which is straight after this programme. hello. welcome to the media show. well, on this week's programme, we've talked about a couple of subjects which are pretty familiar to us on the media show, but they're no less pressing because of that. one is howjournalists should cover donald trump — and of course, he's trying to become president of america again — and the other is about the business models of news, because they are under ever more pressure. and when it comes to the business model, we are also looking at al and journalism, because several news organisations have done recent deals with the big tech firms. so that is all coming up. on this week's programme, we're going to hearfrom andrew neil, who has a brand—new show on times radio. he's also the chairman of the spectator group. and we'rejoined by caroline waterston, the relatively new editor in chief of the daily mirror. yeah, we've also got two guests coming out of the states — one, katie notopoulos, who's the senior tech and business correspondent at business insider. but the first person we spoke to isjeffrey goldberg, who is editor in chief of the atlantic. and we started off by asking him just to sum up what the atlantic is. how is that even possible? on the rare... just in case people don't know, it's a 167—year—old magazine founded in boston. 1s... — 1850s, before the civil war. politics, culture, literature, remains committed to those coverage areas today. but we try to explain america to itself to some degree. i think that's one of our purposes. we have a monthly magazine with a large subscriber base. we have a million subscribers, including digital subscribers. we reach a pretty wide array of people across the us and other parts of the english—speaking world. and i think i'm right in saying you're privately owned by emerson collective, which is an organisation set up by laurene powelljobs, widow of the apple founder stevejobs. just explain to us how that works. yeah. laurene and emerson collective bought the atlantic seven years ago. it works, knock on wood, wonderfully well. she's a great owner. we have complete editorial independence. she's very supportive of the mission, as is the whole organisation. we're a for—profit organisation, although emerson collective has a for—profit and a not—for—profit, separate wings. we are profitable on our own, which is a good thing and fairly rare these days. i'm just thinking about... i've been thinking about the washington post a lot of the last couple of days... well, we definitely want to ask you about some of the announcements at the washington post. and we want to ask you about your route to profitability, because that was one of the reasons we were so interested to have you on the programme. before we get into the details of what you've done at the atlantic, ijust — with katie's help as well, and a guest who'sjoining us — want to put what the atlantic is trying to do and what all publications in the news arena are trying to do in some context. yes, because katie notopoulos is from business insider, and ijust thought it'd be useful if she just gave us a recap on the structural problems facing the industry. because, katie, you know, as has already been mentioned, much of this comes back to advertising, doesn't it? right. so one of the biggest problems isjust that| digital advertising — - which was what supported journalism for many . decades or centuries — has sort of dried up. facebook and google are very effective at being digital- advertisers, and they've just sucked up a lot of the - ad dollars out there. so if you're a brand i like pepsi, it's easier to put your dollars somewhere else than to run an ad - in a publication. and that has really affected . the industry across the board. and you obviously... there's a lot of other| factors going on, just the rise of digital, - and therefore print is not as popular as it used to be. but i think... you know, there are some bright i spots, and there's reason to be i hopeful about the state - ofjournalism and being able to sustain media businesses. katie, thank you. jeffrey goldberg from the atlantic, let's bring you back in. you launched your online paywall in 2019. tell us about that decision and what's happened since. yeah, well, it turned out to be excellent timing, because the pandemic hit the next year and advertising bottomed out. we're holding our own on advertising. we have good people doing it. and, you know, it's not going to be the primary source of revenue for this company going into the future. we've switched, actually, since 2019. we're now majority... you know, the bulk of our revenue comes from subscriptions, the consumer business, not advertising, but advertising is still an important part. but we launched this paywall. i mean, obviously, we're a print... we've been a print magazine since the 1850s. we've had long experience of being a subscription—based organisation. when we entered the internet in a big way in the mid '90s, late '90s, obviously programmatic ad revenue, other forms of advertising, became huge for us. but we finally decided, the company finally decided in 2019 to launch a paywall for a digital product. and thank god we did, because a combination of pandemic news and trump news really accelerated our growth in the next couple of years. and that brought us, we just crossed a million subscribers total. half of those... roughly half of those subscribers are print and digital and half — roughly half — are digital only. all news organisations are diversifying the type of content that they're making. i wonder, aside from the trademark atlantic long articles which many people will know, what else you offer digital subscribers? well, we have a daily report. you know, we're not building a second newsroom, or a third newsroom in the washington post case, for tiktok videos or whatever it is that they're doing... you don't sound overly impressed, jeffrey. no, i'm just feeling generally dyspeptic today. so you're just getting... just getting a general vibe. hopefully, that's nothing to do with you coming on the media show! god, no. glad to hear it. just checking. this is the only meeting i'm looking forward to today. sorry, we interrupted you. no, no, no. it's ok. i'd rather make jokes than talk about the business ofjournalism. i think that... so when i started as editor eight years ago, you know, all i wanted to do, and i have, you know, laurene's100% backing on this, make highest—qualityjournalism, because highest—quality journalism is the only thing that people will pay for. you know, if we had put all of our eggs in the programmatic ad revenue basket, we'd be in bad shape, and so on. and so i think doubling down on what you do best, and doubling down on making a unique... unique stories that people will actually pay you for to read is the way to go. and so we have a much more... you know, obviously, 30 years ago, before the internet, the atlantic came out, it was a, you know, more leisurely—paced thing. today, we publish every day. we publish, you know, every hour in busy times. but we're still trying to maintain that level of quality and differentiation so that we can convince readers to become subscribers... i'm going to pause you there, sorry, just to bring in andrew neil, because some of this with your spectator hat on must be sounding quite familiar. jeffrey's talking about a million subscribers. how... you're a subscription model as well? we are a subscription model. the spectator has about 100,000 subscribers in the uk, 20,000 in america, because we just launched there, and about 12,000 in australia. if you get the business model right, the digital age can be a golden age forjournalism and publications like atlantic monthly and the spectator. but you need to get it right, and you need to realise that the old business models will bankrupt you. so when i took over the spectator in 2005, 65% of our revenues came from advertising. today, it's less than 10%. advertising is only our third—biggest revenue stream. we've had to seek new revenue streams. we put a very tough paywall up about 12, 14 years ago. 80% of our revenues now come from subscription. and it's a wonderful business model, because subscription revenues are predictable. i know within 5% plus or minus what's coming in this year, because i know the renewal rate, i know what the marketing will produce, and it's not subject to the economic cycle, unlike advertising, which is highly unpredictable. so you get that right and you're a golden age. the poster child of all this, of course, is the new york times, which now has nine million subscribers, more foreign correspondents than it's ever had in its history. and they got in early, didn't they? that was part of it. they got in early, as some of us did too. the times and the sunday times in this country are now highly profitable on the subscription model. and then you need to look, in addition to subscription revenue, for other streams of revenue, streams that you would never have thought of before. so, for example, of course, you still take some advertising. you take very little programmatic. because here's the problem — if you're a subscription model, you're providing a premium website, and you don't want your website punctuated by endless ads for things that you have no control over. so you really need to control that. and you're talking about digital dimes in terms of programmatic, but instead, you do newsletters, you do podcasts, you have spectator tv and other ventures like that. and above all, our second—biggest stream of revenue — events _ we do events that expand the brand and bring in a ton of money. ok, caroline waterston, i want to bring you in because this presumably isn't sounding very familiar to you because it isn't something that you're doing at the mirror. have you ever thought about subscription? have you ever thought about a paywall? it's not on the mirror's agenda. i mean, certainly from my point of view and from the mirror's point of view, you know, i believe that our content should be available to a wide community and not just those that can afford it. you know, we are a news brand. i want to ensure that everyone has access to our content, and certainly it's not on our agenda. but what does that mean financially? you're taking a hit. do you believe...? i mean, are...? are you essentially of the belief that a paywall — is this too dramatic, a paywall is a threat to democracy? is that how you see it? no, it's just not on our agenda at the moment. that's because it doesn't work. we talked... well... for red—top tabloids, it doesn't work. the sun tried it and had to abandon it. you know, it's different with atlantic, spectator, times, sunday times, financial times... people are willing to pay. ..new york times. people are willing to pay for that kind ofjournalism. the problem with what we used to call the red—top tabloids is that people won't pay for it digitally. of course, in the old days, they paid for it by putting their money down to buy the paper. but it seems that a lot of that kind of content, they think they can already get almost for free on the net. so they're not... it's a... of allthe... you know, all of our industry — from the top to the bottom — has had to withgo digital waves of change. the toughest part of the market to get right is the red—top tabloid part of the market, because the subscription model doesn't work. caroline? yeah. and, look, good—quality journalism is exactly what we want to do. but good—quality journalism shouldn'tjust be available to those that can afford to pay it. so, yes, we are an ad model. ads help fund...ourjournalism. and certainly... that's where we are at the moment. in terms of the experience of the user, the digital user of yourjournalism, do you have any concerns that the proliferation of adverts, which you need in order to fund the work you're doing, lessens the experience? look, it's something i think about every day, but, you know, ads are a part of life, and certainly from the mirror's point of view, we have to produce good—quality journalism, and ads help us do that. 0k. let's bring you back in, jeffrey goldberg, because what about your experience in the us, particularly relating to donald trump, who we know back in 2016 drove huge levels of news and news—related content consumption? are you seeing the same thing this time around? 2016 and 2020. i wouldn't say... well, first of all, we have a much tougher paywall, so that limits the sort of explosive numbers that you would have seen 2020, 2016, in particular. i think there's also fatigue. you know, these are... these are characters in now what would be called a long—running drama, right? trump and biden as well. i think there is some fatigue with it. all that being said, yeah, there's... there's obviously an unusual election taking place. i'm trying to use the most anodyne words possible. there's a consequential election taking place and people are... our kind of reader in particular is going to be very engaged in it. but, you know — and i think this is a lesson from the washington post in a way — you can'tjust assume that political news will continually spike for you. i mean, you have to do the thing that's the right thing to do for your publication. it's mission first. and if you forget that, you're going to lose your subscribers eventually anyway. butl... we're not going to see the same crazy numbers that we saw in the past. but obviously, this is not a normal election. and trump does draw an extraordinary amount of attention. i want to ask you further about trump, but you've alluded to the washington post a couple of times. we should say that on monday, sally buzbee, we heard, was leaving her role as the washington post's executive editor, to be replaced by robert winnett from the daily telegraph. and will lewis, who's the ceo of the washington post, said, "we are losing large amounts of money. "your audience. this is to staff. "your audience has halved in recent years. "people are not reading your stuff. "i can't sugar—coat it any more." so the washington post is looking to change its strategy. but coming back more broadly to donald trump, this is a question we've asked a number of times on the media show over the years, but it doesn't make it any less pressing. you've called the election consequential and unusual — i'm sure there are other words you would use, too. how do you, as the editor of a hugely consequential magazine and publication in the us, approach the challenge of covering donald trump? and i'm interested to ask andrew and caroline the same question afterwards. you know, we... we had this problem in 2016, where we were trying to... you know, we were following the old rules, you know, to some degree, which is... and the old rules were the old rules of coverage, what people would call "both—sider—ism..." the old rules worked...when you had candidates who operated within certain lanes, lanes of self—restraint, lanes of adherence to democratic norms, when candidates felt shame and repositioned themselves based on feedback, regarding the things that they do. you know, the most important thing for me, and, you know, we try to get it right, and a lot of other people are trying to get it right, and a lot of people are trying to catch up — the most important thing is that we describe things plainly. right? not euphemise, because donald trump's behaviour is so novel — i mean, it's not novel any more, but it's still novel historically — and that... you know, and that we don't become... and this is what i'm always encouraging our staff about. we don't normalise to this. our own, you know... "oh, well, trumpjust said that, you know, "the north korean dictator's head is made of cheese." "oh, who cares? "he always says stuff like that." no, and we have to do it every... we have to report the oddness, whenever it erupts, and that... by the way, this means... we're notjoining the resistance. we neverjoined the resistance, which means we also questionjoe biden�*s capacities, for instance... that's how you're approaching it at the atlantic. i wonderfor the daily mirror here in the uk, caroline, how do you...? do you approach donald trump like any other politician? or are there particular things you tell your colleagues — "look, we have to be careful here"? look, trump is an interesting character, but at the weekend, you'll hopefully have seen we actually had the world exclusive of stormy daniels, post—everything that happened last week. and, you know, the content that comes out of trump in his everyday life and how he acts, i mean, it creates brilliant, brilliant content for our audience... that's honest. yeah. andrew, let me bring you in here now, because we have senior british executives at the wall streetjournal, the washington post, cnn and bloomberg news. what do you make of this exodus of senior british editors in the direction of the us? bbc too. mark thompson... mark thompson, former bbc... ..is at cnn and was at the new york times. of course, we always put ourselves down, but british journalism is vibrant and dynamic and hugely successful. and we know how to write and we know how to write concisely. well, not for the first time on the media show, we've been talking about artificial intelligence, and the item that we're going to see now is all about search results that are being produced by new ai products. yeah, this is quite a fun one because google has got a new search called ai overview, a search product, and it is coming up in some cases with some pretty crazy results. and i started by asking katie notopoulos, who's the senior tech and business correspondent of business insider, tojust explain how it all works. so it's not on every single search, it's only on certain searches, typically ones that are sort of asking a specific question versus, you know, searching somebody's name or something like that. and it basically gives you a little bit of... maybe a couple sentences, a little paragraph, maybe a few bullet points that essentially answers your question. and this is probably very useful for most searches most of the time. but it was initially sort of riddled with laughable errors. i mean, one of the things that i do know that you did — this really is dedication to yourjob — you made a pizza with glue and ate it. just explain why you did that. slightly gimmicky. i'm assuming it was for a piece. it was. piece of pizza! americanjournalists are ready... all in the line of duty. ..to undertake these big challenges. laughter. yeah, some people have to cover donald trump's trial. some people have to eat pizza with glue on it. right... basically sounds like i the same thing, really. exactly. laughter. one of the sort of silly answer that was going most viral on social media was someone had asked, "how do i get "the glued cheese to not slide off my pizza?" and google suggested, you know, let the pizza cool for a while. and then it also said, "add one eighth of a cup of glue to the sauce." so you're the only person in america who did it... ..it had sourced that little piece of information from a reddit comment that had suggested that — obviously — as a joke. and everyone on reddit at the time, when they were reading it, could understand in context that the person was making a joke that to keep the cheese from sliding off your pizza, you should add glue to the sauce. google sort of couldn't understand that this was satire, that it was a joke... so, not great. i mean, ijust should bring in... well, google have said about this, because they've told the bbc, these were "isolated examples, "generally very uncommon queries, and they aren't "representative of most people's experiences, and that the vast majority," it says, of ai overviews, "provide high—quality information with links to dig "deeper on the web." and it said it's taken action where policy violations were identified and it was using them to refine its systems. just in the last couple of minutes of the programme, let me ask a further question about al, and it comes down to when big organisations that have content, like the atlantic or the spectator or the mirror, decide whether or not to share all of that content with the big language models that are training generative ai. and jeffrey at the atlantic, jeffrey goldberg, you've cut a deal with openai. tell us about the discussions within the atlantic, whether you were weighing up whether to do that or not. well, ijust have to be technically clear about something. the editorial team has independence from the business side of this operation, but the business side has independence from the editorial side. and this was a decision made by the corporation and by our business leadership to do this. and so...i was certainly told about it, and i was...invited to share my views on it, but, you know, i... what are your views on it? well, i have my ambivalence about it. i mean, i don't want to... i forget who was saying this before, but, you know, the internet has — turns out — been great for a place like the atlantic. we reach many, many more people than we used to because of the internet. i don't want to be, you know, sort of axiomatically luddite about this sort of thing and say, "ai is only a threat," but i have my deep ambivalences about...ai and what it's going to do tojournalism — and also, by the way, humanity and the future of our planet. all that being said, ai is coming whether or not i want it to come. and it's a little bit like, to me, complaining about the weather. the weather doesn't care that i don't like it. so i've got to dress for the weather, and "dressing for the weather" in this case means trying to figure out a way to have a relationship with openai, in which openai doesn't eat you for lunch. let me just ask quickly caroline and andrew — very quickly, if you would. caroline, how's the daily mirror viewing the idea of sharing its content with these ai, these big ai operators? we wouldn't... - we wouldn't want to. you're not planning to do that yet? no, we're not- planning to do that. and the spectator? we won't do that until we know a lot more about it. if it's another potential stream of revenue that doesn't carry risks, that's one thing. but we need to know a lot more. for me, the al's biggest opportunity is on the commercial side. i think a lot of the ai can help us run the company commercially much better. we can learn more about our readers, about usage of the app, usage of the website. all that sort of thing is fine, but forthe moment, i'll keep editorial separate. and i'lljust add, the new york times is taking a very different approach to this. it's not collaborating with openai. in fact, it's suing for the theft of its content. so we're going to watch how that plays out. and i was at the enders—deloitte media conference yesterday, where anna bateson, who runs the guardian, said they would do a deal with an ai company, but only on the right terms. so there you go. well... something to end on, because that is all we have time for, i'm afraid. thank you so much to katie notopoulos from business insider and, of course, andrew neil from times radio, but also the spectator. and caroline waterston, editor in chief of the mirror, and jeffrey goldberg, editor in chief of the atlantic. well, thanks very much indeed to all of our guests. fascinating to hear their perspectives on all those issues. i suspect it won't be the last time we turn to ai, to business models of news, to covering donald trump, but it was very interesting to hear from all of them. i think you're right. thank you so much to everybody. that was the media show. we'll be back at the same time next week. bye. bye— bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts. hello there. wind coming from the north at times. temperatures are struggled to get into double figures but a slightly different story further south and west, just look at anglesey, a beautiful afternoon and lots of sunshine. temperatures peaking at 18 or 19 degrees. high—pressure continuing its way in from the west, west is the best for tuesday, likely to be a few showers around but hopefully if you would far between. most frequently will be across is in scotland and eastern england. sunny spells and scattered showers going into the afternoon, having an impact with a temperature, but again with a temperature, but again with more shelter and sunshine, 17 or 18 degrees is not out of the question. scattered showers moving their way through northern ireland and scotland, hopefully they will ease over the afternoon. you can see the temperatures are still struggling. 10— 15 degrees at the best. going into wednesday, the best. going into wednesday, the high—pressure will continue to kill off the showers, so wednesday is likely to be the driest day of the week and make the most of it, more rain to come. a chilly start once again for wednesday morning, single figures right across the country, low single figures in auroral spots. hopefully the showers will be few and far between and more favoured spots for the showers once again to the east. more sunshine to the west. temperature is generally similar to what we have seen all week, 10— 80 degrees. the wind will change as we move into thursday, unfortunately towards the end of the week the low pressure will take over and we will see spells of rain at times, some heavy but the wind direction it will play its part. a southwesterly wind means we are the temperatures are climbing a degree also, do not anything to significant because we have the cloud and the rain. not out of the question in eastern england because the highs of 20 degrees. take care. live from washington. this is bbc news. hamas submits its response to a us—led ceasefire proposal, but says israel needs to commit to "completely" stopping the war. us presidentjoe biden�*s son hunter, is found guilty on all three charges in his federal gun case. and malawi's vice president, saulos chilima was killed in a plane crash, along with nine other passengers. i'm sumi somaskanda. it's great to have you with us. the white house says its evaluating an official response by hamas to the latest proposal for a truce in the gaza conflict. us presidentjoe biden submitted the proposal about 12 days ago. earliertuesday, hamas said it has a positive