News Corp sues Perplexity | Former Observer editor Alton says Tortoise 'ideal owner'
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Tuesday, 22 October, 2024 brought to you today in association with SmartFrame – the world's largest image-streaming network. The SmartFrame Guide to the Attention Economy is available to download now.
The saga surrounding the future of the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper took a new twist last night as former Observer editor Roger Alton backed Tortoise Media’s take-over bid for his former title.
Alton’s stance puts him at odds with many Guardian and Observer staff who are deeply sceptical about the bid led by former Times editor James Harding.
Writing to Press Gazette, Alton said he believes the Scott Trust has behaved badly and clearly wants rid of the title and – this being the case – thinks Tortoise Media would be an ideal owner.
So far Tortoise has offered £25m of investment in the title spent over five years. Harding addressed staff at a union meeting last week where one of his prospective new employees said simply: “Can you please go away?”
Guardian and Observer journalists currently enjoy the security of a no compulsory redundancies guarantee and the backing of a £1.3bn investment fund. They also question whether £25m will be enough to plug the gaps left when The Observer is amputated from Guardian News and Media and has to find its own business, sport and foreign coverage.
But The Observer does not currently have a website and the question remains: what will the Scott Trust do once its print sales dwindle to the point where publication is no longer viewed as being sustainable? The title currently sells around 100,000 copies per week and in five years’ time this could have dwindled to 50,000 or 60,000 copies.
Observer journalists face certain decline under the Scott Trust as it focuses investment on the digital future of The Guardian or Harding’s more risky plan to grow The Observer as a standalone title with its own paywalled website.
Today we also report on News Corp’s mega lawsuit against AI firm Perplexity. The size of the claim appears to run into the billions as the Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher sues in the US over the theft of its journalism by Perplexity to provide natural language answers to questions about current events.
Along with the New York Times case against OpenAI this is a lawsuit which should give investors pause for thought and may decide whether original journalism can be protected from exploitation without recompense by the AI supercomputers.
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Perplexity. Picture: Shutterstock
News Corp seeks massive damages from AI firm perlexity for stealing content
In the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on Monday, News Corp subsidiaries Dow Jones and NYP Holdings demanded a jury trial over what they called “massive freeriding on Plaintiffs’ protected content”.
Tortoise is ‘ideal owner’ for Observer says former editor Roger Alton
Alton had earlier been one of three former Observer editors to accuse Guardian Media Group owner the Scott Trust of abrogating its responsibilities to the title by putting it up for sale.
News in brief
The Daily Mail says it has passed 20 million followers across its network of Tiktok accounts, doubling its following since January. Press Gazette spoke to the Mail's head of social video last year about its investment in the platform.
Wholesaler Costco's "Costco Connection" is the third biggest magazine in the US by circulation, The New York Times reports, with 15.4m copies mailed out to members monthly and another 300,000 distributed at stores. The state of affairs is similar in the UK, where the free Tesco and ASDA magazines topped the magazine ABCs for 2023 with 1.5m and 1m copies respectively circulated on average per issue. (The New York Times)
New York magazine and political journalist Olivia Nuzzi have “parted ways”, the publication says, a month after she was placed on leave over an undisclosed “personal relationship” with former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. New York said a law firm hired to review Nuzzi’s work found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias”. (CNN)
Previously on Press Gazette
Top 50 news websites in the world: Half grow traffic year on year
Less moralising and more fun: What we can learn from the golden era of women’s mags
Future plc share price tumbles after boss Jon Steinberg steps down
Nottingham Post vindicated over characterisation of police ‘non-disclosable’ briefing
National editors pay tribute to SWNS at 50: UK’s biggest independent news agency
Phone-hacker Glenn Mulcaire loses bid to appeal against convictions
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