The man who helped cost Rupert Murdoch £500m | Top 50 news sites in the UK
Good morning and welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Wednesday, 5 February.
Convicted phone-hacker Graham Johnson has played a key role in all three of Prince Harry's massive legal actions against the tabloids.
Harry has relied on Johnson's witness evidence, journalism and paid research services to help wage his war on the tabloids.
But far more than that, Johnson believes his work opened the way for some £500m of claims against News Group Newspapers by uncovering evidence of outsourced criminality at The Sun.
I asked Johnson why he thinks Harry settled. He also revealed why he thinks the true cost of the hacking scandal to News Corp could be £3bn and what he thinks will happen in Harry's final great tabloid legal action - against the Mail, due to reach the High Court next year.
Today we also have the latest top-50 UK news websites ranking which reveals strong growth at the Daily Express and volatility elsewhere in the table.
Mail Online remains top of the commercial news providers in terms of time spent on the site, with 1.6 billion reader minutes in January.
The Telegraph continues to prove that you don't need to have an owner to be a success. Despite being paywalled, it was the second most-read commercial newsbrand in the month with 884 million reader minutes - up 20% year on year.
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
The man who helped cost Rupert Murdoch £500m
Johnson says that the seeds of £500m worth of legal claims against News Group Newspapers were sewn over dinner with former News of the World news editor Greg Miskiw at a restaurant in Warrington in July 2015.
50 biggest UK news websites Jan 2025: Express audience up by a third in past year
Just six news websites in Press Gazette’s monthly top-50 ranking saw bigger annual growth, of which five were regional brands also owned by parent company Reach and the sixth was Forbes.
News in brief
About 200 people at Disney's ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks are to be let go, according to the Wall Street Journal. This amounts to just under 6% of staff across the two units. Includes the closure of data-driven political news site 538. (Press Gazette)
Meanwhile "some reporters and editors" in the tech teams at the Wall Street Journal based in San Francisco and New York are leaving the title amid a restructure of the coverage area. (Press Gazette)
The Fox Nation streaming service has between 2 million and 2.5 million subscribers, according to Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch. A separate streaming subscription planned to launch around the start of the next NFL season is aiming to get around five million subs. (Reuters)
Three men have been charged with harassing BBC presenter Catrin Nye who presented a podcast and documentary called A Very British Cult about 'life coaching' organisation Lighthouse. (BBC News)
Hyperlocal digital news platform Patch has rolled out AI-generated local newsletters in recent months, in the process expanding its reach from 1,100 to 30,000 communities in the US according to its chief executive. (Axios)
NBC News digital editorial staff have tentatively secured their first contract since their union formed in 2019. The three-year deal would entail pay increases of between 9 and 17% across the period and eight weeks' severance for laid off union members. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Also on Press Gazette:
Cost cuts and growing digital revenue boost Reach profits for 2024
Girl Talk marks 30 years of being ‘supportive big sister’ in magazine form
£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
Latest Press Gazette podcast
Podcast 83: London’s local news renaissance with Jim Waterson
With three major London-wide local journalism launches in the last few months, is journalism about England's capital city bouncing back after many years of decline?
London Centric founder Jim Waterson explains how his Substack-based title has already gained thousands of paying subscribers since launching in September 2024.