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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
BBC execs grilled over Trump edits debacle | Inside Housing ditches print edition
And as Metro warns of redundancies, publisher DMG Media expands social video team
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 25 November.
Today’s newsletter is supported by Norkon, a financial technology provider that helps publishers turn live market data into personalised, habit-forming reader experiences.
Join them on December 3rd (online, free) at Next-Gen Business & Finance Media to hear how real-time market data can drive reader engagement and interaction.
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😳BBC executives were grilled by MPs yesterday in the wake of the misleading Trump edits debacle.
Board member Robbie Gibb insisted that speculation he orchestrated a coup to depose the BBC leadership and make the broadcaster more right-wing was “nonsense”: “Everyone who knows me knows that I’m hugely impartial”.
Former BBC adviser Michael Prescott said: “What troubled me was that during my three years on the BBC Standards Committee, we kept seeing incipient problems which I thought were not being tackled properly, and indeed I thought the problems were getting worse.”
And the performance of BBC chairman Samir Shah was pithily by the BBC’s Ross Atkins in his report: “The chair didn’t insist on a unified response when the edit was first discussed, he didn’t insist on a unified response for the next few months, and he didn’t deliver a response of any type for a week after the story broke.”
🎥 Audiences are shifting from publisher websites to watching videos on social media and Daily Mail publisher DMG Media is following suit in terms of where it places resources.
Staff at DMG brand Metro were warned last week that jobs would be cut to enable the publisher to “focus resources in areas with the highest potential for growth”. And today DMG Media announced four major hires to its 60-strong social media publishing operation.
It is creator-led content which is lighter, more personal and far less formal than the hard-hitting news the Mail publisher is famous for. And it is funded by brand partnerships which are far more interwoven into the flow of content than has traditionally been the case.
Similar moves are underway at Reach and News UK.
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❌ The Daily Express looks certain to top the table this year for most upheld IPSO complaints with 12 adjudications against it so far.
It has been unfortunate to find itself the subject of a single determined complainer. But it has also sometimes pushed headlines beyond what stories can carry in its coverage of business and finance. IPSO has cited particular concerns about stories such as “Octopus customers given £676” which “had the potential to mislead readers about energy costs and potential savings”.
Specialist news title Inside Housing – which made its name with in-depth coverage of the Grenfell Tower disaster – has become the latest B2B brand to ditch its print edition.
The monthly print title was providing a “minority contribution” and had evidently become a distraction from the focus on digital growth.
The good news is that Inside Housing has 14,000 paying online subscribers supporting a 17-strong editorial team who are ensuring that the social housing sector his held to account. Expansion is planned with more newsletters and podcasts.