Publishers hit back at the AI bots | Top 50 UK news websites monthly ranking
And Douglas McCabe is stepping down after 12 years as CEO of Enders Analysis to head up strategy and business development for The Guardian
Welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Wednesday, 2 July, brought to you today in association with Admiral, The Visitor Relationship Management (VRM) Company.
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There was big news yesterday in the fight for the future of journalism as a coalition of major online publishers backed technology intended to keep out AI bots.
Dotdash Meredith and Time in the US as well as DMGT and Sky News in the UK are among the companies backing the Cloudflare technology.
Cloudflare is an internet hosting network and online security specialist which believes it can keep out unwanted website crawlers. It also has plans to charge the AI bots for access to websites on a pay-per-crawl basis.
Dotdash Meredith is the biggest consumer publisher in the US with brands such People, Verywell and Investopedia. Chief commercial officer Jon Meredith said: "From today, AI companies can’t take our content for free.
"AI runs on chips, electricity, and information. Chips and power are table stakes. But if you have the best inputs, you’ll have the best outputs. We’re one of the biggest publishers on earth, and we believe great content is at the heart of the future of AI.
"So as a first step, no one gets to take it for free."
Without quality input, generative AI answer engines are just recycling and regurgitating worthless online sludge. Journalists and the publishers who employ them are the real value creators and they need to get paid. Full story here.
Surrey Live, with its emphasis on health content targeted at Google Discover, grew 310% year on year and is now the 34th biggest news website in the UK with a monthly UK audience of five million according to Ipsos iris (about four times the population of Surrey).
In terms of engagement, Mail Online is the leading UK commercial publisher with 1.3 billion audience minutes in May compared with 785 billion minutes for The Guardian in second place.
Overall there is quite a lot of variability in performance between different sites.
But with two-thirds of news websites seeing year-on-year growth in May there is no sign yet that worst-case scenarios discussed at recent journalism conferences about Google zero and the death of the website are coming to fruition any time soon.
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On Press Gazette
UK and US publishers back move to block AI scrapers by default
“A game-changer for publishers and sets a new standard for how content is respected online. When AI companies can no longer take anything they want for free, it opens the door to sustainable innovation built on permission and partnership.”
50 biggest UK news websites in May: Two-thirds see audience growth while half get engagement boost
Four Reach websites saw their audience at least double in the past year. The biggest of these sites was Examiner Live in Huddersfield, up 200.4% to reach 9.2 million people in May.
News in brief
Ofcom is consulting on the conditions it should impose for local news on radio under the new Media Act. It is proposing that some local news "must be locally-gathered, which will require journalists to be physically present in the relevant areas". (Ofcom)
LexisNexis legal news service Law360 has a new policy requiring every story to pass through an AI "bias" detection tool before publication. The newsroom union wants the "unproven" tool to be voluntary to use. (Nieman Lab)
The Sunday Post has promoted deputy Thomas Hawkins to editor. (Press Gazette)
Douglas McCabe is stepping down after 12 years as CEO of Enders Analysis to join The Guardian as chief strategy and business development officer. (Linkedin)
The Sun has promoted sales partner Luke Gough to the role of betting and gaming sales director as it grows revenue and its client base in the sector. Sun Originals videos have a new deal with Unibet and Paddy Power has signed with The Sun's football content for a third year.
Former Reach editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley is joining the management team of PR stories marketplace Synapse, where he is already a shareholder and board member, as executive director. (Synapse)
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Mediahuis Belgium’s battle to persuade young to pay for news
Top 50 news websites in the US: Top sites see steep traffic falls in May
The PR agency, the publishers and the disappearing lottery winners
Outsourcing your content licensing: Five reasons why (promoted)
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Latest podcast: Video masterclass with PA Media's Joe Pickover
UK national news agency PA Media has massively ramped up its video output in recent years and is able to provide live video feeds of news events across the country. Here PA head of video Joe Pickover explains how publishers can make video work for them in a podcast edition which is presented by Press Gazette in association with PA Media.