Which sites have blocked the AI bots | NMA chair confident of news payments law soon
And Professor Ian Reeves explains the financial pressures endangering the University of Kent's Centre for Journalism
Welcome to your daily newsletter from Press Gazette on Tuesday, 27 February.
Many news publishers are fed up with being crawled over by spiders, and who can blame them?
It sounds uncomfortable but, more seriously, some of this crawling could be opening the way to wholesale theft of the very thing that underpins all publisher revenue: original content.
There are nine main AI bots crawling news websites, including programmes fuelling Google's Gemini system and ChatGPT.
Bots can be dissuaded with the digital equivalent of a sort of "stay off the grass" sign: a robots.txt page on your website politely asking some or all robots to keep out.
We've looked at the 106 leading news websites listed in our top 50 UK, global and US rankings to find out which are blocking the bots and which are allowing them in.
Protecting the value of copyrighted news content is high on the agenda for News Media Association chairman and Tindle Newspapers chief executive Danny Cammiade.
He spoke to us about why publishers have been effectively subsidising big tech for too long and said he is hopeful that the UK Government's Digital Markets Act will become law this year (before the general election) thereby levelling the playing field a bit.
He also explained how his own company Tindle has turned the clock back, with a plan to re-open town centre offices in all the communities it serves.
And Professor Ian Reeves, formerly of this parish, writes about how his own Kent University Centre for Journalism is being squeezed out of existence by a shift in university funding which is punishing departments like his which sit outside the Russell Group of leading academic universities.
Journalism is a largely practical craft which traditionally has been taught at less prestigious institutions - I learned my trade for example at Lambeth College. It will be bad news for industry diversity if local training providers are squeezed out by more elitist institutions (who are often more grounded in journalism as something to be studied, rather than actually done).
New from Press Gazette
News Media Association chairman confident UK government will act on big tech this year
“There’s a lot of positives to say about the sector but it would be wrong to say it’s not a challenging sector. Mainly for me that challenge is the level playing field with the tech companies and the BBC.”
Revealed: Which of the top 100 UK and US news websites are blocking AI crawlers
Mirror, Express and Manchester Evening News publisher Reach allows all of its websites that Press Gazette checked to be crawled. The same is true of youth-focused websites Ladbible and Unilad and the Lebedev-owned Independent and Evening Standard.
Centre for Journalism being sacrificed to fill University of Kent funding gap
“A man with a digital tape measure appears in one of our teaching newsrooms during a reporting workshop for undergraduates at the start of the September term… What he’s doing, it turns out to our surprise, is measuring up because the building that houses the University of Kent’s Centre for Journalism is to be sold off.”
News in brief
Martha Kearney will leave the BBC Radio 4 Today programme after the upcoming general election. She will continue to present other programmes on Radio 4 but said she wanted to work in “pastures new” and would not miss the early alarm clock. (Press Gazette)
The Economist and Economist Intelligence have new presidents. Leon Saunders Calvert joins Economist Intelligence, while the new president and managing director of the editorial product Luke Bradley-Jones has a remit to identify “new ways to evolve The Economist into a digital-first product”. (Press Gazette)
"All major UK publications" are reportedly in talks with Sesamy, a digital subscriptions alternative from the co-founders of Acast that allows people to make one-time payments for articles and podcasts. The first UK partnership is expected in the spring. (City AM)
Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has praised an amendment to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill that would stop foreign powers from buying UK publishers, warning at present "the government has no powers to stop us being sold to the Emiratis – or, for that matter, to the Kremlin, to Xi or any of their proxies”. (The Spectator)
A French journalist for the Paris-based Africa Intelligence (AI) news website has been detained while reporting in Ethiopia accused of being part of a "conspiracy to create chaos" with two rebel groups. AI said they were "spurious accusations". (The Guardian)
Donald Trump has paid The New York Times $392,000 in legal costs after his lawsuit over the paper's reporting on his tax returns was tossed out. (CNN)
Latest podcast
Podcast 65: Beyond Google? Amazon and Microsoft are future says Ricky Sutton
Former online editor of the News of the World turned tech entrepreneur turned future of news soothsayer Ricky Sutton joins Dominic Ponsford on the podcast sofa.
He explains why Google’s reign as the most important tech partner for news publishers is drawing to a close, but more lucrative partnerships around AI and advertising with Microsoft and Amazon beckon.
Last week on Press Gazette
BBC’s Ros Atkins on AI, switching off (or not), and staying curious
Top 50 news websites in the US: Strong growth at UK newsbrand The Independent in January
Government backs crackdown on lawsuits used to silence journalists
Byline Times, Vorderman and Maitlis face threat of legal action from Dan Wootton
Reach using AI to speed up ‘ripping’ and use same article on multiple sites
News media job cuts 2024 tracked: At least 980 redundancies in January