End of line for Vice News website | Robot does 'ripping' job for Reach
Latest on Julian Assange extradition and UK national newspaper ABCs
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Friday, 23 February.
FT Strategies, in partnership with Northwestern University, are launching a report on what 18 to 25-year-olds think about today’s news. Join them for the Next Gen News launch event, broadcast in a webinar on 5 March.
I can recall asking a room full of bright university students where they got their news from ten years ago and many said websites like Vice, The Guardian and Buzzfeed News.
When I repeated the same exercise a few months ago almost none mentioned any particular website brand. Instead they said: Twitter, Tiktok, Snapchat and Youtube.
Therein lies the problem for Vice News, the media brand that was valued at nearly $6bn in 2017, filed for bankruptcy in May last year and yesterday announced the closure of its website publishing operation with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
The young style-conscious readers Vice targets are nearly as likely to buy a newspaper as they are to type a particular newsbrand’s URL into their web browser (or download its app). Research from the Reuters Institute shows that 18 to 24-year-olds are just as interested in news as older folks, but they tend to access it via social media.
So Vice closing its news website is not that surprising (or even the end of the road for the brand).
It has nearly nine million followers on Youtube, nearly eight million subscribers on Snapchat, 1.5 million followers on Tiktok, three million followers on Instagram and 4.4 million followers on Facebook.
These platforms need users to come back day after day and news is a great way of ensuring that happens. So Vice will live on.
But today is a sad one for independent journalism on the open web which is being squeezed out of existence by a few dominant US tech platforms.
Today we also report on an interesting development in the world of newsroom AI. Reach is using its own generative AI system - Gutenbot - to largely automate the process whereby it slightly rewrites the same story to appear on multiple sites. It is not adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but it may be freeing journalists from a bit of grunt work.
We also have the latest print ABC figures for UK national newsapers which are predictably dire for most. But 700,000+ people per day walking into newsagents to hand over £1 for their copy of the Daily Mail is not to be sniffed at.
And we have a round-up from this week's two-day Julian Assange extradition hearing where his lawyers argued he was the target of political retribution but the US government said he had put lives at risk with the unredacted release of Wikileaks data. A judgment will be handed down at a later date revealing whether his latest appeal against extradition to the United States should be allowed.
Jobs of the week:
Promoted webinar
Over the past eight months, FT Strategies and Northwestern University have travelled across three continents to research what 18 to 25-year-olds think about today’s news and whether it meets their needs and expectations. We’ve written a report on the thinking of this hard-to-reach group with anecdotes, quotes, observations, as well as insightful commentary from industry leaders. With this research, we’re aiming to help news producers better meet the needs of the next generation of consumers. The report launch will be broadcast in a webinar on 5 March, 5.00pm (GMT).
New from Press Gazette
Vice Media to lay off ‘several hundred’ staff and stop publishing on website
“Moving forward, we will look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model.”
Reach using AI to speed up ‘ripping’ and use same article on multiple sites
“When it works, it does work well, because it writes it really, really quickly. But obviously, it’s just so depressing – it’s the definition of a robot taking your job. It can write an article for you in five minutes.”
Assange waits for outcome of last-ditch bid against US extradition
“This wasn’t a slip, or an error, this was the publication of a vast amount of material unredacted.”
National press ABCs: Sunday People sales down 22% year on year in January
Reach titles the Daily Star Sunday, Daily Star, Sunday Mail, Daily Record and Sunday Express all saw their circulations down by 15 to 17% year-on-year, as did DC Thomson’s Sunday Post.
News in brief
The Guardian US has hired Mehdi Hasan as a regular columnist, a few months after his show was dropped from liberal-leaning news network MSNBC. (Press Gazette)
Buzzfeed has sold entertainment media brand Complex to livestream shopping platform NTWRK for $108.6m, after acquiring it for $300m in 2021. Buzzfeed is also cutting 16% of staff in a bid to slash expenses. (Axios)
Guido Fawkes reported that lawyers for Dan Wootton have sent legal letters to Byline Times, editor Peter Jukes, and journalists Dan Evans and Tom Latchem over their reporting of allegations against him about which police have now dropped their investigations. (Guido Fawkes)
Reuters Institute analysis has found that half (48%) of the top ten news websites in ten countries were blocking OpenAI's crawlers by the end of 2023 and 24% were blocking Google's AI crawler. (RISJ)
Meanwhile social media site Reddit has signed a $60m per year AI licensing deal with Google giving permission for its content to be used for training purposes. (Reuters)
Shares of posts from 70 major news accounts on Instagram fell 26% in the week following Adam Mosseri's announcement that the app will not recommend "political content" to users, according to social media management firm Dash Hudson. (The New York Times)
A new limit from The Guardian means people can see up to 20 stories per month for free on its app before being told they must pay (or wait until the next month for the cap to reset). (The Times)
Jeff Zucker says Redbird is buying The Telegraph because "our goal is to invest in or acquire companies that are well situated for the future, especially digitally". He adds there is "no reason for it not to be approved" and he would expand it in the US. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Business Leader has relaunched and "invigorated" its mission "to become the ultimate destination for business insight, tools, community, and mentoring" after its acquisition last year by Homeserve founder Richard Harpin. (Business Leader)
Latest podcast
Podcast 65: Beyond Google? Amazon and Microsoft are future says Ricky Sutton
Former online editor of the News of the World turned tech entrepreneur turned future of news soothsayer Ricky Sutton joins Dominic Ponsford on the podcast sofa.
He explains why Google’s reign as the most important tech partner for news publishers is drawing to a close, but more lucrative partnerships around AI and advertising with Microsoft and Amazon beckon.
Last week on Press Gazette
Germany’s Bild proves paywalls can work for tabloids as it hits 700,000 milestone
Technology newsbrand with ‘optimistic view’ and 20-strong team launches in London
Magazine ABCs 2023: Full breakdown of titles shows 12.4% circulation fall
Magazine ABCs 2023: Private Eye sales dip as current affairs mags flag
ABCs: UK digital magazine sales surge boosted by Spotify-style bundled
Top 25 US newspaper circulations: Largest print titles fall 14% in year to September 2023
News agency rebels over Sun and Times freelance rates unchanged in 40 years
