Tuesday 10th August: Google blocked ads on Piers Morgan's Mail Online column

August 10, 2021

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

Professional snowflake Piers Morgan isn't happy. Google has blocked ads from appearing around a column he wrote complaining bitterly about a world-class athlete making the decision to compete or not based on her own mental health.

Whatever... we expect him to fire up the outrage engine anytime someone breaks his anti-woke code of ethics - he's got bills to pay. What's interesting about this is that Google pulled the plug on any ads running alongside his sad little diatribe, not because of what he said, but because of the 'racist' comments that it attracted.

Esther has concerns about Google taking control in this scenario and I get her reticence, both on Big Tech being the arbiter of right and wrong and also their undeniable hypocrisy. But when it comes to any action taken to curtail the monetisation of hate-filled comments sections fired up by pile-on commentary, the enemy of my enemy is most definitely my friend.

The biggest newspaper company in America added 145,000 digital subscribers in Q2. The business has 1.4 million subscribers across its network of 250 dailies with growth is comparable to that reported by the NYT last week, but overall circulation revenues fell 9.4% compared to the same quarter in 2020. Digital growth isn't making up for digital decline.

Here's a positive update from Manchester Mill, which we last mentioned when it won a share of Substack's local journalism fun. The startup has just reported that it has attracted 925 members, each paying up to £7 a month and contributing more than £65,000 to fund the firm’s four-strong team. Nice.

Bo has been exploring TikTok for about a month, trying to get his head around the success of the platform. His conclusion: "If you want to reach out to a new audience between 19 and 49, this is where they spend 52 minutes a day, every day."

Podcast throwback:

Back in 2017 Chris spoke to newspaper analyst Liz Gerard about the recent history of tabloid front pages and Stop Funding Hate founder Richard Wilson about the goals of the campaign. Given Mr Morgan's faux 'freedom of speech' whining, seems as good a time as any to resurface the episode.

Ko-Fi contributions have really helped us cover our costs over the last year. We love one-offs, but we've also introduced a monthly subscription option to make it easier for our lovely listeners to contribute regularly. It's just like buying us a virtual coffee but you can hit the 'Monthly' button to make use happy over and over and over. 💛💛💛