but will “act as a visionary for the brand,” the company said in a press release.

“Today, success should no longer represent wealth accumulation at any cost, but instead be defined by how value is created and the positive ripple effects it can have,” Russell said. “My hope is that Forbes can continue to even better serve its readership by helping objectively inform, recognize, and challenge leaders to tackle society’s biggest challenges under this mission, with high quality content as well as platforms for its business-focused community.”

Steve Forbes said Russell is a “dynamic entrepreneur and thought leader who has built an industry-leading business from the ground up. His energy and vision will enable Forbes to continue and enhance the excellent work for which we are known.”

Jeffrey Yam, managing director of Integrated Capital, said: “When IWM acquired Forbes in 2014, our vision was to keep the legendary brand as a strong force in the media world, fully accelerate Forbes to digital, and leverage the strength of the brand to create new revenue streams. We were able to achieve our goals.

“Now, we are excited to pass the torch to someone who we believe can catapult Forbes’ legacy to even greater heights with his authentic vision to create a new era of capitalism, backed by one of the most recognizable business brands in the world. We believe there is significant opportunity for value growth with the new vision and, as a result, we will be retaining a minority stake. We look forward to the next chapter of the Forbes growth story.”

Forbes said it would now “empower a new board consisting of American media, tech, and AI experts at the top of their fields”.

Recent innovation at Forbes has included its experimentations in Web3 and e-commerce including the sale of its own branded merchandise. In 2022 print magazine revenues made up around 7% of its total, down from 16% in 2019 following increased diversification.

Forbes had planned to go public through a SPAC merger but ditched the idea last summer after it appeared the bad fortunes of the SPAC market would not have done due credit to its underlying value resulting from double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth over the previous year. It subsequently began looking for a private buyer.

The post Forbes sale to ‘youngest self-made billionaire’ Austin Russell is off appeared first on Press Gazette.

Standing in a muddy trench facing an invasion by Europe’s largest army, Lindsey Hilsum’s thoughts went to Siegfried Sasson and the other poetic chroniclers of the First World War.

For the Channel 4 News international editor and the hundreds of other UK journalists who have reported from Ukraine, the last year has been a foreign reporting assignment radically different from anything anyone has experienced in the modern era.

The scale of the weaponry, the use of online platforms like Telegram and Tiktok, and the impossibilities of embedding on the Russian side meant many new skills had to be learned, and quickly.

Hilsum said she and many other foreign correspondents had to grapple with a very different conflict to what they had been used to (such as the civil wars in Syria, Libya and Rwanda) in part because there was “such a large amount of heavy weaponry, heavy artillery and large numbers of tanks”.

“This is a full-scale invasion by one of the largest armies in the world and where you have trench warfare,” she said. “In December I was reporting from a muddy trench and I felt like I was reporting the Battle of the Somme in World War One, I was thinking about Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and all those poets of World War One, and so that’s what’s very different about this war. It’s physically more like World War One or World War Two in that sense of the terrain.”

Man in chinos at frontline ‘no longer appropriate’

As ITV News global security editor Rohit Kachroo put it: “The magnitude of this story compared to many others, as well as the proximity, are what made the Ukraine story feel so different to cover than some other conflicts.

“At the beginning, there was a lot of confusion, there was no definition of the frontline, there were no organised embedded facilities and, of course, when you step back from the frontline reporting it was part of a broader hybrid war which includes misinformation online and so the old-fashioned approach of the man in his chinos at the frontline telling us how dramatic it all feels is no longer appropriate for what we were dealing with.”

And Emma Graham-Harrison, a senior international affairs correspondent at The Guardian and Observer, said: "The scale of the conflict was almost entirely unexpected by absolutely everybody."

She had arrived in Ukraine on 15 February, hoping to get to know the country, when the war began nine days later. This abruptness meant journalists were spread out across Ukraine, including in places that suddenly became the frontline. Graham-Harrison herself had been on a train to Mariupol, soon to be famous for the siege it was put under, that night.

"I decided that, for me personally, I wasn't comfortable being that close to the frontline," she said. "At the time, I was planning to meet a translator there and it was unclear whether I'd be able to meet her so I came back to Kyiv to cover the beginning of the war from there instead."

The start of the war was the scariest and most uncertain period for many, although The Sun's defence editor Jerome Starkey was among those to emphasise that these emotions were "tenfold" among Ukrainians themselves.

Being on the wrong end of Russian artillery

Nonetheless, Starkey, who has previously been Afghanistan and Africa correspondent for The Times, told Press Gazette: "I've been scared at many points – very notably on day one, and particularly for those first few days. It began to lessen, but that first period of the war was particularly fraught and nerve-wracking for a number of reasons."

He pointed out that no one could tell whether Putin's army would capture the entire country within hours or days, leaving open the possibility they "would either be caught up in that violence or find ourselves reporting from Russian-occupied Ukraine," he said.

[Read more: Antonia Cundy on freelancing in Ukraine: ‘If you can add something, the risk is worth it’]

At that time, there were also rumours swirling of plainclothes Russian special forces and intelligence units that may have infiltrated Ukraine to foment uprisings behind the frontlines. This created a tricky situation for journalists at checkpoints, Starkey said.

"Some of them were very professional, well-trained soldiers, but some of them were not professional soldiers. They were keen volunteers, armed with hunting rifles and shotguns, and occasionally alcohol and fear. And that's quite a potent combination when they have been briefed that there are Russian saboteur teams around.

"As journalists, we're some of the only people driving against the tide of refugees driving towards the frontlines. I happened to be in a group of three men, often we'd be wearing body armour and helmets and driving on almost deserted roads up to these checkpoints so from their point of view, we looked incredibly suspicious. That was nerve-wracking."

Similar emotions, Starkey said, continued as he "started to see and experience and feel the death and destruction that was being unleashed". He was in Kharkiv on the second day of the war and came across a dead Russian soldier and a burnt-out Russian tank. At this point, he had no interpreter, who had left to be with his family. And then Starkey found himself sheltering from shelling coming towards him.

"This is very, very different to going on a patrol with incredibly well-trained, friendly British paratroopers or Marines who are the best in the world," he said. "I think perhaps for colleagues who had been to the Balkans or Chechnya or even Syria, they may have some more experience of this. I covered very fluid and volatile situations in Africa, but nonetheless nothing that compared to being on the wrong end of Russian artillery."

Starkey also recalled some "absurd" moments he had while staying in the southern city of Kherson in November after it was liberated from Russian forces. There was no electricity or running water and he and his team, along with the city's residents, had to collect drinking water from the river. He said he was "always just imagining what an anticlimax it would be to get shot while you were filling a bottle of water in order to basically flush your loo".

ITV's Kachroo, who has type one diabetes, also recalled being in Kherson at that time. His team had prepared supplies of hundreds of bottles of water and stockpiles of Kitkats and Twixes for the initial uncertain weeks in Kyiv that were ultimately not needed – but proved crucial in Kherson nine months later. "Some of it had gone past its sell-by date but obviously we weren’t too worried about that," Kachroo said.

He always travels with two months' worth of insulin but admitted "it did cross my mind at some point what would happen if we couldn’t get out and would it be unfair and unethical of me to intrude on the supplies of insulin to people [in Ukraine]?"

In terms of food, many journalists travelling Ukraine's huge road network have found themselves relying on petrol station hot dogs - though Hilsum, as a vegetarian, said she was more partial to the spinach pastries. "Every other journalist who is not a vegetarian has eaten so many Ukrainian petrol station hot dogs that it's amazing that they're not coming out of their ears," she said.

But, as several of the correspondents pointed out, international journalists are more able to retreat when things get too dangerous, uncomfortable or simply when they need a break or more varied diet. Their Ukrainian colleagues cannot.

Ukrainian journalists give 'unclouded perspective'

Katya Soldak, editorial director of Forbes' international editions, is Ukrainian herself and has been working with the Forbes Ukraine team from New York. She said they, and other Ukrainian journalists, "know Ukraine in and out and have this ability to provide the angle that is not clouded by the Western perspective".

Soldak was full of praise for how they "don't think they are brave but they are risking their lives". She recalled sending a message to Forbes Ukraine editor-in-chief Boris Davidenko in October after Russia started hitting Kyiv, where the team is largely based, with missiles again.

He responded with a message along the lines: "Yes, they're hitting us with missiles. But we're so busy. We are finishing the issue and going to print." Soldak said: "It's very surreal to hear these things. But that's how they did it... that's the mentality of the war."

The Sun's Starkey credited the Ukrainian titles Pravda, Interfax and Kyiv Independent, saying they are "phenomenal operations in extraordinarily difficult circumstances and they don't always necessarily have the same logistics chain behind them in terms of support".

[Read more: Ukraine war: Without local media, no one would have heard the cries for help]

And The Guardian's Graham-Harrison said: "I think most international journalists have tried to be supportive of their Ukrainian colleagues but however much we try, essentially we can all go home and rest and they can't really do that the same way."

She said there has been "a lot of exploration and attempt to become more aware in recent years of the complicated power and often problematic power dynamics between international reporters who come and go from other countries and local reporters who live there" and that the most important thing foreign correspondents can do for their Ukrainian colleagues is listen to what they want.

"One thing I think people have been better at in this conflict than in others – and I hope that will continue – is crediting Ukrainian colleagues' words, making sure they have bylines or reporting credits as appropriate so their labour is acknowledged," she added.

Pride in so-called 'mainstream media'

The correspondents also all expressed gratitude for the teamwork within their news organisations, including the photographers and camera operators who joined them in Ukraine, the security advisers, fixers and translators who supported them, and their newsrooms back in the UK. Two – Starkey and Graham-Harrison – mentioned Ukrainians who worked alongside them but were not journalists at all until the war broke out.

Starkey said: "It's a massive team effort at The Sun. That's really important because in a newspaper I often am the one with my name on the story or my picture in the paper, and it's the same with TV as a correspondent, but I'm massively aware that I'm really lucky I've worked with some great teams."

ITV News' Kachroo said he has never received better feedback from the public on the street in the UK.

"I’m more used to people coming up to me in the street to shout or to question something they’ve seen on the news or to criticise what they call the ‘mainstream media’ but for the first time I was hearing strangers in supermarkets, or people getting in touch that I went to junior school with, saying that they really appreciated the work that all journalists were doing in Ukraine because they sensed it was really important.

"It sometimes feels like journalists are becoming more self-involved, that many are using social media to promote their own personal brands rather than spread the information and this story felt like a reminder of the importance of what we do and how crucial it is to have journalists bearing witness to really important events.

"And so despite the horror and the tragedy of the last 12 months in some ways, I feel more positive about the good that journalism does."

Kachroo also discussed how many of the key players of the war have put their messages out through platforms like Tiktok or Telegram, meaning that more than ever journalists on the ground could only capture a "jigsaw piece of the whole story".

For this reason, he and his team made the decision to not necessarily rush to the frontline in the first few weeks. "We were also looking first at the most interesting Telegrams," he said. "Sometimes that felt unsatisfying because we often weren’t seeing the action, but the reality was we were able to get as broad a picture as possible by trying to bear witness when we could but also being that our vantage point was only a snapshot of what was going on elsewhere and a lot of this was happening online."

He added: "I think the challenges of this conflict brought a whole new skillset to the fore. Yes, brave journalists and camera operators who were willing to go close to the fighting were able to bring us the most important pieces of reporting, perhaps no more important than the Associated Press journalists who remained in Mariupol and were able to tell that story to the world.

"But we still are equally relying on individual journalists who don’t work for any major news organisation who perhaps had a huge following on social media but were in the places that matter and whose contribution to the broader picture was really important.

"We no longer have the monopoly on truth. We can aggregate whatever information we can but perhaps unlike some previous conflicts reporting on this war required a different skillset."

How to be objective in 'war of aggression'

Another key difference, Hilsum explained, was that in many previous wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan journalists have been able to tell stories from both sides more easily.

"In Syria, I often went in with a government visa," she said. "I was not on the side of the government, but I was covering it from the government side – very important distinction – and others of my colleagues would be covering it from the rebel side. So we were showing how it looked from two different sides.

"But with this, of course, it's been extremely difficult to get access on the Russian side and, in common with most British journalists, we have not been able to get in on the Russian side at all and so that is a real challenge and one has to be constantly aware of it.

"There's no doubt this is a war of aggression. There is no doubt that Russia invaded Ukraine. One can be very clear about that. It's a fact. But you have to be very careful not to lose your objectivity in the sense of being objective about how the war is going."

However Forbes' Soldak suggested that Western media can get "sidetracked" by developments from Russia as Putin is good at "stealing the narrative of the war" and "there are a lot of editors and journalists in the West who are even still more comfortable with Russia" because, for example, many news organisations set up bureaux in Moscow after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

"Russia is a big country and it was always more interesting for the West because it's inherited the legacy of the Soviet Union," Soldak said. "And there's still a lot of news about Russian journalists, people being evacuated from Russia... it's all great, but there is an actual country of 40 million people that have been attacked by Russia and it needs to be the centre of this narrative."

One thing Hilsum has learned is that "you never know what's going to happen", citing how few people expected the scale of Russia's invasion prior to 24 February 2022. "You think as a journalist, particularly if you've been around a bit like me, that you've seen so much and that's it and everything is repetition. Everything is not repetition. This was totally unexpected."

But when a major story like this demands blanket coverage for many months, other important stories such as the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and its effect on its citizens' human rights should not be forgotten, Graham-Harrison said.

She herself took a break from Ukraine to return to Afghanistan in August, and praised other veteran correspondents such as BBC News' Lyse Doucet and CNN's Clarissa Ward who have also been back. But she said: "There was a lot of focus sucked away from other conflicts... I think it's really important that the media doesn't take resources away from covering these other things that are going on in the world."

Audience interest has remained high, with the Ukraine conflict making up almost a quarter of page views to The Guardian's world news section, including more than 400 million to its daily Ukraine live blog, throughout 2022. Others such as Sky News and The Telegraph have previously told Press Gazette that appetite for regular updates from the war stays strong.

Graham-Harrison added: "Obviously there's got to be some redeployment of resources if you're staffing a conflict like Ukraine the way it's being staffed by the entirety of the world's media and that is a response both I would say to reader interest and the importance of this conflict - I'm very much in the category of people that sees this as not just a war about Ukraine, but a war about what the world order looks like and how dictatorships feel they can act in the world."

The post A year of reporting from Ukraine: ‘Magnitude and proximity made this story different’ appeared first on Press Gazette.

News websites saw a significant drop in their prominence on Google search results in 2022, according to data from independent search visibility performance company Sistrix.

Press Gazette analysis of data from the search engine optimisation (SEO) experts reveals that 45 out of the 68 news domains ranked worse in UK Google search results in January of this year compared to the same month in 2022.

Sistrix’s visibility index assigns web domains values based on how well they rank in Google search results. The score draws on organic (unpaid) search results and does not include Top Stories or other Google news platforms such as Discover (a personalised Google content feed on Android devices). A higher score means that a domain appears higher in search results.

Press Gazette used the news domains that appear in our latest UK monthly top 50 list, which ranks news sites based on their number of unique visitors each month. We also included some additional news domains that Sistrix tracks as part of its regular IndexWatch project.

When it came to relative change in visibility – how much a site lost out in Google rankings compared to its own position at the start of the year – the biggest losers were Reach‘s mylondon.news and independently owned irishtimes.com. Both sites saw a 61% fall in their search visibility between January 2022 and January 2023. They were closely followed by DMGT’s inews.co.uk, which saw a 60% fall in visibility.

Since all three sites have relatively low visibility scores relative to the other sites in our analysis, small changes in score will inevitably make a larger relative impact.

Among our list, in absolute terms, guardian.com lost the most visibility points over the year (125) – a relative fall of 36% as its score dropped from 351 to 266. It was followed by thesun.co.uk (down 41 points or 48%) and nytimes.com (down 35 points or 34%).

Commenting on the changes, Steve Paine of Sistrix told Press Gazette: "The key factors seen in the data are mostly due to a reduction of news-related URLs appearing in search results. This has been a trend we've seen over a number of years."

Overall, across the 68 sites we looked at, visibility was down by 20% based on a combined total of 390 fewer points on the visibility index between January 2022 and January 2023.

At the other end of the list, the biggest winner in 2022 was Newsquest's thenorthernecho.co.uk, which saw its search visibility surge by 111% in 12 months. It was followed by the irishmirror.ie, whose visibility increased by 99% and dailystar.co.uk, up 92%.

Forbes.com saw the biggest absolute gain. The domain, which at the start of 2022 was the fifth-best ranked for visibility on our list with a score of 89, saw its visibility score increase by nine points in the 12 months to January this year. It is currently the third-best ranked news site in our list for search visibility.

The business-focused publisher was followed by dailystar.co.uk, whose visibility score increased from six to 11, and journalist Martin Lewis’ consumer advice site moneysavingexpert.com which was up five points from 50 to 55.

News publishers have, in recent years, been expanding their digital offerings to include more non-news content by going into verticals such as games, recipes and reference content.

Such non-news content has, according to Paine, helped drive the increased visibility of the sites that have seen the biggest gains in 2022.

"The winners in this list don't appear to have won through news content," he said. "Nearly all of the gains were made through other content strategies. Examples include lottery results, what's on content and reference content. The most prominent example of success is the Forbes Advisor content project," which aims to help consumers with financial decisions.

Despite its large loss of points in 2022, the Guardian remains the site with the greatest search visibility in our analysis. As of 27 January 2023, guardian.co.uk's visibility index was 229, 103 points higher than the second-best ranked independent.co.uk (126) and 123 points higher than third-best ranked forbes.com (106).

Strong brands and larger content bases across many topics tend to perform better, according to Sistrix.

While a site’s visibility score reflects the success of a web publisher’s SEO strategy, visibility in search can also be affected by core algorithm updates by Google. While the company is constantly tweaking its algorithm, these periodic major changes have a big enough effect on who ranks in search results to be noticed by publishers and search marketers.

While not all core updates spell bad news for publishers, a Press Gazette analysis last year found that ten of 25 leading news websites in the UK saw their visibility in search rankings reduce as a result of a major update to Google’s core algorithm in September.

That update was designed to reward high-quality content, according to SEO specialists Yoast. "This update had a massive impact on a huge amount of the publishing industry. Major news publishers and information sites which publish reviews and informative guidelines lost up to 40% of their traffic in some cases."

Google has for many years been the biggest single source of traffic for every major news website in the UK, although some are now successfully growing their direct audiences.

Paine said: "The majority of factors affecting visibility are under the control of the domain owner, but, given that there is finite space in organic results, a close competitor's visibility change can have a large impact."

Although publishers are always striving for better search visibility, it does not always have an immediate effect on actual traffic to a site – for example, it can build up authority on Christmas trees, but cannot benefit from this all year round.

The post How Google has downgraded importance of news websites in search results appeared first on Press Gazette.

Forbes’ new neighbours are Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton. The New York-born business magazine hasn’t upped sticks to Los Angeles. Instead, it has set up shop in the so-called metaverse.

The business magazine is not new to Web3 tinkering, having claimed to be the first publisher to have turned its cover into an NFT (non-fungible token) in 2021.

But now, its chief technology officer Vadim Supitskiy told Press Gazette, the 105-year-old publication is setting up its own little world on the web.

Supitskiy said he was confident the venture will pay for itself in time – but that creating this virtual experience was mainly about positioning Forbes for the future and broadening the value proposition for subscribers.

Forbes CTO: Web3 will help us create a ‘full circle’ for our users

Forbes said its “first-ever metaverse destination and event” would see members receive a “wearable” NFT as their ticket to enter, allowing them to “interact with other members, purchase Forbes-branded wearable NFTs in the Forbes Store, and even check out the famous Forbes Highlander Yacht”.

The meaning of the term “metaverse” is contested. It originated in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash to describe a virtual reality planet accessed through headsets, but is used today to describe a wide range of online experiences.

Supitskiy told Press Gazette the publisher's approach was to build a "Web3 ecosystem" of which the metaverse is one part.

Supitskiy said: “What we want to do is to create that full circle of our users, our members, our subscribers being able to interact with us in Web 2, Web3, in real life and tying it all together, making it more of a smooth experience.

“And then if you're talking about NFTs specifically, they’re definitely going to be part of the metaverse. And one of those ways will be we’ll actually be giving you a wearable NFT that you will be able to use in Sandbox, anywhere, as a ticket to access the metaverse.”

Forbes has raised at least $333,333 (£290,000) for charity through its cover NFT sale, as well as around $75,000 (£65,000) in profit through its “Billionaires” NFT series.

[Read more: How news publishers made $12m selling NFTs]

The latter NFTs - which are each associated with an imaginary stock portfolio and thus ever-changing net worths - will be on display in a gallery in Forbes’ virtual world.

Into the metaverse

Unlike Stephenson’s metaverse, or indeed the one Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says he is building, Forbes’ virtual world (the entrance to which is pictured at the top of this article) is not accessed through a headset. Instead, it is on a smallish plot within The Sandbox Game, a programme users can download to their computer like any conventional free-to-play PC game.

The Sandbox is visually reminiscent of the open world game Minecraft, but functions more like Second Life or the old noughties children's favourite Habbo Hotel - users walk around a space and use a chat bar to communicate with others in the area.

[Read more: Metaverse opportunities for publishers - Next online revolution or waste of money?]

The South China Morning Post went live with a Sandbox experience earlier this year, using its archives to let users explore the Hong Kong Star Ferry Pier as it was in the 1980s up to the present day. In Forbes' case, the space is a luxurious clubhouse, complete with outdoor dancefloor and a yacht modelled on Malcolm Forbes' Highlander party boat.

Supitskiy showed Press Gazette a video in which a visitor to Forbes' metaverse experience sampled its amenities.

"So you can dance, you can do things like that," Supitskiy said as the player toured the estate. "You can just enjoy yourself. But also, while you're doing it, you're going to be learning about Forbes...

"The idea is that the user will be able to go and communicate and compete with others if they want to, and just hang out. But if they want to do something fun, they can go on a quest."

After speaking to a non-player character representing Malcolm Forbes himself, the player embarked on their quest. A notification popped up on the screen: "New objective unlocked: find the cocktail bar."

Supitskiy narrated the journey: "So this is kind of a pool party area; a DJ; you can do your dance moves, whatever you want.”

The avatar in the video entered the clubhouse building.

"As you can see, you get clues while looking around. Malcolm was famous for riding motorcycles, for example, and his car collection. So you get a lot of clues there. And then, to proceed, you [need] to answer... three questions as well."

The house contained virtual renderings of artefacts from Forbes' past. Some objects, when clicked, provided text about the publication's history. The game was essentially a tour of the artefacts, rounded off with quizzes about the experience. The walkthrough took approximately 12 minutes.

"If you complete it Malcolm will congratulate you, and you'll get some fireworks."

Supitskiy said the company planned to add more. "We're gonna probably have new quests, as well as new events, potentially - more educational material and more learning here, more NFT drops, more NFT collections and things like that. So continuing to tie it all together, maybe to even live events as well, like 30 Under 30 and things like that."

Press Gazette noticed a health points bar at the top of the screen. Could you die in Forbes' metaverse?

“No, you actually can’t die. You can’t die here.”

What is new about virtual shared worlds?

A virtual, shared world accessed through a computer isn't new: most people born in the late Eighties onward will have experienced it through games like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Fortnite or Runescape.

If these technologies have existed for decades, why are publishers only getting into it now?

“I think it's that connection, in Web3… to NFTs, where you have ownership of these things," Supitskiy said.

“So what's interesting here is that for us to be here we had to buy land. We had to purchase the land, and there are a lot of celebrities also purchasing land in the Sandbox metaverse.

“Snoop Dogg has a land there. Paris Hilton has a land here. Steve Aoki has a land there. So now we own that space, that land, so we have that ownership."

This chimes with Stephenson’s original story, in which you had to buy real estate in the virtual world.

Supitskiy added: "Our members also, they will be owning pieces of this, they will be owning NFTs, not just wearable [NFTs], but we're showing NFT Billionaires, for example, where it's theirs, and they're gonna get more and more utility based on what they own as well.

“So it's an ownership part. It's kind of immutable, you have it and that's part of it. And for us, this is a space that we bought, this is the space that we own in that world. So it makes it more real than just like a game. And that part, I think, is the difference. The ownership for a company and ownership for the users as well. Having it decentralised in that way.”

Many of the earlier social virtual worlds also had components of ownership, as any parents forced to purchase their children Habbo Hotel credits will attest. The newer element is that ownership can now be recorded on a blockchain. In The Sandbox objects and land are purchased with Sand, the game's cryptocurrency.

Paying for it

Forbes says it paid the equivalent of approximately $15,000 for its space in The Sandbox. The company has some of its developers working on the project, but hired creative agency Polygonal Mind, which specialises in metaverse design, to shape its Sandbox plot.

Forbes' metaverse experience launches on 10 November, and will initially be open to subscribers.

Gary Liu, the former chief executive of the South China Morning Post who has since left the business to spin-off its NFT project Artifact, told Press Gazette in April that SCMP had decided to build in the metaverse, despite the expense, because it had little choice: "If media companies are not involved in establishing what information in the metaverse looks like then once again our business won't be disintermediated and somebody else will come and invent it on our behalf and we're going to have to play by those rules."

Supitskiy shared a similar sentiment: “We're definitely focusing on investing in the space because we believe that's going to be the future. We do think that it's going to change a lot. That's why we’re experimenting, and we want to be on the forefront of whatever is happening in technology and be innovative.

“So we definitely don't want to be left behind. But we know that it will change a lot - one of the big things that needs to happen for mass adoption is it needs to be more frictionless. And we’re trying to work with others, also, to see how we can help, how we can educate."

To get onto The Sandbox in the first place a user needs to have a cryptowallet. Those are easier to set up now than a decade ago, but still add cumbersome steps to getting online.

Supitskiy said Forbes would be sending "a lot of different videos and instructions" for its Sandbox launch but that "the industry has a long way to go to make it really easily accessible to the mainstream world".

"And that's where I think it's going to be a huge, huge change in the next year or so.”

Supitskiy said Forbes did not have a timeline for when the company's metaverse would pay for itself.

"We do believe that, if we continue to build in there, that monetisation will come," he added. "I think it's just natural. It will be there if we have our community, we have something exciting to offer to our audiences, and then potentially our advertisers and brands.

“I don't see monetisation as being a problem in the future. But we don't want to fixate on that. We want to, number one, build that value proposition to our users and audiences first." It is ultimately part of Forbes' larger membership strategy, he added, through which subscribers get fewer ads, member-only events and full digital access.

And come 10 November, will Supitskiy be hanging out often in Forbes’ metaverse?

“​​Yeah, absolutely. 100%. We've done already a bunch of that internally, and it has been very successful for us. They've done some really cool events for our teams at Forbes.”

Picture: Forbes

The post Forbes in the metaverse: Why business mag has built a party boat in Sandbox virtual world appeared first on Press Gazette.