Podcaster Andrew Schulz couldn’t keep a straight face in his recent interview with Donald Trump.
Although Schulz has previously said that he thinks the GOP presidential nominee seems “enticing” when compared with Democrats, the comedian couldn’t take him seriously during one moment in their 90-minute discussion, which was released Wednesday.
That moment? Well, it was when Trump claimed that he’s “basically a truthful person.”
Trump’s no-way-it-would-survive-a-fact-check statement came while he was insisting that Democrat Kamala Harris has lied about him and about previously working at McDonald’s.
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“She lied about McDonald’s,” Trump said, without citing evidence. “She lied about many things, and she’s a liar.”
He added that “there should be some kind of a rule, when they know it’s a lie, you can’t do a commercial on it” — nodding to a Harris ad that says she once worked at the fast-food chain.
Trump then said, “They can say what they want — I have a hard time doing it to them, because I’m basically a truthful person.”
At that point, Schulz started laughing hard, appearing to ask, “What does that mean?” But Trump ignored his amusement and doubled down on his Harris harangue.
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“She’s given me so much ammunition. I don’t really have to,” Trump said. “She’s a radical-left lunatic who will destroy our nation.”
Not surprisingly, Harris’ presidential campaign shared a video of the exchange online.
And, yes, social media users found the “truthful person” claim by Trump — widely known for his lies on varioustopics — to be quite absurd.
By Truthful Trump means he only lies three quarters of the time.
Imagine a convicted felon,convicted convicted man, adjudicated rapist and facing a rife of other felony charges having the balls to say I’m a truthful person.
The United States consistently fails to ban and regulate harmful chemicals, ProPublica reported in December 2022. Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner, and Kathleen McGrory explained how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the chemical industry are responsible for causing the United States to become “a global laggard in chemical regulation.”
Michal Freedhoff, the EPA’s head of chemical regulation, conceded to decades of regulatory failure, blaming the agency’s inaction on barriers created by the Trump administration, including funding and staffing shortages. However, ProPublica’s investigation revealed broader issues at play. Through interviews with environmental experts and analysis of a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases, and regulatory records, ProPublica uncovered the longstanding institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals.
Although the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) gave the EPA regulatory authority to ban or restrict the use of chemicals that pose serious health risks, the chemical industry’s involvement in drafting the bill was so extensive that one EPA administrator joked that the law “should have been named after the DuPont executive who went over the text line by line,” ProPublica reported. The law required the EPA “to always choose regulations that were the ‘least burdensome’ to companies. These two words would doom American chemical regulation for decades,” Bedi, Lerner, and McGrory wrote.
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In 2016, Congress amended the law to remove the “least burdensome” language, but that statute too was seen as “company-friendly.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stated that the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry lobbying group, was an originator of the draft bill, a claim that has been denied by the ACC and a congressional sponsor of the bill, ProPublica reported.
In the meantime, over sixty thousand chemicals remained on the market for years without being vetted for health risks. Some toxins that were originally exempted from regulation include asbestos and trichloroethylene (TCE). ProPublica noted that “asbestos is only one of many toxic substances that are linked to problems like cancers, genetic mutations and fetal harm and that other countries have banned, but the United States has not.”
After the 2016 removal of the “least burdensome” language, “the EPA named TCE as one of its 10 high-priority chemicals and tried to propose a ban on high-risk uses that year,” according to the ProPublica report. But after industry complaints, the proposal was shelved by the Trump administration, which decided instead to “reassess” TCE. ProPublica noted that in July 2022, the EPA’s draft assessment “found that 52 of 54 uses of TCE present an unreasonable risk to human health.”
Chemicals are difficult to regulate because the United States still uses a “risk-based” approach in which chemicals are “innocent until proven guilty.” This approach “puts the burden on government officials to prove that a chemical poses unreasonable health risks before restricting it,” which can take years, ProPublica explained. By contrast, in 2007 the European Union (EU) “switched to a more ‘hazard-based’ approach, which puts the burden on chemical companies to prove that their products are safe.” Under this “no data, no market” approach, the EU has banned or restricted more than a thousand dangerous chemicals.
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Another reason for lax US regulations is the burdensome process that encumbers even high-priority chemicals, including asbestos and TCE. Each chemical must undergo a lengthy assessment protocol, but the underfunded EPA cannot keep pace, especially in the face of industry resistance. “The whole regulatory process is designed to be slow and to be slowed down by those opposed to regulation,” said Joel Tickner, a leading expert on chemical policy who was interviewed by ProPublica, “Frankly, unless EPA doubled their size, they can’t do much with the resources they have.”
ProPublica also highlighted industry-friendly staffing practices at the EPA. Specifically, “the EPA has a long history of hiring scientists and top officials from the companies they are supposed to regulate, allowing industry to sway the agency’s science from the inside.” The revolving door contributes to “the sense that industry science is the best science, which is very much in line with regulators deferring to industry-funded studies showing there isn’t cause for concern,” said Alissa Cordner, author of Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health, who was quoted by ProPublica.
In a related story, IFLScience reported in June 2023 on an Annals of Global Healthstudy based on decades of secret industry documents about PFAS—so-called “forever chemicals”—showing that “the chemical industry just like the tobacco and oil industries were aware of the dangers of the product they were making but willingly suppressed the knowledge as it would hurt their bottom line.” Meanwhile, governments and people pay the price. According to a May 2023 article in DCReport, the global societal costs of PFAS alone are over $17 trillion per year.
A handful of corporate outlets have reported on the EPA’s slowness to regulate certain toxic chemicals, including the Washington Postand theNew York Times[Note also: Timothy Puko, “EPA Struggles to Ban Asbestos, Other Chemicals Years After Congress Granted New Powers,” Washington Post, February 19, 2023; Eric Lipton, “Public Health vs. Economic Growth: Toxic Chemical Rules Pose Test for Biden,”New York Times, March 16, 2023], occasionally noting business opposition to proposed new rules and the downsides to industry.However, none have highlighted the systemic failures wrought by the EPA and the chemical industry.
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Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner, and Kathleen McGrory, “Why the U.S. Is Losing the Fight to Ban Toxic Chemicals,”ProPublica, December 14, 2022.
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UK bosses will be able to fire new recruits after a warning of poor performance during a nine-month probation period, in a last-minute concession to business that will soften the impact of Labour’s flagship reforms to workers’ rights.
Draft legislation published on Thursday sets out a swath of changes to UK employment law that together constitute the biggest overhaul in a generation.
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The Employment Rights bill will give shape to 28 of the roughly 70 measures promised by Sir Keir Starmer’s party before the election in its “Plan to Make Work Pay”.
These include a clampdown on zero hour contracts, stronger rights to work flexibly if feasible and curbs on employers’ use of fire and rehire tactics.
But the most contentious provision, day one protection against unfair dismissal, will be softened considerably under government proposals for a statutory probation period during which employers will have to follow only a “lighter touch” process to justify a dismissal.
Ministers are planning to consult for several months on the maximum length of the probation period but are already minded to opt for nine months, according to officials.
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Many of the measures will be subject to further consultation to thrash out the details of secondary legislation needed to implement them, while other measures will be added to the bill at a later stage, or pursued separately in future by other means.
As a result, the majority of the reforms will not take effect any earlier than 2026, the government confirmed.
Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, is presenting the package as a way to “boost pay and productivity” in an economy “riven with insecurity”. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, the umbrella body for the UK labour movement, described it as a “seismic shift” that would improve working life for millions of people.
But businesses are alarmed at the cumulative impact of the reforms, and in particular by the scrapping of the current two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal.
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Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses trade body, described the bill as “a rushed job, clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned”.
The government has said the changes will help more than 1mn people working on contracts with no or few guaranteed hours, who will gain new rights to a contract reflecting their regular hours, and to notice or compensation when shifts are cancelled.
An extra 30,000 fathers will benefit from a right to take paternity leave from the first day in a job, scrapping the current qualifying period.
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The bill will also broaden coverage of statutory sick pay, strengthen trade unions’ role in the workplace, pave the way for collective bargaining in the care sector, establish a new agency to enforce employee rights and strengthen protections at work for new mothers, among other changes.
A nine-month probation period is longer than Rayner initially envisaged and follows intense lobbying from businesses that had the backing of business secretary Jonathan Reynolds and chancellor Rachel Reeves.
While employers will still need to show they have acted fairly in dismissing a new hire, they will not need to follow the lengthy process typical at present when dismissing an employee of more than two years tenure. Giving written notice could suffice, officials suggested.
Details of how a probation period works will be subject to consultation, however, and will need to be set out in both secondary legislation and a separate code of conduct. This means the day one right will take effect in autumn 2026 at the earliest.
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Other consultations will look at how to determine workers’ regular working pattern, in order to offer them an appropriate contract, and how to ensure businesses only use fire and rehire when they are at genuine risk of going bust.
My introduction to the Amazon came in 1990 when I was a research assistant, fresh out of college and living elbow-to-elbow with a team of scientists aboard a floating raft on the Amazon River. Every day brought the promise of new discoveries, and many mornings I found myself waiting impatiently for the first glimmer of dawn to peek through the canopy, fading from deep indigo to soft gold as it filtered through the leaves and revealed a slumbering world come to life. Lowland tapirs grazing on the riverbank, their long, flexible snouts half-buried in the grass. Pink river dolphins gliding through murky waters. A tableau of life in all its forms, rich and full and astonishingly fragile.
Within a year of my arrival, much of that pristine forest had vanished, felled to make way for human settlements. Back then the Brazilian government was trying to entice families to leave overcrowded urban favelas and make their homes in the forest. One governor handed out chainsaws to newly minted landowners with the gusto of Oprah handing out car keys to a studio audience. In the process, species like the dolphins and the tapirs, were driven from their habitats, their numbers rapidly dwindling.
Flash forward to present-day and we find the same tragic story unfolding around the world. According to the 2024 Living Planet Report released today by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), where I serve as chief scientist, globally monitored wildlife populations have plummeted by 73% in just 50 years, driven mostly by habitat destruction, overexploitation, and climate change. This decline has a dangerous ripple effect. Earth’s wild places cannot long survive the loss of its wildlife. And human civilization, despite its undeniable progress and technological wonders, remains bound to the health of the one planet we all call home.
The path we’re on now leads to catastrophic tipping points—thresholds where harmful changes to nature and the climate become potentially irreversible. The decisions we make in the next five years will determine if we can reverse these trends or watch them spiral out of control.
To appreciate what’s at stake, one must understand the connection between shrinking wildlife populations, collapsing ecosystems, and human well-being. Consider the tapir that used to greet me along the banks of the Amazon River. These quiet, roaming creatures—sometimes called “gardeners of the forest”—consume a variety of fruits, leaves, and shoots, and disperse the seeds through their dung, helping to maintain the diversity and structure of the forest. Without the tapir and other seed dispersers like tamarin monkeys and toucans, many of the large, hardwood trees they help propagate may fail to regenerate, leading to a less resilient forest that doesn’t store as much carbon as it once did. As healthy, intact forests disappear, they take with them the services that sustain human life: food, water, medicine, and the very air we breathe.
Today, the Amazon rainforest is on the brink of a transformation into degraded savanna, which would dramatically accelerate the decline of wildlife and the destabilization of our climate globally. Coral reefs face a similar fate: parrotfish, which play a crucial role in controlling algae growth, have seen their populations plummet on the Mesoamerican Reef due to overfishing. Without them, algae can overgrow and outcompete corals for space, light, and nutrients, hastening the collapse of these vital ecosystems and making them less resilient and more susceptible to warming waters brought about by climate change. The loss of this reef and others around the world would have dire consequences for the 330 million people who rely on them for food and coastal protection from storms.
Nature is the bedrock of human survival. By protecting the tapir, parrotfish, and other quiet engineers of the natural world, we invest in our own future. But time is running out.
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This month’s U.N. biodiversity conference in Colombia (COP16) offers a key moment that we need to seize. Governments will present plans at COP16 intended to align with the globally adopted target of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030. Getting there requires conserving 30% of global landscapes and seascapes by the end of this decade, which in and of itself requires significant increases in both government commitments and financial flows to projects that keep nature intact. WWF’s own analysis finds that most national commitments heading into COP16 fall short of what’s required. We hope today’s Living Planet Report findings inspire more countries to get serious about what needs to be done and strengthen their domestic targets and action plans before COP16 concludes on Nov. 1.
On the domestic front, the U.S. remains the only U.N. member state that has yet to ratify the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity—meaning that it will be attending as an observer but not a party to the conference in Colombia. Nonetheless, the Biden Administration has set goals through its America the Beautiful initiative which strongly align with national values as well as global goals. Namely, it has committed to “restore, connect and conserve at least 30% of lands and waters by 2030.” Now the U.S. needs to make good on that commitment.
The task before us is unprecedented in its scope. And yet, I am hopeful. Here’s why: in my home state of California, one of my favorite places to visit is the Pinnacles National Park, where I can look up and see California condors—once nearly extinct—soaring on the thermals. These massive birds, with their wingspans stretching nearly 10 ft., play a crucial role in the ecosystem as scavengers, cleaning up carcasses that could carry disease and recycling nutrients back into the environment. As I walk along the foothills, with the distinct scent of sagebrush and sunbaked earth rising from the chaparral vegetation around me, I think about the decades of conservation efforts that brought this species back from the brink. Their recovery is a testament to what bold, sustained action can achieve.
At-risk species like the lowland tapir in the Amazon and success stories like the California condor embody the choice we face. Both species serve critical roles in the conservation of nature and the myriad benefits it provides to billions of people. One species is rapidly declining, while the other is slowly rebounding. The difference is human action. If we act decisively, we can ensure that more species, like the condor, find their way back to thriving ecosystems. With crucial tipping points looming on the horizon, the question of whether we tip toward restoration or irreversible loss is up to us.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will need to come up with billions of pounds more to meet the government’s pre-election promises, according to calculations by influential think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The government has promised no return to “austerity” for public services and a boost to government investment, designed to kickstart growth.
But to honour those commitments the chancellor will need to “grasp the nettle” and come up with £16bn more on top of £9bn tax rises set out in the Labour manifesto, the IFS said.
The chancellor is finalising details of her first Budget, to be announced on 30 October.
Reeves will set out how she plans to meet a raft of manifesto promises against a tangle of self-imposed restrictions on borrowing, spending and debt.
There is an expectation that more of the tax burden will fall on higher earners, following the government’s surprise decision to limit winter fuel payments to the poorest pensioners. Some also hope for an end to the two-child limit for benefit payments.
But Reeves’ first Budget comes against a backdrop of higher debt following the pandemic, higher interest payments to finance that debt and inflation that has only recently returned to normal levels. A growing and ageing population and the climate transition impose additional challenges.
The new government had inherited an “unenviable” situation with the public finances, the IFS said in its regular pre-Budget analysis of the public finances.
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Growing pressures on health and pensions, combined with falling revenues from fuel and tobacco duties made the situation harder, but tough decisions were necessary, IFS director Paul Johnson said.
“If Ms Reeves does not grasp the nettle on 30 October, it could come back to sting her again before the next election,” Mr Johnson said.
Getty images
Protecting services
The IFS, working with economists at investment bank Citi, calculated how much extra revenue the chancellor would need to find to avoid sharp cuts in public services. That is based on her pledge to ensure day-to-day spending is paid for with tax revenues.
Economic forecasting is not precise; stronger than expected growth could give the government greater room for manoeuvre, while weaker growth might mean cuts were still required.
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The IFS said on their own the £9bn tax rises already planned by the chancellor, might be enough to maintain spending at current levels, including taking inflation into account, although the forecast was so tight it was “on a knife edge”.
However, many public services including prisons, higher education and local government are struggling to meet current needs. Pressures are expected to grow, especially in social care and the NHS and the government has pledged additional healthcare staff and other reforms.
To meet that growing need without public services deteriorating and to fulfil manifesto promises, the IFS said real-term spending would need to rise in line with the size of the economy, or around 2.8%, requiring the extra £16bn in funding.
New rules
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Spending increases that simply keep pace with inflation, or even ones that keep steady as a proportion of the size of the economy, would not be enough to transform public services, the IFS warned.
Even the larger increase remains much less generous than the 3.3% increase Rishi Sunak pledged in 2021. When Boris Johnson announced an “end to austerity” in 2020 he pledged a 4.1% increase in average year-on-year spending, the IFS said.
The new government has also pledged to boost investment. However, the chancellor has indicated she is likely to treat spending for investment as separate from day-to-day spending, and consider borrowing more to fund it.
She is also widely expected to change the way the UK’s debt burden is measured and as a result what constraints are made on government borrowing. Before the election Labour said it would stick to Conservative pledges to have debt falling as a proportion of economic output by the fifth year of the forecast.
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The IFS said increased investment was an important component in addressing the UK’s low growth, but said “significant extra borrowing to fund that investment would be risky”.
The UK had elevated debt levels, substantial borrowing and a current account deficit, meaning it imports more than it exports, which left it more vulnerable than the euro area or the US over borrowing pressures.
“Some additional investment may therefore need to be financed through higher taxes,” the IFS said.
AMAZON shoppers have flocked to grab a huge Nestle chocolate box where bars are less than 30p each.
The 1.36kg selection box was described as a “dream come true” by fans who had rushed to nab the amazing deal.
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Nestle’s Big Biscuit Box contains 1.36kg of chocolate for less than £20Credit: Amazon
The Nestlé Big Biscuit Box contains a range of “amazing” chocolate biscuits including KitKats, Blue Ribands, and Toffee Crisps.
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In light of the major saving, more than 5000 purchases of the product were made in the past month alone.
The selection box normally costs £21.78 but some lucky shoppers managed to secure 36 per cent off the listed price today.
The set was selling for just £13.99, meaning shoppers got the 69 chocolate biscuit bars for around 20p each.
However, following this rapid buying period, the price has already reverted upwards again, and is now at £19.85.
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With this new 9% saving, the biscuits work out to a still fantastic 29p per bar.
The KitKats in this selection come in three different flavours: Milk Chocolate, Orange Milk Chocolate, and Dark.
The Nestlé Big Biscuit Box currently has a 4.5 star rating on Amazon.
Arthur said: “From the moment I laid eyes on the Nestle KitKat and Friends Big Biscuit Box, I knew I was in for a treat.
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“This colossal treasure trove, boasting a staggering 69 chocolate biscuit bars spanning KitKat, Blue Riband, Toffee Crisp, and more, is a dream come true for any chocolate aficionado.
Shoppers beg Cadbury’s to bring back 2005 recipe on iconic bar – as they moan current one ‘tastes like candle wax’
“Weighing in at an impressive 1.357kg, this bulk chocolate box is not just a purchase; it’s an investment in pure joy.”
Brian commented: “I bought the item for myself and to offer to my friends when they came round the selection was excellent the enjoyment it was fantastic I love keeping my chocolate in my fridge as when you eat it it melts slowly and it wasn’t that expensive.”
Stuart posted: “The Nestlé KitKat and Friends Big Biscuit Box is a delightful assortment of some of Nestlé’s most beloved chocolate biscuits.
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“Perfect for sharing in the office, at home, or during gatherings, this box offers a variety of flavour’s and textures that cater to different tastes.”
Julie wrote: “The selection was lovely. They all tasted amazing. All very good quality. Good variety. Had to hide them from Grandchildren as wanted to eat them all at once.”
Paddy added: “Loved this mixture of chocolates it’s great value for money and perfect for my morning/afternoon coffee breaks…”
However, one shopper said: “I’ve ordered this many times but was very disappointed with this last box as the contents have changed – had I realised this I would not have ordered them as it’s mainly KitKats now.”
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How to save money on chocolate
WE all love a bit of chocolate from now and then, but you don’t have to break the bank buying your favourite bar.
Consumer reporter Sam Walker reveals how to cut costs…
Go own brand – if you’re not too fussed on flavour and just want to supplant your chocolate cravings, you’ll save by going for supermarket’s own brand bars.
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Shop around – if you’ve spotted your favourite variety at the supermarket, make sure you check if it’s cheaper elsewhere.
Websites like Trolley.co.uk let you compare prices on products across all the major chains to see if you’re getting the best deal.
Look out for yellow stickers – supermarket staff put yellow, and sometimes orange and red, stickers on to products to show they’ve been reduced.
They usually do this if the product is coming to the end of its best before date or the packaging is slightly damaged.
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Buy bigger bars – most of the time, but not always, chocolate is cheaper per 100g the larger the bar.
So if you’ve got the appetite, and you were going to buy a hefty amount of chocolate anyway, you might as well go bigger.
Paul Rowland, Reach editorial director, at the Future of Media Technology Conference on 12 September 2024. Picture: ASV Photography for Press Gazette
The editorial director of Reach’s Live network of websites has described page views as “the best thing we’ve got right now” amid a drive to increase the number of stories they publish.
Paul Rowland wrote in an email to staff on 27 September that article volumes were being talked about “a lot in newsrooms at the moment” and blamed, in part, the volatility from previously huge traffic referrers like Google and Facebook.
A separate email, sent by Birmingham Live editor Graeme Brown last month, suggested journalists should file at least eight stories per day unless they were newsgathering outside of the office.
As first quoted by Hold The Front Page, Brown said: “We need to make more of shifts where people are not going out as drivers of volume. In practice, if you’re on a general shift and you’re not on a job, it should be at least eight stories a shift.”
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Press Gazette understands this can vary hugely depend on whether the role is court reporter or affiliate writer, for example.
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However Brown has since revised the target to around five stories “on a normal reporting shift” with up to eight on a “live or weekend shift” in response to feedback from the newsroom, Press Gazette can reveal.
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Brown wrote in a follow-up email on 2 October that he understood the concerns but “this is about better connecting you all with the issue. Page views are our currency and there was a time we were getting 50% of our traffic from Facebook – now it is more like 5%. We get a fraction of the PVs we used to from, say, a local murder and this is the most plausible way I can see to address that.”
He continued: “We’ll be expecting more volume and are more likely to be focusing on a higher number of quick turnaround stories. On a live or weekend shift we might expect a reporter to produce closer to eight stories, whereas on a normal reporting shift it might be closer to five.
“It’s not an absolute – if you want to write something you think is brilliant and demands a whole day, talk to your manager who can adjudicate. In general, we need to be managing time efficiently.”
Reach editorial director’s email to staff about importance of page views
Rowland’s email sought to explain why page views are still key to Reach even as other publishers focus more on loyalty and engagement metrics.
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Rowland said: “Ultimately, this is all about building sustainable newsrooms, and in the here and now that means making sure we’re driving enough page views to fund our journalism.
“Going forward, there’s a lot of working happening to diversify our revenue streams – be it through affiliates, social video, podcasts, e-commerce or other routes that haven’t even emerged yet – but in the meantime we need to make sure we’re bringing in the funds that will support the business to continue developing and transforming the way we engage readers as the digital media landscape changes.
“The way we do that right now is through page views. It may not be a perfect metric, but as a directly monetisable digital unit, it’s the best thing we’ve got right now. And at the risk of reducing journalism to pure maths, the page views we generate are a compound of the number of articles we produce, and the number of times that each one is read.
“That might seem like a complete statement of the obvious, but it’s an important thing to confront when we think about the things that we need to do to fund our journalism. To increase page views, we need to increase either the number of articles we produce, or the number of people who read each one (or both).
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“Given the volatility we’ve seen in recent months (and years) with the big referrers, it’s hard to put any certainty around our ability to consistently increase the average number of page views each article gets.
“That’s not to say there aren’t actions we can take to influence this positively – choosing topics and formats that are optimised for a specific referrer is one route. Fostering communities of readers around events and issues so that we’ve got a captive audience hanging on our updates is another. But the constant jeopardy of the environment we operate in is that the benefit of that good work can potentially be overwhelmed by a sudden and violent downturn on one or more referrer.
“We talk about volume a lot because it’s the one variable that’s entirely within our control. But please don’t misunderstand that as me implying that it’s easy to control. It’s not. I know how much hard work is going into increasing our volume levels to where they are at the moment.
“But here’s the even harder bit – volume for volume’s sake will get us nowhere. We need to find the ways to create more opportunities for audiences to discover our content in areas where we can compete and win, and we need to do it without sacrificing the reasons our local brands exist. It’s really tough. But it’s not impossible.”
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Rowland added that Reach sites frequently cover major breaking news events in which “every possible crumb of audience interest has been spun out into a breakout that finds readers by doing every angle, for every platform. That’s not about us ticking a volume box; it’s about providing the most comprehensive service to readers coming directly to us, and giving ourselves the best chance of more casual readers browsing for information landing with us (and hopefully returning).
“So yes, we need to publish at scale on the populist topics that can help us bring in the big numbers from Discover – the things you’ll routinely see topping Chartbeat – but we also need to generate that scale around the topics that our most loyal readers turn to us repeatedly for.”
In its half-year results published in July, Reach revealed page views were down 25% compared to H1 2023 due to the “ongoing impact of 2023’s referrer deprioritisation of news”. But it added: “Trends are improving and open market prices for mass scale programmatic advertising have stabilised.”
Data-driven revenues, which are based around Reach’s own audience data, affiliates, partnerships and e-commerce rather than programmatic advertising, now make up 45% of all digital revenues. However in the first half of 2024, print still made up 77% of the company’s total revenues.
In response to a Press Gazette post on X about the article target, many users shared concerns for the journalists involved.
Journalist Olivia Devereux-Evans said: “As someone who has done this… a 7-3pm shift means writing at least a story an hour, sometimes more. Sometimes I didn’t take a proper lunch break as I felt pressure to hit 8 stories and was consistently stressed about page views…”
Similarly Louis Staples said: “As someone who used to work in clickbait content farming: this puts reporters at professional and personal risk. It burns them out and leads to mistakes and a loss confidence, not to mention questionable ethical judgements in pursuit of traffic. End this model!”
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Many of the comments also focused on the user experience on Reach’s websites which can be slow to load and hard to read due to ad clutter.
Sharing a screenshot of the Cambridgeshire Live website featuring a pop-up asking for permission to send notifications alongside advertising, journalist Alex Goy said: “And this is how those stories will be presented. The problem ain’t the volume, chums, it’s that you can barely read them.”
Another X user said: “It’s 2024. First of all Reach need to design basic news sites that work then we might actually use them. The awfulness of regional news sites means people ignore them. End of chat.”
Mullen said these financial obligations have meant “we need to put a certain amount of ads on our pages.
“All that money is paid off in 2028 so we should see a gradual reduction. We’ve already launched a new platform which has managed the latency of it, which is on some of the regional titles, the Liverpool Echo, you will notice a difference, but over the last couple of years, it was pretty packed, and that is gradually getting better now…”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog
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