Justice for Marlborough News! | Economist backs Labour
And Sky News deputy political editor tells us about his extraordinary campaign trail lifestyle
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Friday 28 June, 2024.
I’m pleased to announce that after a short campaign Press Gazette has secured victory for Marlborough News in its wrangle with property services group Savills over fees charged for a PR image.
The tiny hyperlocal site received a bill from lawyers after a PR image shared by Savills turned out to be owned by someone else.
After initial stonewalling, Savills paid the £250 bill within a few hours of our story appearing. Thanks for doing the decent thing Savills and I have now ended my boycott of your services. The next time I purchase a country house or commercial office block, you will be my first port of call.
Today we also have the latest on Prince Harry’s legal battle with News Group Newspapers. The Sun publisher has accused him in the High Court of destroying evidence relevant to the case.
And in a mini victory for the Sun publisher, the Red Prince has been ordered to pay £60,000 towards its legal costs.
Keen media watchers will note that this is rather a case of people in glass houses hurling rocks out of them (Prospect Magazine recently revealed how NGN deleted 31 million emails when it was facing investigation over phone hacking).
Wilmington Media has sold one of the UK’s leading B2B news brands, Health Service Journal, as well as the rest of its healthcare information assets to private equity investors.
And we caught up with Sky News deputy political editor Sam Coates on the campaign trail where he shared details of his unusual election diet and explained why he does not get frustrated by politicians stone-walling in interviews. This was before, however, he asked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak three times whether he told his parliamentary private secretary Craig Williams the date of the election before he placed a bet on it.
In other political news, The Economist has come out in favour of a Labour victory in next week’s UK general election. Check out our page rounding up all the media election endorsements so far. We will be keeping a sharp eye on the leader columns of The Sun, FT, Times and others next week to see which way they go.
JOBS OF THE WEEK
PA Media is recruiting a parliamentary reporter based at its HQ in Paddington
DigitalOcean is recruiting a senior technical writer based remotely
Find and post the latest jobs on Press Gazette
New from Press Gazette
Sky’s Sam Coates reveals his election formula: 18-hour days, power naps and gallons of Huel
Sky's deputy political editor describes a "bin fire" June schedule that he "wouldn't swap for the world".
Savills pays copyright bill for PR image after Press Gazette coverage
Hyperlocal news website was facing £460 bill from rights holder of PR image.
Harry ordered to explain loss of messages with ghostwriter that may be relevant to Sun legal case
Court hears Harry was dragged "kicking and screaming" into letting his personal emails be examined for evidence.
Health Service Journal sold by Wilmington to private equity firm in £26m deal
HSJ has been owned by Wilmington since 2017.
General election 2024 press endorsements: Economist endorses Labour for first time since 2005
Round-up of newspaper endorsements for the 2024 general election as they come in.
News in brief
Time has become the latest news publisher to sign a content licensing deal with OpenAI. (Press Gazette)
Russia's "sham" trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich started on Wednesday after he already spent more than a year in detention. (Dow Jones)
CNN chief executive Mark Thompson has teased he hopes to have a subscription product in the market by the end of the year. (Axios)
The New York Times is reportedly exploring paywalling all but the three most recent episodes of its flagship The Daily podcast and making new episodes of Serial subscriber-only as the start of gradually making its podcasts subscriber exclusives. (WSJ)
The Times is putting the price of its Saturday edition up from £3.50 to £4 next week with The Sunday Times going from £4 to £4.50. The Federation of Independent Retailers says there is "anger" as profit margins for newsagents won't increase until January. (The Fed)
Women's lifestyle site Popsugar UK has relaunched as PS UK with a focus on "accessible wellness" via health, fitness and beauty and balance verticals. Popsugar, which launched in the US in 2006 and in the UK in 2015, has been part of Vox Media since 2022. (PS UK)
Former Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell has been named CEO of Chicago Public Media, a non-profit which owns the Chicago Sun-Times and radio station WBEZ. She has recently been studying the impact of news avoidance in US local news for the Reuters Institute. (Chicago Sun-Times)
The next executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review is Sewell Chan, the current editor in chief of prominent non-profit The Texas Tribune. (New York Times)
Previously on Press Gazette
‘Enemies of accurate, prescient journalism?’ Geordie Greig hits out at Mail and Telegraph
Less on polls, more policy please says 5 News political editor Andy Bell
What happened when British GQ stopped trying to ‘feed the algorithm’
‘So many damn follow-up emails’: Jay Rayner tells PRs to stop ‘driving me nuts’
Top 50 news websites in the world: BBC fastest-growing among ten biggest brands in May
Nigel Farage goes to war with Mail titles over coverage of Ukraine comments
Mind the London news gap: The boroughs which have little coverage of council activities
Latest podcast
How Total Politics is making B2B work without a paywall
Press Gazette sat down with Mark Wallace, the chief executive of Total Politics Group, to find out how the company makes free political journalism pay.
Press Gazette asked how the Politics Home, Conservative Home and The House publisher is faring since incorporating in its new form in 2022, and finds out how the business has found a way to hedge against political cycles by selling services to both sides of the aisle.
"The next time I purchase a country house or commercial office block, you will be my first port of call." Brilliant! 👏🤣