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US and China-owned websites now dominate UK online publishing
Good news for local journalism in Shetland and alarm bells ring over cuts to journalism course funding at UK universities
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Welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Tuesday, 1 July.
Meanwhile, Reddit continues to surge ahead after a deal with Google last year which appeared to turn on the taps of search traffic for the social media platform.
Looking at the top of the tree, Reach is the only UK commercial news publisher to feature in the top ten UK website publishers in terms of total monthly audience. According to Ipsos iris data, the Mirror publisher reaches 71% of the UK population each month.
In terms of total audience minutes, Mail Metro Media drives the most engagement among news publishers with 1.5 billion audience minutes in May 2025.
Meta and Alphabet dominate UK website publishing to a staggering degree.
In May 2025, the average UK website user spent more than an hour every day with both Alphabet and Facebook-owned website properties. The pair also take all the money, as regular Press Gazette readers are aware, with Google making at least £20bn per year in the UK alone and Facebook at least £6bn.
The most striking thing about the data for me is the extent to which the UK internet is now foreign-owned.
Total time spent with the top 25 UK website publishers in May 2025 was 313 billion minutes: Just 5% of that was spent with UK-owned sites, 9% with Chinese-owned ones (mainly Tiktok which is absolutely massive by the way) and 85% with US-owned entities.
Read our full story with charts galore here.
We take a closer look at the unusually vibrant local media ecosystem of Shetland, the small island community off the north east coast of Scotland, following news that local paper of record The Shetland Times has been saved from closure.
And we say goodbye to Vic Chapple, a highly-regarded former Sun reporter who was one of the last survivors from the team of reporters who took the paper from failing broadsheet to the UK’s top-selling (and most profitable) tabloid.
On Press Gazette
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Top UK online publishers: X plummets, Reddit surges, news publishers ranked
Reach has largest monthly audience reach among commercial UK news publishers.
Government warned cuts to journalism training ‘weaken civic fabric’
Government has removed extra funding support for journalism courses.
Shetland’s only local newspaper saved from closure
“There is plenty of news in Shetland,” from Viking burial sites to “robotic graveyard lawnmowers”.
Vic Chapple, ‘the complete reporter’, dies aged 93
Chapple helped The Sun move from broadsheet to tabloid and become top-selling UK daily.
News in brief
The San Francisco Standard, which was founded by venture capitalist and ex-journalist Michael Moritz, has bought Charter, a newsbrand focused on the future of work with about ten employees. Charter co-founder Kevin Delaney will be editor in chief of both. (New York Times)
Google has begun rolling out its second core update of 2025, which it said may take three weeks to complete. (Searchengineland)
Veteran ITV News at Ten presenter Sandy Gall, who was also a foreign correspondent for ITN and Reuters, has died aged 97. (ITV.com)
Piers Morgan Uncensored has celebrated passing four million Youtube subscribers. The show is produced by Morgan's own production company. Morgan said: "There is no current affairs debate/interview show in the world that offers a platform to so many diverse opinions."
Jon Slade takes over as CEO of the Financial Times today, succeeding John Ridding.