š Hello from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 29 September.
ā° FINAL CALL on entries for this yearās British Journalism Awards. The official extended deadline is midnight tonight. But ā between you, me and the gatepost ā we will still accept entries all day tomorrow (Wednesday). Find out more here.
š Newsquestās Oxford Mail was the fastest growing top-50 news site in the UK in August ā nearly doubling its monthly audience to 6.5 million, and more than tripling engaged minutes year on year to 11.7 million.
Another Newsquest site, The Herald in Scotland, grew its audience 58% year on year to 2.9 million.
Meanwhile, Reach titles Chronicle Live, Daily Record and Manchester Evening News were among the biggest fallers ā down more than 30% year on year each in terms of monthly UK audience.
The Oxford Mail seems to focus heavily on local, breaking news and it may be that Google Discover and search are favouring this over more generic stories around particular verticals (like health and personal finance), which used to do so well for certain Reach titles.
Overall, only 16 out of the top 50 UK online newsbrands grew their UK audience year on year in August.
Looking at the top ten titles ranked by total audience minutes per month, The New York Times was the fastest UK growing online newspaper brand in the UK in August ā up 33% to 648 million minutes.
š¤ Do publishers have an audience challenge or a sales challenge?
Sometimes I think we focus on the former at the expense of the latter (distracted by the big monthly reach audience number falling as we lose a lot of drive-by traffic from social media and search).
Harmsworth Media has decided to beef up the sales operation of the New Scientist with the launch of a new B2B arm. It offers a mix of native content, events, brand partnerships, consultancy and new editorial platforms designed to better capitalise on its core audience of boffins actually working in science and technology.
Itās all based around the premise that the New Scientist knows its audience better than anyone else and can offer marketers bespoke packages to get in front of them.
CEO Emily Shelley has put in place a three-year plan and a new senior leadership team aimed at bringing the company back into growth.
The core news agency business ā PA Media ā only accounts for Ā£35m of annual turnover with stock picture agency Alamy around the same. Its other businesses are sports betting information brand Podium (Ā£22m), PR and marketing services (Ā£12.7m) and sports streaming platform StreamAMG (Ā£11.6m).
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š¤ News In Brief
Mill Media has received a cash boost of Ā£100,000 from Postcode Lottery to fund subscriptions for under-25s. The local newsletter-focused brand now has 15,000 paying readers and employs 25 journalists. (Press Gazette)
The National Union of Journalistsā Reach group chapel has passed a vote of no confidence in editorial leadership, particularly chief content officer David Higgerson, following the latest plans to cut 160 jobs. (NUJ)
The New York Times and other publishers have formally opposed the Trump administration's intervention in their copyright case against OpenAI, arguing it "may have been influenced by extraneous considerations". (Politico)
More than 300 news publishers are heading to Washington today to urge Congress to crack down on ābad botsā scraping content for AI training without permission. The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act would force AI crawlers to identify themselves and their purpose. (Digiday)
OpenAI has provided another $10m in funding to pay for staff to experiment with AI initiatives at US local newspapers. The support is a mix of cash and software credits. (Nieman Lab)
Former Conservative Party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft has acquired a minority stake in Reach. (Daily Business)
The Centre for Investigative Journalism is holding a day-long series of panels and talks on 30 October at the Barbican in London, discussing topics from AI to the Epstein Files. (CIJ)
Multimillionaire entrepreneur Dale Vince has said heās considering expanding Westminster Extra to cover London-wide issues and making Camden New Journal āproperly digitalā, after announcing a funding package for the two papers and the Islington Tribune. (The Guardian)
Women in Journalism is launching an online AI for Journalists course with speakers from CNN, the BBC and Newsquest explaining what AI tools they use and how they use them. The course covers finding stories, sifting through documents, verification and automating tasks. (Women in Journalism)
Mediahuis-owned EU politics and policy newsbrand Euractiv has rebranded as Rapporteur, noting the word is "used in political life across the English-speaking world to refer to those who report reliably back to agencies, legislatures or assemblies". (Rapporteur)
News UK has announced an investment in AI-powered legal compliance tool ClearDraft. It scans content and identifies legal risks for journalists before publication. (News UK)
š In case you missed it:
1) Financial Times grows business to record revenue of Ā£566m for 2025
FT Group revenue up 5% in 2025 with operating profit jumping 23%.
2) BBC to cut local radio and regional TV news with 90 jobs at risk
Latest changes are part of Ā£500m annual cost savings to be found in next three years.
3) How Advance Local went from zero to 250,000 paid online subs
SVP of digital consumer revenue at Advance Local Ann Poe shares her insights on dynamic paywalls.
4) Facebook algorithm change in April ācrushedā audience reach for Digitalbox
Publisher of Entertainment Daily and The Tab investing heavily in original video.
5) What publishers can learn from creators: āBe audience, not platform, obsessedā
Senior leaders from Guardian and BBC spoke about creator economy at Press Gazette event.
š» Latest podcast
Advance Local on going from zero to 250,000 online subs
US local news publisher Advance Local has gone from zero to 250,000 paid digital subscribers in the last eight years.
SVP for digital consumer revenue Ann Poe explained how the group evolved from a simple premium content model to having a dynamic paywall that makes decisions on whether to gate content based on individual users.
VP for sales at Mather Ariel Burkett explained how Matherās Sophi platform ingests user data to present individuals with an offer most likely to maximise revenue for the publisher.