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

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

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

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

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

UK national newspaper editors

The Times

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

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

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

The Sunday Times

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

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

Daily Mail

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

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

Mail on Sunday

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

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

The Sun and The Sun on Sunday

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

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

Daily Mirror

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

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

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

The Daily Telegraph

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

The Sunday Telegraph

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

Daily Express and Sunday Express

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

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

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

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

The Guardian

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

The Observer

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

i

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

Financial Times

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

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

Daily Star

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

Daily Star on Sunday

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

The Independent

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

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

Free newspaper editors

Metro

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

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

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

Evening Standard

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

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

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

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

City AM

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

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

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

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

All of the UK’s biggest political stories, both print and broadcast, have been approved by the outlets’ political editors. They are the minds behind every news story and coverage involving politics, and these names climbed the journalism ladder thanks to their innovative and critical thinking.

Political editors are some of the best-known names in the industry, bringing in scoops from their overflowing books as well as typically juggling a team of political correspondents and reporters.

These are the country’s main political editors across traditional newspaper outlets and broadcasters, from the BBC to The Sunday Times and GB News to the Daily Mail.

Who are the UK national newspaper political editors?

The Guardian – Pippa Crerar (2022 – present)

Pippa Crerar, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, attended Newcastle University, obtaining a degree in English. She later took a postgraduate course at City, University of London in newspaper journalism.

Crerar began her journalistic career in 1999 when she received the Scott Trust bursary, which paid for her training and provides work experience at The Guardian for people from under-represented groups in journalism.

During her residency at The Daily Mirror, where she was political editor, Crerar won scoop of the year at the British Journalism Awards along with Guardian journalist Matthew Weaver for their revelation that government advisor Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules.

In recent times, the journalist focused on other stories about lockdown-breaking events in Downing Street.

She recently took over from Heather Stewart as political editor at The Guardian. “I know that we’ll do great journalism together, holding politicians and power to account and shining a light on how their decisions impact all of us,” she said.

The Observer – Toby Helm (2022 – present)

Toby Helm worked for the Sunday Telegraph between 1991 and 1996, when he began serving as the Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, later moving to become Berlin correspondent.

He stayed there until 2002, when he was appointed chief political correspondent on his return to the UK – before moving over to The Observer in 2008 as Whitehall editor. He is now The Observer’s political editor.

The Sun – Harry Cole (2020 – present)

Harry Cole is The Sun’s political editor. His career has been enriched by working for publications such as The Spectator and The Mail on Sunday.

After reading politics at the University of Edinburgh, he obtained a Master’s degree at the same university in anthropology and economic history. After graduating in 2009, Cole started his journalistic career.

Starting as a blogger for Guido Fawkes’s Blog from 2009 until 2015, Cole covered the role of contributing editor for The Spectator at the same time, from 2012 until 2015. He joined The Sun on Sunday in 2013 as a diarist and moved to The Sun in 2015 as the Westminster correspondent.

After his first encounter with The Sun’s editorial team, Cole turned to the Mail on Sunday to work as deputy political editor from 2018 until 2020, when he left and went back to The Sun as political editor, which he still is today.

Cole won the publication the Scoop of the Year prize at the British Journalism Awards in 2021, thanks to his revelation of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s affair with Gina Coladangelo during the pandemic.

However, as the political editor revealed, The Sun experienced threats from government officials and even heard of imminent action from Chinese and Russian spies. This is after the Information Commissioner’s Office raided the houses of two suspected whistleblowers who may have leaked CCTV footage of Hancock’s affair. As the journalist explained, these threats came also from the proposed reform to the Official Secrets Act which could see journalists treated like spies.

Cole said: “Everyone in this room, whether they read The Sun or not, should know that this has a chilling effect on the freedom of the press and we are really glad that public interest journalism is recognised in this way.”

The Sun on Sunday – Kate Ferguson (2022 – present)

Kate Ferguson joined The Sun on Sunday as political editor in 2022 after being deputy political editor at The Sun since 2019.

Ferguson started her journalism journey as a cub reporter on the Willesden & Brent Times and then the Ham & High. She developed her skills by working as a crime reporter for the Press Association.

“I am hugely excited to be the new Sun on Sunday political editor – it is a dream job for me. With the economy in crisis, the war in Europe and rebellions in Parliament, our political coverage has never been more important,” the journalist stated when she took the role.

The Times – Steven Swinford (2021 – present)

Steven Swinford is The Times’ political editor and has been since 2021. Prior to this, he was deputy political editor under Francis Elliott.

Swinford’s career also involved being deputy political editor at The Daily Telegraph and a reporter at The Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times – Caroline Wheeler (2021 – present)

The Sunday Times’ political editor is Caroline Wheeler, who took up the role in 2021.

The journalist graduated in political science and government from the University of York in 1999, and then undertook a Master’s degree in newspaper journalism at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Right after the end of her studies, Wheeler became a trainee reporter for Trinity Mirror Group PLC, where she remained for four years. In 2004, she covered the role of parliamentary correspondent for Local World Media from 2004 until 2014, before embarking on another journey as political editor for Sunday Express, where Wheeler worked for three years.

Wheeler took up a role at The Sunday Times in 2017 as deputy political editor until 2021, at which point she stepped up to be the political editor.

Throughout her career, Wheeler has broken multiple agenda-setting stories about the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and the 2017 general election.

The acclaimed journalist was included in Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ journalist blacklist. “The British journalists included in the list are involved in the deliberate dissemination of false and one-sided information about Russia and the events in Ukraine and Donbas. With their biased assessments, they also contribute to fueling Russophobia in British society,” the Ministry declared in June 2022.

The Independent – Andrew Woodcock (2019 – present)

Andrew Woodcock has covered the role of political editor at The Independent since 2019.

Before starting his career, Woodcock graduated from the University of Cambridge in French and German in 1989.

Six years later he joined Press Association, where he worked from 1995 until 2011 as chief political correspondent and from 2011 until 2019 as political editor. After almost 24 years at the same company, Woodcock switched over to The Independent, where he still works today.

Throughout his career, The Independent’s political editor has reported on four prime ministers and five general elections. Woodcock has also filed dispatches from Afghanistan, Iraq and Lybia, as well as flying on Air Force One with former US President Barack Obama.

The i – Hugo Gye (2021 – present)

Hugo Gye’s career started in 2011 when he joined MailOnline as a reporter. The journalist covered that position until 2016 when he was promoted to associate news editor.

After his experience at MailOnline, Gye moved to The Sun as a digital political editor until 2019.

The journalist joined The i Paper in 2019, first as deputy political editor and then as political editor in 2021.

The Daily Mail – Jason Groves (2021 – present)

Jason Groves was appointed as political editor of the Daily Mail in 2021.

He has also worked for publications such as the Daily Express, MSN and USA Today, according to his Muck Rack profile.

[See also: Editor Danny Groom on why ‘market leader’ Mail Online is expanding royal coverage]

The Mail on Sunday – Glen Owen (2018 – present)

Glen Owen, a Cambridge graduate, is The Mail On Sunday’s political editor.

Owen was promoted to the role of deputy political editor in 2018, replacing Simon Walters.

Owen became embroiled in a scandal in April 2022 when he reported that some anonymous members of the Conservative Party had accused Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner of “crossing and uncrossing her legs” to distract Boris Johnson while comparing her to Sharon Stone in the movie Basic Instinct (1992).

Daily Mirror – John Stevens (2022 – 2024)

Update on 16 August 2024: John Stevens is leaving the Mirror to become a special adviser to senior Labour MP Pat McFadden. His successor has not yet been announced.

After graduating in economics and politics from the University of Exeter, John Stevens completed a Master’s in newspaper journalism at City, University of London. His Master’s was funded by a Scott Trust scholarship, which also allowed him to work at the Guardian and the Observer for two months.

With his involvement in the university’s student newspaper, Stevens continued his career by working as a parliamentary researcher for the UK House of Lords for less than a year, and then starting at the Daily Mail, where he stayed for around 12 years ending up as deputy political editor.

In 2022, Stevens switched over to the Daily Mirror, where he was appointed political editor, taking over from Pippa Crerar.

He was shortlisted in the Politics Journalism category at the British Journalism Awards in 2023 for revealing a Partygate tape showing inside a lockdown-breaking Westminster party.

While at the Mail he was shortlisted for the Politics Journalism prize for revealing that then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was on holiday and apparently “too busy” to help British troops’ Afghan translators during the fall of Kabul.

Daily Express – Martyn Brown (2024 – present)

Martyn Brown was promoted from deputy to political editor in November 2024, succeeding Sam Lister.

Brown first joined the Express as a news reporter in 2007, later becoming political correspondent. He took a three-year break to live and work in Myanmar from 2015 but returned to the Express as deputy political editor.

On his appointment, Express editor-in-chief Tom Hunt said Brown is “fully deserving of his promotion and will take the team on to the next level as we continue to hold the new Government to account”, referring to Labour after their July victory.

Prior to Brown, Sam Lister was Express political editor for just over two years but has now become an associate editor at the title.

Sunday Express – David Williamson (2022 – present)

David Williamson graduated from the University of Aberdeen and then started his journalism career.

He worked as a political editor at the Western Mail and Wales Online after serving as a trainee reporter and business correspondent.

Williamson is now covering the role of political editor at the Sunday Express, after being promoted from deputy.

Financial Times – George Parker (2007 – present)

George Parker has been the Financial Times’ political editor since 2007. The journalist was previously the FT’s bureau chief in Brussels, reporting on the EU and Westminster.

Parker has reported throughout his career on some of the most dramatic events in modern British history, such as the financial crash of 2008, the coalition government and Brexit.

FT’s political editor is also a regular speaker on Radio 4’s Week in Westminster and has also appeared on shows like BBC One’s (now-defunct) Andrew Marr show and Radio 4’s Today programme.

The Telegraph – Ben Riley-Smith (2021 – present)

Ben Riley-Smith graduated from Cambridge University with a BA in history and went on to obtain a Master’s degree in journalism at City, University of London in 2012.

Riley-Smith’s career has revolved around only one publication: The Telegraph. He started in 2012 as a trainee reporter, and the journalist quickly climbed the ladder. In 2014, Riley-Smith was promoted to Scottish political correspondent and then to political correspondent. Smith stayed in that role until 2016, when he became assistant political editor.

After one year of covering this role, Smith took on the job of US editor until 2021, when he was appointed as political editor.

The Sunday Telegraph – Camilla Turner (2024 – present)

Camilla Turner took over from Edward Malnick as political editor of The Sunday Telegraph in April 2024 when Malnick became head of live features for The Telegraph.

She had been The Telegraph’s chief political correspondent for two years and was education editor for five years before that.

She first joined The Telegraph in 2013 as an editorial trainee and has worked her way up from news reporter and investigations reporter.

According to Linkedin Turner studied history at the University of Oxford and then did City University’s MA Investigative Journalism course.

[See also: National press ABCs: i reports smallest annual decline in March]

Evening Standard – Nicholas Cecil (2021 – present)

Nicholas Cecil is the political editor at the Evening Standard.

He mostly covers Westminster stories, as well as foreign affairs and other major events affecting the UK and EU. Cecil reported on the Covid-19 pandemic, air pollution, and climate change as well as some sports stories.

Who are the UK broadcast political editors?

BBC News – Chris Mason (2022 – present)

Yorkshire native Chris Mason was born into a family of teachers and, since a young age, he thoroughly enjoyed listening to the radio and had the ambition of being a presenter one day.

Mason studied geography at Cambridge University but also achieved a postgraduate diploma from City, University of London in broadcast journalism, in 2002. Straight after finishing his master’s degree, Mason got a job at BBC Newcastle and then moved to the Westminster desk.

The new BBC political editor was a Europe correspondent at BBC News until 2006, before moving to BBC Radio 5 Live. He then became a political correspondent at BBC News in 2012. Five years later, Mason began presenting the Brexitcast podcast alongside Adam Fleming.

In 2022, Mason was offered the job as BBC News political editor, taking over from Laura Kuenssberg, who took over the BBC Sunday morning TV politics slot, replacing Andrew Marr.

ITV News – Robert Peston (2015 – present)

London-born Robert Peston is the son of Labour Peer Baron Maurice Peston.

After graduating in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University, Peston moved to Bruxelles to obtain a master’s degree at the Universite libre de Bruxelles. A year later, in 1983, Peston started his journalistic career at Investors’ Chronicle, working his way up to the Independent, Financial Times and Sunday Telegraph.

From print, the acclaimed journalist switched over to TV, when he started working for the BBC in 2005 as a business editor. Peston became one of the most renowned and respected journalists of modern Britain thanks to one particular scoop. Northern Rock and the financial crisis, which won him the Royal Television Society’s Television Journalism Award for Scoop of the Year in 2008.

After becoming the economics editor for the BBC, he moved to ITV in 2016 to become the broadcaster’s political editor. However, his role has caused him stress, telling Press Gazette: “I’m never relaxed. Like many journalists, I’m terrified that if I don’t get the next story, I’ll be out of a job.”

Today, The Pest – as is his nickname – also hosts his own Wednesday programme, Peston.

Channel 4 News – Gary Gibbon (2005 – present)

English journalist Gary Gibbon has been Channel 4 News’ political editor since 2005.

Born in Harrow, where he also attended school, Gibbon then headed to Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in History. After leaving education, Gibbon started to climb the journalism ladder.

While at Channel 4, he covered four general elections and wrote impactful stories throughout the years. For instance, in 2001, the political journalist’s interview with Peter Mandelson motivated the Northern Ireland Secretary’s second resignation from the Cabinet.

Gibbon is an acclaimed journalist, having won the Royal Television Society Home News Award with Jon Snow thanks to their scoop on the attorney general’s legal advice on Iraq in 2006.

Sky News – Beth Rigby (2019 – present)

Born in Colchester, Beth Rigby graduated from Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge in social and political science and then achieved a Master’s Degree in economics at the University of London.

Rigby joined Sky News in 2016 as a senior political correspondent and became deputy political editor before getting the political editor job in 2019.

Previously she was chief political correspondent at the Financial Times and media editor at The Times.

5 News – Andy Bell (1999 – present)

From 1999 to the present day, Andy Bell has been covering the position of political editor at ITN’s Channel 5 News.

The Cambridge graduate, after obtaining his degree in history in 1984, moved to the US to attend a Master’s course in international relations and affairs at the University of Pennsylvania.

His career took him all over the world, starting in Paris, where Bell worked as a stand-in correspondent for The Guardian from 1990 until 1993. The journalist’s experience led him to obtain a long-lasting job at the BBC, where he worked for almost nine years, first as a foreign affairs correspondent at Today Programme and then as a BBC Paris correspondent, until 1996.

GB News – Christopher Hope (2023 – present)

Christopher Hope joined GB News as head of politics and political editor in 2023 after spending almost 20 years at The Telegraph.

He had been a member of The Telegraph’s parliamentary lobby team since 2006 and at the time of his departure hosted a weekly politics podcast, Chopper’s Politics.

Before moving into political journalism Hope was business correspondent for The Scotsman, the launch chief business writer for Business AM in 2000, City editor for The Herald and business correspondent for The Daily Telegraph when he first joined the newspaper in 2003.

Hope studied politics at Bristol University and then magazine journalism at Cardiff’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture. His first journalism jobs were on trade titles Print Week and Construction News.

[See also: Who are GB News’ presenters? Everything you need to know]

The post Who are the UK’s political editors? From broadcast to print appeared first on Press Gazette.

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

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

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

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

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

Details here about how to book tickets.

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

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

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

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

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

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

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

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

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

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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

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

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

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

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

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

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

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

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

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

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

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

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

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

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

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

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

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

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

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

David James Smith — The Independent

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

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

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

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

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

Local Journalism

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

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

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

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

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

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

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

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

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

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

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

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

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

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

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

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

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

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

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

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

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

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

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

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

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

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

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

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

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

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

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

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

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

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

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

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

Kitty Donaldson — i

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

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

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

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

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

Specialist Journalism

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

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

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

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

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

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

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

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

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

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

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

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

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

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

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

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

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

Alex Crawford — Sky News

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

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

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

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

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

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

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

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

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

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

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

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

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

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

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

Marianna Spring — BBC News

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

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

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

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

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

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

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

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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

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

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

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

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

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

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

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

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

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

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

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

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

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

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

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

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

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

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

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

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

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

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

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

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

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

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

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

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

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

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

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

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

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

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

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

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

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

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

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

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

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

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

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

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

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

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

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

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

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

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

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

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

Matt Lawton — The Times

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

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

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

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

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

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

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

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

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

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

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

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

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

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

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

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

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

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

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

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

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

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

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

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

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

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

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

Nick Ferrari — LBC

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

Samantha Poling — BBC

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

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

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

Paul Brand — ITV News

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

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

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

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

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

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

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

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

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

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

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

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

Jane Merrick — i

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

Steven Swinford — The Times

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

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

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

Ed Conway — Sky News

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

Tom Bergin — Reuters

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

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

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

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

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

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

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

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

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

Online Video Journalism

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

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

Andrew Harding — BBC News

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

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

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

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

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

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

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

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

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

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

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

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

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

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

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

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

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

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

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

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

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

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

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

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

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

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

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

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

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

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

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

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

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

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

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

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

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

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

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

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

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

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Missing links: Upmarket UK newsbrands deny click-throughs to story sources appeared first on Press Gazette.

Can publishers cope with being software companies?

This was the question experts addressed at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference on a panel about the role tech plays in finding new revenue streams.

Senior leaders from The Times, Haymarket and the Mail shared their insights on using tech to reduce subscriber churn, sell corporate subscriptions and introduce a partial paywall.

Payal Sood, director of technology at Haymarket Media Group which has built new products as it moves away from a reliance on advertising revenue towards subscriptions and corporate customers in particular, said she likes “going for a build option” where possible.

“For Haymarket, we have built our own CMS,” she said. “Of course, we are not a software company, but we partner with the software developers to build the way we would like things to work.

“The CMS is quite core to create our content and give the editorial the workflow they would like and it also gives us the scale because at Haymarket we keep relaunching our brands, we keep acquiring new brands, and we do launch new brands as well.

“If we are on somebody else’s platform then it’s difficult, and sometimes it’s not even economically viable, because you are just launching a new brand which may not be generating that much revenue to start with, but you’re paying the same amount in the SaaS [software as a service] platform.”

Sood added: “We have got a single platform and our smaller brands also get the same enriched platform features which our bigger brands are getting. So for us, it makes more sense to keep building and keep upgrading that CMS.”

Sood said the key principle at Haymarket for answering the build or buy question is: “If it is core to your business: build, or at least have the complete control over your systems and your data. You don’t want somebody sunsetting the system you are working on and the customer data platform you have just migrated.”

‘Having great partners is the way you get success’

Mail product director Simon Regan-Edwards said: “My view: always buy, although we’ve built quite a lot of stuff… But I would say look for great partners.

“Having great partners who have invariably done this before you, and working closely with them, is the way you get success.”

In response to Sood’s point about software businesses sunsetting a product, Regan-Edwards responded that “you can also have internal employees who give three months’ notice and suddenly you’ve got an unsupported platform. So there is a downside.”

But he agreed that the crucial point is deciding “what is differentiated and core to your business, and then yes, you may have to go and build that yourself if you’re big enough and it can be supported, but that total cost of ownership is often higher than you think it is.”

Regan-Edwards also emphasised the importance of a “cross-functional, co-located working team within editorial”.

When rolling out the Mail+ partial paywall on Mail Online at the start of the year, making about ten to 15 stories a day available to paying subscribers only, Regan-Edwards said they brought together marketing, product and tech people to sit together with the journalists in the newsroom.

“I think having that connection between editorial, product and tech, working directly with your preferred partners – that is the glue, that is the secret sauce.”

Times focus is on churn reduction and mobile performance

Edward Roussel, head of digital at The Times and Sunday Times, agreed on the importance of cross-functional teams.

He said the success of The Times is “at the intersection of three things. It’s, first of all, brilliant journalism, so thinking very deeply about every story needs to be distinctive and differentiated and needs to perform well on a mobile device.

“Secondly, I think it’s about the newsroom working very closely with the product team and with the marketing team, because if that connective tissue isn’t working well, it’s like a three-legged stool. If one element doesn’t work, then you’re not going to be able to continue to build your audience and build your subscriber base.

“And I think the most important thing from a business point of view, is churn reduction. So what are the elements that ensure that you can retain those hard won subscribers?”

On that point he revealed there is a “very strong correlation between daily habit, getting people to come back every day, if not every day certainly every other day, and the propensity to churn. So if people come back more than 16 times in a month, what we see in our data is propensity to churn drops off dramatically.

“And so to that end, we work very hard on getting people to use our app, because if you use our app, propensity to churn drops by about 50%.

“We work very hard on getting you to subscribe to a newsletter because if you subscribe to a newsletter, the propensity to churn drops by about 11%.

“And we look at other ways, like puzzles is a big thing for us, and if you’re what’s known as a solver and do the crypto crossword, the propensity to churn drops by 22%.”

The Times has “completely modernised” its newsroom including a new website CMS, Roussel revealed, which includes elements like AI headline suggestions and easier mobile optimisation via dragging and dropping elements of a story.

He said this meant people can “now focus on the journalism, as opposed to manipulating complicated bits of software”.

But of the creation of this tech, Roussel said: “We’re very much of the view that we should not be a software company.

“Candidly, when we were trying to do our own software, we were really bad at it, and that was clarifying. So we select tools that we then integrate and augment.

“But that in itself is a skill by selecting the right providers, the right suppliers: augmenting their off the shelf products to make them more relevant to how we operate is in itself a skill and not to be dismissed and we need very talented technology and product teams to be able to do that.”

Publishers ‘need to decide if they want to be software companies’

Stewart Robinson, managing director of web and app software company Full Fat Things, said publishers “need to decide whether they want to be software companies.

“It’s a bit scary to become a software company and to grow all that skill. And there are many phrases like ‘we are all developers now’ as we look to just embrace every technology that led you to do more and more and more. But is it something core to the business? Is it something that they really want to do? And I would say that as someone who sells software, but I genuinely think there’s something there. “

Robinson added: “I think the great challenge for the publishing industry is having really good glue between your systems, not just making them connect, but making your data flow across all of your systems in a meaningful way.”

The post Winning technology strategies shared by Times, Mail and Haymarket appeared first on Press Gazette.

Just over a third of News UK staff are using AI tools on a daily basis, according to chief operating officer David Dinsmore.

Dinsmore said this appears to be in line with adoption of AI tools by the general public at work.

But he added: “I think what we’ve learned from that is we need to make it 75% pretty quickly.”

Dinsmore was speaking on a panel about “newsroom transformation in the age of AI” at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference in London on 12 September.

He revealed The Times developed an AI-powered content management co-pilot to help with headline suggestions, summaries and some “light subbing” which has now been rolled out to The Sun and other News Corp titles.

News UK‘s own “safe version” of ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini chatbots, called News Assist, has been made available to staff so they can input sensitive documents, and the company’s engineers have access to a new coding AI.

Finally, Dinsmore said, the publisher has created News Transcribe, its own version of a speech-to-text tool like Otter or OpenAI’s Whisper.

Australian news website Crikey revealed earlier this month that News Corp had blocked the use of Otter.ai by journalists in the country.

Asked by Press Gazette why the company created its own tools – which are all based on existing large language models – rather than using what was already out there, Dinsmore said: “The reason you do some of your own iterations is security. I think there’s another well-known voice to text tool that may come out of China and you may not think that’s a great place to have all your information… But also we know our business best and I think we should be adapting these super-powerful models to superpower our products at the same time.”

Reach’s Guten AI rewriting tool is ‘continuously learning’

Reach, the UK’s biggest commercial news publisher, rolled out the use of its own AI product at the start of this year.

Articles written for one Reach website can be “re-versioned” for any of its other brands in their own house style by Guten.

This rewriting was previously done by Reach journalists who can now spend time writing original articles that are “distinct to their particular beat or their particular patch” instead.

Paul Rowland, editorial director of Reach’s Live network of sites, told the panel: “We know from referral behaviour that almost any story that exists on our network can drive enormous audience on almost any site on our network through third-party referrals at any time. What Guten does is allows us to do that at scale.”

He added: “It’s widely used across our organisation, it means that we can do things that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. It’s continuously learning so you edit within it and it means that… it continually becomes more focused and tuned to a particular house style. And we’re developing it all the time to increase its capacity and increase the language models as well that sit behind it.”

Reach also experimented with AI-produced bullet point summaries at the top of articles on its website Nottinghamshire Live.

Last year Swedish news website Aftonbladet found people were spending longer on articles with AI-generated summaries at the top. It appeared that people who got a more general understanding of an article upfront were more likely to read the whole text.

Rowland said this was the hypothesis behind Reach’s experiment, which he said was “modestly successful” although they have not continued with it.

“I think certainly in terms of where we’re going next with that, with Guten and with versioning there’s also a big opportunity for us in repackaging particular stories and pieces of content into formats, summaries that are relevant, that are customised to different audiences, different age demographics, different platforms, so we can get multiple value out of one piece of content in a more efficient way.”

Are AI disclaimers always necessary?

Initially, Rowland said, every piece of content that went through Guten carried a disclaimer about its use of AI.

However he explained why this has changed: “My view is that that’s an AI-supported editing process. I think it’s different.

“That’s a piece of content written by a human, reorganised by AI, re-edited by a human. I think that is an entirely different situation to a piece of content generated from scratch… from asking ChatGPT to write me a new story.

“And I think absolutely we would always, if we were doing that kind of thing, would absolutely, always declare that. But I think AI-supported editing is a different matter.”

Dinsmore agreed, saying that “the customer will decide” but that he is unlikely to care if a human or an AI has written a football match live blog, for example.

“Because all I want is that information as quickly as possible: ‘Man kicks ball, scores goal’. That’s it.

“Whereas if it is an opinion piece or something like that, if that is written by a bot – although why you would get a bot to write it, I don’t know – then I would want to be told.”

Similarly Graham Page, head of media at consultancy Q5, suggested AI involvement should be labelled in a similar way to sponsored content.

He said the publishers with whom he works are looking at the use of generative AI for tasks like tagging, transcription and summarisation but that it’s largely still in A/B testing and not being seen by audiences.

“The more adventurous are starting to think about where they can take really structured data and turn it into a news article,” he said.

“So the obvious place to start is weather. You can take the weather data, turn it into a news article. Sport might be the next place to go, especially a data-heavy sport like cricket, [a journalist] might not want to sit through four days of test match, but they can create an article about it. And you can imagine other things if the data gets better… so could you take your council minutes if the data structure improves and turn those into news articles for local publishers.”

AI and subscriptions: We are just getting started

Nina Wright, chair at Harmsworth Media which is the division of DMGT which runs the i and the New Scientist, said she is “particularly interested” in the potential of AI in subscriptions and personalisation: “helping to take a customer on a journey, serving them what they want, when they want it, how they want it”.

She said this could “help our businesses be smarter subscriptions businesses, and so I think we’re just starting to scrape the top of the iceberg on that”.

The post How News UK and Reach are using AI in the newsroom appeared first on Press Gazette.

The Financial Times was the big winner at the Future of Media Awards 2024, taking home four trophies.

The FT won recognition for its reader revenue strategy, its website, its digital storytelling and the Inside Politics newsletter (the latter two prizes for the second year running). The FT was also highly commended for online video.

The FT’s count was followed by The Telegraph and Sky News which each won two awards – The Telegraph for its adtech tool Clarity and its app, and Sky News for its money live blog and its podcast Patient 11.

Also winning for the second year in a row was the Times investigations team in the online video category.

The winners of Press Gazette’s third Future of Media Awards were presented at the London Hilton Bankside on Thursday alongside a sit-down dinner for the first time. The ceremony followed the Future of Media Technology Conference held during the day.

The Future of Media Awards, which are free to enter, recognise excellence in digital news media and publishing.

Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “We launched this event to showcase the journalism products and innovations which are lighting the way to a sustainable future for our industry.”

The winners were chosen by a panel of 30 judges who carried out their own assessments before taking part in two days of in-person discussions.

For the website of the year categories, the judges were looking for sites which have great content, are well designed, are easy to use, are strong technically and commercially sustainable. As well as the FT, Bluebean Publishing’s The BV Magazine was recognised in the local/regional category and Carbon Brief won the specialist category.

Other winners included The Times and Yorkshire Post in the online video categories, the Racing Post for its The Front Runner newsletter, and The Courier and Press and Journal data team for digital storytelling.

Entries were open to publishers from the UK and worldwide. From outside the UK, Armenia-based podcast Country of Dust was a winner and US-based The Athletic was highly commended for its live-blogging.

You can revisit the entire shortlist here and see the list of winners and highly commended finalists below.

Future of Media Awards 2024 winners

Advertising Technology, sponsored by Content Ignite

WINNER: The Telegraph – Clarity

The judges said: “This is a tool which offers game-changing insights – it’s a credit to the team who developed and deployed it.”

App of the Year, sponsored by Purple

WINNER: The Telegraph

The judges said: “This app is doing a remarkable job of putting a mobile-friendly interface on a huge amount of journalism.”

Digital Storytelling (National), sponsored by SWNS

WINNER: Financial Times – How China is tearing down Islam

The judges said: “This was breathtakingly well researched and executed journalism. The digital storytelling was intrinsic to the story.”

Digital Storytelling (Specialist/Regional), sponsored by SWNS

WINNER: The Courier and Press and Journal data journalism team – Tracking the High Street

The judges said: “This is an example of extraordinary data gathering and reporting filling in an important knowledge
gap and utilising visual tools to illustrate the extent of the problem and drive change.”

Live Journalism, sponsored by Tickaroo

WINNER: Sky News – Money blog

The judges said: “This is a great idea for the audience. Responds to readers’ questions by delivering the content they ask for, as well as real-time reporting. It is what interactive journalism should do.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: The Athletic – Live blogs

The judges said: “This feels like a premium product. Huge team of expertise, clean design, loads of graphics and great pictures.”

Newsletter (National/International), sponsored by Stibo DX

WINNER: Financial Times – Inside Politics

The judges said: “There are lots of political newsletters out there but this one stands out out thanks to its diversification – such as the pub quiz night it inspired – and, most importantly, the high number of subscribers paying for a premium standalone product.”

Newsletter (Specialist/Regional), sponsored by Stibo DX

WINNER: Racing Post – The Front Runner

The judges said: “This newsletter delivers so much more than the key information. It has a community feel and mines
a niche market with real humanity and personality.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Tes – Tes Daily

The judges said: “A newsletter which services a clear niche creating a highly engaged audience. It is clean, well designed, concise.”

Online Video (National), sponsored by EX.CO

WINNER: The Times – Investigations

The judges said: “They are breaking exclusive stories through high-quality investigative video journalism, with ingenious reporting which weaves together an engrossing story on a relevant topic complete with arresting graphics.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Financial Times – Eksom: how corruption and crime turned the lights off in South Africa

The judges said: “An incredible story about nationwide corruption which had huge impact, delivering more than one million views on Youtube.”

Online Video (Specialist/Regional), sponsored by EX.CO

WINNER: The Yorkshire Post/Nova Studios: Meet The Makers

The judges said: “These were beautifully shot videos which were a delightful way to showcase fascinating local businesses. Exceptionally well produced.”

Podcast (National), sponsored by Pugpig

WINNER: Sky News – Patient 11

The judges said: “Production of this podcast was excellent with lots of texture, nice sound design and interviews all contributing to an intriguing story which draws the listener in. It also appeared to have a real-world impact on government thinking.”

Podcast (Specialist/Regional), sponsored by Pugpig

WINNER: Country of Dust

The judges said: “This was extremely well produced, scripted and told. An interesting and insightful podcast from a region we rarely hear about.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Premier Christianity – Soul Survivors

The judges said: “This was deeply researched and well-scripted and produced, with excellent interviews and great use of archive to tell an important story.”

Reader Revenue Strategy, sponsored by Mirabel Technologies

WINNER: Financial Times – Consumer Revenue Group

The judges said: “This was a perfect case study of how media companies should approach reader revenue strategies, creating multidisciplinary teams that use tech, data and knowledge to launch new products, improve current ones, AB test, redefine goals, move fast and optimise results.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Bristol Cable – 23/24 membership drive

The judges said: “This is an example of how local news coverage should be done and monetised.”

Important announcement from the Bristol Cable’s @ElizMizon…

We did it folks! The Cable has now raised around 105% of the membership income target we’ve been working towards for a year.

Thankyou Bristol pic.twitter.com/ebLDEMtduv

— The Bristol Cable (@TheBristolCable) August 27, 2024

Website of the Year (Regional/Local), sponsored by Ancoris

WINNER: Bluebean Publishing – The BV Magazine

“This site has a clear mission, serving a clearly defined rural audience, delivering news content effectively on multiple platforms and securing the support of local businesses.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: So Publishing – SoGlos

The judges said: “This was a brilliant example of a sustainable model for local journalism.”

Website of the Year (Specialist/B2B), sponsored by Ancoris

WINNER: Carbon Brief

The judges said: “This site punches above its weight reporting on a hugely important niche. It produces agenda-setting data journalism amplifying their important stories.”

HIGHLY COMMENDED: The Racing Post

The judges said: “A hugely impressive website with data galore. It is also crisply designed and easy to navigate the site across desktop and mobile.”

Website of the Year (National/International), sponsored by Ancoris

WINNER: Financial Times

The judges said: “This sets the bar for clear, modern yet classic news website design which is constantly pushing the boundaries of digital storytelling. A commercial success whilst never cluttering the reader experience.”

Future of Media Awards 2024 judges

Thank you to the Future of Media Awards 2024 judges:

• Gavin Allen, digital journalism lecturer at Cardiff University and former Daily Mirror associate editor
• Pablo Altieri, media and technology advisor and founder of Diagonal Minds
• Ian Carter, chief operating officer at Iliffe Media
• Madhav Chinnappa, senior executive consultant
• Sarah Ebner, executive editor and head of newsletters at Financial Times
• Jim Edwards, executive editor at Fortune and former editor in chief for news at Business Insider
• Paul Hood, digital development director at The Sun
• Alan Hunter, co-founder of HBM Advisory
• Luba Kassova, co-founder and director of the international audience strategy consultancy AKAS
• Serena Kutchinsky, assistant editor for premium content at Sky News
• Robert Marr, chief executive of Metropolis Group
• Sarah Marshall, vice president audience strategy for Conde Nast
• James Morris, pathway director, MA Digital and Social Journalism at City, University of London
• Glyn Mottershead, senior lecturer in data journalism at City University
• Alison Phillips, former editor in chief of the Mirror
• Simon Regan-Edwards, product director at DMG Media
• Alan Renwick, strategy director at National World plc
• James Rosewell, co-founder of Movement for an Open Web and 51 Degrees
• Adam Tinworth, consultant and trainer in audience engagement
• Sandy Warr, senior lecturer and head of podcasting at City University
• Chris Waiting, chief executive of The Conversation UK
• Claire Wilde, data producer at Channel 4 News
• Martin Winter, director of SWNS Media Group
• And Dominic Ponsford and Charlotte Tobitt from Press Gazette

The post Future of Media Awards 2024: FT, Telegraph and Sky News are big winners appeared first on Press Gazette.

Independent production companies rather than established publishers dominate the UK podcast rankings when it comes to the popular true crime category.

Crime is a staple of traditional journalism. And since 2014 hit series Serial, podcasts have turned out to be an excellent format for longer crime investigations and reporting.

Casefile Presents podcast Troubled Waters has topped the Apple true crime charts in the UK. It investigates the mystery of a young woman’s suspicious death in 2011.

Wondery‘s Redhanded leads the way on Spotify. The weekly podcast started as hobby for its two hosts Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala and now claims four million listens per month.

Wondery has two other podcasts that feature on either top ten list, while Casefile Presents has one more.

There are no official charts for UK podcasts, with publishers rarely revealing their own numbers. The Apple and Spotify charts reveal a snapshot of which shows are doing best on each platform.

Neither Wondery nor Casefile Presents were willing to share listener figures with Press Gazette, but Wondery says it is seeing strong growth in listener numbers and commercial revenue.

Cocaine Inc., which was produced by The Times and Sunday Times in collaboration with News Corp Australia, claims to have clocked over 750,000 downloads in the first two months since release, with every expectation that they will hit the one million mark.

The Daily Mail team claims their podcasts have surpassed 30 million downloads in total, with their biggest hit The Trial of Lucy Letby previously topping true crime charts.

While Youtube views can be a good gauge of the reach of a podcast, sometimes accounting for over half of a podcast's total views, few true crime podcasts have taken off on the platform.

The notable exception is Rotten Mango, produced by Stephanie Soo with Ramble, which averaged more than one million views per episode on YouTube over the previous month.

Nonetheless, true crime podcasts are understood to be booming across the other platforms on which they are available.

This growth mirrors that seen in the rest of the podcast industry. Press Gazette recently revealed how listener numbers boomed for political podcasts during the course of the general election, while sports podcasts have also seen encouraging growth.

Chris Baughen, head of UK podcast content at Wondery, said that "podcasts are the perfect medium to build intimacy with an audience", precisely because this attention is well-suited to discussing highly personal subjects.

He added that "as a result of this bond, podcast listeners often develop a deep loyalty for their favourite shows and hosts, anticipating each new episode with excitement".

Madeleine Baran, who hosts The New Yorker's In the Dark, also said that "audio reporting has always been a powerful way to connect with people. There's something compelling about the experience of listening to an injustice be revealed."

Will Roe, podcast producer for The Times and Sunday Times, said that "when you're doing a digital piece, you're concentrated to a word count; that's the name of the game. Whereas with podcasting, episodes can be anywhere between 25 and 40 minutes, so you can add a lot more in."

According to Roe, the case of Andrew Malkinson, whose 2004 rape conviction was later overturned due to the discovery of new DNA on the scene, perfectly demonstrates the strength of podcasting.

He said of the discovery of the DNA: "For the newspaper, you write that up that week, and it goes out that Sunday. For a podcast audience, because they're not always newspaper readers - podcast listeners tend to be younger - I hold that drop, or twist, until episode four. So you can hold stuff back.

"When making a series, what you're looking for is enough beats of the story, with enough twists and turns, to last you four, to six, to eight episodes."

Spend on podcast advertising up 23% year-on-year

The growth in the podcast industry has led to a growth in spending on podcast advertising. The IAB digital media industry update reported a 23% increase in advertising spending on podcasts compared to 11% for the industry generally.

Though some publishers are concerned that the sensitivity of many true crime topics can put advertisers off, advertising is still a major source of revenue for true crime podcasts.

Declan Moore, head of international at Wondery, told Press Gazette that Wondery was also seeing revenue growth from exclusive subscription offerings.

Moore also stressed the important role of indirect revenue streams, such as live events, merchandise and publishing adaptations.

The Times and Sunday Times told Press Gazette that they hoped Cocaine Inc. would expose their journalism to a wider, more global, female-skewed audience.

Roe told Press Gazette that "the UK market for podcasts is quite small, so there's a lot of growth still to tap into".

He added: "If you can break into the US market, if your stories can translate over there - which I think all stories can do - then that's also a real avenue for growth."

The post Independent production companies dominate true crime podcast rankings in UK 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.

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News Corp has begun taking “legal steps” against unspecified “AI aggressors”, chief executive Robert Thomson revealed as the company published its full-year results for 2023/24.

The Sun, Times, New York Post and Wall Street Journal owner signed a deal with OpenAI, announced in May, that includes the use of content from many of its major newsbrands in the UK, US and Australia in the ChatGPT creator’s large language models.

In its own reporting the WSJ put a value on the deal of more than $250m over five years.

But News Corp remains critical of the practices of other AI companies.

Thomson said in a statement alongside the results: “Our landmark agreement with OpenAI is not only expected to be lucrative, but will enable us to work closely with a trusted, pre-eminent partner to fashion a future for professional journalism and for provenance.

“Meanwhile, we have begun to take legal steps against AI aggressors, the egregious aggregators, who are predatory in the confiscation of our content. ‘Open source’ can never be a justification for ‘open slather.’”

Thomson said the 2023/24 financial year had been “an outstanding year for News Corp, as we not only delivered robust earnings growth and created substantial shareholder value, but took a significant step to prepare the company to prosper in the AI age”.

News Corp reported that revenues in the year ending 30 June were up 2% to $10.09bn (£7.91bn) and total earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up 8% to £1.54bn (£1.2bn).

The growth was attributed to WSJ and Barron’s division Dow Jones as well as News Corp’s real estate and book publishing divisions.

Dow Jones revenues grew by 4% to £2.23bn with EBITDA up 10% to £542m.

News media revenues down at News Corp in 2024

However adjusted revenues in the news media division (which is separate to Dow Jones) were down 4% in the year to £2.19bn – taking them under Dow Jones whereas last year it was the biggest segment in the business.

News Corp said that the $80m (£62.7m) decline included a $20m (£15.7m) positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations.

Advertising revenues saw the biggest decline, down $73m (£57.2m) or 8% year-on-year due to lower print and digital advertising at both News UK and News Corp Australia.

News UK revenues were flat reflecting a 5% positive impact from foreign currency fluctuations, or down 5% in constant currency. Meanwhile News Corp Australia revenues were down 7% due to the advertising decline and a negative impact from currency fluctuations.

News media EBITDA was down 23% to £120m. This includes $6m (£4.7m) of one-off costs at News UK relating to its print operations merger with Mail publisher DMGT with the decline otherwise largely put down to a lower contribution from News Corp Australia.

The Sun online saw a 30% drop in global monthly unique users to 112 million in June 2024 compared to a year earlier, according to Meta Pixel data reported in the results.

Similarly the New York Post’s digital audience was down 19% to 117 million in June.

In the final quarter of the year the company said lower digital advertising was “mainly driven by a decline in traffic at some mastheads due to platform-related changes, partly offset by growth in digital advertising at Wireless Group”.

In the final quarter the company also noted the end to the Meta content licensing deal in Australia as part of the reason for its circulation and subscription revenue decline. The social media company is not renewing its commercial deals with publishers in the country because it claims news is not a priority for its users.

Latest News Corp subscription figures

Barron’s Group saw the biggest growth in digital subscribers among the News Corp properties, reporting a rise of 27% year-on-year to 1.3 million at the end of the financial year.

Overall Barron’s subscribers were up 21% to 1.4 million in the fourth quarter.

The Wall Street Journal is the biggest property within News Corp for subscribers, with digital-only subscriptions up 11% in the year to 3.8 million – 89% of the total subscription number which was up 7% to 4.3 million.

The company said the WSJ growth resulted in circulation revenue growth within Dow Jones of 1%, offset by lower print volumes. Digital accounted for 71% of circulation revenues in the division, up from 69% in 2023.

Meanwhile within Dow Jones advertising revenue was down by 2%, primarily due to a 10% decrease in print advertising and partly offset by a 4% increase in digital advertising. Digital made up 64% of all ad revenues, up from 61% a year ago.

Elsewhere, digital subscriber numbers to The Times, Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement were up 5% to 594,000.

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