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Regional publisher Newsquest buys rival Archant — pressgazette.co.uk

We're kicking ourselves for missing this from this week's news roundup. With Newsquest purchasing Archant, there are now effectively only three major regional news publishers in the UK. It throws up any number of questions about media plurality, the ability of journalists to collaborate across titles, the potential for redundancies... it's a huge discussion and we'll absolutely have it in the near future.

But first, as reported in Press Gazette, the details. Rcapital acquired Archant in 2020 (though not The New European which had previously been spun off) - but less than two years later things have obviously changed.

Archant’s chief executive Lorna Willis said: 'By bringing the best of Archant and Newsquest together we have the opportunity to lead the way in building an exciting future for regional media, a future that speaks to growth, innovation and sustainability, built on quality local journalism.'

Why audio articles are great for retention, conversion and attracting young readers — www.twipemobile.com

The podcast market has become saturated and difficult to navigate. Discovery is very difficult. This article from Twipe Mobile argues that audio articles are a great place for publishers to start - and we've discussed some examples of publishers doing just that very recently.

Reuters staff raise alarms over partnership with Russian-owned wire service — www.politico.com

Tass, the Russian-owned newswire, is causing consternation at Reuters. Politico reports that Tass has published unverified information about the war in Ukraine. That has potential reputational ramifications for Reuters - but it also means that the public potentially eventually has conflicting reports originating from the same service.

Race and leadership in the news media 2022: evidence from five markets — reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

Depressing and unexpected news from the Reuters Insitute's latest report into race and newspaper leadership. News media leadership is still overwhelmingly white; in Brazil, Germany, and the UK, as in 2021, none of the outlets in Reuters' sample have a non-white top editor. Meanwhile in the US, 33% of top editors are non-white, up from 18% in 2021.

This week's episode:

Headlines Network Founder Hannah Storm on improving the mental health of people working in the media — voices.media

In this week’s episode we hear from Hannah Storm, founder and director of the Headlines network, an organisation working to improve the mental health of people working in the media. She tells us about why mental health can be bad among media professionals, and what organisations and individuals can do to make things better.

Conversations: Passendo talks monetising inventory and protecting privacy with Access Intelligence — voices.media

Building audience engagement with email is high on every publisher’s agenda. But building revenue with email doesn’t get nearly the same attention. In this special Conversations episode, Chris is joined by Passendo's Andreas Jürgensen, Anders Rantzau Rasmussen, and Access Intelligence’s Michael Ring to discuss how publishers are growing their bottom line by optimising and automating in-email ad serving.