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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
How Axios is making local news pay | Ex-Observer staff expand The Nerve
And publishers have joined Amazon in fighting a crucial legal action against Perplexity over theft of content for AI training
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Thursday, 5 May.
Press Gazette’s awards for the best digital journalism products (newsletters, podcasts, websites, etc.) are now open for entries. Find out more here.
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✅ Some encouraging news from the US where Axios is ramping up its expansion into local news.
With around 100 journalists it plans to have 43 local editions by the end of the year.
The model is a simple one. Around two journalists per edition who are focused around a daily newsletter with about five original stories plus links to relevant content elsewhere. Money comes mainly from advertising, but also from donations (which keep the content free for everyone). And AI is used heavily to help source content and streamline production, but never for writing.
🚀 UK-based investigative journalism outlet The Nerve is also funded by reader donations which help keep its content free. Supporters get involved because they back its mission of journalism which is “independent, transparent, investigative, inclusive and fearless”.
Its five founders are all former Observer staff who left in the wake of its sale to Tortoise Media. Now six months on The Nerve is expanding already with four additional writers joining the team.
Paid memberships are gaining traction around the world as a way of supporting journalism.
My theory is they work because they appeal to a different part of the human brain, wherever altruism sits. If pitched right, this appears to land a lot more easily than demands for subscriptions which get readers on the defensive.
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It is the latest battle in a war which will determine whether journalism has a future in the AI-powered age.
As US trade body Digital Content Next puts it: “An AI agent that commercialises publisher content for AI products without authorisation effectively commandeers a perpetual license of unlimited scope without paying a cent to the publisher who created the content, and thereby deprives the publisher of an important, regular source of revenue. This is simply not sustainable.”
If copyright is over in the AI age, then we are all doomed.
🤏 News In Brief
Press Gazette’s tracker of AI journalism mishaps has been updated with several non-English language examples and Ars Technica fabricated quotes case.
This week’s news diary from Foresight News includes STV journalists going on strike, David Attenborough’s 100th birthday and the Bafta Television Awards. (Press Gazette)
An Associated Press reporter has shared that 40 reporters, photographers and videographers have taken buyouts