Sun editor Victoria Newton on Huw Edwards | David Knowles remembered with public service award
And we have your news diary for the week ahead
Good morning and welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing for Monday 16 December, 2024, brought to you today in association with Content Ignite — the end-to-end solution for ad stack management.
This morning we have a rare interview with Sun editor Victoria Newton as she spoke about her title's British Journalism Awards double win for its work investigating Huw Edwards.
She was pleased for her Sun team but remains concerned about how popular investigative journalism will be funded in the future.
The Huw Edwards investigation will have been hugely costly for The Sun. Today it looks like money well spent because it has delivered a boost to the title's reputation.
But in terms of advertising revenue, or copies sold, the story will have been a loss leader. For the same money The Sun could have written hundreds of frothy stories thinly sourced from social media, which would have delivered far more advertising revenue.
Tabloid journalism which probes the publicist-produced veneer of celebrities remains under threat.
Today we also share the speech made on behalf of Telegraph journalist David Knowles in recognition of his posthumous British Journalism Awards win.
David's Ukraine: The Latest colleague Francis Dearnley said: "A better world is always possible. David believed that, and I think that it is vital that we all remember that whenever we’re having a bad day, because that’s what David did for us: whenever we had a bad day, he kept our spirits high.
“Idealism should be our compass and pragmatism the way. That was David’s philosophy, and I think we can all do with a little bit more of that in our lives.”
You can see the full list of British Journalism Awards winners here.
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On Press Gazette
Sun editor Victoria Newton: ‘We are the number one scoop machine on Fleet Street’
The Sun won both the Scoop of the Year and Investigation of the Year prizes at the British Journalism Awards in London on Thursday night.
‘A brilliant journalist and brilliant human being’: David Knowles remembered with Public Service Award
Knowles launched The Telegraph’s daily podcast Ukraine: The Latest, initially on Twitter Spaces, in February 2022. It has now surpassed 700 episodes and 100 million listens almost three years after Russia began its full-scale invasion.
News diary 16 – 22 December: Gisele Pelicot trial verdict, English Devolution White Paper
A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda this week, from the team at Foresight News.
News in brief
Evgeny Lebedev is reportedly exploring a sale of his loss-making TV station London Live after ten years. Staff have been told it is "considering options to sell or merge the business with other TV channels where a combined entity can be more effective". (The Sunday Times)
ABC News has agreed to pay $15m (£12m) to settle a defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump after anchor George Stephanopoulos wrongly said the president elect had been found "liable for rape". (BBC News)
Hearst Magazines has bought the MotorTrend Group of car brands in print, digital and events from Warner Bros Discovery. (Variety)
The BBC has complained to Apple after an Apple Intelligence AI-powered summary made it look as though it had reported Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing insurance boss Brian Thompson, had shot himself. (BBC News)
LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has done an interview with his paper. He said he plans to "continue to fund" it: "But something has to change if all this is considered a philanthropic trust. It’s not. A sustainable business has to occur.” (LA Times)
Semafor has seen an email in which Axios' senior counsel told staff that under Trump the title expects "more aggressive government efforts to investigate leaks — which could include a wave of subpoenas seeking journalists’ phone records, documents, and testimony". (Semafor)
Nearly 40 creative and media groups, including the Financial Times, DMG Media, Associated Press, Society of Editors and the News Media Association have called on the government to firm up copyright protection. (FT)
The government of Niger has suspended the BBC in the country and said it would bring a complaint of “incitement to genocide and inter-community massacre” against the French government’s Radio France Internationale. (Committee to Protect Journalists)
Forbes has opened a private members’ club in Madrid, which it plans as the first of several around the world. (FT)
Also on Press Gazette:
Observer sale: New email reveals Guardian refusal to talk to potential bidder
Business Insider tech chief: AI lets us ‘punch above our weight class’
The Big Issue’s shift from street paper to campaigning digital title
50 biggest UK news websites in October: Sun falls out of top five
Spectator rebuked for calling Juno Dawson ‘a man who claims to be a woman’
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