Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Thursday, 5 May.

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🗽 The biggest online publisher in the US, People Inc (formerly Dotdash Meredith), could have cried into its beer over the collapse of Google traffic.

But instead it has focused on building new revenue streams which aren’t dependent on website visits.

In the first quarter of 2024 Google fed People Inc 55% of its website traffic. In the first quarter of this year that had fallen to 25%.

Google-written AI summaries now appear on 70% of the top 10,000 search keywords which People articles used to rank for.

But despite Google effectively stealing a big chunk of People Inc’s website publishing business, the US consumer media giant managed to grow digital revenue 8% in the first quarter of this year to $253m.

Company leaders Barry Diller and Neil Vogel explained yesterday how they stopped being Google “serfs” and built a publishing business which they are in control of. They also explained why new revenue streams outside advertising and subscriptions are the future growth drivers for the group.

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^🚨A cautionary tale from Forbes which has reached a $10m privacy settlement after being sued for breach of privacy over the use of website tracking cookies.

The claimants were able to argue in California that the publisher invaded their privacy by tracking their movements across the internet, and sharing information with other companies, without proper consent.

Given there are estimated to be around four million potential claimants in this case, $10m looks like a reasonable result for the publisher.

It’s a case which any publisher operating in California needs to be aware of and which also underlines the importance of complying with privacy and data protection rules in every jurisdiction.

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⚖️ And the UK Freedom of Information Act is under attack again. Ever since the law came into force 21 years ago, governments have tried to water it down and put the genie of a statute-backed public disclosure back in the bottle. Journalist Barnie Choudhary’s attempts to make the Judicial Appointments Commission comply with its FOI obligations have left him facing potential financial ruin and a punitive costs order.

Tim Dawson explains why the case presents a threat to the public’s right to know and comes amid government plans for wider curbs on FOI.

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🤏 News In Brief

The BBC has commissioned a six-part factual drama to explore the work of Sir Harry Evans, with actor Matthew Rhys playing the former Sunday Times editor.

Podcast production company Goalhanger is expanding its written journalism offering (both on websites and in newsletters) with the recruitment of a commissioning editor and writer. (Job advert)

Five book publishers are suing Meta, alleging it accessed millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from websites hosting pirated material and downloaded unauthorised scrapes of “virtually the entire internet” in order to train its Llama AI models. (