Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Wednesday, 19 August.
🧑🎨 September will mark two years since Sir Paul Marshall bought The Spectator and saved it from the even more drawn-out sale process that The Telegraph went through until earlier this summer.
But going slightly under the radar in The Spectator deal was monthly art magazine Apollo (often given one mention and no further reference in the coverage, including at Press Gazette).
I have now hopefully made up for that omission by speaking to Apollo editor Edward Behrens about the state of play at the profitable title.
Apollo has just launched a premium subscription tier based around its newly-digitised magazine archive.
Behrens also spoke about how Apollo has proved slightly protected from the Google AI changes due to its niche position. If the stuff it covers isn’t included in AI model training data, people still need to go to them directly.
🎬 Earlier this year we reported that Tiktok’s owner Bytedance was the fastest-growing website publisher in the UK by engagement time, with minutes spent on its platform growing 30% year on year in April.
The Daily Mail is the runaway Tiktok success here. It added 16.6 million to its main news account since August 2024, totalling 26.5 million followers, and that doesn’t even include its family of other pages.
The Daily Mail didn’t appear to be a leader in our analysis of young audiences to UK newsbrands last week, coming in just below average on percentage of its audience aged under 35 and with just 4% of time spent on its platforms (website/app/syndication partners) coming from that group.
But that data didn’t include social platforms and the Daily Mail is no doubt expecting that Tiktok reach to be a long-term gain for its brand as the next generation of news consumers come through.
Anecdotally, when we’ve had interns into the Press Gazette office in recent years, as well as from other young people who have had the pleasure of being quizzed by me on their news diets, the Daily Mail on Tiktok has repeatedly been mentioned.
👨💼 And finally, Metropolis Group CEO Robert Marr is our sixth What I’ve Learned interviewee.
If you’re interested in how other leaders think, this is definitely one for you.
He speaks about going through three transformations in 15 years, the shift from unknown eyeballs to known audiences of decision makers, and why he once really should have invested in getting an interim CTO.
Personally, I didn’t know he was once a “finance bro” or that we’d be citing Margaret Thatcher so soon into this series!
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The National Union of Journalists has said "media organisations should reflect on their coverage" of Jason Arday but condemned attacks on individual journalists who are being targeted since his death. (NUJ)
Youtube views will soon be measured as soon as a video starts to play, following a similar change that arrived for its Shorts last year. (IGN)
ABC has sued the Federal Communications Commission after the agency ordered eight ABC-owned stations to seek early licence renewals. ABC says the FCC is punishing it over its editorial decisions. (Adweek)
NBC News has struck an exclusive deal for its global programmatic advertising sales to go through Taboola's Realize performance ad platform. (Axios)
AI publishing platform Prism News has shut down its network of more than 200 AI-generated publications posing as US local newsrooms and hobby sites. They featured fake bylines and repurposed local reporting using AI. (Interlochen Public Radio)
Digital measurement company Comscore is pulling out of Spain. (Dircomfidencial)
CNN has said it stands "firmly behind" its journalist Kristen Holmes after the official White House Rapid Response account on X called her "a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment". (CNN on X)
Complaints filed en masse in relation to Clause 1 (accuracy) of Editors’ Code.
The Economist has a 93% subscription retention rate on its B2B offering.
Why journalists should not be worried about audiences finding climate change information boring.
Chief strategy officer on scarcity leading to licensing deals, and move to “pay-per-use”.
Extensive Google AI summaries of health-related searches take traffic from charities.
Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.
Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.
Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.
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