Circulation at the UK’s regional daily newspapers was down by an average of 17% year-on-year in the first half of 2024.

This was a slower rate of decline than in the same period a year ago, when the regional dailies audited by ABC were down by an average 20%. And it is slightly higher than in the first half of 2022 (the same period two years ago), when we calculated a 16% fall across the daily market.

Excluding digital editions, the average print circulation decline in the first half of this year was 16%.

Digital editions were steady, going from an average of 11,699 (all paid subscriptions) across ten newspapers in the first half of 2023, to 11,659 this year.

These figures compare with an average monthly audience growth of 33% year-on-year among the top 78 regional news websites in the UK in July, according to Ipsos iris data, as well as a 12% growth in monthly audience minutes.

[Update: UK local news websites see audience bounceback in July 2024]

The newspapers at the top of the table all stayed in the same order. The Belfast-based Irish News remained on top with an average daily circulation of 22,782, down 9% compared to H1 2023, after overtaking the Aberdeen Press & Journal in 2023.

All of the 53 regional daily newspapers included in ABC‘s report reported year-on-year decline. But The Irish News was one of just three to report a single-digit drop. The Southampton Southern Daily Echo (5,767) and Dorset Echo (4,045) were also down by 9%.

The Press & Journal in second place reported an average circulation of 21,765 after a 12% year-on-year drop.

The highest newspaper in the table to drop places was the Manchester Evening News, down from 12th place in H1 2023 to 14th place with a circulation of 6,519. The MEN stopped distributing free copies in 2022 so these were not included in last year or this year’s numbers.

The Yorkshire Post fell below a circulation of 10,000 for the first time, to 9,461 (down 11%).

Only one newspaper saw a decline of more than 30% in the period: the smallest title in the list, the Paisley Daily Express in Scotland, was down 35% to an average 1,233 copies per day.

A further 14 of the daily newspapers saw circulation decline of at least a fifth. The second-highest was the Hull Daily Mail, with a drop of 28% to 4,904.

Thirty, or 57%, of the 53 newspapers included in ABC’s regional daily report for the first half of the year had a circulation below 5,000.

Not all regional daily newspapers are included in the ABC figures, for example the Belfast Telegraph is omitted.

In print, newsstand sales among the dailies audited by ABC were down by 16% while paid subscriptions were down by 13%.

This is how the digital circulations (all paid subscriptions) stack up for the ten daily newspapers that also report them to ABC:

Several Scottish daily newspapers report their circulations each month: see their latest numbers here.

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National World’s website for Manchester has rebranded “with a new purpose and ethos centred on the people of the city” in an attempt to build its own niche in the city.

Manchester World was launched in 2021 as National World created a portfolio of new city websites to go with its legacy titles like the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman acquired when it bought JPI Media at the start of that year.

The Manchester site, which has a team of six, has now rebranded with the new tagline: “Ordinary Mancs, extraordinary stories” as well as a logo inspired by the city’s bee symbol.

Editor Adam Lord told Press Gazette the people of Greater Manchester “will be at the heart of everything we do”, telling stories “from their point of view” and “celebrating” them.

The shift in purpose takes place as Manchester World seeks to find its own niche in a local news market already dominated by the Manchester Evening News (MEN), and supplemented by long-read newsletter start-up the Manchester Mill which has been going since 2020 and has more than 3,200 paying members.

According to Similarweb, the Manchester World website received 770,230 visits in July versus 36.5 million for the Manchester Evening News.

Lord acknowledged it is a “really crowded marketplace in Manchester, and I’m not just talking about the MEN, there’s loads of lifestyle and specialist websites”.

He said: “Obviously, we want to grow the audience. I think part of that is brand awareness. What I would say is that I don’t see the MEN as a competitor. What this is about is finding our place in Manchester, and giving people something different.”

He added: “It’s all good reporting on these major events, but it’s about how it impacts people and what they think about it.”

As well as Lord, Manchester World has two news reporters, a video journalist and journalists covering Manchester United and Manchester City.

He added: “With a smaller team, we can’t cover absolutely everything, which is why I say that trying to compete with the MEN would be folly.”

The relaunch will focus on ensuring that all stories are covered from the perspective of those affected, hoping to complement reporting from other titles, he said.

While National World has given its support to the relaunch, including the new branding coming from its marketing company MNA Digital, Lord said it was a “bottom-up, not top-down” decision.

“It’s always been something I wanted to do, but it’s come from the team and worked its way up. And there’s been a lot of support across the wider National World business for it, which I really appreciate.”

This means the relaunch is not something that will be rolled out to all sister titles as although there is a “big National World umbrella… each brand is effectively its own little enterprise as well”.

Lord said: “I’m grateful that National World have allowed us to try some stuff, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”

Ultimately, Lord said, increasing the site’s brand awareness and audience will have “a commercial impact, positive ones if we get it going in the right direction. But what I would say is that I am keen to grow, potentially, a different kind of audience to what local news has been trying to… I do want to grow a more sustainable audience.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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City AM will provide business and financial news for many of Reach’s biggest newspaper titles including the Daily Express.

The new partnership comes as City AM appoints Christian May as editor-in-chief – a return for the former editor after almost four years away from the newspaper (and journalism).

May will replace Andy Silvester, the former Sun PR chief who joined City AM as May’s deputy editor in September 2019 and then succeeded him in late 2020.

Silvester’s last day as editor was Thursday (18 July) and May will return at the end of August.

The two-year deal between City AM and Reach will see the business newspaper’s content appear online in the Express, Business Live (which will continue its existing regional coverage) and sites in its Live network, plus in print in the Express, Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo.

Reach chief digital publisher David Higgerson said working together with City AM “will give us the opportunity to strengthen our quality business journalism offering across our portfolio, and them the chance to get their content in front of our engaged audiences, both nationally and locally around our strong regional centres”.

Former Daily and Sunday Express business editor Geoff Ho – described as a hero after confronting the London Bridge attack terrorists in 2017 and getting stabbed in the neck – announced on 2 July that he had left the company after 17 years and was now on gardening leave.

City AM chief operating officer Harry Owen said: “This partnership has provided us with an incredible opportunity to combine resources and provide readers with best-in-class journalism that tackles both local and national issues under one roof.

“As a market-leader, Reach is renowned for its regional coverage. The combination of this footprint, THG’s studio capabilities and City AM’s deep understanding of UK business is compelling.”

City AM has ambition to be ‘truly national’ publication

The publisher said the deal “forms a central part” of its “ambition to become a truly national business and finance publication”.

After traditionally sticking to London since its 2005 launch, City AM has this year hired its first UK editor launching a national newsdesk based in Manchester.

It is also moving to a new office in the City of London after outgrowing its current headquarters with growth in editorial and commercial.

City AM has grown its headcount from 40 to 53 since its takeover by online beauty and wellbeing retailer THG in July last year.

It had gone into administration but was rescued by THG in a pre-pack deal and subsequently broke even in the remainder of 2023 following investment in editorial (especially digital and video), commercial and the launch of its first app within six weeks.

Revenue in January to April was up 9% compared to the year before.

Fellow London free print newspaper Evening Standard is dropping its daily edition to go weekly, blaming “shorter commuting weeks, widespread Wi-Fi along our commuting routes and the desire for our readers to consume ever-richer content across a variety of platforms and devices”.

But, just as free newspaper Metro told Press Gazette this week it is profitable in print as well as online after a restructure in the past year, Press Gazette understands City AM has no plans to reduce its print circulation and that it is continuing on the growth trajectory described by Owen in March.

City AM upped its print distribution year-on-year by 1% to 68,112 in June, and kept it steady compared to May. Online the publisher said it gets 2.4 million unique website visitors per month.

Christian May back as City AM editor

May, who was editor from 2015 and through the first part of the Covid-19 pandemic when City AM was forced to take a hiatus from print, has described his time at the title as “the happiest and most rewarding years of my life”.

“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,” he said, after a period back in PR/consultancy with Teneo, 5654 & Company and Hawthorn. For his first stint as editor he was plucked from the comms team at the Institute of Directors, a group for business leaders, aged 28 without any full-time journalism experience.

Owen added: “We have an ambitious plan for City AM’s future and Christian’s experience and track record will help ensure we deliver on those ambitions.

“Our newsroom is bigger than ever, and growing, while commercial innovation and investment continue to transform the business. Christian will lead a dynamic editorial team of journalists and will play a key role in serving our readers across the country, growing our audience and supporting the business on its next stage of growth.”

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More than 100 journalists and media industry leaders have signed a letter to UK police chiefs asking them to “do everything you can to break the cycle of abuse that risks sidelining women from journalism”.

The letter, led by Reach, Women in Journalism and Reporters Without Borders, asked three police representatives on the Government-coordinated National Committee for the Safety of Journalists to take action in four ways that could help “secure a safer future for women working in journalism in the UK”.

Scroll down to see the full letter and list of who signed it

The journalists fear that a “significant” increase in online abuse against women in journalism over the past decade could impact media freedom and diversity by making them want to leave the industry.

Research conducted by Women in Journalism and Reach last year found that 18% of around 400 women journalists who responded had considered leaving the media industry altogether as a result of abuse and threats online.

The letter, sent on Friday to mark International Women’s Day, said improving the recording of crimes against journalists and whether attacks are as a result of their work would help reveal the scale of the problem and, as a result, allow effective responses to be found and social media platforms to be held to account.

It also asked for these statistics to be regularly reported back to the committee and government.

It asked for national guidance and training for police to be issued so they can understand the “gendered nature of online violence, the connections between online and physical violence, and best practice in dealing with such crimes”.

Finally it called for better dialogue between police forces and journalists “to ensure attacks can be quickly reported and effectively dealt with and perpetrators held to account”.

National newspaper editors to have signed the letter include ex-Women in Journalism chair and former Mirror editor Alison Phillips who left the newspaper group a month ago and her successor Caroline Waterston, the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People’s Gemma Aldridge, The Guardian’s Katharine Viner, The Observer’s Paul Webster, Chris Evans at The Telegraph, Tony Gallagher at The Times, Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton, Reach Scotland editor-in-chief David Dick and Gary Jones at the Express.

Broadcasters showing support include Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford, who last week coordinated a separate letter calling for international journalists to be allowed into the Gaza Strip, Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman and international correspondent Lindsey Hilsum, ITV News presenters Julie Etchingham and Mary Nightingale and political editor Robert Peston, and BBC disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring – who alone is the target of more than 80% of online abuse flagged within the BBC.

Editors of regional brands across Reach and Newsquest, including the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and Belfast Live, are also represented.

Also signing was Women in Journalism chair and ITN chief executive Rachel Corp, who said in an interview around mental health this week: “Unfortunately, there are still things which are harder for women as journalists, particularly around online safety and the kind of abuse people can receive.”

Reach is the biggest commercial news publisher in the UK and unusually has an online safety editor working to support staff and work on internal and external measures to try and crack down on abuse. The third partner behind the letter, Reporters Without Borders, has published multiple reports about online harassment and sexism affecting journalists.

Full letter sent to police chiefs:

Violence against women working in journalism in the UK has increased significantly over the past decade, much of it conducted online. While all journalists may be subject to online abuse, women are far more likely to experience gendered attacks: recent research showed that three-quarters of women working in the UK journalism and media industries had experienced rape or death threats, harassment, stalking, misogyny or sexual approaches online in connection to their work.

We are deeply concerned about the impact of online violence on media freedom and diversity. Research conducted by the UK’s largest commercial publisher Reach Plc and Women in Journalism (1) found women were leaving front-line jobs in journalism and minimising their online profiles in order to avoid online violence against them. There is also compelling evidence (2) to show that women of colour, women who openly share their faith, LGBTQ+ women, women with disabilities, and women from working class backgrounds are significantly more likely to experience violence and hate online. The chilling effect of online violence – likely to get worse as we head towards elections – stifles press freedom and creates spaces for disinformation to thrive; it also risks making journalism less diverse at a time it needs more than ever to be representative.

We are also worried about the impact on individuals. Women journalists who experience serious online violence, such as stalking, death or rape threats, or receiving unsolicited pornographic content from anonymous accounts, report long-term impacts on their professional and personal lives, including depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder. There is a growing awareness of the link between online and physical violence; fear that online attacks may lead to ‘real-life’ attacks is palpable among those who experience violence online.

Yet despite the rise in online violence, there are worrying inconsistencies in the way police handle, record and respond to online crimes against women journalists nationwide. Women journalists reporting online crimes to police often feel their case is quickly dismissed, or that their fears are perceived as an overreaction – a fact which adds to their trauma and makes it all the more likely they will leave the profession.

We need to stop this cycle. The cycle of women feeling unsafe in their work. The cycle of women feeling unheard. We need to secure a safer future for women working in journalism in the UK.

So today, on International Women’s Day, we come together to ask you – as police representatives charged with working on the safety of journalists – to work with us for change. We have four simple asks which could make a world of difference to our industry both now and in the future:

• Improve the recording of crimes against journalists. Accurate reporting – including clearly recording when attacks are related to a journalist’s work – is essential if we are to understand the scale of the problem, formulate effective responses and hold social media platforms to account.
• Provide national-level guidance for police on online violence against journalists, and training on the gendered nature of online violence, the connections between online and physical violence, and best practice in dealing with such crimes.
• Report back to government. As police representatives on the National Committee for the Safety of Journalists, we call on you to regularly report back figures of crimes against journalists to the Committee.
• Improve dialogue between police and industry. Police forces should establish direct and effective channels of communication with journalists and representative bodies to ensure attacks can be quickly reported and effectively dealt with and perpetrators held to account.

Today, we as journalists and media leaders join Reporters Without Borders UK, Women in Journalism and Reach Plc to ask you to do everything you can to break the cycle of abuse that risks sidelining women from journalism. Let’s work together to break the cycle and secure a safer future for women working in journalism.

Full list of signatories on the letter:

1. Alex Crawford – Foreign correspondent, Sky News
2. Alex Stepney – Policy and External Affairs Director, News UK
3. Alison Gow – Media consultant
4. Alison Phillips – Journalist
5. Andrew Colley – Regional Editor, Newsquest Cumbria
6. Anna Highfield – Senior News Reporter, Architects’ Journal
7. Anthony Baxter – Deputy Managing Editor, LBC Newsgathering
8. Antonella Mulè – Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Reach
9. Anu Anand – Journalist
10. Benedicte Paviot – France 24´s UK Correspondent
11. Carole Cadwalladr – Journalist, The Guardian and The Observer
12. Caroline Waterston – Editor, Mirror
13. Catherine Philp – World Affairs Editor, The Times
14. Cathy Newman – Presenter, Channel 4 News
15. Chris Evans – Editor, The Telegraph
16. Christina Lamb – Chief Foreign Correspondent, Sunday Times
17. Clothilde Redfern – Director, Rory Peck Trust
18. Colin Hume – Head of Learning & Development, National World
19. Daisy Wyatt – Associate Editor, The Daily Express
20. Daniel Gorman – Director, English PEN
21. David Dick – Editor In Chief (Scotland), Reach Plc
22. David Higgerson – Chief Digital Publisher, Reach Plc
23. Dawn Alford – Executive Director, Society of Editors
24. Deborah Bonetti – Director, Foreign Press Association in London
25. Dhruti Shah – Freelance Journalist
26. Dominic Ponsford – Editor-in-Chief, Press Gazette
27. Donna Ferguson – Award-winning freelance journalist
28. Donna-Louise Bishop – Specialist reporter (obituaries), Newsquest
29. Dr Maja Šimunjak – Senior Lecturer in Journalism
30. Dylan Jones – Editor-In-Chief, Evening Standard
31. Edd Moore – Audience and Content Director, South West, Reach plc
32. Eoin Brannigan – Editor-in-Chief, Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life
33. Fiona O’Brien – UK Director, Reporters Without Borders
34. Fleur Launspach – UK correspondent Dutch national news NOS
35. Gary Jones – Editor, Daily Express and Sunday Express
36. Gavin Foster – Editor, Northern Echo
37. Gavin Thompson – Regional Editor, Newsquest Wales
38. Gemma Aldridge – Editor, Sunday Mirror and The People
39. Graeme Brown – Editor, Birmingham Mail and BirminghamLive
40. Hanna Geissler – Health Editor, Daily Express
41. Hannah Storm – Media Safety Consultant and Co-Director, Headlines Network
42. Helen Dalby – Audience and Content Director, Reach
43. Hilly Janes – Associate Lecturer, Media School, London College of Communication
44. James Brindle – Chief Executive Officer, The Journalists’ Charity
45. James Evelegh – Editor, InPublishing
46. James Harding – Editor and Founder, Tortoise Media
47. Jenny Kean – Writer and researcher
48. Jessica Ní Mhainín – Policy and Campaigns Manager, Index on Censorship
49. Jodie Ginsberg – CEO, Committee to Protect Journalists
50. John Crowley – Editor, FT
51. John Wilson – Editor, Hereford Times, Newsquest
52. Jonathan Paterson – Managing Director, The News Movement
53. Joy Yates – Regional Editor, Newsquest Cumbria
54. Julie Etchingham – Anchor, ITV News at Ten
55. Karin Goodwin – Co-editor and Journalist, The Ferret
56. Karyn Fleeting – Delivery Director, Reach Plc
57. Katharine Viner – Editor in Chief, Guardian News & Media
58. Katie French – Regional Editor, Newsquest
59. Leona O’Neill – Journalist
60. Liam Fisher – Head of talkSPORT
61. Lindsey Hilsum – International Editor, Channel 4 News
62. Lisa Bradley – Deputy Head of Journalism, University of Sheffield
63. Liz Green – Journalist, broadcaster
64. Liz Nice – Editor
65. Marcela Kunova – Editor, Journalism.co.uk
66. Maria Boyle – Luxury travel writer and PR director
67. Maria Breslin – Editor, Liverpool Echo
68. Marianna Spring – Disinformation and social media correspondent, BBC
69. Martin Little – Audience Transformation Director, Reach Plc
70. Mary Nightingale – Presenter, ITV Evening News
71. Michael Adkins – Senior Editor, Newsquest
72. Michela Wrong – Journalist and Author
73. Michelle Stanistreet – NUJ General Secretary
74. Natalie Fahy – Editor, Nottinghamshire Live
75. Nic Keaney – Managing Editor
76. Owen Meredith – CEO, News Media Association
77. Patricia Devlin – Investigative Journalist
78. Patrick Ward – Print ACE
79. Paul Caruana Galizia – Reporter, Tortoise Media
80. Paul Linford – Publisher, HoldtheFrontPage
81. Paul Webster – Editor, The Observer
82. Professor Julie Posetti – Global Director of Research, International Center for Journalists; Professor of Journalism, City, University of London.
83. Rachel Corp – CEO for ITN and Chair of Women in Journalism
84. Rana Rahimpour – Freelance Iranian-British journalist
85. Rebecca Whittington – Online Safety Editor, Reach
86. Richard Duggan – Regional Editor North West, Newsquest
87. Richard Porritt – Regional Editor, Newsquest
88. Richard Reeves – CEO, AOP (Association of Online Publishers)
89. Richard Wallace – Head of TV, News UK
90. Robert Peston – Journalist
91. Rodney Edwards – Editor, The Impartial Reporter
92. Ruth Hardy-Mullings – Head of Content
93. Sangita Myska – Journalist & LBC Radio Presenter
94. Sarah Collins – Editor at talkSPORT
95. Sarah Lester – Editor, Manchester Evening News
96. Sarah Macdonald – Founder/Director Make Waves Ltd
97. Sharmeen Ziauddin – Editor in Chief, She Speaks We Hear
98. Sheena McStravick – Editor, Belfast Live
99. Simon Murfitt – Senior Editor, Newsquest London
100. Simon Pitts – Chief Executive, STV
101. Sonya Thomas – Freelance Journalist and Writer
102. Sophia Smith Galer – Freelance Journalist and Content Creator
103. Steffan Rhys – Editor, WalesOnline
104. Tim Lethaby – Regional Editor, Newsquest South West
105. Tim Levell – Programme Director, Times Radio
106. Toby Granville – Editorial Development Director, Newsquest
107. Tony Gallagher – Editor, The Times
108. Victoria Macdonald – Health and Social Care Editor
109. Victoria Newton – Editor-in-Chief, The Sun
110. Wayne Ankers – Editor, YorkshireLive
111. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Journalist, Columnist, Author

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Bosses at Reach and Newsquest have responded to a claim from the founder of the Manchester Mill newsletter start-up that quality “obviously hasn’t” been maintained in UK local media.

However Reach chief digital publisher David Higgerson and Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker left Lords Communications and Digital Committee chair Baroness Tina Stowell “a bit baffled by the picture that you’re painting about the success of your businesses, when the challenge seems to be around the quality of content”.

Joshi Herrmann, who founded the Manchester Mill on newsletter platform Substack in 2020 and has since expanded into Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham, told the committee, which is examining the future of news, on Tuesday: “I think the larger question of how has quality been maintained in local media generally is that it obviously hasn’t.

“In the local town near where my mum lives in Sussex, there used to be two local newspapers, both of which had an office on the high street… Now, there is one newspaper and it doesn’t have any local coverage to speak of. There might be one story about the local town. The rest of it will be aggregated from other local communities where the same large news organisation owns other titles.

“It is effectively a zombie newspaper. It says it is about one town, but in fact it is just got content and stories from all over the country and from all over the county. So quality hasn’t been maintained. If you go on the websites of local newspapers, you will find all sorts of stories that are not journalism and they’re not local, and you’ll find so many ads covering that content that it’s very difficult to read.”

Reach: ‘We do a lot of journalism nobody else does’

Reach content chief Higgerson told the committee he has worked in local journalism for 25 years and “there has been one constant in the fact that there has always been a sizeable proportion of the public who have been ready to dismiss what we do”.

“But I would point out that we do an awful lot of journalism which, frankly, nobody else does.”

Citing three examples in markets that have been entered by Mill Media, Higgerson continued: “If you look, for example, in Manchester at the success of the MEN uncovering the scandal of Awaab Ishak’s housing in Rochdale, that story only gained the traction that it did because of weeks of spadework by the Manchester Evening News and the fact the initial story was read by 150,000 people.

“You look in Liverpool, the tireless work that [political editor] Liam Thorp did to uncover the councillors who were taking an interesting approach to their parking tickets… or indeed the fact that Birmingham Live, previously, Birmingham Mail, continues to campaign for the victims of Birmingham pub bombings. All of that is made possible by doing a very broad mix of content.

“It’s very easy to pick sort of slivers of content on websites and say that’s not local news, or that’s not quality journalism, but pick up any local newspaper from the 80s or the 90s and you’ll see the same broad mix of content in those metro dailies, as you see on our websites today.”

Newsquest CEO: ‘I’m optimistic about the next five years’

Newsquest‘s Faure Walker said he was “more optimistic about the next five years than the previous ten or 15. I think we’ll see a bit more stability, although I think it will continue to be challenging”.

Citing the loss of classified advertising and a hefty chunk of display advertising to Google and Facebook, the CEO said: “But you can’t lose that revenue twice… we’re now down to a more stable core of advertising.” Half of Newsquest’s advertising revenue now comes from digital and it also has a growing digital subscriptions business.

Faure Walker said Newsquest’s revenues were up 3% in 2022, down 3% last year and “pretty flat” so far in 2024 saying that is stable over the past two and a bit years.

“I am confident and I’ve worked in the industry for a long time. I’m more confident than I ever have been in the last 22 years about the prospects for publishers, whether that’s Joshi’s business, or my business or another start-up business in large population markets,” he said.

Faure Walker also noted that although Newsquest has had to “lay off a significant amount of staff, particularly in editorial over the past ten years” they have not made “any meaningful editorial reductions over the last three years”.

[Read more: Newsquest CEO Henry Faure Walker on bucking the trend of regional press decline]

However, he acknowledged: “To be clear I don’t think we’re saying that it’s all roses. I think it’s still challenging, but I think we’re saying there’s more stability than perhaps the public narrative. I think the industry does a poor job of communicating. So I think there are a lot of detractors. It’s easy to throw stones at the industry. But there is a lot of good work going on.”

He cited, for example, Newsquest’s growing loyal audience – now its key metric over page views.

“So the public, the consumers of local news, yes, they may be irritated from time to time with the advertising, they might not like always what we do, but they are coming increasingly back to our sites and the audiences are very, very phenomenal.”

For example, in York about 75% of the adult population visits the York Press website each month, he said, and about 20% of the population comes back more than 15 times a month.

But it will be “more challenging going forward in smaller and medium-sized markets” than larger cities, Faure Walker added. “So I’m more relaxed about the outlook for larger cities and journalism there given the scale of markets.”

He also said: “…in terms of maintaining the quality, I would say that we are doing so.”

‘No hostility’ between MEN and Manchester Mill bosses

Despite his criticism, Herrmann said he had “no hostility” towards his fellow panellists.

Told by a peer on the committee that he “looked extremely annoyed” by answers given by his “rivals” Higgerson and Faure Walker, Herrmann said: “I wasn’t annoyed and we’re not rivals. We’re all trying to create good quality local journalism in an environment that’s very difficult. There’s no hostility whatsoever.

“I think that an important aspect of this is reality though – being honest about the situation that we’re in… there’s no point pretending that it’s in good shape because it’s in terrible shape. It’s in the worst shape it’s ever been since the advent of newspapers.

“So I don’t think there’s any hostility here. I think there’s a difference in how we’re portraying what’s going on.”

Quoting Press Gazette research he said: “I think 6,000 fewer local journalists down from 9,000 in 2007 is a remarkable drop off in capacity. And I think it should signal alarm bells definitely across Westminster that we have got this incredibly important industry that is dying and I’m sceptical about any attempt to pretend that’s not happening because we can see this happening.”

[Read more: Colossal decline of UK regional media since 2007 revealed]

Similarly, Higgerson said: “When he [Herrmann] first launched the Manchester Mill the journalists at the Manchester Evening News were pleased to see more journalism in Manchester. I don’t think either myself or Henry have set out to say everything’s rosy nor do I shirk away from the fact that we have had to reduce the size of our newsrooms, exit some markets over recent years.

“Our starting point is the same as anybody else on the panel which is we want to employ as many local journalists as possible and that’s why as we came out of the pandemic, we thought things would be better than they would be which is why we hired 200 more and we have expanded multiple times over the last decade into into new areas.”

In July 2021 Reach said it employed more journalists than it did pre-Covid in 2019 and that by the end of the year it would employ more than at any point in the previous decade. But since then it has had to make hundreds of job cuts, with more than 700 roles cut last year.

Both Higgerson and Faure Walker rejected a peer’s suggestion that their companies were “the lame ducks of the communications revolution”.

Higgerson said: “I think we’d be a lame duck if people weren’t reading what we were writing and we’re read by record numbers of people now… I definitely wouldn’t say that we’re, a lame duck and definitely wouldn’t say that we ignore what’s happened over the last 20 years.

“I think probably it’s the fact that we look at what happened over the last 20 years so much that makes us so determined to keep changing so that we can get to a place where we are hiring more journalists to have more people on the ground.”

Local news bosses address ‘ad clutter’

Higgerson and Faure Walker also addressed the “ad clutter” that can lead to complaints of poor usability and readability on the major regional news websites.

Higgerson said this issue was why Reach has begun offering paid-for ad-free experiences at some of its titles including the apps for the Manchester Evening News and the Liverpool Echo.

He said Reach hears complaints about usability “regularly” but “those are the ads that fund the journalism” and “we think it’s very important that the news is, free, or more important, freely available”.

In a lot of the towns and cities served by Reach, he said, “People are choosing between whether they can afford to heat their homes or eat the food. The idea of debating whether they pay for a news subscription is largely academic to them”.

And Faure Walker said: “We’ve obviously got to monetise the content so we have to serve advertising. There is a lot of discussion going certainly in my business at how we can improve user experience. We’ve moved quite significantly to digital subscriptions to do that.

“And similar to David, and I think other publishers are following suit, the choice I think will increasingly become you can read our content for free, but you have to put up with quite a lot of advertising clutter, but we’ve got to pay our journalists. But if you would like an ad-light or an ad-free environment, then you need to take a digital subscription for £5 a month.

“So I think the industry is moving in that direction but it certainly hasn’t got it right in terms of user experience as we stand today.”

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Twenty-two of the UK’s 50 biggest regional and local news websites saw year-on-year growth in audience in September, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.

Fastest-growing was Iliffe Media’s Kent Online whose audience was up 610% year-on-year to 2.4 million people, according to data from Ipsos iris. A significant part of this growth will however, be due to the fact that Kent Online moved to tagged reporting data in August 2023. The website was previously reported based on observed panel behaviour, which means audience figures can vary significantly month to month.

Reach’s Devon Live led the brands with double-digit audience growth, with unique visitors up 59% year-on-year to 2.2 million.

It was followed by Reach stablemate Cambridgeshire Live (up 51%, audience of 1.5 million) and Newsquest’s Bradford title The Telegraph and Argus (640,931, 47%).

Two other Reach titles – Bristol Live (audience of 4.7 million, up 41%) and Gloucestershire Live (1.7 million, up 39%) – completed the list of the top five fastest-growing brands.

Biggest local news websites: Reach brands take the ten top spots

Reach also dominated the top of the table when ranked by audience size, taking all of the top ten places.

Manchester Evening News (the MEN) was the UK’s largest regional newsbrand reaching 11 million people in September – 22% of the UK online population over 15.

Second-ranked was Birmingham Live (10.3 million people, 21% reach), overtaking Liverpool Echo (7.8 million people, 16% reach) which fell to third place from second, where it sat in April for Press Gazette's last ranking of this data.

These three regional news websites regularly feature alongside national and international brands in Press Gazette’s monthly ranking of the biggest 50 news websites in the UK by audience size.

The trio were among five regional newsbrands that reached more than one in ten UK online adults in September - along with Reach's local news aggregator In Your Area (4.9 million people, reach of 10%) and Newcastle-based Chronicle Live (4.8 million, also 10% reach).

Bristol Live (4.69 million people), Yorkshire Live (4.6 million), My London (3.68 million), Nottinghamshire Live (3.3 million) and Lancs Live (2.56 million) were the remainder of the top ten list of biggest regional newsbrands by audience size. None of the ten biggest saw year-on-year audience growth.

The best-ranked non-Reach brand was Kent Online (rank eleven), owned by Iliffe subsidiary KM Media Group. It was almost half a million people (487,709) ahead of the next-best-ranked non-Reach property, Yorkshire Post. The National World-owned brand reached 1.9 million people and was ranked in 14th place.

For our list, we used Ipsos’ ranking of the top online brand groups and selected the 50 biggest "local" newsbrands. We excluded sub-national brands such as Wales Online and Daily Record, which cover the entirety of one of the UK’s constituent nations.

Of the 31 Reach-owned titles in our ranking, ten recorded a year-on-year increase in audience while 21 recorded a decline, according to Ipsos’ data. This is slightly fewer than April, when all but seven Reach newsbrands shed audience.

Leicestershire Live (1.3 million, down 62%), Edinburgh Live (1.3 million, down 43%) and Edinburgh Live (1.3 million, down 43%) saw the largest drops overall in September.

Reach Plc’s latest trading update in October noted that digital revenue continued to be impacted by "the well-publicised declining digital referral volumes, in particular from Facebook’s de-prioritisation of news".

Of the 19 newsbrands owned by other publishers, seven saw smaller audiences compared to last September, one saw its audience unchanged (National World’s Sheffield Star), while 11 grew their audiences.

Five of the titles that saw year-on-year growth were owned by National World. They included Sussex World (1 million people, up 38%), Portsmouth’s The News (1 million, up 30%), Belfast News Letter (648,669, up 26%), Lancashire Post (808,214, up 23%) and The Yorkshire Evening Post (1.5 million, up 18%), all of which saw double-digit growth.

While the digital picture was mixed, it tells a more positive story than print circulation of regional titles. Local daily newspaper sales in the UK fell by an average of 21% year-on-year in the first half of 2023 and each of the 53 titles reporting to ABC reported circulation declines.

MEN and Liverpool Echo lead on total time spent while Iliffe and Newsquest titles score well for page views

Engagement revealed a mixed picture. Of the 50 brands on our list, 19 saw a year-on-year increase in page views.

Top of the list was Kent Online (25 million page views, up 202% year-on-year), although this growth was also in part linked to the move to tagging. It was followed by South Wales Argus (3.6 million, up 106%) and Lancashire Post (4.1 million, up 60%).

Looking at total time spent, the MEN (73 million minutes) and Liverpool Echo (39.8 million minutes) came out ahead, although both saw double-digit year-on-year falls in minutes spent with their content of 14% and 26% respectively.

Reach's In Your Area and Newsquest's Telegraph & Argus led for average minutes per user, both on 7.3 minutes.

Ipsos iris replaced Comscore as the industry-recognised standard in 2021. Ipsos iris data is partly derived from a panel of 10,000 people aged 15 and over that is designed to be nationally representative. The participants have meters installed across 25,000 personal devices to passively measure website and app usage.

This data is combined with data from participating websites that are tagged so all devices visiting the site can be identified and logged.

Publishers often have their own internal audience metrics, which can result in different figures. Press Gazette uses Ipsos for its UK news audience ranking stories to be able to compare across publishers.

From January 2022 Ipsos increased the sources of embedded browser traffic (web content viewed within a mobile app) counted in its data. Its monthly data now includes webpages consumed within other mobile app embedded browsers such as Linkedin, Twitter, Google News and Instagram, as well as Facebook which has been counted in its data since 2021. Ipsos has also updated its total internet population figures to align with the latest Pamco survey estimates.

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Unlike the days of print, there’s no physical limit to how much content a news outlet can publish on the web.

Given that the internet offers newsrooms the possibility to publish thousands of stories a day, how do the UK’s top news outlets compare when it comes to how much they put online and what they choose to write about?

Press Gazette tracked the content published to the RSS feeds of eight major UK news sites over a week between 13 and 19 September. While the amount of content varies depending on the time of the year, the number of reporters available and the intensity of the news agenda, we wanted to get a snapshot of what the UK’s biggest newsrooms produce in a week.

The sites selected were partly based on whether we could find comprehensive RSS feeds. The BBC total is for its national news sites in the UK.

Mail Online published the most content of any of the newsrooms we looked at. Between 13 and 19 September, Mail Online published an average of 1,490 stories each day – or 1,640 stories per weekday and 14 stories per hour between Monday and Friday.

On Saturday and Sunday the publisher published an average of 1,114 articles per day. Most newsrooms have fewer reporters on duty during weekends. Mail owner DMGT said in 2020 that it published around 1,700 stories a day across the whole business.

The high content strategy appears to be working. There were 392 million visits globally to dailymail.co.uk in September according to Similarweb, making it the fifth most popular English language news website in the world and the most popular UK-based commercial news publisher globally.

Mail Online was far ahead by publication frequency among the news outlets in our snapshot. Its closest competitor was the Mirror, which published an average of 981 articles each weekday (898 over the whole week).

Fellow Reach title Manchester Evening News published an average of 160 articles each day on Monday to Friday, coming in seventh among the titles in our sample.

A note on methodology: Press Gazette tracked as many RSS feeds that we could identify for each publisher on our list and used these to capture details of the articles published during the week of our research in a spreadsheet. While we tried to ensure that we included all published articles, it is possible that some RSS feeds and therefore articles might have been missed. Duplicate articles that appeared in more than one feed were removed.

Some major publishers, such as The Sun, were excluded as we could not find a comprehensive enough RSS feed sample. Meanwhile it is worth noting that the BBC's data includes its reporting from across the four regions: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Press Gazette contacted all the publishers included in our dataset to give them an opportunity to review our data. Only The Guardian chose to comment.

If you think that you could improve our data in any way, please email aisha.majid@ns-mediagroup.com.

Despite the possibility of publishing literally hundreds, if not thousands, of articles each day, some publishers have deliberately focused on cutting down the amount of content they produce.

[Read more: Charted: The biggest news topics of summer 2023]

Why less is more for The Guardian

The Guardian was fourth among the websites we looked at in terms of the amount of content published during the week, with an average of 400 articles on a weekday and 373 daily pieces across seven days. But it said it has cut back its content in recent years.

Chris Moran, head of editorial innovation at Guardian News and Media, told Press Gazette that in 2016 the publisher looked at its output to assess whether it was publishing too much journalism.

"The factors involved here included in particular whether we were publishing more than we were able to meaningfully show to readers," said Moran.

"This project led us to look carefully at the whole process of commissioning and set up processes which continue to this day. Ultimately we cut back our content by just over a third and, taking into account the volatility of the news cycle, our output has remained broadly steady ever since."

Claire Phipps, The Guardian’s digital editor (live) , added that the number of articles the title publishes varies according to the UK and global news agenda.

"Over the last decade there has been a significant growth in the amount of online journalism we publish including live blogs, video and audio," Phipps said. "The digital teams are careful to ensure that our audience can always find the journalism and information that they need, but aren't overwhelmed with what's available.

"We sometimes make a conscious choice to publish fewer stories and instead find ways to help readers access the stories we think are most important. This may be through explainers, summaries or regularly updated 'catch-up' articles."

Celebrity vs world news: What topics featured the most

It was not possible to categorise articles using the same topics across different outlets as publishers broke down their RSS feeds in different ways. The BBC for example groups many articles by which part of the world they cover. Even with this in mind, it is possible to get an idea of where publishers focus their efforts.

During the week covered by the study, the bulk of articles published by Mail Online were categorised as "News" (18% of articles in our sample) or "Latest" (17%), which cover a variety of genres. However, TV and showbiz also featured strongly (12%) as did articles from the Daily Mail’s US (12%) and Australian editions (10%).

Like Mail Online, much of the Mirror’s content was grouped under its front page feed (covering top stories) and news, however, sport (making up 12% of articles captured during the week) and its 3am celebrity news section (10%) also accounted for significant amounts of articles.

At The Guardian, while most stories were grouped under the homepage and top stories feeds (53%) which cover everything from economy to sports, world news also featured heavily accounting for 13% of stories.

Correction: this story was amended on 3 November to revise down the Guardian's output which had mistakenly been duplicated in the dataset.

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Reach has expanded its experiments with reader revenue to diversify away from its heavy reliance on advertising, which has seen an industry-wide decline, and build relationships with its most loyal readers.

It has now launched premium options on three fronts: apps with metered paywalls, paid-for newsletters on Substack, and a paid-for, ad-free offering on the Daily Express website.

However Reach’s overall strategy is to continue to keep its content free online.

Martin Little, audience transformation director at Reach, told Press Gazette it “has come about from just listening to our audience. Ultimately, we provide free content, that’s a business strategy and we fund that through advertising predominantly. But this is about giving our readers a different way to consume our sites.”

The company’s customer value strategy has seen it gain 13.5 million registered users across its national and regional news portfolio.

“We’re looking to diversify revenues and open up reader revenue as an option for us as a business in a way we hadn’t before, and doing that through premium experiences… it’s a natural segue for the customer value strategy to start to open up different experience-based stuff which allows people to enjoy our brands, enjoy our content, in a different way.”

He added that advertising remains “at the heart of our strategy” and will continue to be “the lion’s share” of revenue.

“But ultimately we’ve got a segment of our audience who are saying we are willing to pay for a better time on your brands and we’re listening to that.”

Premium apps: 1%+ of MEN app audience already converted

The first step on the Reach’s new reader-revenue journey was in June when a metered paywall was launched on the Manchester Evening News and Manchester United apps. The Liverpool Echo and Liverpool FC apps have since followed, with a “rapid uptick” in the number of premium apps being launched in the next four to six weeks, according to Little.

The two news apps, which cost £19.99 per year or £2.99 per month, give readers 25 free articles a week for free, while on the football apps the meter is set at ten articles. The football audience has proved “absolutely critical to driving” the new strategy.

Little said these meters were set to balance consumption trends and the fact that they “don’t want to scare people off. We want people still in these apps.”

Little said the MEN app has already converted more than 1% of its audience to become subscribers “which we’re quite happy with”.

“For context I’d say for instance if you look at other publishers who are behind very hard paywalls [they] convert 3-4% of their registered audience base.” He added that, in comparison, the MEN still has a free website alongside the paid-for app. “The app is all about the experience.”

“There’s definitely a demand from our loyal users – you’ve got lots of people who just come to your sites once or twice a month, and you’ve got those who come twice a day, three times a day,” Little said. “Those are the ones who really are looking for better experiences with us and the most loyal ones are the most important ones for this rollout.”

Newsletters: ‘Strong personalities’ work

Since July, Reach has launched about 12 paid-for newsletters, all on Substack. “Again, we’re really keen to get more of those up and running in the future,” Little said referring to the weeks and months ahead.

These are based around some of the group’s “strong personalities” rather than on a brand-by-brand basis. “It’s about who do we have who’s got a real influence in that space, who people will listen to and want to hear from on a regular basis,” Little added.

Some of the launches so far include:

• Bake On Bake Off, written by Surrey Live What’s On writer Laura Nightingale, had been going since 2021 but moved to a paid-for Substack model in July
• Spurs with Alasdair Gold, written by Football London’s Tottenham Hotspur correspondent
• Earth Watch, written by the Mirror’s environment editor Nada Farhoud who tells readers: “By supporting this newsletter you are helping to fund environmental investigative journalism, vital in this time of a climate emergency.”

Reach chose to use Substack because it has already proved to be a successful platform for many newsletter writers and it is “easy to get up and running”, Little said.

Although the content in these newsletters is behind a paywall, Reach also separately sends out free versions of them featuring more links to sites around the group, while the column-style content also goes in the apps.

Express Premium taps into ‘incredibly passionate audience base’

About three weeks ago the Daily Express website launched the option for readers to pay for an ad-free experience. It costs £19.99 per year or £2.99 a month, the same price as the premium apps.

Little said the Express had been chosen to trial the premium option because of its “incredibly passionate audience base – they really believe what the Express stands for”.

He said this was demonstrated by the commenting volume on the site: comments on the Express make up almost half of all comments across the entire Reach group, which also includes the Mirror, Daily Star and Daily Record brands.

“That level of engagement made us think, okay, that’s got the potential to try something.”

Little said it was too soon to confirm whether other brands might offer the same option as the Express, but that “anything is possible”.

‘Newsrooms love’ reader revenue experiments

Little said these three experiments may ultimately be brought more closely together, perhaps offering users the ability to mix and match a bit more, but at the moment they are separate elements to the overall direction of travel.

“Naturally what we’re going to want to do is bring all this together and package it up appropriately in time, but for the moment it’s very much about learning.”

The journalists involved, Little said, are very positive about the experiments as they can think: “I hit the mass audience at the same time as really making sure that people who come to me every day get to read it in the best format they can in the way they want to.”

He added: “It’s very exciting, the newsrooms love it. We have journalists who create great content every day, they know how to get their content out to as many people as possible. This has given them something else to get their teeth into and learn about and understand more about the audience so it’s been really enjoyable, and hopefully we’ll just keep pushing it.”

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Circulation of the UK’s regional print daily newspapers fell by an average of 21% year-on-year in the first six months of 2023, according to the latest ABC figures.

The overall average decline is calculated on the basis of the combined average circulation of the 53 daily titles that have reported data for both the January to June period in 2022 and 2023. At the time of publishing, the report for the Oldham Times had not yet been published on the ABC website.

Excluding digital copies, print circulation alone fell by a combined 21%.

This decline represents an increase on the same period last year, when we reported on a 16% average drop year-on-year.

Each of the 53 titles individually also reported a circulation decline. It should be noted that not all UK regional dailies are audited by ABC.

Belfast-based Irish News saw the smallest decline of 8% (circulation of 25,010) followed by National World’s The Scotsman (8,249, down 10%).

This meant Irish News became the UK’s top-selling regional newspaper, displacing the long-running leader DC Thomson’s Aberdeen-based Press & Journal into second place (circulation of 24,852, down 13% year-on-year). The Press & Journal had been on top of the ranking since 2018.

Third best-selling title was Dundee’s The Courier also published by DC Thomson (19,264, down 13%) while fourth was Newsquest’s Eastern Daily Press (13,907, down 15%).

Manchester Evening News reported the largest circulation decline, as average circulation fell by 59% to 8,344 compared to the same six-month period last year.

The reduction was due to Reach’s decision to end free copies of the Manchester Evening News (as well as its free Manchester Weekly News) as a result of rising newsprint costs and the brand's large online presence making the outlay unnecessary. Free copies accounted for just under half of its print circulation from January to June 2022.

The paid-for circulation of the Manchester Evening News fell by 24%, from an average of 10,911 in the first half of 2022 compared to 8,344 in 2023.

Hull Daily Mail (average circulation of 6,813 per issue, down 33% year-on-year), Coventry Telegraph (3,681, down 33%), Teesside Gazette (5,640, down 31%), Plymouth’s The Herald (4,449, down 31%), Paisley Daily Express (1,890, down 31%) and Nottingham Post (4,570, down 30%) - all owned by Reach - all saw circulation declines of over 30%.

Hull Daily Mail, The Herald and Teesside Gazette similarly saw the biggest circulation drops in 2022.

Newsstand and subscription sales both down by a fifth

Free copies saw the largest decline among the different types of circulation. Combined average circulation of free copies was down 81% to 2,467, driven largely by the ending of free copies of the Manchester Evening News.

Only four daily titles reporting to ABC continue to provide free copies: the Shropshire Star, Express and Star, Dorset Echo and Brighton’s The Argus.

The bulk of circulation, however, was in the form of paid single copies (281,979, down 19% year-on-year). Paid subscriptions made up the second biggest chunk of circulation (83,462, also down 19%).

Only a minority of publications share digital subscription data and ABC’s digital circulation data only includes subscribers who take a full replica of the printed product, meaning the figures only partially represents title’s digital subscription reach.

Among the titles reporting digital data to ABC, Irish News reported the most subscribers accessing digital replica copies (3,491) followed by the Press & Journal (2,664).

Regional press website audience figures: Manchester Evening News is biggest title

Website traffic, whilst massive compared to print circulation, is also down for many publishers.

According to the latest data from Ipsos iris for July, the UK’s best-ranked regional news site, Manchester Evening News, reached 11.1 million people (down 31% year-on-year) in the month - with 61.9 million page views (down 36%).

Second-placed Birmingham Live, also published by Reach, was accessed by 10 million people (down 26%) and had 60.7 million page views (no change).

National World's best-ranked brand The Scotsman reached 3.1 million people (up 6% year-on-year) and had 12.7 million page views (up 24%).

At the publisher level, Reach, which is largely advertising-supported, consistently ranks among the UK’s top online organisations for audience, regularly reaching three-quarters of UK internet users aged over 15. While Ipsos does not track audience to Reach's regional sites as a group, audience to Reach's national and local sites was 34.9 million in July (down 7%) while there were 992 million page views (down 23%).

National World's brands had an audience of 15.3 million (down 8% year-on-year) and 126 million page views (also down 8%).

Some 13.5 million people in the UK accessed Newsquest's digital brands (down 2%), while page views were down 21% to 103 million.

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