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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Forbes cuts contributors amid falling Google traffic | Freelances offered less than 10p a word
And a former Future editor launches AI-powered rival cycling news website
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Hello from the team at Press Gazette on Tuesday, 9 December. Here’s our daily round-up of media news, brought to you in association with FT Strategies - consulting from the Financial Times.
FT Strategies offers Newsroom Transformation services, guided by a proprietary editorial framework developed from the Financial Times’ own experience, to help your newsroom become a more efficient and profitable organisation.
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💸No one has been hit harder by the rollout of Google AI Overviews than Forbes - the US-based business news website which tracks the wealth of the rich and famous.
Ask Google for a list of the richest business people in the US and the Forbes ranking is now relegated far down the page below a long AI Overview and invitation to “dive deeper” in AI Mode.
This week Forbes cut dozens of paid contributors as it seeks to adjust to falling referral traffic from Google. They are the latest victims of Google’s big content grab and the rise of zero-click searches.
📉The latest UK top 50 news websites ranking shows Forbes is the biggest faller in terms of total monthly audience (down 47% year on year). GB News and OK are both also down nearly 40% year on year.
But overall, more top 50 news websites grew traffic than lost it in September - suggesting the impact of AI on search is not as severe in the UK as it appears to be in the US.
It is difficult to guess what publishers offering such low rates expect to get but it’s not going to be anywhere near enough to pay for the sort of in-depth journalism which will be good enough that readers themselves will pay for it.
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Stuart even goes as far as to let AI draft articles but he insists his site is not creating slop and in fact can be the antidote to low-quality AI content by keeping a human in the loop at every stage.
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