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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 2024

Associated Press – 8% of total staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dotdash Meredith – 53 people

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

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

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

G/O Media – Two people

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

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

National World – Nine people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City AM – ‘Small number’ of people

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

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

Read the full story here.

October 2024

Fandom – Unspecified number

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

GovExec – 16 people

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

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

Oahu Publications – 13 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

Variety – Three people

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

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

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

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

BBC – 210 people

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

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

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

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

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

NBC News – A ‘handful’ of people

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

ABC News – 75 people

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

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

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

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

September 2024

Scripps – More than 200 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gamurs Group – 30 people

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

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

Lee Enterprises – Around 20 people

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

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

Future – Unknown number

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

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

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

Daily Mail US – Up to 20 people

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

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

The Sun US – Unknown number

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

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

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

BBC – 115 people

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

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

Read the full Press Gazette story here.

August 2024

Gannett – 74 people

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

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

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

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

Time – 22 people

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

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

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

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

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

The Hollywood Reporter – At least four people

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

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

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

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

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

New York Public Radio – Around 30 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Axios – About 50 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National World – Five people

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

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

Read our full story here.

July 2024

Newsquest – Two people

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

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

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

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

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

Portland Tribune – Unknown number

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

BDG – Nine staff

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

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

More layoffs are expected to follow in the commercial teams.

LAist – 21 staff

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

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

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

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

CNN – Around 100 jobs

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

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

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

Carpenter Media Group – 62 people

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

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

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

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

June 2024

The Daily Beast – At least 25 people

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

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

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

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

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

Evening Standard – 150 jobs

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

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

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

The Hollywood Reporter – ‘Small number’

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

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

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

Informa Tech – Unknown number

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

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

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

EO Media Group – 28 people

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

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

May 2024

Wall Street Journal – At least 8 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2024

Reader’s Digest – Unknown number

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

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

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

GB News – More than 40 people

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

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

Wall Street Journal – At least 11 people

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

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

Open Democracy – Around 10 people

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

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

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

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

Mail Sport – Up to 15

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

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

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

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

The Times – At least one person

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

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

March 2024

i-D Magazine – 8 people

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

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

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

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

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

Deadspin – Around 11 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center for Public Integrity – Around 11 people

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

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

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

TalkTV – Unknown number

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

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

February 2024

Cord Cutters News – Three people

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

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

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

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

WAMU – 15 people

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

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

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

Vice – ‘Several hundred’ people

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

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

Engadget – Ten people

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now This – At least 26 people

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

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

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

The Intercept – 15 people

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

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

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

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

CBS News – Around 20 people

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

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

Bustle Digital Group – 16 people

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

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

Wall Street Journal – Around 20 people

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

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

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

Journalism job cuts in January 2024

The Messenger – About 300 people

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

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

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

Tech Crunch – About eight people

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

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

Altfi – Up to 15 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time magazine – Around 30 people

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

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

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

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

Pink News – Nine staff at risk

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

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

Los Angeles Times – 115 people

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

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

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

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

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

Mediahuis Ireland – Around 50 people

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

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

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

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

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

Sports Illustrated – Most, if not all, staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

Design Week – Three people

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

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

Pitchfork – At least 12 people

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

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

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

Univision – Around 200 people

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

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

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

NBC News – 50 to 100 people

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

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

The Messenger – Around 24 people

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

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

Major journalism launches/new job roles in 2024

The Lever – Nine people – April

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

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

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

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

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

The Digital Frontier – 20 people – February

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

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

Top news sites collectively received 7.5% fewer visits on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the 2024 US election than they did on those days in 2020, data from Similarweb shows.

The Associated Press, Substack and Axios were among the sites with the most growth between the two elections, while Politico, Fox News, The Guardian and The New York Times all lost substantial proportions of their traffic – according to Similarweb.

After aggregator Yahoo.com (130.6 million visits on Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 November) CNN was the most-visited news site in the US, drawing 109.1 million clicks. That figure is down 19.4% on the same days in the 2020 election.

The New York Times (62.4 million) was the second most-visited publisher, but its traffic too dropped 36.3%. Fox News, the third most popular publisher on the list, saw traffic drop 46.8% when compared with the 2020 election, the fifth-largest fall among the top 50 most-visited sites.

Among the ten most-visited news sites over election night, Fox was the biggest faller, followed by The New York Times and CNN. The AP (47.6 million visits, up 247.1%) was the biggest gainer, followed by NBC News (44.3 million, up 120.2%) and USA Today (27.7 million, up 70.1%). The rest of the top ten saw single-digit percentage point changes.

The significant declines at the most-visited sites may reflect broader news avoidance trends or the relative speed with which the result of the 2024 election became clear. The 2020 election, in comparison, took days to be called.

Among the broader top 50 election night news sites the fastest grower was Axios, which saw visits grow 291.7% from 1.8 million in 2020 to 7.2 million last week.

Faster growing still was publishing platform Substack (5.1 million, up 423.1%), which hosts publications by numerous journalists and was less than three years old at the time of the last election.

Web culture site The Daily Dot (2.2m, up 287.5%), Al Jazeera (3.3 million, up 204.2%) and People magazine (11.5 million, up 115.5%) also substantially outperformed their 2020 traffic totals.

The biggest fall, on the other hand, was at Politico (8.8 million visits in 2024, down 63.7% from its 2020 total of 24.3 million), followed by Yahoo News (5.4 million, down 54.8%) and Business Insider (4.2 million, down 48.8%). The Guardian (10.6 million, down 45.2%) Google News (11.3 million, down 40.2%) and Breitbart (3.9 million, down 48.5%) were all also significantly hit.

NBC News, Associated Press and climate site The Cooldown saw largest election week traffic surges

Similarweb data also shows that, among the 100 top news sites in the US, NBC News saw the largest week-on-week increase in its web traffic over the week of the election, with visits nearly tripling compared with the week before.

Climate website The Cooldown saw a comparable increase of 209.4% and the AP received 207% more traffic than the previous week.

A handful of sites saw fewer visits the week of the election than the week before, among them Cosmopolitan (down 15.1%), Variety (down 13.2%) and Vogue (down 8%).

The post Top publishers saw less traffic on day of 2024 US election versus 2020 appeared first on Press Gazette.

Business Insider has named Jamie Heller as its next editor-in-chief following Nicholas Carlson’s shift in focus towards longer projects.

Heller has worked at the Wall Street Journal for more than 20 years and currently leads its global business and tech coverage as business editor.

Heller said: “Every day I’ve worked at The Wall Street Journal has been an honour. I am in awe of the journalism it does, and am forever grateful to all of my colleagues over the years and around the world.

“I have also long been a fan of Business Insider. I subscribed several years ago because I had to – it is that good. Now, I am beyond excited to lead this tremendous publication to new heights.”

Business Insider chief executive Barbara Peng said: “Jamie is a well-respected leader known for her hustle and outstanding news judgment.

“Jamie is also a long-time fan (and subscriber!) of Business Insider and loves everything that makes us unique. With our strategy in place, we have experienced remarkable transformation and growth already. Jamie’s mission is to keep us on course to make our forward-looking strategy a reality.”

Business Insider’s current strategy has seen it return to its original name after two years. Carlson, who has now become editor at large with a remit focusing on longer projects, said in November that the change was “about recommitting to what we do best: our powerful, insightful, and unique coverage of business, tech, and innovation” with “a name that reminds us all that Business Insider isn’t some generic news website built for everybody”.

However the changes resulted in an 8% cut to headcount in January with the merger of the business, news and life divisions. Staff were told the aim was to “best serve our newly-defined audience”.

According to Press Gazette’s ranking of the top 50 English language news websites in the world, Business Insider is ranked 28 attracting 106 million global visits in July 2024 according to Similarweb.

The post Business Insider names WSJ business editor Jamie Heller as next editor-in-chief appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More than four in ten of the top 100 news websites in the English language allow all AI web crawlers to scrape their content, Press Gazette analysis has found.

Among the 106 websites listed in Press Gazette’s top 50 rankings for the UK, US and world in December, more than half have OpenAI’s bot for ChatGPT blocked.

Read on for the full list of which news publishers block which AI bots.

[Read more: Major news publishers block the bots as ChatGPT starts taking live news]

What is a web crawler, and why do some news sites block them?

Web crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, are programs which travel across the internet with the goal of saving or indexing it one page at a time. Search engines use web crawlers to identify the websites that make up the internet, and artificial intelligence companies use them to fetch information which they then feed into the large language models that underpin their chatbots.

Most news websites block or permit web crawlers by editing a page on their URL named robots.txt, for example pressgazette.co.uk/robots.txt. A recent article on The Verge delved into the history of this page and its significance to the internet. Robots.txt pages are in effect only advisory: a bot’s creator can, if they choose, instruct it to ignore the robots.txt page.

Web crawlers began receiving extra attention from the news industry last year after publishers realised their content had been used to help train large language models without their consent. Whereas some publishers like The New York Times and the BBC have responded by blocking AI web crawlers, others have left their websites open to the bots or brokered content licensing deals with AI companies.

[Read more: News publishers divided over whether to block ChatGPT]

Which news publishers have blocked which AI bots?

Robots.txt pages are publicly viewable, so Press Gazette was able to manually visit each of the 106 websites appearing on our three top 50 rankings and assess which AI company web crawlers, if any, those sites had blocked. A total of nine web crawlers associated with seven AI businesses were named in the sites’ robots.txt files, which are listed below:

• GPTBot: the web crawler which feeds into ChatGPT, the OpenAI chatbot which kicked off the generative AI craze
• Google-Extended: the crawler which feeds into Google’s AI chatbot Gemini (formerly named Bard)
• Claude-Web, Claudebot and anthropic-ai: three crawlers which feed into Claude, the chatbot built by OpenAI rival Anthropic
• Cohere-ai: the crawler for Cohere, an AI company which targets its chatbot at the business community
• Perplexity-ai: the crawler for Perplexity, another ChatGPT competitor
• Seekr: the crawler for Seekr, a company which builds large language models for a variety of purposes
• Meltwater: the crawler for Meltwater, a media monitoring company incorporating some AI tools.

Of the 106 sites, 45 (42.5%) have no AI company bots blocked at all, versus 61 with at least one bot barred. There were 32 sites with two or more blocked, 16 with three or more, 11 at four or more and five with five crawlers blocked.

The only site on Press Gazette’s list with a blanket ban on almost all web crawlers regardless of their origin or purpose was news.google.com, the website of aggregator Google News. The only crawler allowed to scan the site is Googlebot, which indexes pages for Google search.

The site with the most named web crawlers blocked was another aggregator, MSN, which had six bots barred. The UK and US editions of the BBC website both had five crawlers blocked, and as did News UK-owned the-sun.com, thesun.co.uk and thetimes.co.uk. Two more News Corp titles, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, were not far behind with four crawlers blocked apiece.

ChatGPT’s GPTBot was by far the most commonly blocked web crawler, being disallowed by 60 websites (56.6% of the total). That finding coheres with recent research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which found that at the end of 2023 48% of the most widely used news sites in ten countries were blocking the crawler.

The only website Press Gazette found that blocked some web crawlers but not GPTBot was Reuters, which blocked only the Google and Anthropic bots.

Approximately a quarter of the websites had Google-Extended blocked. Including Google News, only 17 websites (16%) had an AI crawler besides GPTBot or Google-Extended blocked.

Claudebot was blocked only by The New York Times and Seekr only by The Guardian. The next most niche exclusions were Perplexitybot, which is blocked by msn.com, CNBC and The Hill, and Meltwater, which is blocked by The Times and the UK and US editions of The Sun.

And which publishers aren’t blocking the bots at all?

While a modest majority of publishers have blocked some AI web crawlers from their sites, there are numerous major publishers who have not prohibited them.

Mirror, Express and Manchester Evening News publisher Reach for example allows all of its websites that Press Gazette checked to be crawled. The same is true of youth-focused websites Ladbible and Unilad and the Lebedev-owned Independent and Evening Standard.

Politico also does not block the bots, its parent company Axel Springer having struck a deal with OpenAI to feed its publications’ content into ChatGPT. Although that deal does not extend to the other AI companies, Politico’s SVP of product and design told Press Gazette last month that a new website redesign hopes to make politico.eu, its European edition, as readable to web crawlers as possible. (Curiously, fellow Axel Springer title Business Insider blocks both GPTBot and Google-Extended.)

A more surprising appearance on this list of titles which don't block any AI bots is the IAC-owned Daily Beast. IAC’s chairman, Barry Diller, has repeatedly publicly called for AI companies to compensate publishers for their content. Three other IAC properties - People, Entertainment Weekly and Investopedia - block GPTBot but no other AI web crawlers.

Several websites on the political right decline to block AI web crawlers, among them GB News, Newsmax, Zero Hedge, Breitbart and, despite other Murdoch-owned titles all blocking the bots, Fox News. The Drudge Report also effectively allows its site to be crawled because it does not appear to have a robots.txt page at all.

[Read more: Politico embraces generative AI web crawlers with website redesigns]

The post Revealed: Which of the top 100 UK and US news websites are blocking AI crawlers appeared first on Press Gazette.

Business Insider has told staff that news will no longer have a separate editorial team as it faces a backlash over the announcement of up to 70 jobs being cut.

The business, news and life divisions are merging following the 8% cut to headcount announced on Thursday.

Employees have hit out at the manner of the cuts however, with more than 80 journalists voicing concerns on an internal Slack channel. They say management has broken a contract it struck with the union last year which said unionised staff should have at least 22 days’ notice before having to clear their desk. UK staff have a consultation period under their statutory employment rights.

A memo distributed following editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson’s address to the newsroom late on Thursday said the unified news, business and life team will be led by former business division head Matt Turner, who has been promoted to Business Insider’s deputy editor-in-chief. The two video teams have also been merged.

“These consolidations and our smaller staff size greatly reduced our need for managers, which is why some editor roles have been eliminated today in the US,” the memo added.

A spokesperson for Business Insider’s NUJ chapel said six editorial roles in the UK are under consultation. They added that all those roles are occupied by women or people of colour.

In a statement issued subsequently, the chapel said it was “concerned about declining mental well-being of journalists, many of whom no longer feel they can trust leadership has their best interests at heart”.

[Read more: Business Insider planning to cut 8% of staff worldwide]

Business Insider’s mass market business model ‘is now broken’

Several staff told Press Gazette that the cuts were a surprise. One person familiar with the company said they believed Business Insider has had to move away from general news coverage for commercial reasons.

They said the company has “this model where the more journalists you hired, the more audience they attracted and the more money the company made. But a big chunk of that model is now broken”.

The model still works “on the business side, because there are clients who still want to advertise next to tech and finance news.

“So you can see the logic of what they’re doing – the whole ‘We’re Business Insider again, we’re gonna concentrate on tech and finance – that’s where the money is.”

[Read more: Marketers urged to ‘back don’t block British journalism’ as Covid-19 hits online advertising]

More than 80 staff fume at management over system shut-outs

Laid off Business Insider employees were informed their laptop and email access would be shut off from 4pm EST/9pm GMT on Thursday. In the half-hour preceding that deadline, more than 80 journalists posted on Slack tagging in members of management and calling on them to observe a 22-day notice period for unionised staff agreed in the June contract with management.

“We specifically negotiated for a notice period before layoffs – not payment-in-lieu of notice,” one employee wrote. “Locking our colleagues out of their work laptops while they’re still employees violates that contractual obligation. Some employees are out sick. Others are on leave. Do not lock any of my colleagues out.”

Another posted that it was “particularly important to give journalists time to close up shop, as the work is sensitive and relationship-based. Do not lock them out of email and deprive them of that important process”.

Most of the posts were made over the course of five minutes, and many were essentially copied and pasted copies of one another. Several charged that it was “unacceptable” to lock the journalists out of the system and called on Business Insider to let them “leave this company with dignity”.

One staffer who was about to be locked out posted saying they had been “in an anxious scramble since learning I was among those laid off this morning. Please at least allow us to continue to access our laptops while we work through this painful transition”.

Another posted asking that they be given extra time to retrieve personal materials from a company drive, including photos and videos of themselves with a now-deceased parent.

In a statement, the Insider Union said it was “appalled” at the cuts, saying it was “disgusted that management has chosen to do this while Axel Springer is reportedly able to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars of dividends to their investors…

“Well-resourced journalism is vital for workers everywhere. As always, we will fight for our members, in service of our collective vision of a better workplace and industry.”

[Read more: News media job cuts 2024 tracked – Year starts with at least 650 redundancies]

The post Business Insider faces internal backlash over lockout for axed staff appeared first on Press Gazette.

Business Insider has informed staff it plans to make 8% of employees globally redundant.

The move comes less than a year after the Axel Springer-owned title cut 10% of its staff in the US.

If Thursday’s cuts are spread equally across teams, it will mean approximately 40 of the company’s 500 journalists are being laid off.

Chief executive Barbara Peng emailed employees at midday UK time (or 7am in New York) informing them that while Business Insider “closed out last year with a plan in place, a clear target audience and a vision”, 2024 would be about “making it happen and focusing our company”.

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

Peng’s note was subsequently published to the Business Insider website. Those impacted were emailed in the 15 minutes following her email.

At the time of last year’s cuts Business Insider, then named only Insider, employed approximately 950 people around the world, of whom 600 worked in editorial roles. The publisher employs 70 journalists in its London newsroom.

In addition to the new round of cuts, some staff will be reassigned to different editorial beats.

Those being laid off in the US appear to be out effective immediately. Peng said in her email that “those leaving today” will receive a minimum of 13 weeks pay and medical coverage through to the end of May.

“We will also offer career support services including 1:1 coaching sessions, resume review and training on networking, interviewing and negotiations.”

Peng hosted a company-wide all-hands call at 4:30pm UK time/11:30am New York time on Thursday, but one staffer who listened in told Press Gazette “the general sentiment among the newsroom is that there was a lack of clarity in the all-hands.

“We’re disappointed in the communication vacuum, to say the least.”

Editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson told the call he will address the newsroom at 9:05pm UK time (4:05pm US time), to “talk more about what’s changing” and “how we’re reorganising the newsroom to best serve our newly-defined audience”.

The cuts last year prompted Busines Insider’s US staff to go on a 13-day strike, which was described at the time as the “longest ever in digital media”. The strike reportedly ultimately saved 22 roles.

The US union was yet to issue a response at time of publication. The UK NUJ chapel, which is yet to strike a recognition agreement with management, plans to put out a statement later in the day.

‘Corporate gaslighting of the highest degree’

The cuts come two months after the business website rebranded back to its old name and Peng took over from longtime chief executive Henry Blodget.

At the time, Carlson said the change was “about recommitting to what we do best: our powerful, insightful, and unique coverage of business, tech, and innovation” with “a name that reminds us all that Business Insider isn’t some generic news website built for everybody”.

Speaking on Thursday, one employee told Press Gazette the cuts represented “corporate gaslighting of the highest degree”.

“Just a day after senior management boasted in a newsroom-wide meeting about going to cocktail parties in Davos, and weeks after Nich Carlson told employees in London that entertainment and life would be a focus of Business Insider’s rebranding, the company decided to surprise the newsroom with a 15-minute warning that 8% of employees would be laid off. A significant proportion of these employees were in the entertainment and life division.

“Disappointingly, hard-working employees who have fulfilled the thankless task of getting high traffic numbers were told with no forewarning that they’re at risk of losing their jobs.

“Even more disappointingly, minimal communication or reassurance came from senior management in the aftermath.”

Last week Business Insider’s UK bureau chief Spriha Srivastava told Press Gazette the title had to think about the stories it prioritises because it has fewer reporters than other major news outlets.

She added: “how could we get better?” was the company motto. “We want to get better every day. So how do we get better? What do we do? What is the biggest story today? How can we follow up that story? And how can we lean more into new areas of coverage?”

The post Business Insider planning to cut 8% of staff worldwide appeared first on Press Gazette.

This year marks a decade since Business Insider opened its London bureau aiming to fill what it somewhat cheekily claimed at the time was a “void in the marketplace” for business leaders in the UK.

Then, Business Insider UK had a team of seven. Now, there is a team of around 70 journalists in the UK, and more than 500 globally.

It is also now one of the country’s biggest business news brands by audience.

UK bureau chief and business executive editor Spriha Srivastava and Shona Ghosh, deputy executive editor of business, told Press Gazette the brand has matured and “thoughtfully evolved” its coverage since 2014.

Ghosh said: “It does feel like we’re in a more mature place from when the London bureau first started in 2014… a few years ago, we couldn’t have talked about ourselves on a par with sometimes the FT or Bloomberg or Sky in the same way and now I think that we can.”

In September, its six-person venture capital and startups team, part of Business Insider’s broader UK business team, received recognition as the best specialist/B2B journalism website in Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards.

The judges said it had “carved out an impressive niche providing readers with deeply-researched news they can use which they can’t find anywhere else. As a result, it has already found a healthy base of subscribers and looks to be on a secure financial footing.”

Tech has been a “core plank” of Business Insider’s coverage since its start as Silicon Alley Insider in 2007 and Ghosh, who has helped to oversee the VC and startups team alongside senior editor Michael Cogley, said that when it launched in the UK there “wasn’t really a lot around interrogating startups and venture capital and tech… in a critical way.

“For a long time tech coverage was actually quite puffy and certainly the [Business Insider] reporters at that time were keen to serve an audience who were interested in tech but also interrogate when things can go wrong.”

Tech always a priority at Business Insider in US and UK

One of Business Insider UK’s first hires in 2014 was a tech editor, and Ghosh said the bureau has “always somewhat focused on startups and venture capital partly because… most of the major technology firms are of course in the US so we thought about what we could really attack from the London bureau”.

Ghosh said the landscape has got busier in the past decade, citing competitors including FT-backed site for the European startup scene Sifted which launched in 2019, The Information in the US, and Tech Crunch, owned by Yahoo.

There is still less focus on the UK and European startup scene compared to the US, however, and Ghosh said none of Business Insider’s competitors on this side of the Atlantic “precisely do what we do” in the VC and startup scene especially.

That includes a combination of “service journalism” – for example publishing redacted pitch decks to demystify the fundraising process – as well as “chasing perhaps juicier stories around bigger companies” although that area is more competitive.

Despite specifically citing Sky News City editor Mark Kleinman as being “often frustratingly just ahead of us on scoops”, Ghosh highlighted several of Business Insider’s recent AI funding scoops about the likes of Eleven Labs, Aleph Alpha, DeepL, Synthesia, and Mistral.

Ghosh said: “A lot of the journalists on the team have been doing this for a long time. They’re very trusted and known in the industry and have very strong sources. So we try and also be first when we can to those stories.”

The team has also done an increasing amount of ambitious reporting, with Ghosh citing a long-read investigation into Austrian education tech platform Go Student, which was highly valued but chaotic behind the scenes. “Readers were super-interested in that kind of in-depth reporting,” Ghosh said. “It’s definitely given us courage to try more of that and do that more frequently.”

Bureau chief Srivastava added that an important part of what Business Insider does more generally is leaning into analysis and “breaking down those big news events in a way that when readers come to us, it’s not just this has happened – it’s more about this has happened and this is what it means”.

“We believe that when a news event happens, we are competing with a lot of people,” Srivastava said, adding that this is where they can differentiate themselves “if you’re able to lean into breaking down that actual news event for the readers and you’re providing them with that extra level of information”.

Business Insider also has a “chattier tone and more conversational plain English tone” compared to some outlets, Ghosh added. “A sense of bringing you inside the room. Not such a sense of formality in the way that we cover the story. I think all of those qualities are unique to us.”

Across the whole of the Business Insider London bureau, coverage areas are wider than the name may suggest, including transportation, tech, retail, markets, general news, politics, lifestyle, digital culture, entertainment and health.

In November, a major rebranding exercise took place (again). Insider was launched as a sister lifestyle brand to Business Insider in 2016 but it ended up taking over as the overall company brand from February 2021.

Now, Insider has once again become Business Insider as the company decided to recommit “to what we do best: our powerful, insightful, and unique coverage of business, tech, and innovation” with “a name that reminds us all that Business Insider isn’t some generic news website built for everybody,” editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson said.

Srivastava described it as a “new beginning” and noted, “we also know that this Business Insider brand is very strong”.

“It reflects who we are and what our audience loves about us – our readers love our approach to these stories, these stories of business and tech innovation…”

Business Insider targets loyal audiences and subscribers

This is proved by awards like the VC and startups win as well as Business Insider’s growing subscriptions base – it has around 330,000 subscriptions across Business Insider and Insider Intelligence with a relatively hard paywall on its website.

Srivastava, who also oversees Business Insider’s team in Singapore as part of her remit as UK bureau chief, said the aim is for Business Insider readers and subscribers to make visiting the website a daily habit and retain its loyal audience.

She said Business Insider has to prioritise because it has fewer reporters than some other major news outlets – but she asks herself daily “how could we get better?”.

“That’s our motto as a company,” she explained. “We want to get better every day. So how do we get better? What do we do? What is the biggest story today? How can we follow up that story? And how can we lean more into new areas of coverage?

“And we also have a young newsroom so how can we mentor and coach and train reporters and invest more in them and invest in areas that are that are working?”

Business Insider thinks of itself as “one global newsroom”, she added, which means different newsrooms, and teams within them, can work together on major stories across timezones – for example, the OpenAI boardroom coup in November which began on a Friday night in the UK and lasted for several days.

On the following Monday morning, she said, “it was the Singapore team and the UK teams getting together to understand and break down the news for our readers and then connecting those dots to the US journalists. So when the US team is online, they know exactly where to pick it up from so it’s very much a collaborative work environment.

“We are on Slack, we have team meetings, we have handovers, so it feels very much like how a global newsroom is run.”

More ‘fully cross-newsroom collaborations’ to come in 2024

Going into 2024, Srivastava said her aim is to stay on top of bigger stories such as OpenAI and the wars in Ukraine/Russia and Gaza/Israel but dealing with them more creatively and with even more explanation and analysis.

“I think that is where we’re going to be shifting next year a bit more – tackling these stories more creatively so our readers feel very enlightened and educated at the end of the story and they come back for more,” she said.

“If you’re able to give them that in the story, then they’ll keep coming back for more and we’ll create that loyal audience. I think that is going to be a big priority for me personally going into 2024.”

Meanwhile, Ghosh said there will be more “fully cross-newsroom collaborations”: “Experimental collaborations where we have reporters in Asia, Europe and of course the US all teaming up to look at one particular issue at the same time and reporting back their findings.

“It takes time to build those relationships, processes, capabilities and trust in each other and that’s where we are and I think that will be extremely fun.”

The post Business Insider: From seven to 70-strong London newsroom in a decade appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Building direct relationships as search and social referrals fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Responding to advertising headwinds and death of cookies

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Acting on challenges and opportunities of AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kamal Ahmed, The News Movement

Editor-in-chief and co-founder

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

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

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

Jennie Baird

EVP and MD BBC Global Digital News

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

So, my forecast is:

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

Anna Bateson, Guardian News & Media

Chief executive

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

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

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

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

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

Julia Beizer, Bloomberg Media

Chief digital officer

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

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

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

Michael Booker, GB News

Editorial director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wendy Brundige

Senior vice president of content strategy CNN Digital Worldwide

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

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

Christine Cook

Chief revenue officer, Bloomberg Media

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

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

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

Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider

Global editor-in-chief

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

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

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

Rachel Corp, ITN

Chief executive

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Flood, Future

Global ad product & revenue operations director

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

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

David Higgerson, Reach

Chief digital publisher

Biggest challenge

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

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

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

How we’ll deal with it

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

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

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

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

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

But…

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

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

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

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

James Lamon, Footballco

EVP content & operations

Challenges

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

Reasons to be cheerful

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

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

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

Almar Latour

CEO Dow Jones and publisher Wall Street Journal

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

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

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

Will Payne, The Sun

Director of digital (editorial)

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

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

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

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

Sherry Phillips, Forbes

Chief revenue officer

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

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

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

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

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

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

And conversely, what are your reasons to be cheerful?

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

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

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

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

Scott Purcell, Man of Many

Co-founder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Smith, Semafor

Co-founder and chief executive

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

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

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

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

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

Katie Vanneck-Smith, Hearst UK

Chief executive

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

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

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

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

Business Insider co-founder Henry Blodget has stepped aside as chief executive after 16 years leading the brand.

Blodget will become chairman of the board and said he would launch further projects with Business Insider and parent company Axel Springer “in the years ahead”.

Blodget is being succeeded by Barbara Peng, who joined the company in 2015 and became its president in 2021, which the company has now said was the beginning of this leadership transition.

Peng’s first major move is to rebrand Insider back to Business Insider to, the company said, refine its “brand positioning”.

Insider was first launched as a lifestyle brand in 2016 and replaced Business Insider as the company’s overall branding in February 2021.

Editor Nicholas Carlson wrote that he didn’t see it as changing the name “back” to Business Insider as “this move is not about going back. It’s about a new beginning for this company. An exciting new era.”

He added that the change is “about recommitting to what we do best: our powerful, insightful, and unique coverage of business, tech, and innovation” with “a name that reminds us all that Business Insider isn’t some generic news website built for everybody”.

New CEO Peng said: “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to lead such a talented and capable team as we work towards positioning Business Insider for the best possible future.

“For us, that’s about honing in on our incredible audience — one that’s driven by ambition, optimism, and curiosity. They love our approach to business, tech, and innovation which not only celebrates progress but the bold innovators driving it.”

The company said Peng had already “played a pivotal role in skilfully steering Business Insider through the challenges of a pandemic and the sharp downturn in the advertising industry, while simultaneously fine-tuning Business Insider’s strategy”. The publisher has a strong subscription base, making it more immune to factors like the ad downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic compared to many digital publishers.

In 2021 Blodget, a former Wall Street technology company analyst, told Press Gazette there would be a “period of shake-out and consolidation. Eventually, some really strong companies will continue to do very well, and we certainly hope to be one of them. In terms of our own patterns, we remain eager to look at potential partners but we’re also confident in our organic growth, so it’s not something we have to do.”

Business Insider began life in 2007 as Silicon Alley Insider with a focus on start-ups and technology before expanding into finance, markets and broader industries including going beyond business. It has been owned by Germany-based publisher Axel Springer since 2015.

The post Business Insider co-founder Henry Blodget steps aside as CEO appeared first on Press Gazette.