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

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

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

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

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

UK national newspaper editors

The Times

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

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

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

The Sunday Times

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

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

Daily Mail

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

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

Mail on Sunday

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

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

The Sun and The Sun on Sunday

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

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

Daily Mirror

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

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

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

The Daily Telegraph

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

The Sunday Telegraph

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

Daily Express and Sunday Express

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

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

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

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

The Guardian

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

The Observer

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

i

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

Financial Times

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

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

Daily Star

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

Daily Star on Sunday

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

The Independent

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

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

Free newspaper editors

Metro

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

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

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

Evening Standard

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

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

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

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

City AM

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

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

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

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

Press Gazette is honoured to announce the finalists for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

In order to make the shortlists work has to be revelatory, show journalistic skill and rigour and serve the public interest.

The winners will be announced on 12 December at a dinner in London hosted by Radio 2 presenter and journalist Jeremy Vine.

Details here about how to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year will be announced following a second round of judging. The winners of Journalist of the Year, the Marie Colvin Award and the Public Service prize will be announced on the night.

Chairman of judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Without journalism, Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, wronged postmasters would not have a voice and victims of the infected blood scandal would not have a chance of compensation.

“The 2024 British Journalism Awards shortlists celebrate the stories which would not be told without journalists willing to shine a light on uncomfortable truths and publications brave enough to back them up.

“Congratulations to all our finalists and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the British Journalism Awards.

“In a media world which is increasingly controlled by a few parasitic technology platforms it is more important than ever to celebrate the publishers willing to invest in and support quality journalism that makes a difference for the better in our world.”

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

Natasha Cox, Ahmed El Shamy, Rosie Garthwaite — BBC Eye Investigations

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• Missing from mainstream: Excluded children with nowhere to go
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision
• Hospital schools: On the mental health crisis frontline

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• The parents group at the centre of a rollback of trans rights
• ‘One day they may thank us for that “abuse”’: Inside the Bayswater Support Group

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans, Cate Brown, Ed McGown, Tom Stone, Ed Campbell, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Mariah Cooper, Reshma Rumsey — ITV News

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

• Taking the stand: Grace’s story
• Taking the stand: Emma’s story

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

• Level the Field
• Is there a problem with young farmer culture?
• Editor’s view: Facing hard truths about young farmer culture

Joshua Nelken-Zitser, Ida Reihani, Kit Gillet — Business Insider

• Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

• The last stand of the call-centre worker
• Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters
• Last love: a romance in a care home

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

• America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burned his initials on a patient’s liver

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

• ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward
• The life and tragic death of John Balson: how a true crime producer documented his own rising horror
• The Russell murders: is Michael Stone in prison for a brutal crime he didn’t commit?

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

• How Nigel Farage took over my hometown – and why Keir Starmer should be worried
• My battle to bring a predatory Met Police officer from the same unit as Wayne Couzens to justice
• ‘A court packed with those who know their way around already, and jails are too full to take them’

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

• My doctors insist it’s time I died – but I will fight them: Extraordinary case of 19-year-old woman suffering from Charlie Gard condition battling medics’ attempts to ‘condemn her to death’
• Sudiksha: ‘Condemned to Die in Secret’ – The Shocking Story of the 19-year-old’s fight to live

David James Smith — The Independent

• How did so many miss the sinister warning signs about James Bulger’s killer for so long?
• Is Lucy Letby innocent? I’m a miscarriage of justice investigator – and here’s what I think…
• The wife of this Murdoch executive has been missing since the Sixties – will her body now be found?

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

• Nottingham attacks: ‘We have no faith in the police. We want justice’
• ‘A horrible way to die … and no doctors can help you’
• Realising Sarah Everard got into a sex offender’s car was horrific

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

• Ghislaine Maxwell ‘was tortured in prison – now she’s ready for a comeback’: Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite pimp runs half marathons at low-security Florida lock-up and is now ‘focused and motivated’ for her appeal next week, her brother reveals
• ‘I shook Epstein’s hand and asked him what my daughter would be doing’: Virginia Roberts’s father describes dropping her off at paedophile’s mansion, meeting ‘despicable’ Ghislaine… and blasts Prince Andrew for showing ‘no remorse’
• Black Widow who ‘relished killing and had no regard for human life, even for children’: Griselda Blanco shot a child in the head when she was 11 and rose to be Miami’s drug kingpin. As she’s immortalised on Netflix, her son recalls his ‘fearsome’ mother

Local Journalism

Abi Whistance, Joshi Herrmann, Kate Knowles, Mollie Simpson, Jothi Gupta — Mill Media

• Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Investigation: The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Gurpaal Judge
• Exclusive: How did a semi in Harpurhey sell for £1.8m?

Richard Newman, Jennifer O’Leary, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Lough Neagh has become a scene of Biblical disaster, and Stormont was central to its destruction
• Killing Edgar podcast

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

• Building societies scandal: Yorkshire victims reveal shocking stories – and plead for action to be taken
• Philips Trust: FCA got ‘Ponzi scheme’ warning on firm at heart of £138m building society scandal – 18 months before collapse
• Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham Building Societies to pay tens of millions to Philips Trust victims

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

• Teacher’s ‘life blown apart’ in onslaught of hate as false racism claim goes viral
• The truth exposed about ‘secretive’ council meeting on equal pay crisis in Birmingham
• ‘Like a prison’ – the tower block for homeless families that has 8pm curfew and no visitors allowed

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

• Mental health patients ‘raped and sexually assaulted’ as NHS abuse scandal revealed
• Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for 10 years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
• Revealed: NHS regulator’s ‘culture of fear’ that leaves rogue nurses free to abuse patients

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Science for sale: Philip Morris’s web of payments to fund tobacco research
• Inside the strategy doc Philip Morris never meant you to see
• Tobacco state: why Japan was the perfect testing ground for Philip Morris

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

• The trauma ward
• The Cass Review into children’s gender care should shame us all
• Hundreds of doctors are challenging the BMA’s stance on puberty blockers

Robbie Boyd, Eamonn Matthews, Steve Grandison, Ian Bendelow, Sophie Borland, Katie O’Toole, Islay Stacey, Ali Watt, Frances Peters — Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 Dispatches

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

Ellie Pitt, Cree Haughton, Justina Simpson, Ellie Swinton, Patrick Russell, Liam Ayers — ITV News

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth
• Urgent warning amid fears cosmetic fillers could cause immune system problems

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying ‘allowed me to mostly forget’ fears, says Aussie man hit by brain tumour
• Dame Esther’s assisted dying petition delivered to Prime Minister’s doorstep

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie, Joel Moors, Winifred Robinson, Dan Clarke, Philip Sellars, Tom Brignell, Mom Tudie — BBC

• To Catch a Scorpion
• How we found Europe’s most wanted migrant-smuggler
• Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

• Millionaire’s ‘sex worker immigration scandal’
• Hamish Ogston: millionaire accused of exploiting women ‘set up charity to help win knighthood’
• Hamish Ogston: tycoon asked Met to arrest woman who accused him of sex trafficking

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

• ‘Distraught’ Holly Willoughby under police guard after man is arrested over terrifying ‘kidnap plot’
• Police chief faces ‘Walter Mitty’ probe after being pictured wearing Falklands medal despite being 15 at time of war

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Family Court Files: mother ‘devastated’ after rapist father granted contact with child
• Family Court Files: Psychologist’s evidence used to ‘ramp up’ allegations of parental alienation
• Kristoffer White: TBIJ wins court battle to publish name of sex offender

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• Lawsuit accuses Abercrombie & Fitch of funding sex-trafficking operation
• FBI investigate after ex-Abercrombie boss sex claims

Isobel Yeung, Alex Nott, Esme Ash, Nick Parnes, Alistair Jackson, Matt Bardo, Sarah Wilson — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

• Israelis and Palestinians must start to listen
• Wes Streeting’s lessons from Richard Nixon and China
• Here’s the Keir Starmer I’ve known for decades

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

• When I was at school a teacher could call me the P-word. We’ve come so far
• The storm is gathering, and Europe is still dithering on defending itself
• Locked in by language, we are freed by music, poetry, painting … and love

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

• The most pointless job in Wales
• The worst political leader in the UK
• Bluster, fluster and ‘word salad’ nonsense: Vaughan Gething ducks and weaves like a boxer at the Welsh Covid Inquiry

Kitty Donaldson — i

• Part political update, part group therapy: inside Starmer’s Cabinet meeting
• Grenfell is a tragic reminder to the Tories that regulation is not a dirty word
• The winter fuel row is a painful wake up call for new Labour MPs

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

• A summer defined by men killing women and girls. This can’t go on
• Think of this: a plan to ‘warehouse’ disabled people. What kind of nation is Britain becoming?
• Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

• Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
• The narcissism of minor differences, Labour Party edition
• British boomers are losing out for the first time

Specialist Journalism

Peter Blackburn — The Doctor (by the British Medical Association)

• Nowhere left to turn
• Fears for patient care due to shortages of chronic alcohol misuse treatment Pabrinex
• Not the only failing

Lucinda Rouse, Emily Burt, Ollie Peart, Louise Hill, David Robinson, Rebecca Cooney, Andy Ricketts, Nav Pal, Til Owen — Third Sector

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

• Revealed: Water firms dumped sewage 5,500 times in a year ‘illegally’
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• Toxic water, debt and sewage dumping: How Britain’s rivers got so bad

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

• Inclisiran: the ‘extremely unusual’ political influence behind the novel drug’s approval
• Galleri promises to detect multiple cancers—but new evidence casts doubt on this much hyped blood test
• Inclisiran: Government’s strategy to promote cholesterol lowering drug after Brexit was “spectacular failure,” says insider

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

• Revealed: the racehorse owner fronting an illegal bookmaker with more than 1,000 customers
• ‘People don’t want to provide bank statements. We’ve got so many people betting with us’

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• The rise of the parent activist
• AI’s allure is proving hard to resist for the UK’s learners
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

• Over 30 sepsis deaths linked to ‘systemic’ failings, investigation reveals
• Revealed: Doubling of average waits for critical stroke treatments
• Midwives call women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ amid ‘hostile’ environment fears

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

• Prince Harry at 40: ‘All he does is spend time looking back’
• The hospital heart-to-hearts that brought Kate and King even closer
• Prince William to build houses for homeless on his land in Cornwall

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
• First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head
• ‘Who will protect us?’: Christina Lamb on the Yazidis’ dangerous journey home

Alex Crawford — Sky News

• Libya floods: Child’s voice heard under rubble as rescue teams search desperately in Derna for survivors
• Warning of Islamic State’s growing resurgence – as Sky News gets rare access to terrorists’ families
• Report from Lebanon

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

• Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russia’s invasion
• ‘I have buried more than 50 friends’: My life as a British soldier fighting on Ukraine’s bloody front line
• The families of hostages taken by Hamas are desperate – but can Israel get them back?

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

• The secret city of tunnels where hundreds live below Vegas glitz
• Claudia Sheinbaum: Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
• Stand-off at Eagle Pass: welcome to the epicentre of the US border crisis

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

• Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
• Myanmar military forces victims to fight in brutal civil war

Gesbeen Mohammad, Brad Manning, Nechirvan Mando, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, Esella Hawkey, Tom Giles, Hafez — ITV

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Stuart Ramsay, Dominique van Heerden, Toby Nash — Sky News

• Haiti gang boss will take part in talks if invited – but warns foreign forces will be treated as ‘invaders’
• Aboard ‘The Beast’: What do migrants face travelling through Mexico on way to US?
• Shocking scenes in Gaza hospital as IDF moves into Khan Younis | Israel-Hamas war

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Life and death in Putin’s gulag
• Death and destruction in a Russian city
• Life and fate (podcast)

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

• Ransomware attacks hit record level in UK, according to neglected official data
• UK government urged to get on ‘forward foot’ with ransomware instead of ‘absorbing the punches’
• Exclusive: UK to propose mandatory reporting for ransomware attacks and licensing regime for all payments

Marianna Spring — BBC News

• The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots
• Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
• X takes action on deepfake network smearing UK politicians after BBC investigation

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

• ‘Pig butchering’ scammers target BBC reporter
• Sextortion warning: In six hours, my son was dead
• Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

Cathy Newman, Job Rabkin, Emily Roe, Sophie Braybrook, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker — Channel 4 News

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Apocalypse Neagh: The source of 40% of NI’s water is ‘dying’
• Watch: Sam McBride’s in-depth look at Lough Neagh’s blue-green algae crisis

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Backroom deals, mystery companies and a ‘killer lake’: inside DRC’s gas and oil auction
• HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge
• Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

Esme Stallard, Becky Dale, Sophie Woodcock, Jonah Fisher, Libby Rogers — BBC News

• Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days – data suggests
• BBC uncovers 6,000 possible illegal sewage spills in one year

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

• The Watershed Pollution Map
• Landfills across England could be leaking harmful toxic ooze, warn experts
• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Guy Grandjean, Patrick Fee, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight Northern Ireland

• Spotlight – The Lough Neagh Monster
• Hundreds of environmental breaches by Moy Park

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

• ‘If we can’t fish any more, we’re going to die’: the volunteer sea patrols protecting precious Philippine waters
• From sea to plate … to sea! Hong Kong puts oyster shells to new use
• ‘It smells so bad’: glut of wild salmon creates stink in Norway and Finland

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

• Trojan Horsepower – Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby
• F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

Mark Daly, Mona McAlinden, Shelley Jofre, Jax Sinclair, Karen Wightman, Hayley Hassall — BBC Panorama

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?
• Ridley Scott: I didn’t need historians to make my Napoleon epic
• Olly Alexander on Eurovision: ‘I was trying not to have a breakdown’

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘At the start you get molested and by 45 you’re too old to work’ – the secret misery of women working in TV
• Fresh crisis at ‘toxic’ Strictly as ex-staff claim they faced sexualised comments and cruelty
• ‘The outrageousness of what Louis CK did is totally lost’: the film about the backlash faced by his accusers

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

• BBC’s Huw Edwards scandal teen breaks silence in first interview – ‘I felt groomed’
• Huw Edwards scandal teen: Why I first tried to protect BBC star but now feel shame
• Paul O’Grady’s beloved dog nuzzled star’s shoulder as devoted husband battled to save him

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out
• The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?
• ‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

• Strictly pro Giovanni Pernice probed over serious complaints by 3 ‘traumatised’ contestants as BBC ‘gathers evidence’
• Strictly Come Dancing bosses make huge changes to show after Giovanni Pernice quits
• Strictly bombshell as Amanda Abbington demands backstage footage of her and Giovanni as she is diagnosed with PTSD

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

• The British Museum’s missing gems
• Painting stolen in art heist more than 30 years ago returned to Glasgow museum

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• ‘I felt used and abused’ on Arthur: alleged Russell Brand victim speaks

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

• Labour loses Muslim support over stance on Israel-Hamas ceasefire
• Reform UK’s unusual structure with Nigel Farage in the middle
• How Post Office lawyers pushed boundaries in UK sub-postmasters scandal

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

• ‘We’re going to see people dying on the streets’: homeless refugee crisis grips Liverpool
• ‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis
• Met police agree six-figure payout to student hit by baton at protest

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

• Whistleblower reveals corruption and collusion inside Wandsworth Prison
• The fraud scammers putting people out of pocket by cloning phone numbers

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

• Everyone is on their phones. But is it really phone addiction we’re experiencing?
• The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs
• He was shot in the throat. Now he saves gun victims as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Santander arranged billion-dollar oil bond after making green pledge
• Santander weakened fossil fuel policy after raising billions for gas projects

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

• Anxiety drug pregabalin killed my son — and hundreds more are dying from it
• The company taking refugees out of Gaza — and ‘making millions’
• After the earthquake: how Morocco is rebuilding

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

• Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides
• Dodging Israeli rockets with Ghana’s UN peacekeepers
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon: Attacks are causing wildfires across south

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

• London mayor election: Bots, misleading URLs cause voter confusion
• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined
• Ulez: More than 300 cameras damaged or stolen in four months

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

• Special report: Newcastle United sponsor Noon and shocking allegations of worker mistreatment
• Saudi Arabia investigates worker mistreatment allegations after The Athletic report on Newcastle sponsor Noon
• Special report: ‘Disturbing’ safety issues at Hillsborough 35 years after disaster

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

• Angela Carini was sent unforgivably into harm’s way by gutless IOC cowards
• After my grandfather hugged Jesse Owens, the Nazis told him: ‘Never embrace a black man again’
• Michael Vaughan: If I had gone through this racism ordeal at 80, I would have wanted to be shot

Simon Lock, Rob Davies, Jacob Steinberg — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / The Guardian

• Abramovich’s hidden football deals during Chelsea’s time at the top (TBIJ) and Chelsea FC face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success (Guardian)
• ‘I worked for Abramovich?’: footballers were owned by oligarch via offshore deals (TBIJ) and Revealed: Abramovich, the super-agent and the footballers owned as ‘commodities’ (Guardian)
• Leaked documents reveal Abramovich is still connected to Vitesse (TBIJ) and Abramovich loans fund owner of Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest (Guardian)

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

• Drifting through life without gold medals, tortured by his past, and now claims of bankruptcy… How did petulant Wiggins fall so spectacularly from his golden bike?
• Seb Coe explains why he’s HAPPY to break 128 years of Olympic tradition by handing out cash for gold… and reveals Roman Abramovich’s unlikely role in athletics
• The curious case of Jade Jones’ drugs test and why the Chinese might be quick to ask questions, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

• Looting and rioting, setting fire to police officers and hunting down English fans… fearful European clubs are turning a blind eye to shadowy leaders of their untouchable ultras
• Thirty-five years after horror of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mail Sport can reveal that incredibly the stadium is still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel
• Grubby, classless, the five-year legal battle over plane crash victim Emiliano Sala takes us into football’s sewers… where players are pawns and chronically inept clubs desperately try to save cash

Matt Lawton — The Times

• Man City launch unprecedented legal action against Premier League
• ‘The horror is everywhere’ – inside Lord Coe’s secret trip to Ukraine
• Russian athletes should be allowed at Olympics, says government

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

• How does endometriosis affect women in sport?
• USA cricket teen on tackling social media trolls, South Asian heritage and 2028 Olympic goals
• Um-E-Aymen Babar ok Tiktok

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

• Thousands dead, 40 years of cover-up: time for justice for infected blood victims
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims
• Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal

Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday, John Domokos — The Guardian: Unpaid Carers

• Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules
• ‘Injustice’: 92-year-old with dementia told by DWP to repay £7k in disability allowance
• I’m under attack and fighting back: the scandal trapping carers

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

• Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know
• Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban
• Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled ‘unachievable’ as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

• Boys, porn and the alarming way they talk about girls – a special investigation
• School pupils tell how they are victims of sexual harassment every day
• Show some respect: Standard launches campaign with £500k to tackle sexist abuse in schools

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

• Save Britain’s Rivers: i challenges all parties to commit to election manifesto
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• National Trust signs up to i’s Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto

Hanna Geissler, Giles Sheldrick — Daily Express: Give Us Our Last Rights

• My assisted dying petition proves Brits are compassionate – now Rishi Sunak must act
• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying debate must move on to how law will change, MND campaigner says

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

• Revealed: 16 years in prison for stealing a bike and no hope of release – as 7 trapped in jail kill themselves
• ‘He looked like a starving dog on the floor’: Prisoner trapped on indefinite jail term driven to hunger strike
• Father imprisoned for 12 years for stealing mobile phone under ‘cruel’ indefinite jail term reunited with son

Martin Bagot, Jason Beattie — Daily Mirror: Save NHS Dentistry

• Dentists warn ‘rescue plan’ will fail to end crisis as 60,000 people sign our petition
• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

• Ed Davey: ‘Being a carer is harder than being a politician’
• Peter Kyle: It was 5am. A woman said, ‘Your partner is dead ’
• Emma Barnett: ‘The pain was so bad, I was losing the will to live’

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• ICC prosecutor: UK didn’t blitz the IRA — Israel needs that restraint
• The president’s daughter (and Instagram star) wanted by Interpol
• David Cameron: ‘Why did I take the job? Rishi Sunak asked!’

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

• Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
• How Can We Protect Our Children Online?
• Inside No 11 with Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

• ‘You asked me questions I’ve never asked myself’: Keir Starmer’s most personal interview yet
• ‘Dismissing global warming? That was a joke’: Jeremy Clarkson on fury, farming and why he’s a changed man
• ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind

Nick Ferrari — LBC

• Labour leader Keir Starmer joins Nick Ferrari to take your calls
• Champagne and caviar: Esther Rantzen reveals plans for final moments as she pushes for assisted dying law change
• Nigel Farage joins Nick Ferrari

Samantha Poling — BBC

• How I confronted Emma Caldwell’s killer
• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell
• Who Killed Emma?

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey
• Kevin Spacey Breaks Down As He Faces Debt Of MILLIONS
• Piers Morgan vs Rishi Sunak Round 2 | Prime Minister Discusses Israel-Hamas War, NHS, Rwanda & More

Paul Brand — ITV News

• Interview with Rishi Sunak
• Interview with Ed Davey
• Interview with Keir Starmer

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

• Keir Starmer accepted £76,000 of freebies including tickets to over 20 football games
• Keir Starmer faces backlash over early failure to disclose £16,200 in donor-funded clothing
• Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

• Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff
• Rishi Sunak aide placed bet on election date days before announcement
• Tories putting party reputation before sexual assault claim, says alleged victim

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• ‘No room for the Indians?’: Tory donor Frank Hester suggested staff climb on train roof
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

• Election exit poll
• The Battle for Number 10: A Sky News Leaders’ Special
• How Reform fares on Thursday will also determine the Conservatives fate

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

• Commons worker arrested after allegedly spying for China
• My MP husband Andrew Bridgen was captured by antivax ‘cult’
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims

Jane Merrick — i

• Thousands of disabled people died after ‘Covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe
• ‘My daughter was allowed to die of Covid because she had Down’s syndrome’
• Labour manifesto missing pensioners’ winter fuel and bus pass pledges

Steven Swinford — The Times

• Britain and US launch airstrikes on Houthi targets
• Jeremy Hunt looks for £9bn to balance his budget
• Teachers and nurses should get above-inflation pay rise, ministers told

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

• Fujitsu boss lives on ‘blood money’ with £2m mansion as we suffer, says Post Office victim
• Provider boasting of ‘compassion’ threatens daughter with court action over £50k care bill for her 93-year-old amputee mother with dementia
• Mirror tracks down former Post Office IT chief that Horizon inquiry insisted couldn’t be found

Ed Conway — Sky News

• Surge in sale of UK-made cars to Russia’s neighbours shows how it’s beating sanctions
• British firms’ exports are almost certainly bolstering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, Sky data analysis finds
• How British financial services aid sale of Russian gas on European market | Ukraine War

Tom Bergin — Reuters

• Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

• Chinese state banks are lenders to Thames Water’s parent company
• Thames Water owners pile group with debt
• Thames Water shareholders backed away over regulator’s debt demands

Siddharth Philip, Benedikt Kammel, Anthony Palazzo, Katharine Gemmell, Sabah Meddings — Bloomberg News

• Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Faked Employees Too
• Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
• UK Fraud Cops Make Arrest in Fake Airplane Parts Scandal

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

• Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings
• Nuclear Narnia: why is Sellafield Europe’s most dangerous industrial site?
• Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

• Mike Lynch: Flown to the US in chains, now he is free … and talking
• Inside Mike Lynch’s last stand as $11bn fraud trial looms
• The app that promised an NHS ‘revolution’ then went down in flames

Online Video Journalism

Alex Rothwell, Alastair Good, Yasmin Butt, Pauline Den Hartog Jager, Jack Feeney, Federica De Caria, Kasia Sobocinska, Stephanie Bosset — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse | Investigation
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation
• ‘Illegal’ conspiracy theory school exposed | Times Investigation

Andrew Harding — BBC News

• BBC tracks down smuggler behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

Mohamed Ibrahim, Owen Pinnel, Mouna Ba, Wael El-Saadi, Feras Al Ajrami — BBC Eye Investigations

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

• Has the man who killed Jill Dando finally been found?
• Jill Dando murder: Man wanted for questioning matches features of Serbian assassin
• Jill Dando murder: Key witness identifies Serbian assassin

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Clancy Morgan, Amelia Kosciulek, Matilda Hay, Liz Kraker, Dorian Barranco, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna — Business Insider

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey

Ben Marino, Joe Sinclair, Veronica Kan-Dapaah, Petros Gioumpasis, Greg Bobillot — Financial Times

• Chinese brokers launder hundreds of millions for global crime groups | FT Film

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

• Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’
• Huw Edwards used position of power to groom young people for 6 years even sending pictures from BBC desk to impress them
• We’re still suffering, say parents at centre of Huw Edwards scandal as they slam BBC for lack of answers after he quits

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, Esella Hawkey, Imogen Wynell Mayow, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Ian Bendelow, Victoria Noble, Alistair Jackson, Sarah Wilson, Geraldine McKelvie — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions, Channel Four Dispatches Investigations Unit

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• Russell Brand: In Plain Sight

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

• I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks
• My son died in HMP Bedford. I never felt he was safe there
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation

Ruth Evans, Oliver Newlan, Leo Telling, Sasha Hinde, Hayley Clarke, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Holly Bancroft, May Bulman, Monica C. Camacho, Fahim Abed — The Independent and Lighthouse Reports

• At last! Afghan special forces heroes set for sanctuary in UK after government U-turn
• MoD accused of burying admission that UK special forces had power over Afghan sanctuary claims
• Murdered, tortured or in hiding from the Taliban: The special forces abandoned by Britain

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Isabel Alderson-Blench, John Ray — ITV News: The Post Office Tapes

• New secret tape reveals top Post Office lawyer was warned of ‘wrongful’ convictions decade ago
• Secret tape shows Paula Vennells was told about problems with Horizon and warned not to cover it up
• Paula Vennells’ ‘smoking gun’ email reveals Post Office ‘cover-up’

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Samantha Poling, Eamon T. O Connor, Anton Ferrie, Shelley Jofre — BBC Disclosure

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches

Huw Edwards Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’ — The Sun

Naked photos sent in WhatsApp ‘phishing’ attacks on UK MPs and staff— Politico

No 10 pass for Labour donor who gave £500,000 — The Sunday Times

Labour will add 20% VAT to private school fees within first year of winning power — i

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

Harry Lewis-Irlam, Stephen Matthews, Darren Boyle, Rhodri Morgan — Mail Online: Deep Dive

• Anatomy of a loveless landslide: How Labour won on apathy and division
• Hour by hour, how D-Day unfolded…
• How China could seize Taiwan and spark WW3

Laura Dunn, Katie Lilley-Harris, Ellie Senior, Sherree Younger, Scott Nicholson, Jamie Mckerrow Maxwell — KL Magazine

• Rocky Bottoms
• Johnny Cave’s Asparagus
• Archangel Distilleries

Niels de Hoog, Antonio Voce, Elena Morresi, Manisha Ganguly, Ashley Kirk — The Guardian

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

Alison Killing, Chris Miller, Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner, Sam Joiner — Financial Times

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

David Dubas-Fisher, Cullen Willis, Paul Gallagher, Richard Ault — Reach Data Unit

• DWP Cold Weather Payment postcode checker – map shows where households are due £25, £50 or £75 boost
• Enter postcodes in this map to see average house prices in your area
• Cheapest places in Greater Manchester to buy petrol as RAC issues fuel price warning

Gabriel Pogrund, Emanuele Midolo, Venetia Menzies, Darren Burchett, Narottam Medhora, Cecilia Tombesi — The Sunday Times

• The dead teenager, the lying suspect and the black box that proves it

The post British Journalism Awards 2024: Full list of this year’s finalists appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Telegraph bidder Dovid Efune’s New York Sun: An illustrious but relatively small online title appeared first on Press Gazette.

Upmarket UK newsbrands are far less likely to link through to the work of their colleagues at other publishers than tabloid news sites, new Press Gazette research suggests.

Press Gazette assessed recent output from nine leading UK news websites to establish how often they include a hyperlink when repeating information sourced from other publishers.

In the snapshot survey we found that the Mirror and The Sun were the most likely to link to other publishers, doing so in eight out of ten stories assessed at each site.

The Times, Financial Times and Telegraph, on the other hand, each only linked to another news site in one of the ten articles analysed at each and appear to have taken editorial policy decision not to link.

The Guardian and BBC, meanwhile, appeared to link through to their sources slightly less often than not.

Mail Online linked to publisher sources in the majority of articles and the Express in half of the examples we found.

The overall picture is of an industry that routinely avoids linking to sources when lifting information from other sites.

Press Gazette searched each publisher for articles published in recent weeks that featured the word “reported” (i.e. “The New York Times reported…”) and selected from the results the first ten stories that carried information copied from a named third-party news outlet.

Because the research only looked at articles that disclosed they were citing another news outlet, this research does not account for the overall frequency with which the publishers credit their sources: uncredited rewrites of a competitor’s story, for example, would not be picked up in the analysis.

Across all the publishers assessed internal links to other parts of their own websites were common. Many of the publishers would also credit information to "local media" when describing something that had been reported overseas, without identifying or linking to the source.

The Mirror told Press Gazette that it is supportive of linking and that the two articles in which no external link had been inserted were the result of human error.

A spokesperson for The Sun, similarly, said: "The Sun has always been known for breaking great exclusives and we have long campaigned for publishers to receive recognition for their original journalism.

“Alongside expecting to receive this attribution we in turn make every attempt to ensure that we attribute other publications' good stories that we have picked up."

The BBC’s operating licence requires the corporation to link to relevant third parties in its online output, and in its most recent “Delivering our Mission and Public Purposes" report it said that, in a sample of 1,370 articles published across the BBC News and BBC Sport websites, 18% of its output had linked to another media organisation. The BBC declined to comment.

Mail Online declined to comment. The Guardian also declined to comment, but pointed Press Gazette to its editorial code, which instructs its journalists that material "obtained from another organisation should be acknowledged".

The Times, FT and Telegraph had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

What's best practice on linking to other news sites?

Gavin Allen, a digital journalism lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism and a former associate editor at Mirror.co.uk, said there can be a “double incentive” for news sites not to link to competitors: “On the one hand, you're saying ‘we didn't break the story, someone else did’ which may be bad for reputation.

“On the other hand, you're pointing readers away from your website,” which he said may lead them to click away.

Materially, Allen said traffic from backlinks is often “vanishingly small”. Instead, he said, the way un-linked re-reports “might start to cannibalise your traffic is if it’s attracting search away”.

He said: “It’s more a courtesy and an ethics thing as well, I think… If you’re doing stuff based on other people’s work then you should be crediting that work. That would be good practice.”

Search engine optimisation orthodoxy holds that Google gives better rankings to articles that link to relevant third-party websites.

The Association of Online Publishers offers the following guidance on this topic: "Fair attribution is vital to help publishers get credit for the time, money, and effort they put into sourcing, investigating, and producing original content.

"As well as helping direct users to the original source of a story, linking is vitally important for SEO. Google uses links from ‘prominent websites’ as a signal to determine ‘authoritativeness’ – a key factor in determining ranking."

The AOP invites publishers to sign up to the Link Attribution Protocol, a group of publishers who agree to follow best practice on linking and who share a single email point of contact for getting links added to stories.

Scroll down for the full linking results from each of the nine publishers

The post Missing links: Upmarket UK newsbrands deny click-throughs to story sources 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.”

The post ‘Bastards’: Publishers remain focused on alternatives despite Google cookies U-turn appeared first on Press Gazette.

GB News investor Sir Paul Marshall has successfully acquired The Spectator for £100m. Read the full story here.

Also this month the owner of The New York Sun is said to be considering a bid for The Telegraph (see more below).

Meanwhile it was reported in August that former advertising mogul Lord Saatchi had a £350m bid to buy The Telegraph rejected.

Lord Saatchi, who had put together the bid with former Economist Group director Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, has not made it into the second round of the auction process.

In a statement to Sky News they said: “We are sorry Redbird IMI overpaid with £600m for the Telegraph.

“We are offering £350m plus further payments dependent on performance.

“Our bid is not the biggest – but it is the best.

“Whatever happens, this important national asset should end up in safe hands for the long term.”

But Redbird IMI, which is leading the sale, said in response: “They never signed an NDA [non-disclosure agreement]. They never made a serious bid.

“And they haven’t been invited into the second round.

“So, with all due respect, no one takes Maurice or his views on any of this seriously.”

Belgium-based media group Mediahuis also reportedly made a bid but will not progress to the second round of the auction.

The open auction process to buy The Telegraph and The Spectator magazine restarted after a failed bid by the Jeff Zucker-led Redbird IMI, a joint investment vehicle between US private equity firm Redbird and Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle International Media Investments.

The deal, which saw Redbird IMI agree to pay off more than £1bn in debts for The Telegraph’s former owners the Barclays, was ultimately thwarted when the UK Government brought forward new legislation to ban foreign governments from owning UK newspapers and current affairs magazines amid criticism of the UAE investment.

Redbird IMI is looking to recoup at least £600m from the sale of the Telegraph and Spectator (the value of Barclays debt secured against the titles).

Press Gazette will update the following story as bids are confirmed or discarded, or new information comes to light.

Any of the people or businesses mentioned could bid individually or jointly, or not at all.

Who still wants to buy The Telegraph?

Dovid Efune

Dovid Efune, the owner of The New York Sun which he bought in 2021 to revive it as a right-leaning online brand, is reported to be considering a bid for The Telegraph.

According to The Telegraph, British-born Efune made a presentation to the newspaper’s management team and was asked to submit a second-round offer at the end of September.

Semafor reported that Efune has potential financial backers including asset managers Oaktree and Hudson Bay Capital, the family office of US hedge fund manager Michael Leffell and the investment arm of Canadian developer Beedie.

Efune is a former editor-in-chief and chief executive of New York-based international Jewish news publisher The Algemeiner.

GB News investor Sir Paul Marshall

Sir Paul Marshall, the co-founder of hedge fund Marshall Wace, was long reported to be the frontrunner to buy The Spectator ahead of his successful bid. It is unclear whether he still wants to separately buy The Telegraph.

It was previously speculated that Marshall’s Spectator deal could value the current affairs magazine somewhere between £50m and £100m, Sky News reported on 1 August. The acquisition is understood to have taken place for the top end of that range, £100m.

Last year, amid the first auction process, Sir Paul was reported to be working with the investment bank Moelis on a potential bid to buy The Telegraph and was holding discussions with US billionaire and hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, one of the world’s richest men, to potentially take part in a consortium.

Griffin is a donor to the Republican Party in the US – although he did not contribute to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign – and any potential involvement in The Telegraph would be his first personal entry into a media business. It would be in a personal capacity and not through his hedge fund Citadel, the FT reported last year.

Sir Paul has been an investor in GB News in a personal capacity since before its launch in 2021. He has since renewed his investment, saying he was proud that the broadcaster is providing a space for “genuinely independent thinking, insightful discussion, and impartial analysis” but not “groupthink”.

Politically, he is known for donating to the Vote Leave campaign ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum. The Telegraph also declared for Leave and, according to Press Gazette’s ‘Brexitometer’, was the third most biased national newspaper towards Brexit behind the Daily Express and Daily Mail.

Sir Paul is also a financial backer of Unherd, the news site set up by former Times columnist Tim Montgomerie in 2017 that says its aims are “to push back against the herd mentality with new and bold thinking, and to provide a platform for otherwise unheard ideas, people and places”.

Unherd says it is not aligned to any political party and its media pack shows a split among its audience of 34% right of centre, 29% centrist, and 21% left of centre.

David Montgomery’s National World

In March, National World chairman David Montgomery claimed the Yorkshire Post and Scotsman publisher, which has made a series of smaller specialist acquisitions in the past two years, was still the “best qualified” candidate to buy The Telegraph.

Former Local World/Trinity Mirror boss Montgomery re-entered the market at the start of 2021 when he bought the former JPI Media newspaper titles through new company National World Plc.

The company first confirmed its interest last August, telling investors: “National World notes media speculation that it is a possible participant in the sale process surrounding Telegraph Media Group and its associated titles.

“As the Company has previously announced, its growth strategy is rooted in actively exploring opportunities to build its business through acquisitions and implementing its new operating model for owned assets.

“The Board continues to evaluate accretive opportunities to grow the business and will consider participating in a sale process for Telegraph Media Group as and when such a process formally commences. There can be no certainty that an acquisition will take place nor as to the terms of such an acquisition.”

Sky News subsequently reported that Montgomery is “close to appointing Cavendish Capital Markets and Peel Hunt to help raise the financing” to buy both Telegraph titles. The firms would work alongside “Rothschild, which is providing corporate finance advice to Mr Montgomery, and Dowgate Securities, its existing broker”.

Then in March Montgomery said: “In the second half of 2023 National World competed in the aborted auction for The Telegraph. The conclusion of its ownership change is still in doubt but the opportunity was in line with both the founding principles of National World – that it would be a consolidator in the sector – and its ability to leverage both its infrastructure to extract significant synergies and its proven management expertise.

“Our view remains that National World remains the best qualified among the various candidates for such a deal both in terms of industry qualification and also editorial independence, as well as the absence of any competition issues.”

Nadhim Zahawi

The former Conservative MP is reported by Sky News to be approaching billionaire backers including the Reuben brothers with a view to assembling a £600m bid for the Telegraph titles and The Spectator.

Sky News reported on 12 August that the bid is now “fully financed” but no further details have emerged.

Sky also revealed that the idea of former prime minister and Telegraph columnist and Brussels correspondent Boris Johnson as editor-in-chief was “floating around” in preparation for the eventuality that Zahawi’s bid is successful. Preliminary and informal talks are said to have been held. Zahawi was chancellor under Johnson.

News Corp

Multiple reports last year claimed Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy The Spectator, potentially to expand it further in the US where it first launched a dedicated offering in 2018 and where it could align with right-leaning News Corp brands like Fox News and the New York Post.

Murdoch stepped down as chairman of News Corporation in November.

But The Guardian spoke to a source with knowledge of the initial sale discussions who said: “People still think Murdoch is the frontrunner and can outbid everyone else. He’s got so much cash, it’s a trophy prize he’s always wanted. You can see it like the end of his career.”

Ultimately that did not happen with Marshall winning out.

Conrad Black

Conrad Black, who initially sold The Telegraph to the Barclays in 2004 for £665m, has reportedly been “approached about a potential bid”, according to Jane Martinson in The Guardian on 11 July.

Who was interested in buying The Telegraph but has pulled out or had their bids rejected?

Lord Saatchi and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild

Sky News first reported on 6 July that former Conservative co-chairman Lord Saatchi, responsible for some of the party’s major advertising campaigns, was considering a bid alongside Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former director of The Economist Group.

“City sources said they had approached a number of potential financial backers in recent weeks, although neither could be reached for comment, and people close to the process cautioned that it was far from certain that they would ultimately participate in an offer,” Mark Kleinman reported for Sky News.

However a month later Kleinman revealed Lord Saatchi and Lady de Rothschild’s bid had been rejected.

Mediahuis

European media group Mediahuis, which owns titles including Belgium’s De Standaard, Dutch daily De Telegraaf, and the Irish Independent, reportedly made a bid to buy The Telegraph.

However it was not high enough to progress to the second round, according to the Financial Times.

CVC

Investment firm CVC Capital Partners was considering a bid for The Telegraph, the news outlet reported on 17 July.

If any bid was ultimately successful, The Telegraph would have become the first UK national newspaper to be owned by a private equity firm.

However the FT later reported CVC was “unlikely to make a bid or participate in financing a future deal” while The Times confirmed at the end of July the firm had “walked away from the bidding process”.

Last time The Telegraph was up for sale in 2004 CVC teamed up with DMGT but they pulled out when the price went higher than they were willing to pay.

This time CVC was said to have been interested alone. DMGT has separately said it is no longer interested in taking part.

CVC has investments in a range of industries, notably in the UK in Six Nations and Premiership Rugby, but in terms of media it has Authentic Brands Group, which owns the intellectual property for Sports Illustrated.

Lord Rothermere’s DMGT

The Times reported on 10 July that Lord Rothermere’s DMGT, which owns the Mail, Metro, i and New Scientist titles, had told bankers overseeing the sale that it had decided to pull out of the race.

DMGT feared a “protracted regulatory process” amid potential competition concerns if it won the auction and said this could affect its ability to grow its own existing business.

It also warned that a ban on foreign governments investing in UK newspaper titles passed by the last government had curbed its ability to raise capital. The law was rushed through in the wash-up process before the general election and turned out to be more restrictive than had been expected, banning foreign sovereign wealth funds and state pension funds from having any stake at all in a UK newspaper business.

A spokesman for Daily Mail and General Trust told The Times: “DMGT believes the new statutory regime governing the ownership of UK newspapers is overly restrictive, and could curtail our ability to raise capital for our news publishing and other media businesses — both now and in the future.

“With a new government in place, we would face a heightened risk of a protracted regulatory process if we were to win the auction. This would cast further uncertainty over the Telegraph and could disrupt our plan to grow DMGT’s diverse stable of news titles.”

DMGT first confirmed in August 2023 it was considering a bid for the Telegraph alongside investors – but later decided to go it alone.

It said the two potential benefits of a takeover were learning from The Telegraph’s subscriptions business and the potential of growing it in the US.

A spokesperson said last year: “The Rothermere family has a unique record as a custodian of newspapers, and since Lord Rothermere took DMGT private, its focus as a consumer news business puts it in an ideal position to provide the resources, management expertise and long-term decisions the Telegraph needs for its journalism to thrive.

“The Telegraph’s success in building a subscription model will help us reinforce the strength of our existing business.”

They added: “We do believe there is a strong potential to scale the Telegraph abroad, particularly in the US, just as we have very successfully done with the Mail.”

Rothermere took DMGT private at the end of 2021, with him and his family paying close to £1.6bn for the part of the company they did not already own.

DMGT initially held talks with Middle Eastern investors, though emphasising it would only do a deal if it kept economic and editorial control. But it later decided to pursue the bid alone.

In a rare interview with The Times, Rothermere explained why: “We went down the road of talking to people both in the Middle East and in the US. In the end I just thought to myself, ‘You know, it’s just too difficult.’

“If you’re in bed with a financial investor, their normal term time frame is three to five years, they want to know how they’re going to make more money over that period. I think a lot of the fruits are going to be born over a much longer period of time.”

Rothermere described The Telegraph as “a great brand, it also attracts great journalists. And after all, that’s what a news organisation is”, adding: “The Telegraph is one of the great newspapers of the world. It is impossible for me just to walk by.”

And he said existing parts of DMGT could learn from its subscriptions business: “I think we can carry on being mostly advertising, but we can also build a premium subscription product as well.”

The size of DMGT’s existing empire would likely have meant a challenge from the Competition and Markets Authority if it attempted to buy the Telegraph titles.

Press Gazette analysis last year showed that if DMGT bought The Daily Telegraph, it would control more than 50% of the daily national newspaper market in the UK.

A takeover of the Sunday Telegraph would take it to about 32% of the Sunday market - less than the 40% controlled by News UK incorporating The Sun on Sunday and The Sunday Times.

Rothermere told The Times: “I have faith that the CMA is going to look at this in a proper way and I don’t really want to front-run their answers or make them feel in any way that I’m trying to influence their judgment." But he emphasised the independence given to his editors at the Mail, i and Metro titles, saying: "Do I want to get involved? No I don’t. I genuinely don’t. It is not my remit." i editor Oly Duff told Press Gazette last month Rothermere was "known for letting editors edit".

Rothermere previously expressed an interest in buying The Telegraph in 2004 and said of that time: "It was a complex transaction. In the end the Barclays bought it and paid a higher price than I was willing to pay anyway."

Axel Springer

German publisher Axel Springer pulled out of the running in the initial auction, according to the FT on 17 November, after deciding it was not willing to pay the likely £600m price tag.

Axel Springer had registered its interest to buy The Telegraph titles with Goldman Sachs.

The publisher previously attempted to buy The Telegraph in the 2004 race that was ultimately won by the Barclays.

Axel Springer was founded by the publisher of the same name in 1946 with ambitions to create the biggest newspaper publisher in Europe. Its biggest German titles include Bild and Die Welt but it is now active in 40 countries and major acquisitions have included Insider in 2015 and Politico in 2021. It also created curated news app Upday as part of a strategic partnership with Samsung, on whose phones the app appears.

Ex-Telegraph editor William Lewis

Ex-Telegraph editor Sir William Lewis told Bloomberg in September he had lined up funding to take over his former employer.

He said in an interview: “I love the Telegraph. It’s a fantastic journalistic organisation. I would be really interested in trying to find a way to buy it. We have the support to do it," although he added that the title "needs a digital product and services refresh".

However in November he was appointed chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, seemingly thwarting those plans.

Lewis did not share who had been involved or how much funding they had offered, saying only he had received "significant expressions of interest from a wide range of potential backers".

He added that he would not unilaterally reject Middle Eastern support, but that there are currently no Saudi Arabian business partners involved.

Lewis edited The Daily Telegraph between 2006 and 2009 and led a major period of its digital transformation.

He was until last year chief executive and co-founder of The News Movement, a social-led start-up focusing on reaching Gen Z audiences, alongside former BBC editorial director Kamal Ahmed who is editor-in-chief.

Why is The Telegraph being sold?

In June last year Lloyds Banking Group effectively repossessed Telegraph Media Group and The Spectator over the Barclays' outstanding debts. The value of The Telegraph was put at around £600m.

The formal sale process then began on Friday 20 October. It ended abruptly after Redbird IMI made its deal with the Barclays although the transaction was put on hold by competition inquiries ordered by then-Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer. It was then ultimately stymied altogether and Redbird IMI withdrew rather than continuing to fight.

The latest financial results for Telegraph Media Group have since been published: although it is profitable, with a 35% rise in operating profit in 2023, it saw a record £244.6m loss due to mystery loans apparently extracted by the Barclay family. Turnover was up 5% to £268m.

The latest results for The Spectator, for 2022, showed revenues up 2% to £20.8m with operating profit down 10% to £2.6m, attributed to investment in the US, Australia and sister fine art magazine Apollo.

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Police in Gibraltar have announced they are investigating the sudden death of Telegraph journalist David Knowles while he was on holiday on Sunday.

Knowles, who was 32, died of a “health emergency” which was a suspected cardiac arrest according to The Telegraph.

Royal Gibraltar Police said on Thursday it is “investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death” of Knowles although it added that “there are no specific concerns at this time with regard to the death”.

UK counter terrorism police are providing support with the investigation.

Update: Royal Gibraltar Police said on Friday a post-mortem exam has been carried out and there “continue to be no specific concerns surrounding the cause of death” although the “results will take some time to be processed”.

It added that detectives supported by counter terrorism colleagues “continue to progress their investigation”.

Knowles was well-known for launching and presenting The Telegraph’s Ukraine: The Latest daily podcast at the start of the Russian ground invasion in February 2022.

He was previously deputy and head of social media as well as head of audio development at the title, and previously worked on the social media teams at Mail Online and the World Economic Forum.

The Telegraph set up an online book of condolences for Knowles which has received contributions totalling more than 90,000 words.

Ukraine: The Latest was shortlisted for the Innovation of the Year award at the British Journalism Awards 2022 and this year was named the Best News Podcast at the Publisher Podcast Awards.

In its obituary, The Telegraph said Knowles was “known and cherished by a huge number of listeners all over the world for his dedicated work presenting the Telegraph’s award-winning Ukraine podcast; a naturally gifted broadcaster, he was a reassuringly authoritative presence who never pushed his own personality into the foreground, even though he felt deeply about the fate of the Ukrainian people”.

Telegraph editor Chris Evans said: “David was exuberant and innovative. He was passionate about the cause of the Ukrainian people and their attempts to repel the Russian aggressor. Without his enthusiasm, the Ukraine podcast would not have been half as successful. He was also a gentle, sensitive man who inspired deep affection among his colleagues.”

Knowles was last year added to a list of people banned from entering Russia, alongside many other UK journalists.

The full Royal Gibraltar Police statement about the death of David Knowles said: “The Royal Gibraltar Police is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of 32 year British National David Knowles on Sunday 8th September, whilst holidaying in Gibraltar.

“His Majesty’s Coroner in Gibraltar has been informed and a Coroner’s investigation is underway. Next of kin for the deceased have been informed and a specialist RGP family liaison officer has been appointed. Arrangements have been made for a post-mortem examination to be conducted today.

“A policing ‘mutual aid’ request for specialist support was submitted to UK policing, although there are no specific concerns at this time with regard to the death.

“Following the RGP’s mutual aid request, detectives from UK Counter Terrorism Policing have been appointed to provide support to the RGP investigation, due to their existing capability and their experience of dealing with international enquiries.

“The RGP will not be making further comment at this time regarding any aspect of the investigation.”

The full follow-up statement reads: “The Royal Gibraltar Police can confirm that the post-mortem examination of the late David Knowles was completed yesterday afternoon at St Bernard’s Hospital, and there continue to be no specific concerns surrounding the cause of death, albeit that the post-mortem examination results will take some time to be processed.

“RGP detectives supported by Counter Terrorism Policing colleagues continue to progress their investigation, and any further updates will be provided at the appropriate time.”

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The Daily Telegraph had the most breaches of the Editors’ Code upheld by IPSO in 2023, its annual statement to the regulator shows.

The broadsheet was ruled to have breached the code five times during the year, ahead of liverpoolecho.co.uk and the Jewish Chronicle, which reported four breaches each.

IPSO’s own annual report for 2023, which dates breaches based on when complaints are entered into its system rather than when they conclude, also puts The Telegraph top for breaches, tying with Mail Online on three complaints fully upheld and one partially upheld.

The Telegraph and Mail were followed in IPSO’s count by Reach flagship websites mirror.co.uk and express.co.uk, which each saw two complaints partially upheld.

The Times, Sunday Times, Herald on Sunday and metro.co.uk all had one complaint fully upheld in IPSO’s 2023 annual report. Telegraph.co.uk, thejc.com, birminghammail.co.uk and walesonline.co.uk all similarly had one complaint partially upheld.

IPSO regulates most of the UK’s largest non-broadcast news brands. Some prominent publishers have opted to self-regulate, however, including Guardian News and Media, the Financial Times, the Evening Standard and The Independent.

In their annual statements to IPSO publishers collectively reported 69 breaches of the Editors’ Code that were ruled on in 2023.

Mail Online had three rulings against it, and 11 titles, including The Sun, The Times, the Daily Mirror, express.co.uk and manchestereveningnews.co.uk had two each. A further 31 titles, including My London, dailystar.co.uk, The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday recorded one breach apiece.

The most complained-about title in 2023 was the print Daily Mail, which was the subject of 1,138 complaints to the regulator covering 171 articles. The DMGT-owned brand was followed by telegraph.co.uk (808 complaints about 91 articles), Mail Online (731 complaints about 503 articles), The Sun (573 about 66) and The Times (512 about 117).

As usual, however, the vast majority of the 8,045 complaints received by IPSO in the year were either rejected because they were outside its remit or resolved before the regulator had to make a ruling. Some 364 of these were investigated, representing 4.5% of the total: 120 were resolved directly between the complainant and the title, 116 were not upheld and 52 were upheld. The 20 most-complained about titles accounted for 5,716 of the complaints made in the year, or 71% of the total.

The number of complaints in 2023 was significantly down from 2022, when IPSO fielded a total of 38,658 complaints. Around 25,000 of these were accounted for by a column by Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun in which he described his “hate” for Meghan Markle.

That column, which was published in December 2022 and so covered by last year’s annual report, produced likely the most notable IPSO ruling of 2023 when the regulator determined the article breached Clause 12 of the Editors’ Code, covering discrimination. The decision was welcomed by the NUJ and Women in Journalism but drew criticism from Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, who suggested he might take the magazine out of IPSO as a result.

Notable IPSO rulings in 2023 included:

• Actor Martin Clunes won a complaint against Mail Online after a reporter was judged to have likely made an accident when taking down a quote
• The Telegraph was found in breach for a column in which former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith claimed without evidence that children homeschooled during Covid lockdowns were not “receiving a good education”
• Former health secretary Matt Hancock lost several complaints, and won one, made against the Mirror over its reporting and commentary on his role in the Covid pandemic
• The Scottish Sun was found to have harassed former MSP Natalie McGarry when its journalists followed her onto a motorway after she was released from prison
• The Times was ruled to have made "significant accuracies... which had the potential to affect readers' financial decisions" after an investor complained that the paper had been publishing inaccurate dividend yield figures for "a number of years".
• And the Mail on Sunday agreed to clarify a “misleading” claim about the ethnicity of “grooming gangs” made by former home secretary Suella Braverman, although IPSO did not find the title had breached the Editors’ Code with the story.

IPSO is a voluntary system of press regulation covering most national and regional newspapers and magazines. Exceptions include: The Guardian and Observer, Evening Standard and Financial Times - all of which have opted out of press regulation.

The post Daily Telegraph tops the table for most Editors’ Code breaches in 2023 appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Fastest-growing news publishers on Tiktok since start of 2023 revealed appeared first on Press Gazette.

Top political podcasts saw downloads rise 50% or more during the 2024 UK general election, according to their publishers, leading one to dub it “the first podcast election”.

Press Gazette has heard from podcast company Acast, hosting platform Spotify and publishers including the BBC, Telegraph, Politico and Sky, who all report significant listenership growth over the election.

Although podcast publishers are secretive about numbers Press Gazette estimates market leader The Rest Is Politics is likely to have achieved more than ten million downloads in June. No-one from publisher Goalhanger responded to requests for comment.

Update: On 6 August Goalhanger put out a press release stating The Rest is Politics and sister interview podcast Leading together saw combined total downloads and full episode Youtube views of more than 21.6 million in the election campaign period between 22 May and 5 July. This meant they were getting more than 700,000 audio downloads an episode.

Co-host Alastair Campbell said: “It fills me with hope that so many people tuned into our show across the general election. Rory [Stewart] and I aim to fly the flag for balanced debate and real clarity amidst the constant noise of 24-hour rolling news, and we’re delighted to see our audience respond in such positive ways.”

‘Truly the first podcast election’

Podcast production and hosting company Acast told Press Gazette that, “from the announcement through the week of the election, our political podcasts saw an average growth of 53%”.

Sam Shetabi, Acast’s UK content director, added that “podcasting in general has a bit of a summer lull between June and August… whereas all of our news podcasts have completely bucked that trend”.

He said that Political Currency, the Persephonica and Acast podcast featuring former politicians George Osborne and Ed Balls, had been “a superstar” within the group, seeing episode downloads rise 81% between the week the election was called and the week it ended.

Besides Political Currency, he said, the FT’s Political Fix grew by 39%, The Guardian’s Today in Focus grew 47% and The Times’ How To Win An Election grew 43%.

He added the growth had been “greater than that of a lot of our football shows”, despite the surge in listening for those podcasts amid the Euros.

A spokesperson for Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, painted a similar picture, telling Press Gazette: “Total hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK have increased by 49% over the last 12 months.

“Listeners in the UK to news and politics podcasts have increased 6% over the last 12 months, so there’s been a slight increase in the number of people listening, but a big increase in how long they’re listening for.

“The Rest is Politics is the top political podcast in June 2024, and in 2024 overall [the BBC’s] Newscast has seen the most growth over the last year, increasing its listenership by 64%.”

The BBC, which has increasingly been trying to direct its podcast audiences toward its own platform BBC Sounds, said Sounds saw a record number of listeners on the morning following the election.

A spokesperson said: “Eight out of ten UK adults came to the BBC across all platforms as audiences tuned in to BBC election coverage in their millions.

“The week of the general election was the biggest week for BBC News on BBC Sounds in at least the last 18 months, with results day (5 July) the second biggest day on BBC Sounds overall. We also saw significant audience interest in our election podcasts.”

Other publishers also furnished Press Gazette directly with figures about their increases.

Global said that The News Agents, hosted by former BBC presenters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, is nearing 100 million all-time downloads and that “listens are up 45% since the general election was called”. The podcast hit 10 million downloads in December 2022, three months after launch.

The Telegraph’s The Daily T, which launched only shortly before the election was called and hosted the first election trail interview with Rishi Sunak, told Press Gazette its election night and results day episodes “performed on average 45% above a typical episode’s performance”.

“The Rishi Sunak interview was listened to 84% more times than the average episode,” a spokesperson for the publisher added, and “podcast listens the week of the election were 2.7 times higher than the week prior to the election announcement.”

[Read more: Why Telegraph’s Tominey and Ahmed think there is room for another daily podcast]

Politics at Jack and Sam’s, a co-production between Politico and Sky News presented by the former’s UK editor Jack Blanchard and the latter’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, has hit two million downloads since it launched in October.

It had its most successful week following the election, “with more than double the listeners on Monday 8 July than the week before”.

Another Sky podcast, Electoral Dysfunction — fronted by political editor Beth Rigby and politicians Ruth Davidson and Jess Phillips — has also hit two million downloads, having launched in March.

Sky said Electoral Dysfunction was “growing week on week and achieving above our targets” and that its election debrief episode the day after the vote “was the most successful episode to date, with a 40% increase in audience”.

Both the podcasts saw record downloads in June, the publishers said — in part because they increased their frequency, with Electoral Dysfunction going up to twice a week and Politics at Jack and Sam’s going out every weekday.

Dave Terris, the head of audio at Sky News, said it had been “truly the first podcast election”.

“During an average day on the campaign trail, our political editor Beth Rigby and deputy political editor Sam Coates would write an analysis for online, do a TV package for the News at Ten and then discuss the big political news of the moment on Electoral Dysfunction, Politics at Jack and Sam’s and the Sky News Daily…

“Both Electoral Dysfunction and Politics at Jack and Sam’s have reached two million downloads. Considering that nine months ago neither of these propositions existed, we’re extremely pleased to see how they’ve been received.”

Will the influx of new listeners stick around now the election is over?

That listeners would take an interest in politics during an election does not necessarily mean that they will stick around once it’s over. But Acast’s Shetabi said: “We would expect there to be a nice long tail that you retain…

“They will favour one of those shows that they particularly enjoyed listening to over this election period, and I expect there to be growth in all of those shows that continues for the rest of the year.”

Asked how advertisers had taken to the growth of political podcasting given the well-publicised reticence of brands to advertise against some hard news, Shetabi said: “I think there was some nervousness around the election period itself… lots of brands chose to try to [advertise against] other content, and also because we had the Euros there were lots of other opportunities for lots of other ears to reach.”

But he added: “What we have seen with advertisers is if they’ve changed their plans, they’ve moved campaigns to later in the summer, rather than cancel them.

“There’s not really a sensitivity around news and politics per se. It’s more around the current context [of an election].”

Meanwhile, Politico’s executive director of advertising and partnerships for Europe, Rolant Glyn, told Press Gazette: “We’ve had sustained interest from new advertisers to engage with our podcasting output and, in particular, Politics at Jack and Sam’s since its launch.

“The increased number of listeners and subscribers shows an appetite to hear from Jack and Sam’s unique perspective on British politics which we’re expecting to contribute to revenue growth in the second half of the year.”

Podcasters are secretive about exact listener numbers

Unlike radio, television or (to a decreasing extent) print circulations, there is no auditor for podcast audience sizes.

Although multiple publishers were generous enough to provide Press Gazette with data on how their listenership had increased over the election, none were willing to hand over average episode download or monthly listener numbers.

However, Press Gazette did gain access to a copy of the media kit for Goalhanger, the Gary Lineker-founded publisher of the most popular politics podcast, The Rest is Politics.

The media kit appears to date from before the launch of the also highly popular The Rest is Politics USA (which debuted this year) and The Rest is Entertainment (which debuted in November 2023). It claims The Rest is Politics receives eight million downloads monthly, making it the second most popular podcast in Goalhanger’s stable after The Rest is History, which receives ten million downloads monthly.

The Rest is Football, Goalhanger’s third most popular podcast, was on three million downloads a month at the time the kit was issued and The Rest is Money, hosted by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, was on 500,000.

The publisher said listeners average 40 minutes per episode, that two-thirds of its audience are aged 28 to 59 and 70% of its audience is male.

Which UK political podcasts were popular on Youtube during the UK general election

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do display in-app leaderboards showing which podcasts are most popular, both overall and by topic. Press Gazette has captured the top ten from both leaderboards on Wednesday 17 July below.

Although neither Apple nor Spotify display audience numbers, one other popular podcast medium, Youtube, does.

BBC research, previously reported by Press Gazette, has suggested that approximately one-third of podcast consumers prefer to watch their podcasts than listen to them — something reflected in the popularity of so-called “vodcasts” like The Joe Rogan Experience.

The profile and tastes of these video podcast listeners likely differ in some regards from audio-only podcast consumers, and not all podcasts are published to Youtube. However, because the data is public, it is possible to see how those podcasts that do publish to the video platform fare in relation to one another.

If you have any other podcast listener data to share, let us know at bron.maher@pressgazette.co.uk.

The data shows that on Youtube, too, The Rest is Politics was the most popular UK politics podcast of the election, garnering more than 4.2 million views on podcasts uploaded between the date the election was called and Wednesday 17 June. (Press Gazette has refreshed the above chart twice after publishers requested inclusion. First, the day after publication, to add four additional podcasts: Channel 4's Political Fourcast, Joe Media Group's Politics Joe, Crooked Media's Pod Save the UK and IFS Zooms in from the Institute for Fiscal Studies; second, on 22 July, to add TLDR News' podcast and Novara Media's Novara Live.)

Illustrating the extent to which vodcast and podcast audiences can differ, the second most popular political podcast was that of The New Statesman, which received 3.2 million views. On Spotify and Apple Podcasts The New Statesman Podcast ranks 34th and 32nd respectively at time of writing. (Similarly Politics Joe, which is 71st on Apple, and 29th on Spotify, is fourth on Youtube, and Channel 4's Fourcast, which is second place on Youtube, comes in at 159th on Apple and does not rank at all on Spotify's 50-strong leaderboard.)

The New Statesman (a sister title of Press Gazette) told us after the publication of this story that across all its Youtube content, regardless of publication date, it received 5,212,722 views between 23 May and 18 July. Although we excluded shortform Youtube Shorts from this analysis, the NS channel's Shorts published since 23 May have received 1,484,157 views.

The News Agents was third-ranked among the Youtube podcasts, nearing two million views.

It is also possible to plot how podcast releases performed.

Most podcast publishers on Youtube use the medium to host both their audio products and their general video content. But for the handful of publishers on the above list that mainly use their Youtube channels to host their podcast, it is possible to see use the platform's publicly-available channel subscriber figures to see how subscriptions to certain podcasts on Youtube grew over the election.

Acast's Shetabi told Press Gazette the growth across podcasts during the election showed the market still has plenty of space for new entrants

“The audience size is only growing," he said.

"The election period proved that — all of these shows grew to some extent because people were discovering new shows and new perspective, new angles... You're not going to say that two of these shows in the top 20 news and politics podcasts are the same."

Additional reporting by Amy Seal and Juliana Pamiloza.

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