The UK’s news landscape could fracture “irreparably” in the next five to ten years with “grim” implications, a new Parliamentary report has warned.

The Future of News report from the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee noted that although a “changing news landscape should not be conflated with its imminent demise”, many media publishers will not survive the new dynamics.

The report made recommendations for action that could help stave off some of the challenges, ranging from firmer action on AI copyright theft to the creation of news “accelerators” and tax breaks for local journalism.

Without action, and potentially with it, the committee warned there is “a realistic possibility” that the UK will see the emergence of a “two-tier media environment” in which a minority of the population is well-served by high-quality, paywalled news while the rest are left with low-quality free information.

The committee said that this “is not a hypothetical worry: the contours of this scenario are already apparent.

“If current trends continue, the gap between those consuming professional journalism and those who do not will widen at pace. There is a realistic possibility of the UK’s news environment fracturing irreparably along social, regional and economic lines within the next five to ten years.”

The committee said it did not believe any silver bullet solutions exist for these problems and that “much of the work needs to be led by industry itself”.

But the role of the Government, it found, should be “to establish the conditions that enable the sector to stand on its own feet and survive a protracted period of technological turbulence”.

Lord Communications and Digital Committee calls for urgent creation of UK AI regime that protects publisher copyright

Among its recommendations, the Lords report said the Government needs to rapidly develop an artificial intelligence regime that encourages innovation without fatally compromising publisher copyright.

Good economic and security reasons for encouraging AI training in the UK, they wrote, did not mean the Government “should pursue rules that primarily benefit foreign tech firms (who seem prepared to pay vast sums on energy, computing facilities and staff—but not on data)…

“Previous efforts to find a solution have been weak and ineffectual.”

Any new regime on AI bots scraping publisher content to power their systems, it said, “must include transparency mechanisms that enable rights holders to check whether their data has been used”, backed up with “meaningful sanctions for non-compliance”.

But it warned against adopting “a flawed opt-out regime comparable to the version operating in the EU.

“Much better means for ensuring technical viability, transparency, consent and enforcement are needed for a new text and data mining regime to work to UK advantage.”

In February the committee said it was insufficient for the (then Conservative) government to “sit on its hands” and wait for issues around copyright and AI to be solved by years of case law.

Lords suggests expansion of search and social media regulation

The peers recommended as a priority that the Competition and Markets Authority should investigate any tech firms “leveraging dominance in one domain, notably internet search, to secure anti-competitive advantages in obtaining data for generative AI training”.

News Media Association chief executive Owen Meredith described this recommendation as “very timely, as the regulator considers which firms and services to prioritise under the new regime for digital markets”.

Similarly, the committee advised the Government to give Ofcom “the necessary powers to investigate tech firm recommender algorithms and the operations of large language models”.

Sudden changes to content recommendation algorithms, for example at Facebook, have significantly disrupted traffic and revenue at publishers in recent years, and some publishers have previously expressed concern that they have been made less visible on social media or in search because of their politics.

The committee also said they had been “disappointed” that the Labour government’s proposed changes to the media plurality regime did not go further.

“The decision to exclude online intermediaries [i.e. social media and search engines] looks oddly short-sighted given the rapid advances in tech firms’ ability to produce news summaries.

“We appreciate that tech firms are not newspapers but this does not mean their evolving role in the news landscape should be overlooked…

“The previous government’s years-long timeline for implementing vital changes has been inadequate,” they added, recommending the government commit to responding to future Ofcom priority recommendations on media plurality within a year.

GB News ‘needs to comply with the spirit’ of impartiality rules while Ofcom needs to be more transparent about its standards, lords say

Other recommendations included a “Future News catalyst scheme” modelled on start-up accelerators, action against legal action used to silence journalism, and tax breaks for hiring local journalists.

The report argued that the Government should consult on allowing a wider range of news providers to carry public notices, which are worth millions in revenue each year but can currently only be published in print newspapers. However it cautioned that using local government advertising to support the media “risks becoming a market distortion”.

And it recommended that the Government’s online advertising taskforce should “review the work and impact of brand safety organisations on news publisher revenue”, which publishers such as Unherd say have unjustifiably harmed their revenue.

On impartiality in television news, the peers said GB News “needs to comply with the spirit of the rules, not stretch them to breaking point”, advising Ofcom to carry out more detailed assessments of audience views on politicians serving as presenters on news channels.

But the peers added that public service broadcasters like the BBC “should reflect on why alternative providers are finding a following and how this relates to the way underserved communities are represented in their own news coverage”.

The committee also wrote that, although Ofcom’s leaders had said the regulator’s approach to impartiality had been clear, “we struggled to reconcile this with the evidence”.

“More transparency in future would help, particularly around the thresholds at which alternative interpretations of the rules might apply.”

GB News responded that it had raised concerns about Ofcom’s unclear approach to impartiality “repeatedly.”

The broadcaster also said: “We take our responsibilities under the Ofcom Broadcasting Code extremely seriously and remain committed to operating a comprehensive compliance regime. But we also strongly believe that this regime should be modern, fit for purpose and much clearer.

“It’s vital the Government establishes conditions to support honest, accurate and informative news which enables the UK media to stand on its own feet through sector-wide structural changes that drive innovation – whilst maintaining media independence.”

The report also warned against schemes that “risk overreach” such as a Government-endorsed kitemark for trusted news.

Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes, writing in The Telegraph, described this as “among its best recommendations… it would be a mistake for our industry to invite government in as an arbiter of our credibility.”

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The management of the UK’s third-largest regional publisher National World has hit out at a major shareholder proposing a takeover bid, accusing it of financial “irregularities”.

Media Concierge, which on Friday launched a bid for the 72.2% of National World it does not already own, rejected National World’s claims as “baseless”.

Despite the acrimony, Media Concierge revealed that “National World’s advisers have indicated that they would provide Media Concierge with access to limited and confirmatory due diligence”.

National World is the publicly-listed publisher of newsbrands including The Yorkshire Post, The Scotsman and a host of city-focused websites. It was formed by executive chairman David Montgomery in 2021 to acquire the former Johnston Press titles, assisted by investment from Media Concierge.

It is understood that Media Concierge abstained on a vote to re-elect Montgomery for National World’s leadership at its annual general meeting in May. Montgomery won regardless, and National World has since discontinued a deal that had seen Media Concierge subsidiary Mediaforce handle its national print advertising.

Media Concierge is majority-owned by founder Malcolm Denmark, who built the business providing publishing infrastructure to the news industry including newspaper inserts, leaflets, advertising and printing services.

[Read more: Battle for future of National World as shareholder launches takeover bid]

National World responds to Media Concierge takeover bid

Announcing its takeover bid last week, Media Concierge said it had not heard from National World since first proposing to buy out the remaining equity for 21 pence per share, a premium of approximately 40%, at the end of October.

National World has now “acknowledge[d] the potential merits of the possible offer”.

But the publisher claimed that on 1 October, before the takeover was first mooted, it had been “made aware of a potentially systemic pattern of historical invoicing irregularities in relation to the activities of entities affiliated with Media Concierge”.

National World went on to claim that, separately, “entities affiliated with Media Concierge are currently inappropriately withholding revenues due to [National World] totaling £4.4 million”.

The publisher said it had sought further information in order to undertake an investigation and told shareholders to “take no action at this stage”.

Media Concierge responded that the allegations are “completely baseless and are strongly denied in their entirety.

“No evidence has been provided to support them, and the timing of the emergence of these entirely unjustified allegations coincided with Media Concierge’s initial approach to National World.

“The amounts allegedly ‘withheld’ by Media Concierge are subject to Media Concierge’s substantial counter-claim, in excess of the £4.4 million amount, for a number of breaches of contract by National World.

“We have put National World on notice that Media Concierge will hold the makers of these false and misleading statements fully responsible for them.”

A spokesperson for National World told Press Gazette that it has presented “evidence” to Media Concierge subsidiary Mediaforce (London) “concerning its activities”.

“Irrespective, if Mediaforce (London) has nothing to hide then there can surely be no objection to our carrying out a forensic audit?” the publisher added.

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Reach chief executive Jim Mullen has written to staff saying “I have kept my word” on job cuts at the group as parts of the business enact redundancies.

Mullen previously wrote to staff at the start of 2024 to say that, after making more than 700 job cuts in 2023, the business planned to end 2024 with “the teams that we have starting the year”.

However recent weeks have seen team restructures and consequent redundancies at titles including the Sunday Express, Scotland’s Sunday Mail and the Irish Sunday Mirror.

In each case the Sunday titles have been moved into a seven-day merged print and digital operation, with a resulting loss of jobs.

Sunday Express editor David Wooding has left Reach as part of the changes, The Guardian has reported, and Sunday Mail editor Lorna Hughes has also elected to leave according to an email seen by Hold the Front Page.

The NUJ Reach group chapel said the recent redundancies “concern more than two dozen talented journalists leaving the company”.

“Our members are mindful of Jim Mullen’s words as we entered 2024 about staff not having ‘one eye over their shoulder’ after a corrosive year of hundreds of lost journalists’ jobs.

“Yet that is exactly what is happening currently, particularly if you are in a print-facing role…

“The constant threat of cutbacks, particularly among the national titles, is a major source of demotivation and drain on morale. This group chapel calls on the company to make 2025 a redundancy-free, growth year at Reach.”

Separately on Friday, Daily Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston emailed staff saying the staff of the daily newspaper will be merged with that of celebrity magazine OK!. Waterston, who was previously editor of OK!, added the brands “will remain completely distinct” and that she did “not expect this change to result in any reduction in roles”.

Reach CEO says company will end 2024 with more staff than at conclusion of 2023 restructure

On Friday November 22 Mullen emailed staff saying “external commentary” on the company was “noisy, distracting and, to be honest, a bit lazy at times”.

His commitment for 2024, he said, “was about growth, that there would be no more large-scale cuts and that the size of the overall business was about right for the year ahead.

“I have kept my word and have not changed this commitment.

“And I’ve kept my commitment to being upfront with you all about the fact that our business will have to evolve, adapt and continue to change to better suit the changing preferences of our audiences, their chosen channels and our advertisers.”

Last month Reach announced it would be hiring 60 new editorial staff with a focus on “audience writers” and “general assignment journalists” who will cover breaking stories and trending topics. Mullen said this meant the company will conclude 2024 “with more jobs than we had at the conclusion of the 2023 restructure programme”.

“This is not to disparage or dismiss the feelings of colleagues whose roles have been impacted by changes that are part of the running of our business…

“As CEO, I understand that it is my role to make decisions that are not always popular but that I believe are right for the business. I recognise that, at times, it means I won’t win any popularity contests, but I will never shirk from being up front and honest with you.”

In its statement earlier in the week, the NUJ Reach group chapel said the 60 new roles were “of course welcomed.

“But our members cannot avoid the feeling that in some way sacrifices are being made in print – where three quarters of Reach’s revenue still comes from – to fund changes the company wants elsewhere. This is no reflection on anyone being recruited to Reach, but does lead to speculation on the wisdom of the actions being taken.”

There has been a move away from standalone Sunday editorial teams across the news industry. Last year News UK proposed a merger of the Scottish Times and Scottish Sunday Times and Mail Newspapers brought the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday “much closer together”.

Several dedicated Sunday operations continue, however, including The Sunday Times, The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, as well as FT Weekend and i weekend.

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Direct marketing business and Irish local newspaper publisher Media Concierge has launched a bid to take control of the UK’s third-largest regional media group National World.

Media Concierge, which also owns Irish newspapers including the Donegal Democrat and Limerick Leader through subsidiary Iconic Media Group, was one of National World’s original backers and already holds 27.8% of its shares.

Media Concierge abstained in a vote on chief executive David Montgomery’s continued leadership of the business at the company’s last annual general meeting in May, Press Gazette understands.

Since then National World has discontinued a longstanding business relationship with Media Concierge subsidiary Mediaforce, which had until then handled national advertising for the company. National World now sells its national print advertising through competitor Reach.

The group has proposed to buy the remaining equity at 21 pence per share, which it says would be “a significant premium” of 40% on its London Stock Exchange price. National World closed at 15p per share on Thursday and Media Concierge said its volume-weighted price over the preceding six months was 14.8 pence.

The bidder said the price offered represented “a highly attractive and deliverable opportunity for National World shareholders to realise their investment at a substantial premium in cash”.

National World shares leapt more than 20% on Friday morning, reaching a year-long high of 19.25 pence.

Media Concierge revealed its bid on Friday morning, saying it first made the proposal on 31 October but that it has received “no substantive engagement to date” from the National World board. Its offer values the company’s share capital at £56.2m in total, a significant increase on its last sale price of £10.2m.

National World publishes titles including The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and eponymous national news site nationalworld.com. It was formed by career media executive David Montgomery in 2020 to take on the assets of the former Johnston Press, then named JPI Media.

Since then the company has made repeated rounds of significant job cuts, including proposed redundancies this month in Sunderland and Manchester and a voluntary redundancy round at The Scotsman.

Press Gazette calculated in July 2023 that National World had cut its total workforce by 27% since taking over JPI Media. NUJ staff members held strike action in 2023 in the company’s first-ever nationwide walkout, and a second strike a month later was approved but ultimately did not go ahead.

National World reported revenue growth of 5% in its most recent annual report, which had been bolstered by a string of acquisitions in 2023.

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Muslim news site 5Pillars has left press regulator Impress after having a second discrimination ruling upheld against it within a year.

5Pillars, which has been under Impress regulation since 2018, said the body “is run by what we perceive to be liberals whose values are not compatible with Islamic norms”.

Impress ruled on Thursday that a May episode of 5Pillar’s podcast Blood Brothers breached its standards code because the host had allowed a guest, the former deputy leader of Britain First, to “espouse antisemitic conspiracy theories without pushback or challenge”.

The guest, Jayda Fransen, had made claims including that “Jews” were “behind the abortion industry” and “the LGBTQPZ plus agenda”.

5Pillars defended itself by saying that Fransen was notorious among Muslims for what they called anti-Islam rhetoric and that they did not endorse her views or dispute allegations she is an anti-Semite.

The regulator summed up 5Pillars’ position saying it “interviewed her due to her relevance to British Muslims and because it believes in engaging with and challenging those it disagrees with, which it says is important in a democracy that values free speech”.

The regulator’s decision follows another ruling in May this year that saw Impress order 5Pillars to alter or remove a Blood Brothers episode which it said encouraged “hatred and abuse” towards Jewish and LGBT people.

In that case the interviewee had been Mark Collett, the leader of a far-right group and who Impress said had also been met with “insufficient challenge from the interviewer”.

In June, following that ruling, 5Pillars gave Impress notice that it would leave its regulatory scheme.

Impress nonetheless carried out its investigation and ruled — the day after 5Pillars formally announced its departure — that the site should remove or amend the interview. The episode, titled “Britain First, Christian nationalism, and the Zionist agenda”, remains online at time of writing.

5Pillars editor envisions advent of an Islamic press regulator

Impress is one of two UK press regulators. Impress, which was designed on principles laid down by the Leveson Inquiry, predominantly oversees newer, digital-native outlets such as Novara Media, Journo Resources, Desmog and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as some print titles such as Prospect magazine.

The other regulator, IPSO, covers most national and regional newspaper and magazine titles. A handful of national titles — The Guardian and Observer, The Independent and the Financial Times — have opted to self-regulate.

Announcing its departure, 5Pillars editor Roshan Muhammed Salih said the title was leaving Impress because “we do not want non-Muslims who do not share our values to have editorial control over our content”.

The publisher signed up in the first place, he wrote, “because we wanted our readers and viewers to know that we were serious about adhering to professional editorial guidelines”.

However it was rapped by Impress in 2021 over a social media post that described homosexual sex as a “crime against God”, after which “complaints about 5Pillars kept coming in, especially from our detractors in the pro-Israel and pro-LGBT lobby…

“It became clear to us that our enemies were trying to utilise Impress to bog us down with numerous complaints.”

He wrote that 5Pillars would continue to adhere “to the majority of the professional guidelines set out in the Impress Standards Code”.

Salih said he hoped to eventually see “the emergence of an external regulator – but a Muslim one that will judge us according to the Quran and Sunnah…

“An independent Muslim media regulator – which 5Pillars and other Muslim media could join – would send a strong signal to the community (as well as non-Muslims) that Muslims take journalism seriously.”

Responding to the departure of 5Pillars, Impress said: “We are of course disappointed that 5Pillars came to the decision to leave Impress earlier this year.

“It is our strong belief that it is better for both publishers and the public that recognised independent regulation is taken up as widely as possible to preserve journalistic integrity across the sector.

“Unfortunately, until there are genuine incentives put in place by Government and the industry for that to happen, publications will continue to be free to do as they please, including discriminating against protected groups with no recourse or consequence.”

[Read more: IPSO v Impress — Ten years after Leveson, how are the press ‘watchmen’ faring?]

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Jay Rayner, one of The Observer’s most prominent writers, is leaving the newsbrand as controversy surrounds its proposed sale to Tortoise Media.

The news was announced on the same day that Paul Webster, who was editor of The Observer until earlier this month, wrote a lengthy denunciation of the proposed sale, which he said was based on “two false premises”: that the newspaper’s operation poses a financial risk to The Guardian and that Tortoise Media could sustain the brand in print.

A Guardian and Observer staff strike over the proposed sale is set for early next month.

Rayner, who has reviewed restaurants for The Observer for 25 years, said last month that he had been shortlisted for columnist of the year in the BSME Awards “in the same month that The Guardian has told me they will terminate all our contracts if they can sell The Observer to Tortoise”.

Tortoise and Guardian News and Media have previously assured Observer staff that their jobs will be safe if the sale goes ahead.

A spokesperson for Tortoise told Press Gazette contract arrangements like Rayner’s would also be honoured in any deal.

Rayner was previously a vocal campaigner against an unsuccessful bid to merge The Observer into The Guardian in 2008.

A spokesperson for Guardian News and Media said: “Jay Rayner has entertained readers for many years with his writing and we wish him all the best with his new role.”

On Thursday, Webster, who edited The Observer for six years and was its deputy editor for 22 years, spoke out about the proposed Tortoise deal for the first time.

He wrote on Twitter: “Here’s why I think the proposed sale of the Observer to Tortoise would severely damage the reputation of the Scott Trust and threaten the future of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, which I edited until last weekend.

“This planned sale, if ratified by the Trust, would be a discreditable conclusion to a damaging episode in the company’s history.

“It is based on two false premises. One, that the Observer represents a serious threat to the security and future of the Guardian because of its financial position.

“This is preposterous. As editor for the past 6 years, I was provided with  revenue and expenditure data.

“They showed that despite the well-documented decline of print sales, The Observer has continued to make a net contribution of several millions of pounds to the company’s finances.

“Even once added expenses are included, as they have been in the company’s recent shameful attempt to bundle the paper out of the door as quickly as possible, and account is taken of shared resources we use, the losses are miniscule set against the company’s  £1.3bn cash pile.

“And they fail to take any account of mitigating strategies we might have discussed, but which the Trust entirely failed to consider during my tenure, or of the considerable contribution Observer journalism makes to the Guardian website’s breadth of coverage and income.

“The second false premise is that Tortoise Media, a small historically loss making start up, is able to sustain the Observer as a serious competitor on Sunday newstands.

“Based on the little information Observer journalists have been provided with it does not have the resources to shoulder the cost of sustaining a standalone Sunday paper with a comprehensive news, foreign, sports, business and cultural coverage able to compete with our rivals.

“Nor are its projections of subscription sales realistic, and uncertainty clouds the scale and future of its funding.

“The Scott Trust boasts a proud record of defending liberal journalism, as represented by both the Guardian AND the Observer. It appears as if it’s about to betray that record by essentially gifting the Observer to a small, historically loss-making start-up.

“If its losses are severe enough to warrant abandoning the Observer then it is doubtful that Tortoise has the means to sustain the title. If they are not, then the Trust, with a £1.3bn endowment, is a far better home for the Observer.

“The Guardian persistently boasts that it’s not owned by a proprietor. But – by excluding its own journalists from the process of the sale – it has behaved as if it is.

“As a senior journalist on the Guardian and Observer for 35  years, I believe the Scott Trust should reject this deal and embark on a proper review of the Observer’s future if it is to uphold its clearly enunciated role as a defender of liberal journalism at home and abroad.”

Financial Times to expand weekend food and drink coverage

The Financial Times poached Rayner amid an expansion of its weekend food and drink coverage.

The business paper has also hired former Sunday Times restaurant critic and current Noble Rot contributing editor Marina O’Loughlin for a monthly FT Magazine column about the global restaurant scene and food culture.

The FT’s current restaurant critic, Tim Hayward, moves to a new role as a food writer, “contributing deep-dives on home cooking projects and other culinary fixations”.

Rayner said: “I have been both an avid fan and devoted reader of the paper for many years and it’s an honour to become part of a team I have admired from afar for so long.

“I can’t wait to play my part alongside the huge talents that are Jancis Robinson, Tim Hayward and Marina O’Loughlin, in providing the most entertaining and authoritative food and drink coverage in the business.”

Hayward said: “Twelve years is a long time to be critical about restaurants. I’m looking forward to being able to write fully about the thing I love, enthusing about food, in breadth and depth.”

And O’Loughlin said that, “after leaving the Sunday Times, I’ve made a hobby of saying ‘no’ to offers.

“So it’s with enormous pleasure that I’m now saying ‘yes’ to my favourite of all the major newspapers, with the best food and drink section in the business.”

Janine Gibson, editor of FT Weekend, said: “The FT Magazine’s food and drink coverage under its brilliant editor Harriet Fitch Little has gone from strength to strength.

“We have ambitious and exciting plans for the next year and assembling this stellar lineup of the greatest authorities in their field is the first step.

“FT Weekend readers look to us for expertise and exceptional writing on every aspect of culture, and this food and drink team will be unparalleled in their ability to deliver on every front.”

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Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has made a “significant investment” in Prorata.ai, a generative artificial intelligence platform that plans to share revenue with publishers each time their content is used to answer a user query.

The deal gives Prorata access to DMG Media’s content, which includes the archives of the Mail, Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist.

Guardian Media Group and Sky News all also announced on Wednesday that they have made their content available to the start-up, and they were joined on Thursday by magazine Prospect.

The Financial Times reports that the DMG Media investment values Prorata at about $130m (£100m). Press Gazette understands Sky News is also considering investing in the start-up.

DMG Media on Prorata: ‘It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news’

Prorata has not yet launched any public-facing products, but has already signedsimilar content-sharing deals with the Financial Times, Fortune, Axel Springer and The Atlantic.

The company has previously told Press Gazette that it has created a mechanism that lets AI platforms determine “the value of contributing content” in a generative AI response and as a result “calculate proportional compensation” for the originators of that content. It has said it will make the technology available to license to other AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Prorata says it will share half the revenue from its forthcoming subscriptions to its licensing partners.

The business hopes to provide a solution to publishers who don’t want to be left behind should consumers move toward generative AI-powered search, but who have been burned by other AI companies who have ingested their content to create their large language models without providing any compensation.

[Read more: News Corp seeks massive damages from AI firm Perplexity for stealing content]

DMG Media vice chairman Rich Caccappolo said its deal with Prorata made the company “the first UK news publisher to invest in an equity stake in this industry-leading platform”.

“The rise of large language models and real-time content scraping represents a material threat to the news industry. There is a critical need to attribute content used by LLMs to generate answers and compensate all content creators for their work.

“ProRata’s platform is a vital first step toward advancing accurate and fair attribution and promoting transparency. It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news publishers, giving them the incentive to continue investing in high-quality, informative journalism.”

David Rhodes, the executive chairman of Sky News, said: “Global audiences trust Sky News to give them the full story, first. ProRata’s solution helps advance that high-quality, impartial journalism across AI platforms and publishers.

“With all our partners today we’re securing our company’s massive investment in fair and accurate news reporting – now, and well into the future.”

Guardian Media Group chief executive Anna Bateson said: “The trusted, quality journalism for which The Guardian is world-renowned must be fairly credited and valued when used by AI platforms. Prorata respects and promotes these fundamental principles, and we are pleased to be partnering with them.”

And Prospect chief executive Mark Beard said: “In this age of disinformation, we respect and warmly approve of Prorata.ai’s approach. We share Prorata.ai’s belief that fact-checked, authoritative journalism is critical and will not only survive but thrive, if the publishers who produce it are credited and fairly rewarded alongside the technology companies that surface it.”  

Prorata’s chief executive Bill Gross told Press Gazette in August: “Current AI answer engines rely on shoplifted, plagiarised content. This creates an environment where creators get nothing, and disinformation thrives…

“Our technology allows creators to get credited and compensated while consumers get attributed, accurate answers. This solution will lead to a broader movement across the entire AI industry.”

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Google‘s smartphone-based content recommendation feed, Google Discover, has become the single largest traffic referral source for publishing giant Reach plc, its audience director (distribution and customer marketing) has said.

Martin Little told Press Gazette the rise in Discover traffic had compensated “and then some” for a decline in referrals from Google search.

Reach’s overall Google traffic has grown in the second half of this year, Little said, but there had been “a significant shift” in the contributions from different Google platforms.

What Little called “branded search” — traffic from people actively searching for Reach titles like the Daily Mirror or Cornwall Live — has remained “solid”, he said. But referrals from topic-based searches have been falling, contributing to an overall fall in the number of visitors referred via search. Visits from Google News have remained largely stable.

But Discover is “making up for that and then some on top”, he said, and “has become our biggest referrer of traffic”.

“Overall, almost 50% of our titles are on year-on-year growth now,” Little said, “and that is partly because of the shifts in Google.”

Google Discover promotes ‘soft lens’ content — but isn’t so good for news

Google Discover is embedded in the browsing experience for most users who browse Google Chrome on a smartphone.

Little said Discover “is almost like Facebook was… it’s algorithmically served, it’s based on what it thinks you’re going to like. It’s more of an escapism-type outlet”.

The increase in Google traffic at Reach has in part been driven by greater visibility into how Google Discover works. Previously, Little said, it had been “even more of a black box than Search”.

It is now much easier to monitor both your own and your competitors’ performance on Discover, according to Little. Two years ago it would not have been possible for a publisher to even split out their Discover and Search traffic, but now “you can get a far better lens on what’s working and what’s not”.

Little said 44% of Reach content gets picked up in Google Discover, but the platform is “very selective as to what it takes in and what it doesn’t… Google clearly wants Discover to be a safe environment, with brand-safe content within it”.

He described the type of content that does well on Discover as “soft-lens”: first-person pieces do well, as does lifestyle content and articles about niche interests and sports other than football.

“What is interesting as well is, for us as a commercial publisher, we don’t get a lot of news content into Discover,” Little said. “And by news, what I mean is traditional local news, or harder news.”

Reach’s news content is still holding its own in search, Little said, but there is “always a lag for content getting to Discover”. Although stories sometimes arrive on Discover within a day, “it tends to be 24 to 48 hours before content actually gets in”, which necessarily poses a problem for news content.

“You don’t get court content in there, there’s no crime getting in there, our council content doesn’t get in there as well. Stuff from our Local Democracy Reporters doesn’t really get into Discover.

“We need that content — it’s the staple of our regional brands, and it’s frustrating that we see the BBC’s version of that story get in every single time, but we never see any commercial publishers really getting that sort of content in. So it feels like Google is, on Discover, using the BBC to serve that out, but not actually being very pluralistic in its approach.”

[Read more: Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom]

Google Discover selects ‘curiosity gap’ headlines to show readers

Little said Discover has a notable preference for “curiosity gap” headlines. For every story a Reach journalist publishes, they have to write four headlines: one for Facebook, one for Search, one for the home page and one for newsletters.

“Each of those are written in different ways,” Little said. “Search will have some keyword focus within it and the homepage one will be quite brand-safe. Newsletter [headlines] tend to have a little more of a sell… to encourage them to click through… and then social has got to be quite brand safe as well.”

You can’t feed Discover a specific headline: instead the platform chooses “the one that it wants the most”, and Little said most often Discover looks “for the most alluring headline” or “the greatest emotive element”.

Little defined a curiosity gap as “telling the story as it is but withholding the need-to-know piece of information from that headline so that people still feel the need to go and find out more”. (Advocates of the curiosity gap argue it differs from a “clickbait” headline strategy because curiosity gap articles actually deliver the information trailed in the title.)

He gave as examples the following real Reach headlines: “ITV Loose Women’s Janet Street-Porter speaks out from hospital after major surgery”, “BBC Death in Paradise star quits after five years, but fans will be happy with exit” and “NHS symptoms of silent killer, which hits one in 20 but takes years to diagnose”.

In the latter case, Little said: “It’s a very straight, factual headline, but it makes you think: ‘Well, what are those symptoms?’… And as long as you provide them on the other side, Discover rewards you quite heavily.”

Reach uses newsletters and Whatsapp Communities to build topic-based audiences out of Google Discover traffic

Little said Reach did not want the proportion of articles getting into Google Discover to get too large.

“You won’t want to be too reliant on it,” he said, emphasising that “our portfolio is more diverse, in terms of the ways that we generate traffic, than it’s ever been”.

Tech platforms make for notoriously unreliable long-term traffic sources, and Little said Reach has been trying to turn its fly-by Discover visitors into loyal readers.

“A nice example on the Daily Express would be that the Daily Express does really well with Formula One content on Discover.

“We’ve built up a newsletter audience of about 32,000 people, and a Whatsapp community of over 3,000 people, by targeting the people coming in from Discover on F1.

“The Express doesn’t get the same cut-through on Formula One on any other platform [as] it does on Discover, so we know that the generation of that newsletter audience is connected directly to people coming through…

“We’re laser-focused on thinking about: ‘how can we make sure that that traffic is something that we own over a long period of time?’

[Read more: Whatsapp for publishers: How Reach is driving millions of page views via messaging app]

Little suggested Discover has been one way Google responded to the trend of news avoidance.

“Ultimately, for us as a publisher, in some ways Google Discover is a good thing, because it causes us to really think about — if that’s where the audience interest is, that’s what they’re engaging with, how do we start to diversify our content mix to get a broader range of topics across everything we do?

“And I think that’s actually a good thing because it makes us more diverse, it makes us open to new audiences that previously we wouldn’t have been, it makes us think about content in a different way.

“But all of our principles still stand — the content needs to be high quality, it needs to be well-researched, it needs to be written really well and have good imagery.”

The post Google Discover has become Reach’s ‘biggest referrer of traffic’ appeared first on Press Gazette.

Former Washington Post and Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee will join Reuters next month as its news editor for the US and Canada.

Reporting to global managing editor for politics, economics and world news Mark Bendeich, Buzbee will oversee all Reuters text and visual journalists in North America, although financial journalists will continue reporting into global managing editor of business news Tiffany Wu.

Reuters said Buzbee was “one of the world’s most distinguished editors”.

“During her three years at The Post, Sally expanded the Post’s international investigations work, oversaw the creation of new consumer-facing election-night features and built out coverage of wellness and climate. She oversaw coverage that won several Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2022 public service award for an examination of the Jan 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and the 2024 national reporting prize for a visually told investigation of the AR-15’s role in US mass slayings.”

Buzbee said she was “honoured to join Reuters, an organization renowned for its commitment to journalistic excellence. I look forward to working with the talented team to deliver compelling and impactful stories and scoops to our clients, readers, and viewers”.

Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni commented: “I have admired Sally for years, and I am so excited that she will be joining the Reuters family in this key role.

“Her journalistic chops, her management experience, her global understanding, and her positive and pragmatic approach are just what we need in this time of upheaval for the world and for the news industry.”

Buzbee starts in her new role on 11 December. She succeeds Kieran Murray who Reuters said “is moving on to a new role focused on planning, creating and executing newsroom conferences and other events at Reuters”.

Buzbee stepped down as top editor at the Post in June, prompting an ultimately abortive attempt by proprietor Jeff Bezos and chief executive Will Lewis to install Telegraph deputy editor Robert Winnett as her successor.

The post Former Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee joins Reuters as news editor appeared first on Press Gazette.

A wave of news publishers have arrived on Bluesky in recent days, following audiences and journalists departing X/Twitter.

Days after announcing it was leaving X, The Guardian has become one of a flurry of news publishers to set up an account on the rival microblogging platform.

A significant uptick in account registrations since the US election has prompted a wave of new journalists and publishers to start posting to Bluesky over the past week. As of midday Tuesday it had 20 million accounts, up from 16 million before the weekend.

There has been a gradual flow of users from X toward rival platforms since Elon Musk bought the network in October 2022, but the influx has accelerated since the tech entrepreneur became closely involved with Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and then his fledgling second administration. Meta platform Threads, which has signalled an intent not to get entangled with the news industry, appears not to have benefitted from the exodus in the same way as Bluesky.

Publications including The Economist, The Week, the i, Kent Online and ITV News have joined Bluesky in the past week, and previously dormant accounts from the likes of Politico, Semafor, The Lead, Tortoise and Pink News have resumed activity. The National Union of Journalists has also set up, as well as press regulator IPSO.

All of the above have either verified they are official accounts by making their handle their website address, or Press Gazette has confirmed they are official with the publishers themselves.

Although the publications appear to have been joined by numerous big names in journalism, including BBC presenter Matt Chorley and Guardian editor Katharine Viner, few of them have verified their identities. One who has is Sky News lead politics presenter Sophy Ridge, who observed that she appears to be getting more engagement on Bluesky than on X despite having a far smaller following.

Charlie Baker, editor of quarterly print magazine The Fence, agreed that Bluesky engagement has been good, telling Press Gazette: “The Fence got 4,000 followers over the weekend, and we’re enjoying a very high level of engagement. It’s a lot of fun and long may that continue.”

Josh Billinson, the senior social media editor at Semafor, posted on Monday that he had recommenced the publisher’s activity on Bluesky a week earlier “and it already has more followers than the Threads account I’ve been posting to consistently for over a year”.

Where is news publisher Bluesky follower growth coming from?

Bluesky does not include algorithmic recommendations as a standard feature of user timelines. As a result, so-called starter packs — lists created by users of accounts, usually grouped around a single theme and who can all be followed at a single click — have been the leading driver of rapid account growth.

Freelance Chaminda Jayanetti wrote last week that “with warp speed I now have more followers here than on Twitter, which (genuinely) has very little to do with my posts here but really shows the effect of starter packs”.

Getting into a widely-used starter pack in the first place can be another matter, however. Several news organisations have been creating their own, allowing users to follow all of their journalists at once, and a third-party Bluesky directory makes it possible to search for packs on specific themes.

As well as the starter packs, Press Gazette has written previously about a feed containing posts from verified news providers which is maintained by Financial Times data journalism engineer Ændra Rininsland. She said on Monday the feed was receiving one million requests a day. Only news outlets that have linked their handle to their domain name may apply for inclusion in the feed.

[Read more: Twitter alternative? News publishers see potential in Bluesky]

Journalists sign open letter declaring X/Twitter ‘no longer a useful tool’ for reporting

In the past week a group of more than 30 journalists ut their names to an open letter declaring X to be “no longer a useful tool” for reporting.

The signatories include Guardian North of England correspondent Robyn Vinter, investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan, Foreign Press Association London director Deborah Bonetti and former Guardian special correspondent Nick Davies.

The letter, organised by Byline Times chief reporter Josiah Mortimer, said Twitter “played an important role in shaping many of our careers” and that “it was, for a long time, the place to be for UK politics”.

But, it added, “we believe that time is over now”.

The Elon Musk-owned platform has long been a useful way for journalists to find stories, verify information and contact sources, as well as to distribute their work and meet peers.

However the signatories argued that under Musk “feeds have become less useful. Engagement has plummeted, except for those who will pay. Replies gain traction not through merit, but through the corrupted blue-tick system.

“We have seen hate speech and abuse deliberately dialled up and amplified, boosted not just by the algorithm, but by the owner himself… It is no longer a useful tool for objective reporting, but a weapon being wielded by a narrowing ideological set.”

The letter adds that in lieu of X, “we are all putting the majority of our efforts into building more constructive online spaces elsewhere”, in particular Bluesky.

The letter and the full list of signatories can be viewed here.

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