5 Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed

Trinity Mirror buying the Express, Theresa May’s press review, Facebook’s age issue, Poundland’s banned ads and John Humphreys – are you up-to-date with everything that’s happened from the world of PR, media and communications? Here’s five things you shouldn’t have missed.

1. Trinity Mirror buys Daily Express publisher

Trinity Mirror has paid £126.7m for Northern & Shell’s publishing assets, including the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, OK! And New!. That means the owner of the (left-wing) Daily Mirror now owns the (right-wing) Daily Express.

It hopes to make £20m savings on the deal – the biggest cost-cutting coming from overlapping editorial skills; for example, having just one journalist at a sporting event. This pooling of talent won’t extend to politics though, as each paper Trinity Mirror owns will keep its current stance.

Trinity Mirror now also boasts 234m global unique readers online – a huge asset the company will now be looking to capitalise on.

2. Theresa May launches sustainability of the press review

The Prime Minister has announced a review into the sustainability of the press. A panel of experts will be looking at the health of the newspaper industry, how it is being affected by a decline in print circulations, funding models for printing, and how the industry is being impacted by Google and Facebook. The review will also investigate ‘clickbait’ and attempt to ‘tackle’ and ‘undermine’ it.

May said the closure of titles was a ‘danger to our democracy’. Her speech announcing the review focused on local titles, but the investigation will take in every level of the press industry to determine if the Government needs to implement measures or if the industry can sort itself out.

3. Out with young, in with the old

Facebook has a youth problem. The platform isn’t cool anymore (anymore?), and a new survey from eMarketer has found that teens and young adults are leaving the platform in favour of Instagram (which Facebook owns) and increasingly Snapchat (which it doesn’t). The survey predicts 700,000 fewer 12-24 year olds will use Facebook in 2018.

On the plus side, 500,000 new over-55s are expected to join Facebook this year, making it the second-biggest demographic on the network (behind 16-34 year olds). While this group is lucrative for some advertisers (who are chasing the grey pound), eMarketer believes they’re on the platform to keep up with their children and grandchildren. If the kids go, parents might follow.

This is the latest of Facebook’s problems, which have recently included the News Feed and Fake News.

4. ASA bans Poundland’s Elf on the Shelf ads

Poundland’s risqué Christmas social media ads, that featured the popular children’s character Elf on the Shelf in a variety of poses (some sexual, some demeaning to women), have been banned from appearing again by the Advertising Standards Authority. Poundland argued the adverts were based on humour and double entendres, were made so as not to be understood by children and suggested Twitter and Facebook’s minimum age of 13 for users stopped children accessing them.

The ASA ruled the ads could still be seen by children, they were not on age-gated pages and in at least two instances were demeaning to women. For Poundland’s part, the ban may have been worth it, as the very low-budget campaign yielded great financial results. Poundland has also launched a campaign to reverse the decision so their naughty Elf ads can appear again next year.

5. John Humphreys flustered by Jo Swinson
John Humphreys was caught out last week when interviewing Jo Swinson, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. In an interview about sexual harassment and conduct in parliament, Swinson blindsided Humphreys by asking if he had apologised to Carrie Gracie (after audio emerged of he and John Sopel making light of the gender pay gap). Humphreys, said he had, but was clearly annoyed by the question and said it was irrelevant to the discussion. Watch the exchange below:

Liberal Democrat @joswinson turns the tables on @BBCr4today presenter John Humphrys with a question about Carrie Gracie and equal pay. pic.twitter.com/jVE4gXD06R

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 8, 2018