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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Newsquest titles lead UK audience growth | One US print newspaper bucks trend
Plus Reach to open ‘Mirror North’ Manchester base led by Maria Breslin
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Good afternoon from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 1 September.
📊 July was another turbulent month for audience at the 50 biggest news publishers in the UK, of which 37 saw a drop year on year.
The good news is that fewer publishers (27, so still more than half) saw users spending less time with their content compared to July last year.
The best case scenario at this point is that even as audience declines for most publishers due to Google AI Overviews and other user behaviour changes, those that do come to the newsbrands choose to spend more time there.
Those leading the way on this engagement focus, with double-digit minutes growth both month on month and year on year in July, were: The i Paper, ITV, Good Housekeeping, the Oxford Mail and the Daily Express.
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🗞️ In print, our latest exclusive figures from the US show just one of the 50 largest audited newspapers in the country grew average daily circulation in the six months to March.
Two out of three of the biggest declines were at titles owned by rich men whose strategies have come in for some criticism.
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, which cut a third of its staff in February, saw the third biggest year-on-year decline down by almost a quarter.
The biggest drop was at The Baltimore Sun, where a journalist of 25 years recently resigned saying the newspaper has “changed” since its purchase by Sinclair Broadcast Group executive chairman David Smith.
There is a simple reason for the one growing print newspaper: The print-first Villages Daily Sun covers a retirement community area of Florida. But it is owned by the property development company, meaning it is not wholly independent.
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🐝 Back on home soil, Reach is using its USP (having national brands and regionals all over the UK) to create a Northern base for Mirror journalists at the Manchester Evening News office.
Mirror North, echoing Andy Burnham’s No 10 North, is a refreshing motion towards getting out of the London bubble.
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