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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
AI reporters flood football sites with errors | Top UK local newsbrands: Reach sites worst hit
Plus how slow journalism is paying off for The Lever under Trump Two
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Good afternoon from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 22 June.
🪱 Today we can reveal that parasitic behaviour from UK company Clickout Media extends beyond video game newsbrands, as we previously reported, to sports.
Under their ownership, three previously reputable sports news websites - She Kicks, Football Blog and Sportscasting - have introduced AI-generated reporters that are putting out content riddled with errors.
The list of mistakes in our story would be laughable if it wasn’t so depressing.
I’ve been tracking embarrassing AI mishaps across the global media via our rolling page, but most of those are one-off issues or ones that are quickly corrected after public condemnation.
What Clickout appears to be doing is much more systematic and shameless.
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📱 Google Discover was, for a while, an open goal opportunity for newsbrands that could identify and make the most of areas where they had topic authority.
But the platform’s algorithm changes away from professional publisher content can be clearly seen in our new analysis of audience and time spent with the UK’s 75 biggest local newsbrands.
Just 16 of the 75 sites we looked at grew their audience year on year in April, while 15 increased minutes spent with their content.
Despite its declines, Reach chief content officer David Higgerson noted that the publisher has kept hold of much of its local audience - with non-local visitors through the platforms falling off. In today’s world where loyal readers mean more than ever, that means the picture isn’t as bad as it looks just from the raw numbers.
And Newsquest has held up well, having emphasised local content and used AI-assisted reporters to be able to put more time into those core topics.
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🕵️ Finally, we looked at how US investigative journalism outlet The Lever has increased its team even as it reduced the number of stories it’s putting out.
It’s that ‘quality versus quantity’ equation that’s coming up more and more as publishers move away from the years of chasing clicks and sheer scale.
It’s a real change of pace from the last Trum