Reach CEO's note to staff after difficult 2023 | Condé Nast CEO AI warning
And why "unnerving" Post Office drama shows need for PR reset
Good morning and welcome to your daily helping of news about the world of news from Press Gazette on Wednesday, 17 January, brought to you today in association with Opti Digital, an adtech company developing innovative AI-based technologies designed to help publishers maximise their advertising revenues.
I've seen a demo of the new iteration of Google - Search Generative Experience - and the results are frankly terrifying for publishers.
News-related searches can include an AI-written summary of latest developments with no obvious clicks through to the publishers the information has been sourced from. It seems to be a version of the search engine that prioritises keeping the audience on Google unless they are clicking on a paid-for link.
Google SGE is only currently available to signed-in users in the US and other territories outside Europe.
But publishers fear developments like this and ChatGPT all add up to a future where publishers' work is exploited without recompense by answering reader questions with no referral to the source.
We report on the latest evidence from the chief executive of Condé Nast, who has warned Congress that unless regulators act fast many media companies will go out of business while they wait for litigation against OpenAI and others for their blatant copyright infringement to play out.
We also have somewhat brighter news for Reach employees after a torrid 2023 which has culminated with the departure of well-regarded Mirror editor Alison Phillips this week.
CEO Jim Mullen says the cuts are now behind them (for now at least) and that the Prince Harry privacy trial result and the end of the company's long-standing pension fund deficit both point the way to a brighter future.
Mullen said that fresh historic privacy claims are now likely to be dismissed, meaning cost estimates for dealing with the scandal may not rise much further than the current future liability of £45m. The end of the pension fund deficit will deliver £46m a year back to the bottom line from 2028.
And Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre has written for us about what communications professionals and journalists can learn from the Post Office IT scandal. A comms culture that prioritises the short-term interests of a corporate brand over people has to change, Fox says. As the Post Office has found, the long-term damage caused by taking this approach can be grave indeed.
Promoted report
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New from Press Gazette
Reach boosted by Prince Harry trial result and end of pension deficit says CEO
In an all-staff email on Tuesday afternoon, Jim Mullen said the more than 700 job cuts that have taken place over the past year have left the business “structured for our digitally-led future”.
While New York Times litigates over AI, many media companies will liquidate – US Congress warned
If legislators decide the “fair use” argument made by OpenAI and others in the generative AI industry is wrong, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch suggested they won’t need to do any more as the free market will sort out the situation.
Comment: Post Office IT scandal underlines need for a reset in corporate communications
“One of the reasons I found ‘Mr Bates versus the Post Office‘ so unsettling was that I recognised a style of corporate communications that places protecting ‘the brand’ over all else.”
Podcast 63: Political reporting in an election year with Chris Hope and Gloria De Piero
In the latest episode, Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford met GB News presenting duo Gloria De Piero and Christopher Hope. They spoke about their new weekly show, PMQs Live, the future of political reporting in an election year and why they think GB News is striking a chord with viewers by offering them more of what they want.
News in brief
Broadcast data body Barb has now said GB News averaged 33,000 viewers to its New Year's Eve fireworks coverage, after initial (later found to be inaccurate) overnight data gave it a one million milestone. (Press Gazette)
Thomson Reuters has acquired London-based World Business Media, a B2B company focused on the insurance and reinsurance industry. (Press Gazette)
RTÉ broadcaster Dave Fanning is suing for defamation over an article on MSN that wrongly pictured him under a headline about another Irish broadcaster facing trial for alleged sexual misconduct. He shared a suspicion the error was down to AI aggregation. (Irish Times)
OpenAI says ChatGPT users will start to see attribution and links to real-time news reporting in results as it promised transparency in content ahead of this big election year. (OpenAI)
Byline Times has revealed a memo from TalkTV boss Richard Wallace telling staff to "bring migrants back to the front of the agenda" and focus on its "usual domestic 'hits'" such as the Rwanda Commons showdown rather than Ukraine, Gaza and US politics. (Byline Times)
David Smith, the executive chairman of US TV network Sinclair, has bought The Baltimore Sun and its sister titles from Alden Global Capital. Smith said: "I think the paper can be hugely profitable and successful and serve a greater public interest." (The New York Times)
On Israeli military killing more than 80 journalists in Gaza in ten weeks, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists has told the Reuters Institute: "We're also worried about a pattern in which journalists in Gaza report receiving threats and then their families are killed". (RISJ)
Marketing technology business Techtarget - the company which owns Computer Weekly - is combining with Informa Tech into "New Techtarget", which it says will be "a leading global platform in B2B data and market access". (Techtarget)
Analysis of UK journalism job ads last year showed a big drop in recruitment with the biggest falls in the number of ads posted at Thomson Reuters and National World. DMGT and DC Thomson posted the same number as the year before, although both did make cuts. Press Gazette analysis showed at least 8,000 journalism industry job cuts were made in the UK, US and Canada last year. (Journalism.co.uk)
Red Ventures is trying to sell US tech site CNET, which is profitable, according to Axios.
Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh has left the territory to receive surgery on an injury sustained in an airstrike that killed a colleague. Al-Dahdouh had also kept working through the killing of his wife and three of his children. (France24)
Barstool Sports chief executive Erika Ayers Badan is stepping down. In a note to staff she claimed Barstool has seen 5000% revenue growth since she took over in July 2016. Press Gazette spoke with Ayers Badan in June about why the outlet was seeing success amid “a dark time for media”. (Variety)
Previously on Press Gazette
Telegraph in limbo: Latest on saga involving George Osborne, National Crime Agency and Ofcom
Iliffe Media revenue falls 11% but paywalls offer new income stream
Mirror editor-in-chief Alison Phillips steps down after six years
Survey suggests 37% of UK news subscribers are considering cancellation
Be good to hear more about generative search Dominic. Sounds like it could be the internet killer.