Press Gazette

About Press Gazette

Press Gazette is Britain's leading trade publication for journalists and the news media industry. Founded in November 1965 by Colin Valdar, his wife Jill and his brother Stewart, it has chronicled the triumphs and traumas of UK journalism for six decades — surviving administration, a near-closure and multiple changes of ownership along the way. Now online-only and owned by Mike Danson's Progressive Media Investments, it covers newspapers, magazines, television, radio and digital media, runs the prestigious British Journalism Awards, and reaches more than 350,000 readers a month. Its website is at pressgazette.co.uk.

Founding in 1965

Press Gazette — originally the UK Press Gazette — was launched in November 1965 by Colin Valdar together with his wife Jill and his brother Stewart. It was conceived as a trade journal for journalists and editors across the UK: a paper about the newspaper business itself, covering the launches, closures, appointments, pay disputes and technological changes that shaped the working lives of its readers. In an era when Fleet Street was at the height of its powers, the Valdars spotted a gap for a publication that treated journalism as an industry worth reporting on.

The formula proved durable. For its first two decades the magazine served as the noticeboard and gossip sheet of the British press, read in newsrooms across the country. When the Valdars retired in 1983, they sold the title to Timothy Benn, beginning a long period in which the magazine would be traded between a succession of corporate owners — a journey that mirrored the consolidation of the wider media business it covered.

A much-traded title

Press Gazette's ownership history reads like a miniature history of British publishing. After Timothy Benn's purchase in 1983, the magazine was sold in 1990 to the Canadian publishing company Maclean Hunter. In 1994 it passed to EMAP, and three years later it was sold again — along with MediaWeek and twelve other titles — to Quantum Business Media for £14.1 million. Each sale reflected the shifting economics of trade publishing as the industry moved from hot metal to desktop publishing and, eventually, to the internet.

The turn of the millennium brought more turbulence. By 2006 the title was owned by Matthew Freud and Piers Morgan, and in December of that year the company went into administration, with Robert Allen of Vantage Corporate Restructuring appointed as administrator. Proposals were floated for the paper to be run by an industry-wide consortium to preserve its editorial independence. The magazine survived, but its brush with extinction was a sign of how precarious trade journalism had become.

The 2009 near-death experience

The most dramatic episode in Press Gazette's history came in 2009. Its then-owner, the Wilmington Group, announced that the 43-year-old title would close, issuing redundancy notices to its five staff. The closure of the journalists' own trade paper — at the height of the financial crisis, as the regional press was shedding thousands of jobs — was rich in symbolism, and it provoked dismay across the industry.

Salvation arrived at the eleventh hour. Wilmington announced the sale of the title to Progressive Media Group, the publishing company run by the multi-millionaire former Datamonitor chief Mike Danson, who had recently also acquired a controlling interest in the New Statesman. Danson, worth an estimated £234 million after selling his information business Datamonitor, made no secret of his ambition to build a magazine empire. The deal did not include the franchise for the British Press Awards and the Regional Press Awards, which remained with Wilmington — a gap that Press Gazette would later fill with its own awards.

The Danson era and Progressive Media

Under Danson's ownership, Press Gazette found the stability that had eluded it for years. It is now part of Progressive Media Investments Ltd, privately owned by Danson, whose portfolio also includes titles such as the New Statesman, Spear's and World of Fine Wine. (Wikipedia also associates the title with GlobalData, the data and analytics group in the same stable of companies.) The new ownership invested in the title and, crucially, gave it the financial security to plan for the long term — a luxury it had rarely enjoyed.

Editorially, the magazine asserts its independence, stating that it aims to "hold a mirror to the industry we cover without fear or favour". It is regulated by IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The Danson era has seen the title evolve from a defensive survivor into an expansive, confident operation with a growing events business and a daily digital presence.

Going online-only

Press Gazette made the leap to online-only publishing in 2013, abandoning the print edition that had sustained it since 1965. The move reflected both economic necessity — print circulation had dwindled to around 2,500 — and strategic opportunity: as a digital title, Press Gazette could publish breaking media news instantly, build a global audience, and develop new revenue streams around data, events and recruitment advertising.

The pivot worked. Freed from the costs of print, the site grew its readership steadily, and its "Future of Media" strapline captured a forward-looking editorial agenda. The magazine still produces annual paper publications, but its centre of gravity is firmly digital: the website, the daily email newsletter and the weekly podcast The Future of Media Explained.

Dominic Ponsford and the newsroom

Dominic Ponsford has been the defining editorial figure of the modern Press Gazette. Appointed editor in December 2006, he steered the title through administration, the Wilmington closure threat and the Danson rescue. He later moved to the role of editor-in-chief, taking a more strategic position with a focus on the title's growing portfolio of events, while Freddy Mayhew was promoted to editor with day-to-day charge of the site and its daily email edition. The team has since grown to include chief reporter Charlotte Tobitt and news editor William Turvill, among others.

Ponsford's tenure has been marked by campaigning journalism as well as industry reporting. He founded the British Journalism Awards, the Future of Media Awards and the Future of Media Technology Conference, and he led the campaign that changed UK law on police access to journalists' communications data. His author page describes him as the editor-in-chief who "changed UK law with the Save Our Sources campaign".

The Save Our Sources campaign

Press Gazette's finest campaigning hour came in 2015 with Save Our Sources. The campaign exposed and challenged the practice of police forces accessing journalists' telephone and communications records without judicial oversight, using powers intended for serious crime investigations to identify confidential sources. Press Gazette's reporting and lobbying helped secure a change in the law requiring police to obtain a judge's consent before spying on journalists' telecoms records.

The campaign was a finalist for the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism and earned the title commendations in the investigative journalism and campaign of the year categories at the 2015 Online Media Awards, where Press Gazette was named Specialist Website of the Year. It also won the Chairman's Award at the 2011 Online Media Awards. For a trade title, changing the law of the land was an achievement of genuine national significance — and a powerful demonstration of the title's influence.

The British Journalism Awards

Having lost the British Press Awards franchise in the 2009 sale, Press Gazette created its own: the British Journalism Awards, launched in 2012. Billed as the only awards of their kind with a focus on the public interest and open to all media sectors — print, online and broadcasting — the awards quickly established themselves as a major fixture of the industry calendar. Ponsford described the event as "unashamedly idealistic in its aims", celebrating both popular journalism in the mould of the Daily Mirror's Hugh Cudlipp and high-minded investigations in the tradition of the Sunday Times Insight team under Harold Evans.

The awards have since expanded into a portfolio: the Specialist Media Awards (launched 2018) recognise journalism on B2B and specialist titles, and the Future of Media Awards and Future of Media Technology Conference serve the industry's commercial and technology leadership. The events business has become a major revenue driver — inPublishing reported in 2013 that Press Gazette was attracting around 150,000 unique users a month with most revenue then thought to come from the annual awards; a decade later the events attract thousands of industry leaders from the UK and USA.

Coverage and audience

Press Gazette's editorial remit spans the whole of the news media business: national and regional newspapers in print and online, radio, television, digital publishers, B2B and consumer magazines, media law and media technology. Its content pillars include breaking industry news, audience and business data, the fraught relationship between publishers and tech platforms, interviews with media leaders, and analysis of how to build a sustainable future for journalism.

The audience reflects that remit. The site reaches more than 350,000 readers a month via pressgazette.co.uk, with a further 20,000 reading the daily email newsletter — a readership that the title describes as a "who's who" of UK news executives and senior media leaders. The weekly podcast, The Future of Media Explained, extends the brand into audio, while roundtables and networking events serve the industry's C-suite.

The business model and the future

Press Gazette is funded by subscriptions, recruitment and classified advertising, display advertising, sponsored content and — increasingly — events. The appointment of a dedicated chief commercial officer in 2020 marked a deliberate push to monetise the title's influential audience, and the strategy has delivered triple-digit revenue growth, according to industry reports. The events portfolio, the monetised newsletter and the podcast have diversified the business well beyond its old dependence on print subscriptions and classified ads.

Sixty years after Colin Valdar and his family launched a trade journal for Fleet Street, Press Gazette has become something larger: the chronicler, campaigner and convenor of the British media industry. It has outlived owners, recessions and the collapse of the print model it was born into — and in doing so, it has become an indispensable institution for the journalists it serves.