New Statesman editor-in-chief Jason Cowley has announced he will step down at the end of December after 16 years at the title.

Cowley will continue to write for the New Statesman as a columnist and essayist.

He became editor after the acquisition of the New Statesman by Datamonitor founder Mike Danson in 2008 and has led its transformation from a weekly political and cultural magazine to a multimedia brand.

The New Statesman today has a paywalled website and a raft of award-winning podcasts, newsletters and video journalism strands in addition to the flagship weekly magazine.

New Statesman Ltd managing director Will Crocker said: “I would like to thank Jason for his tremendous work over the last 16 years.

“He took the New Statesman to a 40-year high in circulation, he is a multiple winner of the British Society of Magazine Editors’ editor of the year award (politics and current affairs), and he has always championed good writing and independent journalism.

“Above all else, he has been a brilliant talent-spotter: a new generation of political journalists and writers rose to prominence under his leadership. We will be very sorry to see him step down but are delighted he will continue to contribute to the New Statesman through his elegant and intelligent writing.”

Journalists recruited by Cowley who have gone on to success elsewhere in the media have included: Helen Lewis, Mehdi Hasan, Stephen Bush, Laurie Penny, Patrick Maguire, Sophie Elmhirst, Rafael Behr, Johanna Thomas-Corr and Will Lloyd.

‘Home-grown’ writers still with the NS who were recruited by Cowley include senior editor (politics) George Eaton, Britain editor Anoosh Chakelian and senior commissioning editor Anna Leszkiewicz.

Cowley told Press Gazette: “I’ve loved editing the New Statesman for so long, it’s been hard work but also great fun.

“Most rewarding has been helping to develop and nurture a new generation of talented political and cultural writers, bringing them on to the team and giving them an opportunity to write and broadcast and it is fantastic to see them flourish and go on to have big careers in the media.

“As well as having significant writers on the team, the New Statesman should be nurturing new writers and encouraging new talent. I think that’s the thing the Statesman does best and should continue to do.

“I’ve also been proud of the New Statesman having sceptical politics, trying to keep an open mind and championing what I would call a kind of independent liberalism whilst also growing the brand and making it the multi-platform digital title that it is today.

“I’m also delighted that I will continue to have a relationship with the magazine and write for it.

“I’d like to thank all my colleagues for their dedication, support and hard work and I expect the title to go from strength to strength.”

The Christmas special will be Cowley’s last as editor.

He said: “I became editor during the last days of a Labour government, and it now feels appropriate, after all these years, to move on with Labour in power once more.”

The post Jason Cowley bowing out after 16 years as New Statesman editor appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette is honoured to announce the finalists for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

In order to make the shortlists work has to be revelatory, show journalistic skill and rigour and serve the public interest.

The winners will be announced on 12 December at a dinner in London hosted by Radio 2 presenter and journalist Jeremy Vine.

Details here about how to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year will be announced following a second round of judging. The winners of Journalist of the Year, the Marie Colvin Award and the Public Service prize will be announced on the night.

Chairman of judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Without journalism, Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, wronged postmasters would not have a voice and victims of the infected blood scandal would not have a chance of compensation.

“The 2024 British Journalism Awards shortlists celebrate the stories which would not be told without journalists willing to shine a light on uncomfortable truths and publications brave enough to back them up.

“Congratulations to all our finalists and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the British Journalism Awards.

“In a media world which is increasingly controlled by a few parasitic technology platforms it is more important than ever to celebrate the publishers willing to invest in and support quality journalism that makes a difference for the better in our world.”

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

Natasha Cox, Ahmed El Shamy, Rosie Garthwaite — BBC Eye Investigations

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• Missing from mainstream: Excluded children with nowhere to go
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision
• Hospital schools: On the mental health crisis frontline

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• The parents group at the centre of a rollback of trans rights
• ‘One day they may thank us for that “abuse”’: Inside the Bayswater Support Group

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans, Cate Brown, Ed McGown, Tom Stone, Ed Campbell, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Mariah Cooper, Reshma Rumsey — ITV News

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

• Taking the stand: Grace’s story
• Taking the stand: Emma’s story

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

• Level the Field
• Is there a problem with young farmer culture?
• Editor’s view: Facing hard truths about young farmer culture

Joshua Nelken-Zitser, Ida Reihani, Kit Gillet — Business Insider

• Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

• The last stand of the call-centre worker
• Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters
• Last love: a romance in a care home

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

• America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burned his initials on a patient’s liver

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

• ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward
• The life and tragic death of John Balson: how a true crime producer documented his own rising horror
• The Russell murders: is Michael Stone in prison for a brutal crime he didn’t commit?

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

• How Nigel Farage took over my hometown – and why Keir Starmer should be worried
• My battle to bring a predatory Met Police officer from the same unit as Wayne Couzens to justice
• ‘A court packed with those who know their way around already, and jails are too full to take them’

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

• My doctors insist it’s time I died – but I will fight them: Extraordinary case of 19-year-old woman suffering from Charlie Gard condition battling medics’ attempts to ‘condemn her to death’
• Sudiksha: ‘Condemned to Die in Secret’ – The Shocking Story of the 19-year-old’s fight to live

David James Smith — The Independent

• How did so many miss the sinister warning signs about James Bulger’s killer for so long?
• Is Lucy Letby innocent? I’m a miscarriage of justice investigator – and here’s what I think…
• The wife of this Murdoch executive has been missing since the Sixties – will her body now be found?

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

• Nottingham attacks: ‘We have no faith in the police. We want justice’
• ‘A horrible way to die … and no doctors can help you’
• Realising Sarah Everard got into a sex offender’s car was horrific

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

• Ghislaine Maxwell ‘was tortured in prison – now she’s ready for a comeback’: Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite pimp runs half marathons at low-security Florida lock-up and is now ‘focused and motivated’ for her appeal next week, her brother reveals
• ‘I shook Epstein’s hand and asked him what my daughter would be doing’: Virginia Roberts’s father describes dropping her off at paedophile’s mansion, meeting ‘despicable’ Ghislaine… and blasts Prince Andrew for showing ‘no remorse’
• Black Widow who ‘relished killing and had no regard for human life, even for children’: Griselda Blanco shot a child in the head when she was 11 and rose to be Miami’s drug kingpin. As she’s immortalised on Netflix, her son recalls his ‘fearsome’ mother

Local Journalism

Abi Whistance, Joshi Herrmann, Kate Knowles, Mollie Simpson, Jothi Gupta — Mill Media

• Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Investigation: The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Gurpaal Judge
• Exclusive: How did a semi in Harpurhey sell for £1.8m?

Richard Newman, Jennifer O’Leary, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Lough Neagh has become a scene of Biblical disaster, and Stormont was central to its destruction
• Killing Edgar podcast

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

• Building societies scandal: Yorkshire victims reveal shocking stories – and plead for action to be taken
• Philips Trust: FCA got ‘Ponzi scheme’ warning on firm at heart of £138m building society scandal – 18 months before collapse
• Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham Building Societies to pay tens of millions to Philips Trust victims

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

• Teacher’s ‘life blown apart’ in onslaught of hate as false racism claim goes viral
• The truth exposed about ‘secretive’ council meeting on equal pay crisis in Birmingham
• ‘Like a prison’ – the tower block for homeless families that has 8pm curfew and no visitors allowed

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

• Mental health patients ‘raped and sexually assaulted’ as NHS abuse scandal revealed
• Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for 10 years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
• Revealed: NHS regulator’s ‘culture of fear’ that leaves rogue nurses free to abuse patients

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Science for sale: Philip Morris’s web of payments to fund tobacco research
• Inside the strategy doc Philip Morris never meant you to see
• Tobacco state: why Japan was the perfect testing ground for Philip Morris

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

• The trauma ward
• The Cass Review into children’s gender care should shame us all
• Hundreds of doctors are challenging the BMA’s stance on puberty blockers

Robbie Boyd, Eamonn Matthews, Steve Grandison, Ian Bendelow, Sophie Borland, Katie O’Toole, Islay Stacey, Ali Watt, Frances Peters — Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 Dispatches

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

Ellie Pitt, Cree Haughton, Justina Simpson, Ellie Swinton, Patrick Russell, Liam Ayers — ITV News

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth
• Urgent warning amid fears cosmetic fillers could cause immune system problems

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying ‘allowed me to mostly forget’ fears, says Aussie man hit by brain tumour
• Dame Esther’s assisted dying petition delivered to Prime Minister’s doorstep

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie, Joel Moors, Winifred Robinson, Dan Clarke, Philip Sellars, Tom Brignell, Mom Tudie — BBC

• To Catch a Scorpion
• How we found Europe’s most wanted migrant-smuggler
• Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

• Millionaire’s ‘sex worker immigration scandal’
• Hamish Ogston: millionaire accused of exploiting women ‘set up charity to help win knighthood’
• Hamish Ogston: tycoon asked Met to arrest woman who accused him of sex trafficking

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

• ‘Distraught’ Holly Willoughby under police guard after man is arrested over terrifying ‘kidnap plot’
• Police chief faces ‘Walter Mitty’ probe after being pictured wearing Falklands medal despite being 15 at time of war

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Family Court Files: mother ‘devastated’ after rapist father granted contact with child
• Family Court Files: Psychologist’s evidence used to ‘ramp up’ allegations of parental alienation
• Kristoffer White: TBIJ wins court battle to publish name of sex offender

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• Lawsuit accuses Abercrombie & Fitch of funding sex-trafficking operation
• FBI investigate after ex-Abercrombie boss sex claims

Isobel Yeung, Alex Nott, Esme Ash, Nick Parnes, Alistair Jackson, Matt Bardo, Sarah Wilson — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

• Israelis and Palestinians must start to listen
• Wes Streeting’s lessons from Richard Nixon and China
• Here’s the Keir Starmer I’ve known for decades

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

• When I was at school a teacher could call me the P-word. We’ve come so far
• The storm is gathering, and Europe is still dithering on defending itself
• Locked in by language, we are freed by music, poetry, painting … and love

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

• The most pointless job in Wales
• The worst political leader in the UK
• Bluster, fluster and ‘word salad’ nonsense: Vaughan Gething ducks and weaves like a boxer at the Welsh Covid Inquiry

Kitty Donaldson — i

• Part political update, part group therapy: inside Starmer’s Cabinet meeting
• Grenfell is a tragic reminder to the Tories that regulation is not a dirty word
• The winter fuel row is a painful wake up call for new Labour MPs

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

• A summer defined by men killing women and girls. This can’t go on
• Think of this: a plan to ‘warehouse’ disabled people. What kind of nation is Britain becoming?
• Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

• Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
• The narcissism of minor differences, Labour Party edition
• British boomers are losing out for the first time

Specialist Journalism

Peter Blackburn — The Doctor (by the British Medical Association)

• Nowhere left to turn
• Fears for patient care due to shortages of chronic alcohol misuse treatment Pabrinex
• Not the only failing

Lucinda Rouse, Emily Burt, Ollie Peart, Louise Hill, David Robinson, Rebecca Cooney, Andy Ricketts, Nav Pal, Til Owen — Third Sector

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

• Revealed: Water firms dumped sewage 5,500 times in a year ‘illegally’
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• Toxic water, debt and sewage dumping: How Britain’s rivers got so bad

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

• Inclisiran: the ‘extremely unusual’ political influence behind the novel drug’s approval
• Galleri promises to detect multiple cancers—but new evidence casts doubt on this much hyped blood test
• Inclisiran: Government’s strategy to promote cholesterol lowering drug after Brexit was “spectacular failure,” says insider

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

• Revealed: the racehorse owner fronting an illegal bookmaker with more than 1,000 customers
• ‘People don’t want to provide bank statements. We’ve got so many people betting with us’

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• The rise of the parent activist
• AI’s allure is proving hard to resist for the UK’s learners
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

• Over 30 sepsis deaths linked to ‘systemic’ failings, investigation reveals
• Revealed: Doubling of average waits for critical stroke treatments
• Midwives call women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ amid ‘hostile’ environment fears

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

• Prince Harry at 40: ‘All he does is spend time looking back’
• The hospital heart-to-hearts that brought Kate and King even closer
• Prince William to build houses for homeless on his land in Cornwall

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
• First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head
• ‘Who will protect us?’: Christina Lamb on the Yazidis’ dangerous journey home

Alex Crawford — Sky News

• Libya floods: Child’s voice heard under rubble as rescue teams search desperately in Derna for survivors
• Warning of Islamic State’s growing resurgence – as Sky News gets rare access to terrorists’ families
• Report from Lebanon

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

• Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russia’s invasion
• ‘I have buried more than 50 friends’: My life as a British soldier fighting on Ukraine’s bloody front line
• The families of hostages taken by Hamas are desperate – but can Israel get them back?

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

• The secret city of tunnels where hundreds live below Vegas glitz
• Claudia Sheinbaum: Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
• Stand-off at Eagle Pass: welcome to the epicentre of the US border crisis

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

• Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
• Myanmar military forces victims to fight in brutal civil war

Gesbeen Mohammad, Brad Manning, Nechirvan Mando, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, Esella Hawkey, Tom Giles, Hafez — ITV

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Stuart Ramsay, Dominique van Heerden, Toby Nash — Sky News

• Haiti gang boss will take part in talks if invited – but warns foreign forces will be treated as ‘invaders’
• Aboard ‘The Beast’: What do migrants face travelling through Mexico on way to US?
• Shocking scenes in Gaza hospital as IDF moves into Khan Younis | Israel-Hamas war

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Life and death in Putin’s gulag
• Death and destruction in a Russian city
• Life and fate (podcast)

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

• Ransomware attacks hit record level in UK, according to neglected official data
• UK government urged to get on ‘forward foot’ with ransomware instead of ‘absorbing the punches’
• Exclusive: UK to propose mandatory reporting for ransomware attacks and licensing regime for all payments

Marianna Spring — BBC News

• The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots
• Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
• X takes action on deepfake network smearing UK politicians after BBC investigation

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

• ‘Pig butchering’ scammers target BBC reporter
• Sextortion warning: In six hours, my son was dead
• Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

Cathy Newman, Job Rabkin, Emily Roe, Sophie Braybrook, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker — Channel 4 News

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Apocalypse Neagh: The source of 40% of NI’s water is ‘dying’
• Watch: Sam McBride’s in-depth look at Lough Neagh’s blue-green algae crisis

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Backroom deals, mystery companies and a ‘killer lake’: inside DRC’s gas and oil auction
• HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge
• Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

Esme Stallard, Becky Dale, Sophie Woodcock, Jonah Fisher, Libby Rogers — BBC News

• Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days – data suggests
• BBC uncovers 6,000 possible illegal sewage spills in one year

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

• The Watershed Pollution Map
• Landfills across England could be leaking harmful toxic ooze, warn experts
• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Guy Grandjean, Patrick Fee, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight Northern Ireland

• Spotlight – The Lough Neagh Monster
• Hundreds of environmental breaches by Moy Park

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

• ‘If we can’t fish any more, we’re going to die’: the volunteer sea patrols protecting precious Philippine waters
• From sea to plate … to sea! Hong Kong puts oyster shells to new use
• ‘It smells so bad’: glut of wild salmon creates stink in Norway and Finland

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

• Trojan Horsepower – Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby
• F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

Mark Daly, Mona McAlinden, Shelley Jofre, Jax Sinclair, Karen Wightman, Hayley Hassall — BBC Panorama

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?
• Ridley Scott: I didn’t need historians to make my Napoleon epic
• Olly Alexander on Eurovision: ‘I was trying not to have a breakdown’

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘At the start you get molested and by 45 you’re too old to work’ – the secret misery of women working in TV
• Fresh crisis at ‘toxic’ Strictly as ex-staff claim they faced sexualised comments and cruelty
• ‘The outrageousness of what Louis CK did is totally lost’: the film about the backlash faced by his accusers

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

• BBC’s Huw Edwards scandal teen breaks silence in first interview – ‘I felt groomed’
• Huw Edwards scandal teen: Why I first tried to protect BBC star but now feel shame
• Paul O’Grady’s beloved dog nuzzled star’s shoulder as devoted husband battled to save him

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out
• The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?
• ‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

• Strictly pro Giovanni Pernice probed over serious complaints by 3 ‘traumatised’ contestants as BBC ‘gathers evidence’
• Strictly Come Dancing bosses make huge changes to show after Giovanni Pernice quits
• Strictly bombshell as Amanda Abbington demands backstage footage of her and Giovanni as she is diagnosed with PTSD

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

• The British Museum’s missing gems
• Painting stolen in art heist more than 30 years ago returned to Glasgow museum

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• ‘I felt used and abused’ on Arthur: alleged Russell Brand victim speaks

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

• Labour loses Muslim support over stance on Israel-Hamas ceasefire
• Reform UK’s unusual structure with Nigel Farage in the middle
• How Post Office lawyers pushed boundaries in UK sub-postmasters scandal

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

• ‘We’re going to see people dying on the streets’: homeless refugee crisis grips Liverpool
• ‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis
• Met police agree six-figure payout to student hit by baton at protest

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

• Whistleblower reveals corruption and collusion inside Wandsworth Prison
• The fraud scammers putting people out of pocket by cloning phone numbers

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

• Everyone is on their phones. But is it really phone addiction we’re experiencing?
• The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs
• He was shot in the throat. Now he saves gun victims as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Santander arranged billion-dollar oil bond after making green pledge
• Santander weakened fossil fuel policy after raising billions for gas projects

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

• Anxiety drug pregabalin killed my son — and hundreds more are dying from it
• The company taking refugees out of Gaza — and ‘making millions’
• After the earthquake: how Morocco is rebuilding

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

• Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides
• Dodging Israeli rockets with Ghana’s UN peacekeepers
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon: Attacks are causing wildfires across south

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

• London mayor election: Bots, misleading URLs cause voter confusion
• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined
• Ulez: More than 300 cameras damaged or stolen in four months

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

• Special report: Newcastle United sponsor Noon and shocking allegations of worker mistreatment
• Saudi Arabia investigates worker mistreatment allegations after The Athletic report on Newcastle sponsor Noon
• Special report: ‘Disturbing’ safety issues at Hillsborough 35 years after disaster

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

• Angela Carini was sent unforgivably into harm’s way by gutless IOC cowards
• After my grandfather hugged Jesse Owens, the Nazis told him: ‘Never embrace a black man again’
• Michael Vaughan: If I had gone through this racism ordeal at 80, I would have wanted to be shot

Simon Lock, Rob Davies, Jacob Steinberg — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / The Guardian

• Abramovich’s hidden football deals during Chelsea’s time at the top (TBIJ) and Chelsea FC face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success (Guardian)
• ‘I worked for Abramovich?’: footballers were owned by oligarch via offshore deals (TBIJ) and Revealed: Abramovich, the super-agent and the footballers owned as ‘commodities’ (Guardian)
• Leaked documents reveal Abramovich is still connected to Vitesse (TBIJ) and Abramovich loans fund owner of Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest (Guardian)

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

• Drifting through life without gold medals, tortured by his past, and now claims of bankruptcy… How did petulant Wiggins fall so spectacularly from his golden bike?
• Seb Coe explains why he’s HAPPY to break 128 years of Olympic tradition by handing out cash for gold… and reveals Roman Abramovich’s unlikely role in athletics
• The curious case of Jade Jones’ drugs test and why the Chinese might be quick to ask questions, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

• Looting and rioting, setting fire to police officers and hunting down English fans… fearful European clubs are turning a blind eye to shadowy leaders of their untouchable ultras
• Thirty-five years after horror of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mail Sport can reveal that incredibly the stadium is still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel
• Grubby, classless, the five-year legal battle over plane crash victim Emiliano Sala takes us into football’s sewers… where players are pawns and chronically inept clubs desperately try to save cash

Matt Lawton — The Times

• Man City launch unprecedented legal action against Premier League
• ‘The horror is everywhere’ – inside Lord Coe’s secret trip to Ukraine
• Russian athletes should be allowed at Olympics, says government

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

• How does endometriosis affect women in sport?
• USA cricket teen on tackling social media trolls, South Asian heritage and 2028 Olympic goals
• Um-E-Aymen Babar ok Tiktok

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

• Thousands dead, 40 years of cover-up: time for justice for infected blood victims
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims
• Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal

Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday, John Domokos — The Guardian: Unpaid Carers

• Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules
• ‘Injustice’: 92-year-old with dementia told by DWP to repay £7k in disability allowance
• I’m under attack and fighting back: the scandal trapping carers

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

• Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know
• Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban
• Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled ‘unachievable’ as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

• Boys, porn and the alarming way they talk about girls – a special investigation
• School pupils tell how they are victims of sexual harassment every day
• Show some respect: Standard launches campaign with £500k to tackle sexist abuse in schools

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

• Save Britain’s Rivers: i challenges all parties to commit to election manifesto
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• National Trust signs up to i’s Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto

Hanna Geissler, Giles Sheldrick — Daily Express: Give Us Our Last Rights

• My assisted dying petition proves Brits are compassionate – now Rishi Sunak must act
• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying debate must move on to how law will change, MND campaigner says

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

• Revealed: 16 years in prison for stealing a bike and no hope of release – as 7 trapped in jail kill themselves
• ‘He looked like a starving dog on the floor’: Prisoner trapped on indefinite jail term driven to hunger strike
• Father imprisoned for 12 years for stealing mobile phone under ‘cruel’ indefinite jail term reunited with son

Martin Bagot, Jason Beattie — Daily Mirror: Save NHS Dentistry

• Dentists warn ‘rescue plan’ will fail to end crisis as 60,000 people sign our petition
• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

• Ed Davey: ‘Being a carer is harder than being a politician’
• Peter Kyle: It was 5am. A woman said, ‘Your partner is dead ’
• Emma Barnett: ‘The pain was so bad, I was losing the will to live’

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• ICC prosecutor: UK didn’t blitz the IRA — Israel needs that restraint
• The president’s daughter (and Instagram star) wanted by Interpol
• David Cameron: ‘Why did I take the job? Rishi Sunak asked!’

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

• Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
• How Can We Protect Our Children Online?
• Inside No 11 with Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

• ‘You asked me questions I’ve never asked myself’: Keir Starmer’s most personal interview yet
• ‘Dismissing global warming? That was a joke’: Jeremy Clarkson on fury, farming and why he’s a changed man
• ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind

Nick Ferrari — LBC

• Labour leader Keir Starmer joins Nick Ferrari to take your calls
• Champagne and caviar: Esther Rantzen reveals plans for final moments as she pushes for assisted dying law change
• Nigel Farage joins Nick Ferrari

Samantha Poling — BBC

• How I confronted Emma Caldwell’s killer
• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell
• Who Killed Emma?

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey
• Kevin Spacey Breaks Down As He Faces Debt Of MILLIONS
• Piers Morgan vs Rishi Sunak Round 2 | Prime Minister Discusses Israel-Hamas War, NHS, Rwanda & More

Paul Brand — ITV News

• Interview with Rishi Sunak
• Interview with Ed Davey
• Interview with Keir Starmer

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

• Keir Starmer accepted £76,000 of freebies including tickets to over 20 football games
• Keir Starmer faces backlash over early failure to disclose £16,200 in donor-funded clothing
• Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

• Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff
• Rishi Sunak aide placed bet on election date days before announcement
• Tories putting party reputation before sexual assault claim, says alleged victim

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• ‘No room for the Indians?’: Tory donor Frank Hester suggested staff climb on train roof
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

• Election exit poll
• The Battle for Number 10: A Sky News Leaders’ Special
• How Reform fares on Thursday will also determine the Conservatives fate

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

• Commons worker arrested after allegedly spying for China
• My MP husband Andrew Bridgen was captured by antivax ‘cult’
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims

Jane Merrick — i

• Thousands of disabled people died after ‘Covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe
• ‘My daughter was allowed to die of Covid because she had Down’s syndrome’
• Labour manifesto missing pensioners’ winter fuel and bus pass pledges

Steven Swinford — The Times

• Britain and US launch airstrikes on Houthi targets
• Jeremy Hunt looks for £9bn to balance his budget
• Teachers and nurses should get above-inflation pay rise, ministers told

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

• Fujitsu boss lives on ‘blood money’ with £2m mansion as we suffer, says Post Office victim
• Provider boasting of ‘compassion’ threatens daughter with court action over £50k care bill for her 93-year-old amputee mother with dementia
• Mirror tracks down former Post Office IT chief that Horizon inquiry insisted couldn’t be found

Ed Conway — Sky News

• Surge in sale of UK-made cars to Russia’s neighbours shows how it’s beating sanctions
• British firms’ exports are almost certainly bolstering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, Sky data analysis finds
• How British financial services aid sale of Russian gas on European market | Ukraine War

Tom Bergin — Reuters

• Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

• Chinese state banks are lenders to Thames Water’s parent company
• Thames Water owners pile group with debt
• Thames Water shareholders backed away over regulator’s debt demands

Siddharth Philip, Benedikt Kammel, Anthony Palazzo, Katharine Gemmell, Sabah Meddings — Bloomberg News

• Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Faked Employees Too
• Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
• UK Fraud Cops Make Arrest in Fake Airplane Parts Scandal

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

• Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings
• Nuclear Narnia: why is Sellafield Europe’s most dangerous industrial site?
• Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

• Mike Lynch: Flown to the US in chains, now he is free … and talking
• Inside Mike Lynch’s last stand as $11bn fraud trial looms
• The app that promised an NHS ‘revolution’ then went down in flames

Online Video Journalism

Alex Rothwell, Alastair Good, Yasmin Butt, Pauline Den Hartog Jager, Jack Feeney, Federica De Caria, Kasia Sobocinska, Stephanie Bosset — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse | Investigation
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation
• ‘Illegal’ conspiracy theory school exposed | Times Investigation

Andrew Harding — BBC News

• BBC tracks down smuggler behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

Mohamed Ibrahim, Owen Pinnel, Mouna Ba, Wael El-Saadi, Feras Al Ajrami — BBC Eye Investigations

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

• Has the man who killed Jill Dando finally been found?
• Jill Dando murder: Man wanted for questioning matches features of Serbian assassin
• Jill Dando murder: Key witness identifies Serbian assassin

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Clancy Morgan, Amelia Kosciulek, Matilda Hay, Liz Kraker, Dorian Barranco, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna — Business Insider

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey

Ben Marino, Joe Sinclair, Veronica Kan-Dapaah, Petros Gioumpasis, Greg Bobillot — Financial Times

• Chinese brokers launder hundreds of millions for global crime groups | FT Film

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

• Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’
• Huw Edwards used position of power to groom young people for 6 years even sending pictures from BBC desk to impress them
• We’re still suffering, say parents at centre of Huw Edwards scandal as they slam BBC for lack of answers after he quits

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, Esella Hawkey, Imogen Wynell Mayow, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Ian Bendelow, Victoria Noble, Alistair Jackson, Sarah Wilson, Geraldine McKelvie — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions, Channel Four Dispatches Investigations Unit

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• Russell Brand: In Plain Sight

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

• I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks
• My son died in HMP Bedford. I never felt he was safe there
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation

Ruth Evans, Oliver Newlan, Leo Telling, Sasha Hinde, Hayley Clarke, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Holly Bancroft, May Bulman, Monica C. Camacho, Fahim Abed — The Independent and Lighthouse Reports

• At last! Afghan special forces heroes set for sanctuary in UK after government U-turn
• MoD accused of burying admission that UK special forces had power over Afghan sanctuary claims
• Murdered, tortured or in hiding from the Taliban: The special forces abandoned by Britain

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Isabel Alderson-Blench, John Ray — ITV News: The Post Office Tapes

• New secret tape reveals top Post Office lawyer was warned of ‘wrongful’ convictions decade ago
• Secret tape shows Paula Vennells was told about problems with Horizon and warned not to cover it up
• Paula Vennells’ ‘smoking gun’ email reveals Post Office ‘cover-up’

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Samantha Poling, Eamon T. O Connor, Anton Ferrie, Shelley Jofre — BBC Disclosure

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches

Huw Edwards Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’ — The Sun

Naked photos sent in WhatsApp ‘phishing’ attacks on UK MPs and staff— Politico

No 10 pass for Labour donor who gave £500,000 — The Sunday Times

Labour will add 20% VAT to private school fees within first year of winning power — i

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

Harry Lewis-Irlam, Stephen Matthews, Darren Boyle, Rhodri Morgan — Mail Online: Deep Dive

• Anatomy of a loveless landslide: How Labour won on apathy and division
• Hour by hour, how D-Day unfolded…
• How China could seize Taiwan and spark WW3

Laura Dunn, Katie Lilley-Harris, Ellie Senior, Sherree Younger, Scott Nicholson, Jamie Mckerrow Maxwell — KL Magazine

• Rocky Bottoms
• Johnny Cave’s Asparagus
• Archangel Distilleries

Niels de Hoog, Antonio Voce, Elena Morresi, Manisha Ganguly, Ashley Kirk — The Guardian

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

Alison Killing, Chris Miller, Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner, Sam Joiner — Financial Times

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

David Dubas-Fisher, Cullen Willis, Paul Gallagher, Richard Ault — Reach Data Unit

• DWP Cold Weather Payment postcode checker – map shows where households are due £25, £50 or £75 boost
• Enter postcodes in this map to see average house prices in your area
• Cheapest places in Greater Manchester to buy petrol as RAC issues fuel price warning

Gabriel Pogrund, Emanuele Midolo, Venetia Menzies, Darren Burchett, Narottam Medhora, Cecilia Tombesi — The Sunday Times

• The dead teenager, the lying suspect and the black box that proves it

The post British Journalism Awards 2024: Full list of this year’s finalists appeared first on Press Gazette.

The New Statesman has abandoned its old WordPress-based newsletter platform and become the first major publisher to distribute its newsletters entirely through Substack.

The magazine’s staff writer and head of newsletters, Harry Lambert, told Press Gazette the plan is to use the newsletters, which are currently free, to drive subscriptions. (Note: Press Gazette is part of the New Statesman Media Group.)

Lambert cited his own personal use of Substack, as well as its suite of back-end tools, as reasons the magazine chose the platform.

On social media, ‘every piece has to find its audience afresh’

In common with other publishers, the New Statesman has long used newsletters as a way to establish a relationship with its audience unmediated by search and social media platforms.

By comparison, Lambert said that when a New Statesman article does well on X (formerly Twitter), there is no guarantee of retaining readers who had enjoyed it: “Every piece has to find its audience afresh.”

The New Statesman’s flagship politics newsletter Morning Call launched in 2016 and built up a loyal following under political editor Stephen Bush, who has since moved to write a competing, paid newsletter for the Financial Times. Morning Call is now written by political correspondent Freddie Hayward.

By the start of 2023, the New Statesman had numerous separate newsletters for economics, the environment, culture, politics and world news.

This was too many, the publisher decided this year. Lambert said: “Instead of having a whole buffet of different newsletters and cutting the brilliance up into little segments, we just decided to give [the audience] one that we thought they’d like on Saturday and have the power of a big audience through one newsletter.”

That one newsletter is The Saturday Read, which launched on Substack in March and is edited by Lambert and New Statesman commissioning editor Will Lloyd. Comprising six to ten articles mostly from the magazine, Lambert described it as “the best writing across books, culture, ideas and politics”.

In May, the magazine cut all its newsletters except The Saturday Read and Morning Call, which moved across to join it on Substack. “I like to think of it, perhaps grandiosely, as a newspaper operation,” Lambert said.

“Because you’ve got your daily paper, which is Morning Call… and then you’ve got your big Saturday paper with The Saturday Read. And you know, it’s God’s day on a Sunday, everyone’s resting.”

Last week the New Statesman’s policy vertical, Spotlight, made the hop over to Substack too – redubbing its Green Times newsletter, written by associate editor Jonny Ball, “The Green Transition”. It has so far attracted more than 2,000 subscribers.

‘What we’re so pleased about is that people stick around’

The Saturday Read has amassed 156,000 free subscribers since launch and at time of publication it ranks 14th on Substack’s leaderboard of free, politics-focused newsletters, ahead of ‘Slow Boring’, the newsletter by American pundit Matthew Yglesias that ranked on Press Gazette’s list of the top-earning Substack newsletters earlier this year.

The New Statesman appears to be the largest legacy journalism organisation on Substack, and the platform confirmed to Press Gazette it is the only major publisher to host all of its newsletters there.

The Saturday Read’s subscriber numbers have grown consistently since it launched, in large part because anyone registering for a free account on newstatesman.com is told that “by creating an account, you will receive access to three free articles a month and the Saturday Read newsletter”.

“A crucial step change we made when we launched The Saturday Read is we realised the New Statesman every week collects quite a lot of emails from people who want to register on the website,” Lambert said. “And so, we made The Saturday Read an auto-enrol newsletter for registrants.”

He added that “the whole point was because it’s only one email a week and it’s on a Saturday – which is otherwise going to be quite a quiet day – we thought that wouldn’t be too intrusive for registrants.

“And obviously, if you’re registering, you’re showing an interest in our content, and this is the best introduction to what the NS is doing each week.”

Lambert said the auto-enrol subscribers “account for a lot of the growth” the newsletter has seen, but “what we’re so pleased about is that people stick around, because they may well receive this email and then think it’s rubbish and not come back in future weeks”.

The newsletter is “pretty consistently” reaching between 70,000 and 80,000 opens on each edition, he said – although it is worth noting that measuring how many times an email has been opened is an imprecise science. This has been particularly true since 2021, when Apple introduced privacy protection measures that mean it caches all emails sent to Apple Mail users, making it appear to newsletter tracking metrics as though every one of those recipients has opened the email.

The Saturday Read’s numbers do show an upwards trend, however, with the first edition receiving some 17,000 opens, according to Lambert, and the five editions preceding our interview in mid-August each on at least 75,000.

Morning Call currently gets some 20,000 opens per issue, Lambert said. In light of the competition from early morning politics newsletters at Politico, the FT, The Times and The Guardian, the NS decided to push its offering back to the late morning in order to provide “a great take on the essential news or politics of the day”.

Newsletter drives 10% of Saturday’s website traffic

Lambert said more than 100 people click the New Statesman’s “subscribe” link on The Saturday Read each week – although he did not clarify whether all of those made it to the checkout and the magazine’s previous newsletter setup did not track how many subscriptions they generated, meaning a before and after comparison is not possible.

The aim is to drive more magazine subscriptions directly through the Substack offering in future.

Many of The Saturday Read’s readers hit the New Statesman website’s paywall after three articles per month, for example, so Lambert suggested they could send out a paid version of the email in which all the links are free to read, at a cheaper price than a full subscription.

“We’re still working out exactly how we can do that – partly it’s technical. But the whole point of the newsletter was to engage people, and then hopefully encourage them to subscribe.”

[Read more: How Substack has helped FT persuade readers to pay for email newsletters]

In the meantime, the newsletter continues to be monetised through sponsorships and advertising. And on Saturdays, some 10% of the New Statesman website’s traffic is driven by the weekly newsletter.

But asked whether he often saw people sharing content from the Substack on social media, Lambert was ambivalent.

“I don’t think people share that much, honestly, is the truth. I just think we’re in a different era.”

He quoted ex-New Statesman writer Helen Lewis who recently wrote: “Social media is no longer fun, nor even particularly social.”

He also cited Instagram chief executive Adam Mosseri who recently revealed “all the growth in the last five years has been not in feeds or pictures, but in Reels and even more so in direct messages,” as Lambert put it.

“In other words – I’m from the MSN generation, and we’re almost going back to that. We communicate now through Whatsapp, through DMs. We’re ever less social, I think.

“The newsletter kind of fits that era better than the performative social media era we were in before.”

The post Why New Statesman became first major publisher to exclusively host newsletters on Substack appeared first on Press Gazette.

Former Independent on Sunday and New Statesman editor Peter Wilby has been given a suspended sentence for viewing child abuse online.

The 78-year-old had 167 indecent images of children on his computer, according to the National Crime Agency.

When interviewed by police, Wilby admitted having viewed abuse material since the 90s and said he had a sexual interest in children.

Having worked as an education correspondent for various newspapers, Wilby joined The Independent on Sunday in 1990 and went on to become editor.

He was also the editor of the New Statesman from 1998 to 2005.

He has since written various columns for publications including The Guardian, with work published as recently as November last year.

Wilby was charged with three counts of making indecent images of children to which he later pleaded guilty, the NCA said.

Investigators said he had been accessing the material online from his home in Essex.

At Chelmsford Crown Court, Essex, on Friday, he was sentenced to ten months in prison, suspended for two years.

He is also required to undertake 40 hours rehabilitation, is subject to a ten-year sexual harm prevention order and was placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.

Adam Sprague, operations manager at the National Crime Agency, said: “The material accessed by Wilby and recovered from his computer showed real children being cruelly and sexually abused.

“He was viewing this content while working as the editor of prominent national news outlets, a role in which he was entrusted to form the news agenda for the British public. A trust which he has greatly betrayed.

“While there is a global demand for this material, children will continue to be abused. The NCA is committed to tackling child sexual abuse in all its forms, to disrupt offenders and protect children.”

The New Statesman said in a statement following the sentencing: “On 18 August it was reported that Peter Wilby, a former editor of the New Statesman, was convicted after he admitted viewing images of child sexual abuse. He was given a ten-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, at Chelmsford Crown Court.

“The New Statesman staff and management had no knowledge of Wilby’s arrest or charges before they were reported yesterday, and are shocked and appalled to learn of these horrifying crimes.

“Wilby, 78, was New Statesman editor from 1998 to 2005, and remained a contributor.”

The post Former Independent on Sunday and New Statesman editor Peter Wilby sentenced for viewing child abuse online appeared first on Press Gazette.

Three weeks on from the launch of Threads, the Twitter rival created by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, and news publishers are beginning to take stock of their experiments on the platform.

Social media is a rapidly changing beast at the moment: since the launch of Threads in the UK on 6 July (it was available on 5 July in the US), Twitter is rebranding itself as X and Tiktok has added text-based posts to its video-based platform for the first time.

On Threads, so far, many news publishers are posting story links with the same, or very similar, wording as their Twitter posts.

It takes more work to post on Threads as currently users cannot schedule posts in advance and there is no desktop version – users can view links via their desktop computer but cannot do anything beyond that, such as create posts themselves. This means many teams who are already stretched cannot make their Threads trials a priority even if they want to.

However, some are also trying out slightly different techniques. For example, Reach’s Daily Express and Ok! Magazine are more liberal with emojis than they are on Twitter, making Threads feel more informal.

Sky News appears to be using some of its vertical videos from Tiktok on Threads and The Times regularly reposts from its journalists’ own pages.

Like all users, news publishers with bigger Instagram followings had a head start as Threads users were invited to connect with the accounts they were following on Instagram when they created their new accounts.

But that does not necessarily mean they have decided to dedicate much time to Threads even if they have a larger following: The Independent, which has almost 64,000 Threads followers, has not posted on the platform in a week.

Of the top ten UK publishers by audience size, plus a select number of others added for comparison, The Guardian, Financial Times and Sky News are the top three for follower counts on their main accounts across all three of Threads, Instagram and Twitter. (Edit to add: The FT was added to this story/chart a couple of days after it was initially published, as it was pointed out it would be second place in the Threads ranking.)

The Guardian’s posts appear to be largely different from its Twitter posts, with a mixture of questions to the audience and longer sells above story links and videos – for example, one post about the dangers to dogs of puppy yoga also appeared on both Instagram and Tiktok. It has posted more regularly than many other publishers, but still much less than its activity on Twitter.

BBC News does not appear to have created a main account on Threads at all, despite being the biggest news publisher on Instagram. Several of its sub-brands, including BBC Scotland News, Newsnight, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4 and BBC London, have created accounts but not posted. We, therefore, have only included the Radio 4 Today programme account, which appears to be posting links, videos or audio at least once per day, in our ranking of the most popular UK publishers on the platform. The BBC does have an overall account that largely reposts from its sports and entertainment brands.

How is Meta/Threads treating news publishers?

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, quickly made clear after launch that they were not trying to replicate Twitter and they would not be courting news and politics publishers – although they equally would not be downgrading their posts.

Mosseri wrote: "The goal isn't to replace Twitter. The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.

"Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads – they have on Instagram as well to some extent – but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals."

He added: "We won't discourage or down-rank news or politics, we just won't court them [in] the way we have in the past. If we are honest, we were too quick to promise too much to the industry on Facebook in the early 2010s, and it would be a mistake to repeat that..."

Facebook has been unfriending news in its news feed, impacting the bottom line of major publishers like Reach, and parent company Meta continues to oppose attempts at regulation and payments to publishers, including in the UK. As freelance journalist Charlie Moloney put it: "This is the company we rush to for Threads?"

What are journalists and publishers saying about Threads?

Yara Silva, head of social at Reach, told Press Gazette the publisher is experimenting on Threads with all four of its national titles – Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Express and OK! Magazine – by posting with consistency and trying out different topics.

"OK! has the largest following so far as it has the biggest Instagram account, and we’ve also had one big hit from it so far on the Daily Star account too. But engagement and clickthrough is still small compared to what we can drive from other places," Silva said.

"The things I’m most keen to see come to Threads are a desktop version, app insights and the ability to schedule. It’s quite time-consuming at the moment for what it brings us because everything has to be done from our social media editors’ mobile phones.

"If they roll out these changes soon, I think publishers will be able to start strategising more about long-term use of the platform, but at the moment it’s just experimentation."

Silva's colleague Dan Russell, who is Reach's engagement director, also told Press Gazette: "The tracking is a pain but there is some small success. [It's] early days though and the content that is getting more engagement is different to Twitter."

Russell has noticed that actual thread-style posts were getting good engagement on Threads: for example, Wales Online posting historical photos in a thread, Manchester Evening News (MEN) adding a photo of a man jailed for 12 years under the initial story post, and the MEN highlighting a new bakery by posting first a video from inside and then the story link.

At the New Statesman (which is owned by the same company as Press Gazette), resources have not allowed Threads to take up much bandwidth so far, so they are mostly cross-posting the same content that is published on Twitter to save time.

Martina Andretta, the title's head of social media, told Press Gazette: "The traffic and engagement from the platform have been negligible while posting on it is still fairly time-consuming. And as this is strictly a mobile-only experience for the time being, it’s not possible to easily repurpose content or use scheduling tools."

Andretta added: "Being a publisher that covers a lot of politics, I’m concerned about Meta’s reticence towards this type of content – see past elections on Facebook [for example]. If the app wants to rival Twitter, it has to be able to attract journalists, users in the political sphere and people interested in news. It is unclear what the culture on Threads is for the time being, and this will take time to develop."

Others also continue to be sceptical. Darren Toogood, editor of independent outlet the Island Echo on the Isle of Wight, told Press Gazette: "[We] haven’t bothered yet. [We] will when things like Buffer support auto-posting – then we will treat it the same as Twitter."

And Franklin Okeke, a freelance tech writer for Techrepublic, said: “I downloaded the app but didn't like the interface. It was kinda [sic] cluttered for me. As a tech journalist, I was hoping to see something better than Twitter, but that wasn't the case. I haven't used it since then.”

He added that it had seemed like a missed opportunity for Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg "to pounce on the opportunity [of Twitter's issues] to give us something better, but I think he's better off at Facebook".

Meanwhile, Kirsten Dewar, senior global director of news at Dataminr, which gives newsrooms real-time updates on events from social media, said the uses for publishers on Threads remain limited at this point in time.

"At the moment, Threads isn’t designed to be a primary source for news publishers. As we understand it, it isn't meant to be a real-time information service, which drastically decreases its value to news organisations who use Dataminr.

"The platform is still in its infancy, but as of right now, it’s not likely to be particularly useful to news publishers."

The post How publishers are experimenting with Meta’s Twitter rival Threads appeared first on Press Gazette.

I’m a fan of long-form journalism. I commission, edit and publish it at The Fence magazine. I even enjoy reading it – most of the time. But there is a tendency, sometimes, for such pieces to be ornate, obtuse, and often, quite frankly, too long. I wanted to find out what other editors and writers at other more influential publications felt, and how they divine the future for long-form journalism in the British mediascape, and whether there are too many furtive glances Stateside, where the format is a jewel in the country’s literary culture.

The Financial Times and The Guardian are the two newspapers with flagship long-read platforms, and, interestingly, there are two American editors near the helm: Jonathan Shainin, a former editor at the New Yorker, moved to London in 2014 to set up the game-changing Guardian Long Read, and is now the paper’s head of special projects. Matt Vella, formerly of Time magazine, became editor of the FT Magazine two years ago.

Both of them underline the significant differences between the American and British markets. In the UK, there are spiky broadsheets competing fiercely for the same readership in a small island, whereas in the vast continent of America, establishment newspapers represent each city, with the Los Angeles Times infrequently crossing swords or subjects with the Boston Globe (in the pre-digital era). The idea of feature writing, Shainin insists, is a different tradition in the States, and is defined not by length, but by the way articles are commissioned and reported.

Tellingly, all of the famous practitioners of New Journalism – Joan Didion, Hunter S Thompson and Tom Wolfe – made their names as magazine writers, where publications like Esquire and The Nation were responding to the staid rigour of the US newspapers; while in the UK, the whole concept of feature writing, of writing at length, is a newspaper tradition.

There is a feeling that the Fleet Street heritage encourages British editors to commission soft-soap profiles of celebrities or political figures too frequently, as opposed to running riskier, more ambitious material. Subject matter is one thing – range is another.

Jonathan Beckman, editor of 1843 Magazine, says: “Britain is temperamentally unsuited to long-form journalism… the stories in the States tend to be more garish, more gothic”.

There are practicalities, too. Samira Shackle, a regular writer for the Guardian Long Read, tells me: “Just recently I had to abandon a story I was scoping out, which was based around a recent court case, as the only way to get transcripts from the court would be to pay for transcription at a cost of £180 per hour plus VAT. Given that the court sits for four to five hours a day and this trial lasted four weeks, it’s entirely prohibitive.”

Most of the editors I spoke to averred that there is a very small talent pool of journalists capable of long-form writing in Britain. The skillset is considerable: you must have the ability to write lucid prose, report assiduously, organise your materials – which can be particularly tricky when lawyers get involved – and deal with the harsh realities of the editing process, and the ever-likely possibility that your piece might get spiked at any moment, leaving your months of hard work unrewarded.

Which brings us neatly to every writer’s favourite subject: money. So many people are drawn to American publications because they pay much more. There are many outlets that will pay more than a dollar a word. The New York Times Magazine, I am told, pays up to $2.75 per word. In the UK, there are, by my impolite enquiries, six major publications that will pay more than 40p per word. At the top of the tree, the market leader is Granta, which has a new rate of 85p per word.

But the magazine fee can be just the starter: the rich promise of podcast syndications and TV and film options beckon – though this has led, in writer Simon Akam’s view, to an increasing number of journalists trying to pen capers. Someone who does that pretty damn well is Jeff Maysh, a former staff writer at Loaded who has scored, by his count, ten option rights on articles he’s written, including one for $1m – a fair bounty indeed for an 8,700-word feature.

But Maysh is an outlier. Many freelance writers will only have the capacity to execute three or four major pieces a year, if that. A delay in publication, which is common, will mean a delay in payment. While in the States, as Samira Shackle says, “you might have a contract more akin to a book contract where you’re paid part of the fee on delivering a first draft”.

Vella agrees: “In general, the rates are too low. If the only people who can afford to write are people who are independently wealthy, then you won’t have a vibrant journalism scene.” It’s not just the writers who suffer. American publications are better resourced, with squads of skilled senior editors, hoovering up errors and questioning misplaced commas.

Back on this side of the pond, it is worth noting that many of the leading current affairs magazines eschew length: you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything longer than 2,000 words in The Week and The Spectator, and while features are a mainstay of the Times, the Telegraph and the Sunday Times, they have yet to formulate a peer platform to match the ambitions of the Financial Times and the Guardian.

Peter Geoghegan, who has written brilliant lengthy pieces for the London Review of Books and other outlets, is the editor-in-chief of Open Democracy, and tells me that he’s not planning to publish them on his own patch, as they are just “too expensive, especially the high-quality stuff”.

Some who have bet on quality online feature journalism – that’s journalism for ‘free’ – have lost out. Buzzfeed News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning team has been disbanded. Vice’s verticals snapped years ago, and the parent company, once worth billions, is now to be bought out of bankruptcy by its creditors. And at Tortoise Media, there has been a successful pivot away from long reads to podcasts, because the research showed readers were not staying with online articles to the end.

I am told that at certain broadsheets, planned expansions into long-form journalism have been scuppered, as there was a feeling that they would be loss-making. After a tough start to the millennium, many legacy publications are now in profit – lots of profit. Among their number is the leading current affairs magazine in the country, both by circulation and influence, Private Eye, which is famed for the density of its news stories, with five or six stories of 300-400 words packed into one page.

Senior hack Adam Macqueen, who has worked for the Eye since 1997, thinks that the ‘long read’ could do with a rebrand: “‘I’ll Read That Later’ might be a better title in a lot of cases – I’d put money on an awful lot of them sitting on open tabs for weeks or months like those apples people buy with their lunch with the best of intentions and then leave on their desks to go all wrinkly and finally get thrown away. Obviously, there are some fantastic examples of the genre, but mostly I think if stories can’t be told short they’re quite often probably not stories.”

At this point, it’s interesting to see just how long these magazine features are. Amia Srinivasan’s latest London Review of Books essay on free speech in university campuses clocks in at 9,974 words, just under a third of the length of Animal Farm (Mrs Dalloway is 63,422 words; The Great Gatsby is 47,094).

Melissa Denes, features editor of the New Statesman says of long reads: “They are a way of countering audience weariness, on important subjects like migration, which people are encountering every day in the news section – an in-depth piece on Channel crossings, reported with skill, will make readers engage with topics in a different way.”

While Matthew Whitehouse, editor of The Face, says the two longer pieces he publishes in each quarterly issue allow him “to turn the fashion magazine on and off – it’s something to alternate with the glossy images”.

Sophie Elmhirst, who has just delivered the definitive piece on condoms, is a regular writer at the Guardian Long Read and 1843, and feels that there is an exciting new sensibility developing in British long-form journalism, a “mercurial combination of subject and perspective, perhaps a particular tone and humour”.

Fashions ebb, tastes change. For much of the 19th century, leading British periodicals like Blackwood’s Magazine and the Edinburgh Review published lengthy essays on poetry, philosophy and other such exciting subjects. And it was just 30 years ago when a young British editor by the name of Tina Brown took the best job in American magazines: she had once described the typical story in William Shawn’s New Yorker as “a 50,000-word essay on zinc”. Who knows what alchemies and strange ironies await.

The post Why is UK journalism short on long-reads? appeared first on Press Gazette.

The Financial Times is the most expensive consumer digital news subscription in the UK or US, closely followed by The Times.

A full-price digital subscription to the FT costs £319, while The Times is £312.

The next most expensive digital news subscriptions are a big jump down in price: Bloomberg is £199 per year and The Telegraph is £189.

Also £189 is The Economist, which leads the magazine market on digital subscription price.

Press Gazette's comparison of digital subscription prices ranked publishers by their full annual price, ignoring any trial or sale discounts. The prices used in this comparison were correct for a UK consumer on Monday 23 January 2023.

We only looked at paywalled websites, or those such as The Independent with a large amount of premium content, rather than those that are entirely free-to-read but offer something extra such as an ad-free experience to those that choose to pay.

To subscribe to every outlet in our list at full price, it would cost £2,787.30 per year.

Including only the UK national newspaper brands - the FT, Times, Telegraph, Independent, i, Mail+ - that cost would be £1,043.98.

Adding Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Insider and Washington Post takes that to £1,658.93. And adding The Scotsman, Yorkshire Post, Irish Times, Press & Journal/The Courier and Belfast Telegraph means a total of £2,108.71 - and that is still not including the major news and current affairs magazine titles.

The cheapest news offerings come from the Washington Post (£60 per year) and the i (£54.99).

Where applicable, we chose the standard unlimited digital access option rather than a premium subscription with, for example, bonus logins, an e-newspaper edition or ad-free reading.

Comparing monthly prices creates a slightly different picture to the annual ranking: Bloomberg is higher than The Times at £29.99 versus £26, while the Wall Street Journal (£14.99 per month) overtakes The Telegraph (£12.99).

There are fewer UK regional news outlets (including non-UK-wide titles like The Scotsman and Irish Times) experimenting with paywalls compared to the national market.

National World titles such as The Scotsman and Yorkshire Post are top of the pack price-wise on £119.90 per year.

DC Thomson, which in October celebrated reaching 25,000 digital subscribers to its Press & Journal and The Courier newspapers in Scotland, sells those packages for £59.99 per year while Mediahuis-owned Belfast Telegraph, which has achieved around 8,500 paying digital-only subscribers since the launch of its paywall in May 2020, sells online access for £49.99 per year.

Although we excluded trial prices, some publishers do make steep use of initial discounted prices. For example, the FT has a discounted annual price of £159 compared to its full price of £319 while Washington Post has an offer of £20 down from £60 for a year.

The Economist has a half-price first year of £94.50, The Telegraph has £90 off its first year taking it to an almost-half-price £99, Insider has 50% off down to £40, and The Spectator has a half-price first year at £49.

The New European and The Atlantic were the only publishers not to offer a discounted trial offer.

See the full comparison of annual and monthly subscriptions, plus details of the different trial offers, below:

If we left your news outlet off our list and you feel they should be included, please get in touch with charlotte.tobitt@pressgazette.co.uk and we will add you if appropriate.

The post Ranked: FT, Times top list of most expensive digital news subscriptions in UK appeared first on Press Gazette.

Give it ten weeks, exude confidence, avoid silos and don’t be afraid to make heavy use of post-it notes.

These were some of the tips from the Publisher Podcast Summit in London on Wednesday 5 October.

Organised by Media Voices, the publishers gathered at the event represented an array of podcast experiences and strategies: Press Gazette has detailed elsewhere the revelation from now audio-first Tortoise that its podcasts were profitable within their first 12 months, but the business as a whole still isn’t.

Below, Press Gazette rounds up more insights from the event.

Listen to your audience

Ada Enechi, head of culture at Buzzfeed and one of the hosts of its Seasoned podcast, was one of several speakers who said listening and adapting to audience feedback was key to success.

Enechi (pictured top, second left) told the audience: “We actually used to have a weekly video round-up of the news and then the pandemic hit, and we were tired of filming ourselves at home…

“Listening to our audience – when we used to do the video round-up they wanted more opinions. Myself and my co-host Hanifah [Rahman] are quite opinionated online. We tweet a lot, unfortunately, I’m addicted to that stupid bird app. And they kind of just wanted us to expand on that…

“If you’re hearing from nobody, I think that’s when maybe you should be a bit worried.”

Let your listeners in

A related recurring theme among speakers was that it pays to be personal.

Enechi said: “At the end of the day people want to know the people behind the brands… the funniest tweet from a company that will go viral is the one where it seems like somebody’s drunkenly tweeted something, because you’re reminded there’s a human behind that.”

Esther Newman, editor of Women’s Running and one of two hosts for its Women’s Running podcast, told the event that what had begun as an interview show only took off once its hosts started speaking more about their own lives.

“These women runners that we were [podcasting] to – who are quite a broad demographic – they became invested in us as people as much as they were invested in us as runners. And so we realised that talking about things that were kind of to do with running, slightly, but kind of to do with our lives certainly – those sorts of episodes, where we talked about the lows of stuff… that went down so well.

“We have to plot in a few mental breakdowns as we go forward because those episodes always go down really well.”

Innovation is good, but basics are important

Asked about whether novelty is important, Buzzfeed’s Enechi said: “I think it’s always great to be innovative – people want to see new things, you want to create new things, it is always important. But I think don’t let that halt you from just doing the bare bones.”

She noted that, for example, a chat show’s success is more to do with the host than the format. “Especially with the basics when we’re talking about a chat show – I guess it’s the personalities at the end of the day.”

Should a publisher podcast focus on revenue?

Jendella Benson (pictured, second right), head of editorial at Black Ballad and host of its black maternity and parenting podcast The Survival Guide, was asked by moderator Ollie Guillou (right) whether her paywalled publication treated the show as a driver of revenue.

“We treat it as a separate standalone, but we’re always pointing back to our main offering, which is our website, where relevant,” she said.

“We talk about our memberships as well, but we do treat it as – this is an opportunity for another audience to come to Black Ballad who might not know of us. So we do have it quite self-contained, while still always talking about the wider brand.”

She said it was important to keep paying customers top of mind when creating the podcast: “I really do have to differentiate – how is this podcast going to be different, but complement, what we already do? What can we do to enhance it but also make it a standalone product for those who don’t know about the website…

“As long as you keep your audience at the centre, you can pretty much figure it out.”

Make sure you’re diversified

New Statesman Media Group head of video and audio Chris Stone was asked about what happens when a host audiences have invested in, for example former New Statesman politics editor Stephen Bush, leaves. Bush was one of the co-hosts on the New Statesman Podcast before leaving to write a daily newsletter for the Financial Times in February.

Stone said: “One of the things that we did about a year ago was that we started broadening out the number of voices that we started to bring onto the podcast. And that was for two reasons: one was to future-proof ourselves because we identified [journalists like Bush leaving] as a risk. But also it was to try and introduce our listeners to a broader range of our coverage…

“What it meant was that actually we managed to not only maintain but in fact grow our listenership slightly. Because we’d already established that familiarity with one single presenter and then a rotating cast of voices.”

The FT’s Cheryl Brumley, New Statesman’s Chris Stone, The Week Junior’s Anna Bassi and PPA’s Sajeeda Merali at the Publisher Podcast Summit 2022. Picture: Media Voices

Avoid silos

Stone also warned publishers away from sectioning podcast projects away from the rest of the operation.

“Every publisher I’ve worked for where we’ve launched audio or video, there’s always been a temptation for the new thing to exist over there somewhere. And we’ve always benefited when we’ve worked to bring that new thing more closely into the newsroom – so into the editorial meetings, into the commercial meetings, and to understand where that fits within your portfolio.

“So at the moment we’re having quite a lot of commercial success by combining podcasts, events, newsletters, digital and print all together and then selling multi-platform commercial packages with all of those things involved.”

How many episodes should you let a new publisher podcast run?

Asked how long a new podcast might need to find its feet, Ben Youatt, head of podcasts at Immediate Media, said: “What we would recommend as a blanket rule if you’re a new podcaster is do ten weeks.

“Just do a ten-part series, weekly episodes… If you can’t do ten, do eight. And if you can’t do eight, do six.” 

[Read more: How a history podcast from Immediate Media charted its way to £1m annual revenue]

“Don’t do one – that’s silly,” he said. “But give yourself a case study… [which] gives you enough time to learn week-on-week and to test different things.

“Do two weeks where you release a promo video the same day the episode goes out; do two weeks where you release a promo video a week before your episode goes out; put it on the homepage of the website, put it in the newsletter, and do each of these things as individual tests that can be isolated.”

Ben Youatt
head of podcasts, Immediate Media at the Publisher Podcast Summit 2022. Picture: Media Voices

It can be like doing a second job

Will Roe, a producer at The Times and Sunday Times, said that the traditionally print journalists he worked with had found the workload on their narrative podcasts tough.

“I don’t think they quite understood how much [they are] going to take on. All of them said to me, for them, it’s like having two jobs. They’re just working every evening trying to do it alongside the day job… So my top tip is just be ready to work hard.”

Make use of post-its and whiteboards in planning

Storyboarding is not necessarily a familiar skill to print journalists, but when planning a multi-part narrative, some speakers said, it’s essential to have a visual map of your story.

The Telegraph‘s deputy investigations editor Katherine Rushton told the audience: “I would never, ever attempt a narrative podcast without post-its.”

Matthew Chapman, lead reporter at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, made a similar point. “At the start of the process, we just sat down with eight different whiteboards for each of the different episodes, and we just worked out who the different people we had access to were. And then on post it notes, made sure every episode had a cliffhanger at the end.”

Chapman and Rushton cited strong character and a strong story as the key drivers to a narrative podcast.

The Times and Sunday Times’ Roe advised that when putting narrative podcasts together: “Try and keep it as simple as possible. Sit down with the journalist, try and work out what the story is, what the main beats are… You can get away with just introducing one character per episode – you don’t need more, and I think it is just about storyboarding it as best as you can early on.”

You don’t have to have finished recording when you start publishing – but try to nail down your interviewees

Some speakers suggested it can be useful to start publishing before you’re done recording – as long as you already have the things you need to finish the series lined up.

Speaking about her podcast Call Bethel, The Telegraph’s Rushton told the crowd at the conference: “It became a virtue of the podcast, but basically we hadn’t finished producing the final episodes by the time the first episodes went out, which created a degree of panic in me.

“On the other hand, it turned out to be great because we got all these new sources through that we were then able to feed into those eight episodes and really make a difference. I would think hard about doing that depending on the subject.”

Chapman, who led an investigation into British-American tobacco in Africa in the podcast Smoke Screen, said: “I think my key bit of advice would be around access. I think podcasts live and die on people who you’ve got access to who are telling you their story.

“We had a bit of a tense situation at times where we hadn’t got permissions – we were working in conjunction with our partners or BBC, who are great, but they had interviewed some people and our name wasn’t on the permissions form. Just always think about getting access to these people as soon as possible and getting all the permissions nailed down.”

What makes a good podcast guest?

Gary Sharpen, of The Cocktail Lovers podcast, said in the final session of the day: “What makes a good guest is energy and passion.”

For her part, Olive Magazine’s deputy editor Janine Ratcliffe said: “I want the person whose story hasn’t been told, or the person who’s got something really interesting to say that you might not have heard before.”

And Theodora Louloudis, formerly head of audio at The Telegraph (where she and her team won 2021’s British Journalism Award for features journalism), said: “​​I think a lot of it comes down to honesty and authenticity.” She said you don’t want “someone who’s just gonna do their own PR, and it’s why politicians don’t always make great podcast guests”.

What makes a good podcast host?

Louloudis said: “You need someone who’s a confident speaker. I have worked with lots of hosts who haven’t started as confident speakers, but you’ve kind of seen glimpses in their personality where you know they could get there and they make you laugh and they engage you when they talk to you, even if they’re a bit nervous behind a microphone at first.”

She said you can teach someone to be a good podcast host, whether the series is scripted or not. “As long as they want to be behind a microphone… you can get everyone to podcast.”

Louloudis added that in her opinion: “The best hosts are the ones who really know that audience so they know which audience they’re trying to target and they know that demographic really well and they know which guests are going to be great for targeting that demographic.”

And Olive Magazine’s Ratcliffe said the best hosts are those the most interested in their guests. Asking interviewees to come up with ten talking points they feel are most important to the subject can help, she added.

“The thing really is actually active listening – listen to your guests, and being interested in your guest. It’s not about you, it’s about that person. So you can’t underestimate doing your research.”

Find more learnings about the UK podcasting sector from Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology conference here.

Picture: Media Voices

The post Work hard, be confident, avoid silos and give it ten weeks: Top audio tips from Publisher Podcast Summit appeared first on Press Gazette.

Instagram users are in revolt, but news publishers are more positive over changes to the platform to emphasise video and show more AI-recommended content.

Meta-owned Instagram will prioritise video and has said any video posts on Instagram under 15 minutes will be made into a Reel, Instagram’s full-screen Tiktok-like format, within the next few weeks. Previously it was any video under 90 seconds, and that limit had only recently been raised from 60 seconds.

The amount of recommended content – what Instagram shows users from people they don’t follow – will also increase, although this plan has temporarily been put back.

Other plans for a full-screen feed have been fully rolled back.

Reach group head of social media Yara Silva, whose remit includes accounts for the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Star and OK! magazine, told Press Gazette she hoped the brands could grow their audiences on Instagram by getting recommended more often to users that do not currently follow them.

“Although we don’t like the look of the new feed I think that hopefully we can increase our audience and our reach by getting recommended,” she said.

“So when Facebook changed the way they were doing it, and they started focusing more on recommendations, we did see a good increase because we were getting recommended to people who hadn’t previously seen or interacted with our content so our audience was growing, we were getting more traffic from that.

“So if the same thing happens on Instagram that would be amazing. We’ve just kind of got to wait and see I think.”

Asked if there was anything publishers could do to boost their chances of being recommended, Silva said it is yet “to be seen”.

“With Facebook at the beginning it was sort of luck and then we started paying more attention to what was working and when it was working, trying to really drill down into the data, times of day, the types of content, so once we have enough information on how things work with Instagram we will try and drill down into the data a little bit.”

The Reach national titles have already been posting more Reels, while keeping the brand identity of each account consistent. There are some stories that may previously have been photo posts that are instead being animated or put in motion “so that it can be a Reel just because it seems like it’s going to get more priority and obviously we want our reach to be as high as possible”.

But Silva said: “We don’t want to do 100% video because I do think the great thing about Instagram was pictures in my opinion so we do want to carry on doing stills but we will be doing a lot more Reels across the board. But who knows – they might roll the whole thing back, they’re getting quite a lot of signatures on this petition [to “make Instagram Instagram again”] and obviously the power of the Kardashians saying stop trying to be TikTok. So who knows?”

Instagram is the fourth most popular social media network in the UK and one of the fastest growing ways for people to access news, according to the Reuters Digital News Report 2022.

ITV News deputy head of digital Chris Achilleos told Press Gazette the outlet has also already been using Reels “a lot more” since the start of the year, concentrating on a mixture of the top news stories and picture or visual-led stories, and said it has been “seeing some success there”.

He said ITV News has been able to build a “loyal following” on Instagram because it has “quality news video” at its core.

But the boost in recommended content will further “allow our content to be seen by more people who may not interact with us”, he said, adding: “I view it as an opportunity for us to grow audience and engage more people with our journalism.”

ITV News also produces The Rundown, a daily series of Instagram Stories aimed at 14 to 17-year-olds, but Achilleos does not expect this format to be affected by any of the changes.

Achilleos said: “I know sometimes there’s been changes where publishers have been a bit concerned, but we’re pretty happy that this is actually an opportunity for us.”

Elise Johnson, head of audience at Press Gazette’s sister title The New Statesman, said the current affairs title had been planning to produce more video anyway as it prepares to invest in a Tiktok channel.

“Therefore Instagram changing their algorithm to favour Tiktok style content more will probably make less work for us in terms of creative experimenting but I’m not sure it’s good for the user’s experience,” she said.

She said she has built a team at The New Statesman that “are willing to create and fast to adapt to a new strategy” meaning they will “relish” the challenge of adapting to a new version of Instagram.

“It’s a new challenge and an opportunity to benefit our business,” she said.

Johnson said she felt it was “cynical” for Instagram to backtrack on the changes once the Kardashians spoke out as it may have feared being hit as Snapchat was on the stock market in 2018 when Kylie Jenner tweeted that she no longer used the app. Last week Jenner told Instagram to “stop trying to be TikTok… I just want to see cute photos of my friends”.

But Johnson added: “I have no doubt the algorithm is going to turn into the one we just saw despite this initial backtracking, and that is because Instagram has projected that it is more profitable for them long-term.

“I imagine the changes now will take place over a longer period and happen more subtly, but overall for publishers it would be wise to be working on their Reels strategy.”

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri acknowledged last week that there was “a lot of change all at once” including an increase in the amount of recommended content and boost to video.

Of video, he said: “We’re going to continue to support photos, it’s part of our heritage. I love photos, I know a lot of you out there love photos too. That said, I need to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time. We see this even if we change nothing… So we’re going to have to lean into that shift while continuing to support photos.”

Mosseri added: “We’re going to continue to try and get better at recommendations because we think it’s one of the most effective and important ways to help creators reach more people.”

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg later doubled down on this, telling an earnings call last week that Instagram wanted to double the amount of AI-recommended content it shows by the end of the year. He also said time spent watching Reels had grown by 30% in the most recent quarter.

However by the end of the week Mosseri and Meta had delayed the immediate increase to recommended content and ditched a test full-screen version of Instagram that looked even more like Tiktok.

Mosseri told the Silicon Valley Substack Platformer “we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup” but made clear the retreat was only temporary.

Of the recommendations, he said: “When you discover something in your feed that you didn’t follow before, there should be a high bar — it should just be great. You should be delighted to see it. And I don’t think that’s happening enough right now.

“So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then — if and when we do — we can start to grow again.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company was “temporarily decreasing the number of recommendations you see in your feed so we can improve the quality of your experience” and that it wanted to “take the time” to get the changes right.

Some US publishers have also begun being paid for posting Reels that receive above a certain number of views, as first reported by Digiday.

A Meta spokesperson told Press Gazette this was not special to publishers but that some were benefitting from its Reels bonuses, saying: “We continue to test Reels bonuses with all sorts of creators with less than one million followers in the US.

“While we haven’t made recent changes and haven’t explicitly invited nor excluded publishers from the program, some publishers have been invited to join over time. The bonuses that select publishers have access to are no different than what’s available to other creators in the program.”

Press Gazette is hosting the Future of Media Technology Conference. For more information, visit NSMG.live

Picture: Flickr/www.quotecatalog.com

The post Instagram Reels: Why news publishers are positive about platform’s shift to video appeared first on Press Gazette.

What are Twitter Spaces, why are so many outlets experimenting with the new audio feature and why are some betting on it going viral in the future? We found out in our latest in the Platform Profile series.

[See also: Instagram, NewsNow, Substack, Shutterstock, Upday, LinkedIn, Apple News/ Apple News+, Twitter, Acast, Authory, Pocket, TikTok and Twitter Moments].

Last year, many Twitter users may have noticed a slight change to their app. Now atop news feeds sit a line of circles with events hosted by some of the big names you follow.

These ‘Twitter Spaces’ were launched as the app’s latest feature as a beta test in March 2021, before being fully launched allowing all users to host spaces in October 2021.

In recent months, more journalistic outlets are turning to Twitter Spaces to host discussions on the biggest news events and reach readers in a new way. But what do they see in it? And what’s the key to mastering Twitter Spaces?

What is Twitter Spaces?

Twitter Spaces works a bit like an interactive, live podcast. A set group of up to 13 hosts and speakers discuss a certain topic, while an unlimited number of listeners can hear what they are saying in real-time, with the discussion able to be recorded so that it can be listened to afterwards for up to 30 days.

It mirrors the function of other audio apps like Discord or Clubhouse. Unlike both, Spaces are generally free and easy to access without having to join a group or get an exclusive invite beforehand.

Anyone can host a space, or co-host with other Twitter users, though it has increasingly proved popular with news outlets, including The FT, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, Tortoise and Bloomberg.

Twitter Spaces also gives publishers the ability to schedule and set reminders for followers to join a Space on time and even pin certain tweets so that listeners can easily access and read any articles or information being discussed without it interrupting the discussion audio.

Last year, Twitter previewed ticketed Twitter Spaces, where those with more than 1,000 followers that had used Spaces three times in the last 30 days could charge a fee for attending certain Spaces. A Twitter spokesperson told Press Gazette that a “limited group” of users would be allowed to use ticketed Spaces in the “coming months”.

However, the cut taken by tech giants makes the new option less exciting than it seems for publishers. For example, on an iPhone if you charge £10 to attend an event, Apple would take the 30% fee it charges on all iOS transactions, then Twitter would reportedly take 20% of the remaining £7, leaving hosts to just take home £5.60 of the initial £10 charge.

What’s the appeal of Twitter Spaces for publishers?

Some news outlets using Twitter Spaces see it as a middle ground between a podcast and a conventional social media post.

The Financial Times has been using Twitter Spaces since December 2021. The title's head of social media and development Rachel Banning-Lover said: “As always with social media platforms, it’s about building awareness of our journalists, content and brand.

"It’s another step on the ladder toward converting them into subscribers. In many cases, the listeners aren’t yet following the relevant FT Twitter account, so we suspect the Spaces are sometimes the first time some people are interacting with the FT.”

The New Statesman has spent the last few months experimenting with Twitter Spaces, hosting live conversations between a member of its social media team and a journalist where they do a deep dive into a popular article.

"We know we've got excellent content, it's about making sure that we are reaching new audiences. And at the moment, Twitter Spaces is one of the languages on Twitter that can convey our stories," said Elise Johnson, head of audience at The New Statesman. "And we know that if we create an engaged audience on these platforms, our content is surfaced to them more regularly. If we are asking questions, if we're getting them to engage, if they're listening, they will automatically see more New Statesman articles on their feeds."

"I think it's about putting a voice to the name that you're reading. And giving that interaction to your audience and creating that community," Johnson added, going on to explain that there were upticks on engagement with any articles that had been a subject of a Twitter Spaces discussion.

According to Twitter, the reasons people are using the feature are diverse.

Polling for the tech giant of Spaces users found that 87% wanted to build connections and status within their respective communities, 80% were interested in the newness of social audio and 73% saw it as another avenue to monetise their audience.

Twitter’s senior manager for news partnerships Heather Bowen said: “For many publishers, the power lies in the size and interest-level of the audience. We recently spoke to the engagement editor of American news outlet NPR for Twitter’s blog and he outlined how they’ve had conversations from Spaces turn into digital stories, found new sources and even conducted interviews there.”

How many people listen to a newspaper's Twitter Spaces?

Since first starting in December, The FT reports that its average space gets around 300-400 live listeners, with 3,000 to 5,000 tuning in afterwards to watch recordings. Big topics, like discussions around new Covid variants, can reportedly pull in almost five times as many live listeners, Banning-Lover told Press Gazette. A tweet promoting an FT Twitter Space covering NFTs was even turned into an NFT itself.

While Twitter did not disclose overall engagement or news outlet-specific engagement with Twitter Spaces, its spokesperson did tell Press Gazette that the earliest news publishers to adopt using Spaces are “sticking around” and the number of publishers using the feature is “increasing steadily”.

How will Spaces change in the future?

The exact changes and updates in store for Spaces are uncertain, though Press Gazette understands that it will be one of the major focuses of development for Twitter in the coming year.

The New Statesman says it is set to host roughly two Twitter Spaces a week in the coming months involving a shifting selection of the outlet's biggest writers. One will be reacting to the biggest news that week and one will be part of an ongoing series.

The FT meanwhile says it wants to keep using Spaces as a more-accessible alternative to its day-to-day reporting. “We want to retain it as a powerful, yet resource-light tool that journalists can jump on without too much training to dissect an engaging item in the news agenda. A quick way to connect our journalists directly with listeners” explained Banning-Lover.

Publishers can’t currently directly advertise in a Twitter Space, but this could change in the future. As one example, Twitter Fleets, the service’s now-defunct answer to the 'stories' feature in other apps, integrated full-screen adverts before the entire offering was removed from the app on 3 August 2021.

How to make a good Twitter Spaces broadcast, as explained by the FT and NS

Twitter offered an array of advice on how to increase engagement on Spaces, from promoting events in advance and using its "pinning" features to covering trending topics.

The New Statesman's current approach to Spaces is to theme each discussion around a single article published that week that had done well with audiences on social media and Google and use the Twitter Space to help boost engagement on that piece further.

But according to Johnson that is reliant on Spaces being part of a much wider strategy - getting topics featured on Twitter Spaces, and Moments as well as just tweeting about the article itself. "It's just about owning that whole subject," she explained.

The publication also benefits from a team of journalists with podcasting experience, who can easily adapt to speaking to a crowd of listeners in Twitter Spaces.

In the future, Johnson says The News Statesman will be more "experimental" with the way it uses Spaces, including by working more with the hosts of its popular politics podcast.

The FT pinpoints building real audience participation and engagement as one of the keys to its success. Banning-Lover told Press Gazette that the publication opened its Twitter DMs for reader questions, and ensured every question had a response even if it was written and sent afterwards.

The verdict

Twitter Spaces is still in its early stages. What that means for publishers is that they have the chance to be the pioneers of a new trend that may only grow in the future.

But at the same time it comes with its risks and downsides. For one, the fact Spaces is so early in its lifespan means Twitter has yet to give it meaningful analytics. While it's possible to track how many people tune into your Spaces, it's hard to exactly track how many listeners click on any articles mentioned in the event (although Press Gazette understands Twitter is working to improve analytics).

It's also far from certain that Spaces will still be here in the long term - or whether it will joins the likes Fleets, Vine and Periscope on the Twitter scrapheap.

But despite all the risks, there's still a lot that Spaces can offer publishers. It allows for deeper dives into your reporting and can give insights into what ideas are interesting to readers. It can drive traffic to articles and improve the personal branding of your reporters by putting a human voice to a byline. It can help build a sense of community and membership among readers.

Picture: Twitter

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