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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Tech sites remove articles after failing to verify journalists | Guardian Jobs to close
Plus new data shows Amazon and Meta AI bots account for most website visits
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Good afternoon from the team at Press Gazette on Thursday, 3 September.
This newsletter is brought to you this week in association with Q5 - experts in organisational performance. Their latest report ‘Disrupting the newsroom: How news creators are redefining media’ is available now.
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👤 Press Gazette’s ‘Reality Wars’ correspondent Rob Waugh is back from his summer hols and on the trail of published online writers who look a bit iffy to say the least.
He’s uncovered four more prolific finance journalists who have so far been unable to verify they exist. They are widely published and the newsbrands in question have failed to share any information that proves they are real.
It’s a story that raises more questions about the way the world of cryptocurrency is covered by specialist titles. Readers hungry for tips clearly click on stories about new financial launches. But many publishers don’t appear to be checking that published experts really exist.
It is a reminder that (at the very least) we should all be checking that our published writers are actual people – if necessary by asking for ID and speaking to them on the phone.
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💷 The Guardian is shutting down a former cash cow of the business – its jobs portal.
The publisher’s jobs pages were once a major headache for brands like Press Gazette as it stole lucrative classified advertising from us.
Twenty years ago The Guardian’s media, society and education newspaper sections were thick with job advertising.
At the time of writing Guardian Jobs still has some 15,000 job listings live.
The Guardian blamed a shift in the UK recruitment landscape, with vacancies “at their lowest level in five years”.
Anyone who has advertised on Indeed or Linkedin will know there is still a place for more specialised recruitment platforms. No one wants to wade through 200 poorly matched CVs.
But I suspect The Guardian has made a strategic decision to focus on growth areas rather than investing effort into a declining non-core business, which is no longer closely aligned to its editorial priorities.
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