An article in this week’s New Statesman (“In the Post-Corbyn World, What Next for Alternative Left Media?“) spurred Guido to do some research into their traffic and how they are performing generally. The short answer is not very well in terms of raw audience size. In comparison to right-of-centre political news and opinion sites they are well behind. Like-for-like The Spectator has double the New Statesman’s readership. To give you an idea how much worse they are faring after the Corbyn-era glory days, consider this, Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic alone had last month more online readers than the New Statesman, Novara Media and Morning Star combined!
Even the upstart newly launched GB News website has more traffic than most left-wing websites and those same websites say GB News is failing. The question that needs answering is why are right-of-centre news and views outlets out-performing – in terms of audience reach – left-of-centre news and views websites? Some of them will argue that we’re looking in the wrong place – the audience is not just on their website. The Canary and Skwawkbox generate engagement on Facebook which outstrips their own native website audience by a multiple. Novara Media’s videos and podcasts are apparently seen by far more viewers and listeners than will read their articles. Owen Jones has his own lucrative YouTube channel. Of course GB News has a television channel so can’t be compared like-for-like, it also has an active online video audience, as do the Spectator and Unherd. They match the left for reach, similarly they tend to preach to the converted. The only place where the left-wing media seems dominant is on social media, Twitter in particular.
Is the left’s supposed dominance of Twitter entirely true? The left are are certainly more active on Twitter, in terms of followers however @GuidoFawkes has more than any of the left-wing politics sites. Academic research suggests that left-wing Twitter is more active and that activity is mainly preaching to the converted and engaging with other left-wingers. The left is more active on Twitter undoubtedly and it gives the micro-blogging site a hostile atmosphere for right-of-centre users, however election after election shows that, in the words of David Cameron, “Britain is not Twitter”. As the SNP’s Cyber-Nats demonstrate all too loudly, ferocious activity is not evidence of numbers.
Is it money? The New Statesman is backed by Mike Danson, a billionaire willing to bankroll the millions in annual losses of the magazine without flinching. Novara Media got funding from a foundation backed by millionaire philanthropists, Tribune Magazine has the backing of an American publisher. The healthy tradition on the left of funding publications from readers’ donations means Novara Media and Owen Jones have six-figure revenues and paid staff, on the right only Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic is funded likewise. The Spectator and Guido Fawkes are profit-making commercially competitive media enterprises that stand on their own two feet, they are also read in droves by left-of-centre readers who don’t share their editorial line for the news, gossip and entertainment, whereas few right-of-centre readers would enjoy reading the dreary ideological output of most left-wing publications. Funding isn’t the problem.
Perhaps the answer is simply that the likes of the Guardian, Daily Mirror, Buzzfeed News, Huffington Post and the BBC provide most left-of-centre news consumers with satisfactory confirmation of their prejudices such that they just don’t have to venture out to the alt-left for content that appeals. Is it just that in the wider media context it is harder for the alt-left to appeal beyond an ideological core readership?
A writer for The Canary describes himself as a columnist for a widely proscribed Russian left wing disinformation site on his own Twitter account. Steve Topple is a staff writer for The Canary, yet also lists his work as “columnist” for Peace Data, a left-wing fake news outlet created by Russia and banned by Facebook. Left-wingers doing Putin’s work for him…
On Tuesday Facebook released a statement saying it had detected and removed a fresh influence operation from the Kremlin, attempting to steer left wing voters away from Joe Biden. Thirteen Facebook accounts and two Facebook pages were run by the Kremlin’s ‘Internet Research Agency’, boosting a left-wing news site set up by Russia, but hiring real left-wing freelancers, called Peace Data. Despite Peace Data being found out early this week, Topple is keeping them in his bio…
The Treasury has just announced that UK newspapers will receive up to £35 million in additional government advertising revenue as part of its COVID-19 communications campaign. The digital spend is splashing out on some of our rivals.* Guido is glad to see that Canary editor-in-chief comrade Kerry-Anne Mendoza is the beneficiary of the taxpayers’ largesse. Rishi Sunak proving once again that the Tories are committed to media plurality…
*No taxpayers are harmed in the production of Guido, none of the team have been furloughed. Nor have we noticed any government advertising coming our way…
Guido readers will be distraught to learn that The Canary is having to make some “tough changes” after seeing their revenue collapse due to a change in Facebook and Google algorithms – and being put on a fake news advertising blacklist. Corbynistas will no longer be able to get as much of “the writers you know and love” with The Canary getting rid of all but seven staff writers. How will Corbyn’s fan club cope?
Predictably The Canary has already found someone else to blame: “Zionists”. Clarifying that they’re “not against Jewish people as an ethnic group”, they’re blaming the woes on the fact that their “advertisers are susceptible to pressure from political Zionists”. You couldn’t make it up…
According to online industry traffic comparison site SimilarWeb the Corbyn supporting new media outlets have seen a collapse in traffic. The Canary was for a while neck and neck with Guido in terms of audience size, it has now fallen well behind, with traffic halving from six months ago. Skwawkbox, the occasionally bonkers Labour leader’s office supported outlet, is well past its peak. Despite a permanent seat on TV news, Novara Media gets in a year the kind of traffic Guido gets in a week. The question is what is behind this fall?
Facebook’s algorithm change hurt them badly, Corbyn’s ambiguous stance on Brexit is out of tune with younger lefties and there is only so long outrage-at-the-mainstream-media stories can sustain attraction. Nevertheless Guido suspects the real reason they are in decline is that Corbyn has peaked in terms of appeal and he has fallen out of fashion. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’s just so last year…
Guido predicted at the beginning of last year that the change to Facebook’s algorithms would impact online traffic dramtically for those websites that specialised in making content go viral to drive traffic. Taking a look at some of our rivals; one site that bucked the trend was ConservativeHome, the turmoil in the party has been good for their trade, with pageviews up by 13% on the year, although the number of unique users has fallen slightly, likely as a result of there being no general election in 2018. Guido is relieved to only be down 1.89% year-on-year, not so bad in an off election year. On the left it would seem that The Canary, which used to be neck and neck in traffic terms with Guido, finished the year much weaker. Is that because of Facebook or outrage fatigue?
The other sites impacted badly by the Facebook algo change were the newspapers’ websites. According to ABC figures Mail Online was down 16% year-on-year and Sun Online was down 12%. Guido understands that because of the New Statesman’s new semi-permeable paywall it too has seen an even more dramatic collapse in online traffic…
