Profit up at Reach in 2024 | Girl Talk magazine marks 30 years
Good morning and welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Tuesday, 4 February.
Bosses at Mirror publisher Reach have reason to celebrate today after reporting full-year financial results laced with positive news.
Digital revenue was up year on year and profit also returned to growth.
The relentless focus on page views which has led to controversial story-count and page-view targets for individual reporters also bore fruit.
Page views were up in the final quarter helped by strong visibility on Google's Discover smartphone news aggregation product.
The Reach share price has been level this morning with a market cap of £273m, just under three times annual profit.
With the end of the pensions deficit and phone-hacking liabilities now under two years away why do investors still not see Reach as a company with a bright future?
I suspect one reason is the fact print revenue as a proportion of the total remains unchanged at 75% and is locked in decline. Trump-fuelled macroeconomic uncertainty also continues to dent consumer confidence.
Sidebar: My heart sank a little when CEO Jim Mullen praised AI rewrites of weather bulletins as a good source of traffic to Reach local sites in his results statement. By my reading, these articles never seem to quite fulfil headline promises such as 'The Exact Time Snowbomb Will Hit UK'.
But overall the Reach results are encouraging and a tribute to the hard work of the editorial team.
Today we also report on some encouraging signs that generation Alpha (those born after 2010) still has an appetite for professional content at Immediate Media print magazine Girl Talk. I suspect the covermount free gifts may help too!
Reader survey: Five years on from the pandemic how many days are you back in the office? Please fill out our quick survey and we will share our survey findings in full next week.
On Press Gazette
Reach chief executive Jim Mullen. Picture: Reach
Cost cuts and growing digital revenue boost Reach profits for 2024
Print still comprises 75% of revenue for Reach, which publishes more than 100 newspaper titles including the Mirror, Express, Daily Star, Manchester Evening News and Birmingham Mail.
Girl Talk marks 30 years of being ‘supportive big sister’ in magazine form
Editor Claire Morgan said three decades on, the core values of “friendship, family, finding out about the world and themselves, discovering who they are” as well as topics like pets and fashion remain the same for its readers."
News in brief
AI search engines send 96% less referral traffic to news sites than Google search, according to a report by content licensing platform TollBit shared with Forbes.
More than 75,000 digital subscribers to The Washington Post have cancelled since owner Jeff Bezos announced changes to its opinion pages last weekend, according to NPR.
Ofcom has written to the BBC sharing "ongoing concerns about the nature and gravity" of failings relating to a Gaza documentary but saying it will not step in at this stage, letting the broadcaster carry out its own investigations. (Ofcom)
GB News says its new Youtube subchannel dedicated to providing extended/continuous coverage of live events including 10 Downing Street and White House press conferences will later be launched on its own platforms including its website and app.
Good Housekeeping has extended its endorsements to books, creating GH Good Books with a spring collection that will feature eight titles. The books to endorse are decided by a panel of the brand's VIP members and staff.
More than half (56%) of Oscars-related content between 28 December and 27 January may have lost out on advertising because of agency keyword blocklists, according to ad solutions provider Mantis. Articles about nominated film Emilia Perez, for example, contained references to "drug cartels".
Le Monde has sent its M Le magazine du Monde supplement global for an English-language edition, distributing 25,000 copies through a "premium network" of stores in cities across America, Asia and Europe. It is seeking to broaden its international readership online. CEO Louis Dreyfus set out Le Monde's international ambitions and digital subscriptions success in a Press Gazette interview last month.
The LA Times has added AI-generated analysis under its opinion articles that it says identifies "where the views expressed may fall on the political spectrum" and provides "different views on the topic". In one use, which appears to have now been removed, an article about historical KKK control of Anaheim city council was appended with a note suggesting the Klan could be seen as "a product of 'white Protestant culture'... rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement". (LA Times)
News podcast listeners are more likely than other podcast audiences to stop listening to a show because there are too many ads, the content got stale, or they found a better alternative show, according to NPR-sponsored research. (Nieman Lab)
Also on Press Gazette:
£13.6bn publisher adtech claim versus Google takes step forward
Former Independent editor says AI will free up reporters to create more ‘guff’
News agencies boss slams £10 Telegraph picture rate as ‘a new low’
GB News losses since launch top £100m but 2024 revenue more than doubles
Publishers must use AI-powered slingshots to fight big tech Goliath
How German-language news publishers are growing online subs (promoted)
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