Guardian forecasts £39m deficit | New paid weekly website for the North East
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Tuesday 13 February.
The Guardian is the latest news organisation to be hit by the advertising crisis in news media.
Ad revenue down 16% in the nine months to the end of December has contributed to a predicted cash shortfall of £39m at the end of the publisher's financial year on 31 March.
Guardian Media Group is one of the reader revenue giants, with more than one million paying supporters.
But figures shared with staff last week suggest its membership growth has slowed. It is up year on year, but 4% below target.
This contrasts with Dow Jones and the New York Times which have managed to avoid year-on-year revenue decline by growing subscriber income.
At last count, Guardian Media Group had £1.2bn in its investment fund, enough to weather about 30 years of losses at the current rate of decline. So there is no need to hit the panic button at Guardian Towers.
But the Scott Trust's remit is to protect the journalism of The Guardian for a lot longer than 30 years (in perpetuity in fact) so cutbacks can be expected and I would not be surprised if the reader contributions model gets a tweak.
Readers paying £10 per month already get ad-free reading and full access to the app. Throwing in exclusive access to premium content may be the quickest way to get the reader revenue column back ahead of target.
Meanwhile, it is fantastic to see a blast from the past - former Newcastle Journal editor Brian Aitken - back on the journalistic front line with a paid-for website covering the North East of England. My hunch is that The QT will find enough readers in a region of 2.6m willing to pay £7.99 per month to give Brian's five-strong team a living.
The challenge for local news start-ups remains how to replicate this at scale and bring quality local journalism to a mass readership (and how to do so in the towns and cities which currently have very little coverage left).
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Guardian forecasting £39m deficit as ad revenue falls 16%
The ad downturn accounted for £12m of a £17m revenue shortfall compared to budget in the first three quarters of the Guardian and Observer publisher’s financial year.
Ex-Newcastle Journal editor launches weekly website for North East with six-figure investment
Brian Aitken says he is confident people will pay for quality, once-a-week journalism for the region.
News in brief
The BBC employs 5,244 journalists, 186 PR people and 433 presenters, the corporation has revealed in a Freedom of Information response to The Sunday Times.
Bauer Media Group chief financial officer Anna Sedgley has decided to leave after almost three years to focus on board positions and advisory roles. She will not be directly replaced but a finance executive leadership team will be in place. The news comes days after it was announced Bauer Media Group will merge its international digital operations for the first time and UK publishing CEO Chris Duncan will step down. (Bauer)
AFP has eight journalists trapped in Gaza working 24/7. Here they tell their story: "We are watching Gaza disappear in front of us...we risk being killed at any moment."
The first trailer for Netflix's film about the making of Newsnight's Prince Andrew interview, based on producer Sam McAlister's book, is out now. (Netflix)
The BBC has responded to complaints it gave "too much coverage" to the King's cancer diagnosis saying it is a "story of significance which has generated national and global interest" and that it has "continued to report on other stories of national and international importance". (BBC)
404 Media, the tech publication founded by four journalists from Vice's Motherboard vertical, is reportedly profitable six months on from launch. (Nieman Lab)
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.
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Marie Colvin Award winner Bel Trew pays tribute to journalists of Gaza
Paul Morgan-Bentley of The Times on going undercover with British Gas debt collectors
Piers Morgan moves to Youtube in major strategy shift for TalkTV
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