How Newsweek became world's fastest growing news site | Indy US breakthrough
And SEO expert Barry Adams explains how publishers can succeed on Google Discover which is now the biggest source of traffic for many
Good morning and welcome to your Press Gazette Future of Media newsletter on Thursday 7 November brought to you this week in association with Q5 - the experts in organisational health.
Newsweek has had a bumpy few years since being sold for a dollar by The Washington Post Company in 2010.
But under current co-owner and CEO Dev Pragad the title has the largest audience in its 90-year history - doubling year on year to more than 100 million global visits per month in September, according to Similarweb.
As with many fast-growing sites in the UK and US, Newsweek ascribes much of its success to content tailored for Google Discover - the personalised newsfeed which appears on most people's mobile phones.
SEO expert Barry Adams has written a piece for us explaining why Google Discover has become such a big deal for publishers and how publishers can grow sustainably on the platform.
I suspect Google Discover traffic will also have played a big hand in the growth of The Independent which last month became the UK-born news website with the largest overall audience in the US, according to Comscore.
Editor Geordie Greig told us the success is down to "journalistic ethics, richness of content and unbeatable data knowledge".
While the Sun and Mail cut back their US teams this year The Independent is continuing to expand so it is well worth paying attention to.
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On Press Gazette
How Newsweek became world’s fastest-growing English language news website
“As revenue goes up, we’re reinvesting in our journalists, our journalism. We’ve tripled the size of our politics team over the past seven months.”
Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom
“Once a publisher finds a specific topic that consistently generates significant visitor numbers from Discover, it’s seductive to go all-in on that topic and generate daily articles even if there’s very little of substance to say.”
Comscore data: Independent had bigger US audience than Mail or Guardian in September
“He [Trump] has a propensity to make people want to know what’s going on inside America, from inside America and from outside America. And so that is good for journalism. We’ll have to see whether it’s good for America.”
Press Gazette highlights
US election result leaves media pundits and pollsters with red faces… again
News organisations are forced to accept Google AI crawlers, says FT policy chief
‘Millions’ of NYT and NY Daily News stories taken by OpenAI for training data
US election: Speed and fairness are key tactics for fast-growing Newsweek
US election: Grassroots political reporting back in fashion says Semafor’s Ben Smith
New York Times-owned The Athletic reports quarterly profit for first time
How publishers can escape email boxes and embrace automation (promoted)
Latest podcast
Election endorsements, revolting Guardian journalists and regulating AI
Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford and reporter Bron Maher provide an insider take on three of the hottest issues in news media: how did the Washington Post handle its election endorsement so badly? Why are Guardian and Observer journalists set to go on strike? And what can publishers do about the onslaught of generative AI bots harvesting their content without permission?