New Culture Secretary's media record | WashPost starts creating 'third newsroom'
And Kantar Media's director of insight on how publishers can maximise their chances of winning ad spend
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Tuesday 9 July, 2024.
New culture secretary Lisa Nandy previously called for a tax on social media companies to fund regional investigative journalism and more local democracy reporters.
Her 2020 comments bode well for the prospects of a new government which has the power to fundamentally reshape the UK media landscape via the Digital Markets Bill, passed in May.
The law enables tech companies such as Google and Facebook to immediately be given "strategic market status" and then be compelled to "trade on fair and reasonable terms", give notice on big changes to their algorithms and have effective processes for handling disputes.
The last government changed the law so that one newspaper would not be sold to a fund backed by a foreign government. Yet two foreign companies, Meta and Alphabet, were allowed to amass unprecedented power to control everything Britons see online.
This has seen Meta downgrade news content on Facebook even going so far as to label links to public interest stories as spam.
Google has begun helping itself to copyrighted news content without permission to create AI-written news summaries which remove the incentive for readers to click through to the originating sites.
And more than £14bn was spent with Alphabet alone on advertising in the UK last year, seven times more than every national and local newsbrand and magazine combined.
If Labour is serious about national renewal and a reset it has a huge opportunity to revitalise local communities with effective regulation of digital media which encourages original community journalism.
Meanwhile in the US, William Lewis is hanging in there as CEO of the Washington Post despite having to execute a U-turn over his pick of former Telegraph colleague Rob Winnett for the post of executive editor.
For his latest big editorial appointment he has chosen Post insider Krissah Thompson to lead the creation of the "third newsroom". Her job will be to build a team which develops new products and formats, engages off-platform readers and "restructur[es] ourselves for a rapidly and regularly changing news ecosystem".
And director of insight at Kantar Media Trevor Vagg writes for us about how publishers can maximise their chances of winning ad spend by combining their own data about reader behaviour with third-party insights which could help predict the chances people will act on the adverts they see.
New from Press Gazette
New culture secretary Lisa Nandy called for BBC to be ‘mutualised’ but backed licence fee
Nandy wrote in 2020: “I’d like to see us not just move the headquarters of Channel 4 and the BBC out of London but commissioning power too, so what gets made and what gets said is not determined by a small group of men behind a desk in Westminster and Whitehall.”
Washington Post ‘third newsroom’ creation gets underway
In a note on Monday, executive editor Matt Murray described the third newsroom’s goal as “properly structuring ourselves for a rapidly and regularly changing news ecosystem” by “developing new products and formats” and putting its content in front of “different audiences, especially off-platform users”.
Publishers must prove audience loyalty to win ad spend battle
“Publishers and media owners already know a great deal about their audience’s behaviour on their platform through first-party data. They know who engages, when, on which devices, and for how long. But they may not know why the audience is engaging, nor do they know what else the audience does outside of the platform.”
News in brief
BBC News director of journalism and deputy CEO Jonathan Munro has been promoted to global director. (Press Gazette)
The Welsh Parliament will today debate proposals to end the requirement for council tax notices to be published in local print newspapers. Six daily papers in Wales opposed the plan on their front pages yesterday, urging Senedd members to #SaveWelshNews. (See them here)
Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman has reportedly made a "multimillion-dollar investment" to help voting technology company Smartmatic sustain its defamation lawsuits against Fox News and Newsmax. (Washington Post)
Previously on Press Gazette
Top 50 UK news websites in May: ITV growth sees broadcaster re-enter top ten
How Politico and New Statesman election parties toasted Labour’s landslide
Election TV ratings: BBC is clear winner but Channel 4 doubles 2019 audience
Daily Mail gracious in defeat as Fleet Street reacts to Labour landslide
Bankers allowed to sue Dow Jones under GDPR over ‘missing $1bn’ article
Latest podcast
Setting goals for US expansion with Footballco’s first North America CEO
Goal, Indivisa and Mundial publisher Footballco was reaching 30 million people in the US without having any meaningful boots on the ground.
But at the start of 2024 Jason Wagenheim arrived as its first CEO for North America, bringing lessons that sports publishing can learn from lifestyle after a long stint at Bustle Digital Group.
Wagenheim told Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt about how he is approaching Footballco’s two-year runway ahead of the World Cup being held in the US, Canada and Mexico in 2026 as well as the value of going deeper – well beyond traditional match reporting – in an age of algorithms and generative AI.