Hello from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 23 December. Here’s our daily round-up of media news.

🎤If you’ve been at any of our events in the past year, you might have heard Dom disarming senior executives on stage by asking them to describe how business is doing via an emoji.

I stole that idea by bringing it into our end-of-year reflections from senior news leaders, asking for one emoji representing how 2025 went and one representing their feelings about the year ahead. My favourites in the piece?

I’d pull out: 🏗️ (building work going on), 🌊 (a tidal wave of disruptive forces), 🔀(digital overtaking print subscribers), 🧗‍♀️(risk taking comparative to rock climbers), 🔭 (anticipating what’s coming next), and 🙃🙂 (thriving in the ‘upside down’ - and no, I don’t think this is a Stranger Things reference).

There are three rocket ships and three phones, sure. But they each have a comprehensive reason why they’ve been chosen.

Although most of the responses are pretty optimistic about 2026, they contain frankness about the challenges facing most media businesses.

Refreshingly, AI is barely mentioned. So that’s one big difference from our conferences!

You can find all 16 responses, including from the chief executives of Politico, Bloomberg Media, Forbes and The Independent, as well as the chief revenue officers of Newsweek, Mail Metro Media and the Associated Press, here.

READ THE FULL STORY

🗞️And finally we’ll send you off into Christmas with the latest ABC print circulation figures for November.

Despite suggestions that print will soon become a premium, weekend-only product, the Sunday titles are faring the worst for year-on-year change led by the Sunday People.

READ THE FULL STORY

🎄From the whole team at Press Gazette: thank you for all your support in 2025 whether you’ve engaged with our website, newsletter or events. We look forward to spending more time with you in 2026.

🤏News In Brief

The NUJ has called Iconic Media chief executive Malcolm Denmark "Scrooge" over lack of pay rises for journalists since he took over National World this year. (National Union of Journalists)

CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss defended her decision to pull a controversial “60 Minutes” segment on an El Salvador prison, telling staff on Monday the piece needed more reporting, and pushing back on accusations that the move was politically motivated. (New York Post)

Kopinor, an organisation that manages copyright for press and publishing content in Norway, has signed an agreement for Norwegian newspaper content to be used to train AI models. The agreement is funded by the Norwegian state, paying NOK 45m (£3.3m) a year. (Linkedin)

📈Top five on Press Gazette this week:

1) Manchester Evening News editor ‘fed up of playing algorithmic games’

Sarah Lester speaks weeks after MEN launches first major premium paywall on its site.

2) The projects publishers are most proud of in 2025

From video and newsletters to AI licensing and editorial campaigns, these were the things worth shouting about.