Top 50 news sites in the US | Columnist to PRs: please, please stop emailing me
Plus Assange flies home and what happened when British GQ stopped 'feeding the algorithm'
Good morning and happy Friday: the weekend’s around the corner.
This week we have the latest news site traffic rankings for both the US and the world.
Among the ten highest-ranked sites in the US the figures show an 18% month-on-month surge in traffic to People.com (and a 42% boost year-on-year), placing it fifth overall. USA Today, meanwhile, shed 15% of its audience month-on-month — but has still grown its audience 16% year-on-year and sits at ninth place on our list.
On the global charts one of the most notable trends this month is the growth of India-based news sites: likely assisted by the country’s mammoth 44-day elections, Indian sites put in a strong showing in May, with NDTV’s visits up 67% year-on-year (putting it in 15th place), India Times up the same percent to ninth, Indian Express up 56% to 17th and Hindustan Times up 55% to 12th.
Meanwhile Julian Assange was freed this week almost exactly 12 years after he entered London’s Ecuadorian Embassy. The story has loomed large for press freedom campaigners in both the US and UK: as Press Gazette’s editor in chief Dominic Ponsford wrote on Tuesday, the Assange case “will remain as a warning that any UK journalist dealing with US state whistleblowers could be treated like a foreign spy and handed over by their own government to face a possible life sentence in US custody”.
Also this week we heard from prominent Observer columnist Jay Rayner on an issue that — going off the US traffic the article’s been receiving — cuts through for journalists on both sides of the Atlantic: PR emails.
Rayner wrote an open letter to the industry complaining he receives “literally hundreds of emails from PRs a week. And what staggers me is the vast number that have absolutely nothing to do with my beat”.
And finally my colleague Charlotte Tobitt has spoken this week with GQ‘s European director of audience development, analytics and social, Neha-Tamara Patel, who spoke about the brand’s pitch away from quick-hit traffic and toward longer, hopefully more fruitful relationships with a returning audience.
Have a great weekend.
Bron
Top 50 news websites in the US: People and News Corp titles see strong May growth as places shift at the top of the ranking
While the New York Times remained the biggest newsbrand in the US by number of visits followed by CNN, a strong monthly performance from Fox News led it to overtake MSN in third place.
Top 50 news websites in the world: BBC fastest-growing among ten biggest brands in May
AP saw the biggest growth, with visits to the newswire’s site up 20% month-on-month to 115 million. British newsbrands Sky News and the Daily Express also made the fastest-growing list.
‘So many damn follow-up emails’: Jay Rayner tells PRs to stop ‘driving me nuts’
“It is clear to me that a staggering number of you put together random, unfocussed lists of journalists and then just send them everything, despite it being irrelevant to them.”
Campaigners claim victory as Julian Assange freed after five years in Belmarsh
According to Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, the “breakthrough” in the legal case was on the issue of “his rights under constitutional protections to freedom of the press”.
What happened when British GQ stopped trying to ‘feed the algorithm’
“If some of that time and effort could go into longer form content that generates traffic for us, maybe at a lesser spike, but more consistently over a longer period of time, the net gain is actually greater. And that's definitely the approach we've taken.”
Also on Press Gazette:
Campaigners claim victory as Julian Assange freed after five years in Belmarsh
Who’s suing AI and who’s signing: Time latest publisher to broker deal with OpenAI
‘Enemies of accurate, prescient journalism?’ Former Daily Mail editor hits out at former employer
And elsewhere…
Will Google strike a deal with California news outlets to fund journalism?
Laurel Rosenhall, Los Angeles Times
Despite publisher deals, generative AI may never master citing sources
Matteo Wong, The Atlantic
Is journalism’s trust problem about money, not politics?
Jacob L Nelson, Nieman Lab
California Senate passes $500m journalism jobs bill
Rebekah Entralgo, Newsguild
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