Business Insider tech chief on how they're using AI | Murdoch trust overhaul bid fails

Plus Forbes promotes longtime exec Sherry Phillips to be its first female chief executive and Wired drops its UK edition down to quarterly

Dec 13, 2024

Hello, and happy Friday.

This week my colleague Charlotte Tobitt has spoken with Harry Hope, the chief technology officer of Business Insider, about what the brand has been up to with AI.

The company made a notable claim earlier this year that the implementation of a smart paywall had boosted subscription conversions by 75%. Hope told us Business Insider has been going big on AI-driven search with summaries, but that the real benefit of generative AI has been allowing “a team of our size… to punch above our weight class”.

(Incidentally, a quick shoutout to the Business Insider team who got a highly commended at the British Journalism Awards last night.)

Also this week The New York Times broke the news that Rupert Murdoch’s bid to alter his family trust has failed.

The trust currently apportions equal voting rights over the future of his empire to his four eldest children, but Murdoch had hoped to hand greater control to Lachlan, the chairman of News Corp and Fox Corp and the heir seen as the most politically similar to Rupert. Someone should make a TV show about this.

Forbes has promoted chief revenue officer Sherry Phillips to chief executive. After nearly three decades at the company, she becomes the business brand’s first female chief executive.

It’s a particularly exciting development for me because, ~~totally unaware this was coming~~ owing to my immense journalistic nous, I happen to already have an interview with Phillips in the can. Keep an eye out for that next week.

And in some transatlantic media news, Wired’s UK edition is dropping down from bimonthly to quarterly. The tech mag also told subscribers its newsrooms have “gone global” joining into “a single, powerful team” and that the quarterly editions would let them “cover the most essential and urgent stories of our time”.

Have a great weekend.

Bron

Business Insider AI-powered search result page for the search 'Google AI'.

Business Insider tech chief: AI lets us ‘punch above our weight class’

“It gives us capabilities to build products and experiences that we maybe couldn’t quite build before, or maybe a much larger company could build if they had more engineers, more data scientists, but maybe a publisher like us didn’t have the capability to build.”

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Rupert Murdoch loses attempt to give Lachlan control in family trust overhaul

A court commissioner ruled that Murdoch and his son Lachlan – the head of Fox News and News Corp – had acted in “bad faith” and called their efforts a “carefully crafted charade” designed to “permanently cement” Lachlan’s control, according to a sealed document obtained by The New York Times.

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Forbes names Sherry Phillips as CEO to succeed Mike Federle

Phillips, who is becoming the first female CEO in Forbes history, has been chief revenue officer since 2022, overseeing all of the brand’s revenue-driving businesses including digital media, branded content, events and marketing.

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Wired UK to go quarterly and merge teams with global editions

In the letter, which was not attributed to any specific staff member, Wired UK said that going quarterly would allow the publication “to bring together Wired’s journalism from multiple time zones, capturing the diverse perspectives of our teams across North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe”.

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Business Insider tech chief on how they're using AI | Murdoch trust overhaul bid fails

Plus Forbes promotes longtime exec Sherry Phillips to be its first female chief executive and Wired drops its UK edition down to quarterly

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