British Journalism Awards winners revealed | 'Extensive' phone hacking at MGN, judge rules
And why Newsquest has grown its AI-assisted reporter team from one to seven in six months
Good morning and welcome to your daily media news briefing on Friday, 15 December, brought to you today in association with Big Bite, the enterprise WordPress agency. Big Bite has this week launched a groundbreaking report, State of Enterprise WordPress, which reveals why worldwide brands are leveraging the power of WordPress.
Piers Morgan, William Hague and Nigel Farage were not among our British Journalism Awards winners last night (despite all three famous faces being nominated for prizes).
The Guardian was one of the big winners, picking up News Provider of the Year.
Gabriel Pogrund was named Journalist of the Year.
And it was fantastic to see Ian Birrell recognised with the Public Service Award.
As I always say, these awards remind us of what we stand to lose if the online ecosystem is not fixed. We are already seeing fewer finalists coming from websites funded by the open web, with paywalled publishers and broadcasters now dominating.
Check out the full list of finalists here, with full judges’ comments and links to the winning work.
And some breaking news this morning: a High Court judge has found that Mirror Group Newspapers engaged in “extensive” phone hacking between 2006 and 2011, including of Prince Harry who has been awarded £140,600 in damages. Get the full story here.
Today we also have more evidence of newsrooms who are making good use of friendly robot helpers. Newsquest now has seven reporters working with its own generative AI plug-in to create quick content from press releases, council agendas and other sources.
Jobs of the week:
Browse all the latest media jobs on Press Gazette here, powered by Amply.
Sponsored day course:
State of Enterprise WordPress 2023 summarises findings from a survey of over 100 major organisations that are currently using the open source system, with responses from global brands including Macy’s, the V&A and The Times.
Spearheaded by Big Bite, the report gives an up-to-date snapshot of why and how household names and major publishers depend on the platform, as well as highlighting WordPress’s adaptability, versatility, and scalability across a range of demographics including geographical, industrial, and technical dimensions from a range of organisations.
View the results of the survey here:
New from Press Gazette
British Journalism Awards winners 2023: Guardian wins big, Gabriel Pogrund of Sunday Times is Journalist of the Year
The 30 winners were whittled down from 800 entries and 180 finalists by an independent panel of 80 judges.
‘Extensive’ phone-hacking at Mirror titles from 2006 to 2011, Prince Harry trial judge finds
The judge found that the Duke of Sussex’s phone was probably hacked “to a modest extent” by Mirror Group Newspapers and awarded him £140,600 in damages.
How Newsquest and its seven AI-assisted reporters are using ChatGPT
“We’ve produced thousands of articles this way, and we haven’t had any major errors reach the publishing stage.”
CNN’s Clarissa Ward enters Gaza in defiance of ban
Reporting on the damage she saw, Ward said: “I can honestly say I don’t think we’ve ever seen it quite on this scale.”
Extinction Rebellion fails in IPSO bid against Charles Moore Telegraph climate criticism of BBC
XR claimed it was inaccurate to report that the public were being “shamefully ill informed” about climate change by the BBC.
Podcast 62: How publishers can sell online advertising in an awful market
The Guardian‘s senior vice president of advertising for North America, Luis Romero, spoke to Press Gazette about what he says is the toughest advertising market for news publishers since 2008.
Asked how the newspaper’s US operation going about surviving the downturn, Romero said conversations with advertisers are key – but explained times may well stay difficult for a while longer.
News in brief
The editor of Daily Mail Australia, Barclay Crawford, is moving to become the executive editor for the brand’s US operation dailymail.com. He is succeeded as Australia editor by his deputy, Felicity Hetherington. (Press Gazette)
Politico and Insider publisher Axel Springer has struck a deal with ChatGPT owner OpenAI that will see the artificial intelligence company pay tens of millions of euros a year to train its large language models on the publisher’s news content. (Financial Times)
News publishers often use "stigmatising" images when covering the topic of obesity, new research claims. Such images include: subjects eating fast food, sitting on a couch watching TV, focus on their stomach and overweight people without clothes. (Journal of Health Communication)
US politics news site Punchbowl News has bought a data start-up, Electo Analytics, which analyses and tracks legislation. The stock deal reportedly values Punchbowl News at $100m. (The New York Times)
US non-profit newsroom Mother Jones is merging with The Center for Investigative Reporting "to become a stronger and more impactful newsroom that can deliver great, in-depth reporting on more platforms to millions more people". (Mother Jones)
Vladimir Putin has raised the prospect of releasing imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a prisoner swap. He said: "It’s not that we decline to send them home. No, we want to come to terms and these agreements must be mutually acceptable..." (The Times)
Previously on Press Gazette
Guardian US ad chief on how publisher is navigating ‘toughest ad market since 2008’
What The Guardian has learned from five years of daily news podcasting
Why building resilient newsrooms is a necessity, not a luxury
Press regulator Impress forced to correct misleading accounts
