All posts tagged: journalism

Watch the British Journalism Awards 2025 highlights video

Watch the British Journalism Awards 2025 highlights video

Published by Sam Flores

Fraser Nelson of The Times With their emphasis on serving the public interest, the British Journalism Awards winners provided inspiring examples of what can be achieved by simply uncovering facts that others would rather see concealed. Journalist of the Year Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News said she had never won an award prior to last year. She was recognised for her work exposing child abuse within the Church of England which prompted the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Noor Nanji of BBC News spoke to Press Gazette after picking up her award for an investigation into inappropriate workplace behaviour from TV chef Greg Wallace. She said: “The biggest thanks goes to the women who spoke up and shared their stories.” For the foreign affairs journalism winners, the award provided vindication of a documentary – Gaza: Doctors Under Attack – the BBC refused to air. It was instead shown by Channel 4. Filmmaker Ramita Navai said: “It means a lot particularly because of everything we went through as a team. Most of all it’s …

Media Execs Prepare for AI to Bring End of Journalism Industry

Media Execs Prepare for AI to Bring End of Journalism Industry

Published by José Betancourt

Will the slow anaconda crush of AI mean the end of journalism? It’s hard to imagine it completely eliminating the profession outright, unless the machines end up enslaving humanity à la the “Matrix” films. There will always be nosy gumshoes meddling in everyone’s affairs.  But major media companies are in dire straits, and their executives aren’t sounding too cheerful about the future, which could hold in store the end of the traditional news agency. That’s according to a new survey of over 280 media leaders from 51 countries conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ). It found that on average, the sample of editors, CEOs, and digital executives expect traffic to their websites to plummet by 43 percent over the next three years — which would be a disastrous blow to their commercial operations. Traffic to news sites has already been plunging, a trend that preceded the AI boom but only accelerated as chatbots like ChatGPT began to replace the search engine. Analytics data cited in the RISJ report shows that …

Journalism job cuts in 2026 tracked: Rolling updates

Journalism job cuts in 2026 tracked: Rolling updates

Published by Sam Flores

The new Politico European website is seen displayed on a Macbook. Picture: Politico Politico has started 2026 by cutting 3% of its staff as it reviewed “how we best harness our resources for the future”. The Wall Street Journal also announced a restructure that will involve the departure of some staff. They are the first entries in Press Gazette’s new page for rolling updates on journalism industry redundancies and layoffs in 2026. This page will be kept updated throughout the year. In 2025, we found at least 3,434 journalism job cuts in the UK and US. In 2024, the tally was at least 3,875 and in 2023 it was about 6,000. January 2026 journalism job cuts Wall Street Journal – Unknown number 15 January: The Wall Street Journal is carrying out a “strategic restructure” of its features and weekend teams. WSJ editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said the title is continuing to shift from being a “print-centric organisation to a more nimble, topic-driven structure designed to serve our readers wherever they engage with us – across the …

AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp

AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp

Published by skeptic

Newsrooms have been experimenting with AI for several years now but, for the most part, those efforts have been just that: experiments. A relatively unknown startup, Symbolic.ai, wants to change that, and it just signed a major deal with News Corp, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp, the major assets of which include MarketWatch, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, is set to begin using Symbolic’s AI platform with its financial news hub Dow Jones Newswires. Symbolic.ai, which was founded by former eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica co-founder Jon Stokes, says its AI platform can “assist in the production of quality journalism and content” and that its tool has even led to “productivity gains of as much as 90% for complex research tasks.” The platform is designed to make editorial workflows more efficient, providing improvements in areas like newsletter creation, audio transcription, fact-checking, “headline optimization,” SEO advice, and others. In general, News Corp has shown a willingness to integrate AI into its media operations. In 2024, the …

Survey reveals Britons value human journalism and worry about AI

Survey reveals Britons value human journalism and worry about AI

Published by Sam Flores

Chinese robot pictured at Web Summit in Lisbon. Picture: Press Gazette/Dominic Ponsford Members of the public in the UK place huge value on real human-generated journalism and are deeply distrustful of AI in the media, according to a major new survey. UK news industry marketing body Newsworks commissioned a survey of 4,000 UK adults by One Poll carried out in October and November. Asked about the role of AI in news production, some 84% of respondents said it makes human editorial judgment more important. Asked to name three ways AI is affecting “you or society” the most popular answers were that it could reduce “human critical thinking or intelligence” and help “spread misinformation or false content”. Most UK national newsbrands do not use AI to write stories for publication. However, unscrupulous PR agencies have used the technology to industrialise the production of fake press releases which have been published more than 1,000 times in mainstream UK news publications. IPSO-regulated newsbrands have published hundreds of these stories, which often feature AI-generated images of imaginary spokespeople, exposing …

More than 3,000 journalism job cuts tracked in UK and US in 2025

More than 3,000 journalism job cuts tracked in UK and US in 2025

Published by Sam Flores

Top four publishers by estimated number of jobs cut in 2025. Picture credits clockwise from top left: People Inc, Shutterstock/Marmalade Photos, Shutterstock/Marcus E Jones, Shutterstock/Ken Wolter More than 3,000 job cuts were recorded in the journalism industry in the UK and US in 2025 according to Press Gazette’s rolling updates. The total estimated number of redundancies in the UK and US throughout 2025 (based on company announcements and media reports) was at least 3,248. Scroll down or click here for full information about the job cuts included in this tally. This means job cuts in 2025 were 16% lower than in 2024 and 59% down compared to 2023 (although around 2,000 Canadian jobs were also included in that year’s tally. Removing them would make it a 46% decline compared to 2023). The biggest month in 2025 for job cuts was January (at least 939) followed by October (499) and May (482). The quietest time was August (15). About 70% of the journalism job cuts recorded in Press Gazette’s tally in 2025 were in the US, …

The enduring power of journalism in a world of more media and less freedom

The enduring power of journalism in a world of more media and less freedom

Published by Sam Flores

A vast amount of information has not necessarily meant more reliable information, writes James Rodgers, a former BBC correspondent who held postings in Gaza, Moscow and Brussels On December 10, the year 2025 reached a murderous milestone. In 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had recorded 126 journalists and media workers killed, the highest number since the CPJ first began keeping records in 1992. In 2025, the figure was matched with three weeks of the year still to go. One nationality, Palestinian, has paid by far the highest price. “Israel has killed almost 250 journalists since the Israel-Gaza war began in 2023,” the CPJ reported. What does this mean for audiences’ understanding of a world where international affairs are dominated by war, the climate crisis and unpredictable politics? As far back as the early years of the US, and through the European revolutions of the 19th centuries, information and freedom have been linked. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or …

The Fence fundraiser to boost investigative journalism

The Fence fundraiser to boost investigative journalism

Published by Sam Flores

An illustration for The Fence’s Fighting Fund prize draw. Picture: Alex Christian London-based features magazine The Fence is fundraising to expand its staff and increase its output of investigations and “stories that matter”. The independently-owned title, which publishes its print magazine four times a year, is also planning to add a newsletter paywall and print advertorials in a bid to diversify revenues. The Fence’s Fighting Fund has a target to raise £25,000 by the end of the year. It had almost reached £15,000 at the time of publication. The money will be used to expand The Fence’s small team and fund more investigative content after editor Charlie Baker noticed what people want to read “has changed” since he last spoke to Press Gazette in 2022. At the time he described The Fence as a print-first, advert-free magazine with “a lot” of “absolutely silly and absolutely small” content that still had “a sort of permanence”. Speaking after the crowdfunder launched, Baker said: “More generally, in 2022 we had a big space to ourselves in the British …

Kelvin MacKenzie praises ‘decent Guardian journalism’ and says he was ‘duped’ over hacking

Kelvin MacKenzie praises ‘decent Guardian journalism’ and says he was ‘duped’ over hacking

Published by skeptic

Kelvin MacKenzie must rank as the most successful editor ever to work for Rupert Murdoch. He guided The Sun to its highest circulation and was responsible for many of its memorable iconic headlines. He regarded Murdoch, the man he affectionately called “boss”, as the world’s greatest newspaper owner. When the phone-hacking scandal broke in 2011, MacKenzie was among the most forthright supporters of Murdoch’s company. In the course of several TV and radio appearances, he echoed the News International line that a single “rogue reporter” had been responsible for voicemail interceptions. It has long been known that MacKenzie was deeply upset when the truth about the scale of hacking finally emerged. But he maintained a silence in public until his appearance on ITV documentary The Real Hack – the companion to a seven-part drama series, The Hack. He has now revealed just how angry he was to discover the fact that hundreds of people had been hacked by journalists working for the News of the World. He said: “I wrote a note to Rebekah Brooks …