I noted over this summer that we appeared to be having a traffic downturn on this blog and elsewhere. I discussed this with other people I know who publish online, and also with some people in the mainstream media, and was told that the trend was universal. An increasing alienation between the media and what people wanted to read, or even be aware of, appeared to exist.
Amongst the many publications to which I subscribe is one on Substack which deals with issues around what is happening in the press. Its author, Jez Walters, has now noted data on this trend, admittedly from the USA. As they had to say:
U.S. web traffic to 100 of the top news sites fell to 48m visits in July, down from 70m in 2024. Direct traffic, one of publishers' largest funnels, has sunk 25%. User behaviour is changing, with a huge drop-off in scrolling on publisher websites - 40% of desktop visitors no longer scroll.
This trend is undoubtedly serious for the mainstream media. As we all know, newspaper sales have fallen dramatically in recent years, and the publishers of papers did, as a consequence, have to adapt with varying degrees of success to the creation of an online presence. The result has been that much of the media has survived, albeit with many fewer staff, and even lower levels of trust than they had before, as more and more news stories become simple regurgitations of press releases and stereotypical repetitions of political messaging, without questions being asked of those about whom reporting is being made.
As we now know, another trend has emerged, which I've also noted. The same source says:
At a time of ubiquitous content, there is a poverty of attention. Exhibit A: The Times cut its daily output from 200+ stories to 160, yet has seen four months of record traffic growth. Its sports desk cut output by 30% and traffic rose nearly 50%, while Hearst UK has also reduced article volumes and doubled traffic YoY.
I have particularly noticed this in reporting from the FT as well. The number of news stories referred to in the morning emails has reduced significantly over the summer, and they have developed an annoying habit of dragging in stories from previous days to add padding on occasion. The key issue is that content is changing and there is a rejection of information overload.
I am noting this, and as this autumn has begun, traffic is recovering. Traffic here is now running at around 20,000 a day, which is slightly down from a year ago, but it's more than compensated for by growing traffic on Substack, at nearly 5,000 a day, LinkedIn, at an average of 14,000 a day last week, and Facebook, where it seems the traffic is only a little lower than LinkedIn. Meanwhile, YouTube averages around 80,000 a day, with more than 50% of those viewing almost all of any video that we have to offer. I'm beginning to suspect that some mainstream media platforms might be jealous of these numbers.
What matters to me, though, is just what this downturn in viewing might mean, when I strongly suspect that it will be matched by declining viewing and listening figures for television and radio.
Firstly, at a time when AI is facilitating ever greater information overload, it appears that people are making it quite clear that they do not want this.
Secondly, if scrolling is becoming rarer, as anecdotal data also suggests to me, then much of social media is going to struggle right now.
Thirdly, there is an obvious risk that misinformation might increase as a consequence of this trend. I am not saying that the mainstream media is full of virtue because, as a matter of fact, it is misleading, but the risk is that the alternatives that people are now using are even more so.
Fourthly, and this is the most significant point, when an independent free press fails a country, its democracy is imperilled, and that is the risk that we are seeing here. People have now not only lost faith in their politicians, but they are losing faith in the media too, and the consequence is very dangerous. In such an environment, anything can happen, and that is the risk that we face.
Three questions follow.
First, will the mainstream media rise to the challenge and now present us with what people believe is reliable?
Second, would people believe it if it did?
Third, will those corrupt influences that have debased our media permit this?
I could, of course, add a final observation, which is that the organisation we should be able to rely on to rise above this is the BBC. The problem is that it has been as toxic as any organisation in its support for toxic racists, its prejudicial double-siding, which is anything but objective, and its total failure to hold politicians to account, which has been a significant contributor to the failure of its own reputation and that of politicians themselves.
So a fourth question might be, is a renewed BBC possible?
At present, I have no optimistic answer to any of these questions. That is what really worries me.
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The biggest gift the MSM can do for us right now is to help us to remember how we got to this situation.
One of the questions I wrestle with in omnibus discussions, is how to show that MY alt-media source is better than THEIR alt-media source.
Which one is fake news?
The only thing we have in common is a distrust of the BBC, such that we don’t watch/listen any more.
“I saw it on YouTube”. End of argument. Depressing.
Agreed
Obviously proper studies are needed to discover what’s going on, but here’s a couple of suggestions for (loosely related) factors. The first is the ongoing reduction in attention span. This is a well documented phenomenon (just put “falling attention span” into a search field) and a recent National Geographic article puts the average attention span at 40 seconds. That doesn’t get you very far into any medium that presents an argument that needs to be digested by the reader/listener/viewer. Not surprising if people avoid sources that take more than 40 seconds to read. This is terrible news in every respect.
The second is – ironically – the effect of AI. Despite generating slop by the lorry-load, it is really quite good at summarising information and presenting a concise overview. One consequence of this is that lots of sites are losing “clicks” from search results because the AI summary satisfies the immediate need. Clearly this also feeds into the attention span issue. Google have explicitly and consciously moved in this direction but other search engines (DuckDuckGo is my usual starting point) duplicate the behaviour. This is also terrible news in many respects.
Noted, and broadly agreed.
There will always be an audience of quality content. Where you find that content is changing and the manufactured MSM news agenda can overwhelm, by design.
AI summaries are changing how we are using online search. Traffic and clicks are down by maybe 25%. That’s hitting content producers who need organic traffic. As you note commercial publishers are reducing the quantity and quality of their output. We have a negative feedback loop.
Much B2B publishing has become live conferences and events or deep intelligence services, Very specialist High value. High price.
I’ve also observed that may younger people who grew up with digital consume very little traditional MSN and are falling out of of love with digital media of various sorts including gaming and the positively changing their behaviour. It’s got boring…margins ruling and ruining product quality.
Substack is a fascinating outlier. It’s the wild West of long-form journalism. Subversively chaotic and innovative. It gives me hope. Podcast are another area where creators have taken back control.
The decision the Government makes around BBC news and current affairs is one of critical cultural importance as it remains an important benchmark and reflects the role of the state . The bar has been allowed to fall so low it has lost authority and respect.
Thank you
I thought this story from yesterday, worrying…
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/facebook-algorithm-change-in-april-crushed-audience-reach-for-digitalbox/
Noted.
This is true for all the AI-generated search summaries that now do not require the searcher to go through to an actual site.
MSM is owned by corporate oligarchs/billionaire so no hope there.<p>
BBC hasn’t got a proper public service charter – its management are political appointments and as Tom Mills book says – it has never been a public service broadcaster – although maybe it was a bit better after WWII for some years<p>
Am more and more convinced our system – media and politics- is heavily policed by security services etc etc <p>
Paranoid
The BBC looks like a lost cause. Triggered by Evan Davis saying the government’s “chest is empty”, I complained that they continually breach impartiality with their constant peddling of household analogy-type narratives. I asked them why alternative perspectives on government finances are almost completely absent from their output. Ignoring the charge (or course!), they offered this interesting statement:
impartiality requires us to give due weight to significant viewpoints where they are relevant to the discussion
So, while they didn’t waste my time trying to claim they do cover alternative viewpoints, they did, accidentally, admit why they don’t.
Breaking it down a bit…
The BBC makes judgements on whether non-household analogy views are ‘significant and relevant’ to government finances.
If they are judged to be both, the BBC gives them ‘due weight’, which would mean at least a mention of them, surely?
Given that they are almost never even hinted at, the BBC must consider views other than household analogy-type to have neither significance nor relevance. What else can it mean?
It seems their own review into impartiality in their economic reporting (Blastland and Dilnot) is merely propping up the leg of a wobbly table in some conference room.
Never forget that Evan Davis was a Tory and an arch-neoliberal who wrote about such beliefs before joining the BBC.
Is it possible people feel burned out and are switching off?
Right wing MSM is a depressing catalogue of neoliberal harms without offering analysis, hope or resolution and so generates depression and despair. The only button to press in that situation is the off-button.
This is why FtF is so different. It offers hope.
I think it’s entirely possible that people feel burned out and are switching off. Don’t we all feel a bit like that on occasion?
And thanks for your kind comment – I appreciate it.
Part of their rebuttal was
“Evan Davis is an experienced journalist and former economist, with considerable knowledge and expertise in the field of economics”. Indeed.
They must have thought that the 20+ economists who complained in 2022 to the then Director General, Tim Davie (about Laura Kuenssberg’s “the government credit card is maxed out” garbage) must be know-nothing lightweights compared with Evan. Something she repeated almost verbatim two years after the impartiality review. Who are we to question ‘the talent’?
🙂
Might the actual and/or stated concerns about the B. B. C. lacking in objectivity and deep analysis, particularly in its “News” and news derivatives departments, plus its London/south of England centricity, iibe connected to its governing body only having representatives from two of the seven contemporary classes identified by the Great British Class Survey which are the Elite and the Established Middle Class?
Might members of the Elite and the Established Middle Class be those least likely to want objectivity and deep analysis of our society’s current political and socio-econmoic theories and practices?
(From AI Overview)
While I agree with the main points of your post Richard, your last point about the BBC is not fair. It needs pointing out that the last Tory government spent it’s time in power continually attacking the Beeb, reducing it’s licence fee income by over a third through below-inflation increases or fee freezes, both because they were sucking up to people like Murdoch who’s always hated it, and because an increasingly right wing Tory party dislikes public sector broadcasting as a matter of course. And now we see the licence fee itself threatened by increasing numbers of households not paying it, as they claim not to use terrestrial TV, although there is mismatch between people paying it and still listening to the Beeb.
The irony is that in an age of increasing algorithmic and AI based drivel (i.e. lies) there has never been more need for a trusted national broadcaster like BBC. Would those on here like RobertJ who say they no longer trust it prefer it to be entirely replaced by ‘news’ from the anti social media platforms used by far right thugs and lunatics like Musk? I get the feeling from the anti BBC posts here that some on the left are no more interested in listening to programs that don’t accord with their beliefs than the conspiracy theory far right are.