3 Things - 27 January

Welcome to 3 Things - a few stories I spotted from the past week and what I think they say about the fast-moving and converging worlds of media and tech.

1. Transparent justice for Southport victims

Unless you were living underground in the UK last week, there were two stories dominating the news agenda: Donald Trump’s inauguration and the sentencing of Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three young girls and attempted to kill ten others in Southport last summer. The crimes and the aftermath managed to show both the best and worst of humanity.

Among many other things, I was struck by the live broadcast of the sentence being handed down to Rudakubana by Mr Justice Goose at Liverpool Crown Court. Selected sentencings have been broadcast from crown courts in England only since 2022 so they are still a fairly new concept. Given the attention this case attracted, with suggestions fuelled by social media of a ‘cover-up’, I think it was important the Southport sentencing feed was picked up by broadcasters.

I listened in the car on Radio 5 Live en route to pick my kids up. Anyone tuning in and paying attention (which could potentially have been hundreds of thousands given it was also broadcast by BBC News Channel, Sky News and a clutch of others) would like me have been struck by the judge’s words. His sentence - a minimum of 52 years - attracted some criticism. Yet what resonated was the explanation of the logic behind how he arrived at his decision. After months of misinformation and disinformation around the case, this transparency was crucial.

As a regional newspaper reporter years ago I covered my fair share of crown court sentencings, but never one as powerful or moving as the one handed down by Mr Justice Goose last week.

2. Scrambling to serve the CEOs of Davos

Trump (him again) was among those addressing the World Economic Forum last week as the elites gathered in Davos. The event is, of course, always swarming with CEOs so it makes sense that it’s also full of business journalists trying to grab a word.

Semafor, the US title founded by former BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith and ex-Bloomberg boss Justin B. Smith, understandably chose last week to launch The CEO Signal, its "invitation only", newsletter-led product aimed at top dogs, specifically the heads of companies with revenues above $500m.

I think the arrival of The CEO Signal says a few things about the business media market. For a start it underlines a growing trend of serving an ultra-premium audience. Upmarket titles like The Economist, Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are aiming to grow subscriptions by appealing to a relatively broad base of ‘knowledge workers’. Compared to these, Semafor’s new offering is deliberately niche.

To ensure credibility, Semafor poached Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson from the FT to write The CEO Signal. Why leave an established, hugely respected title for a two-year-old online brand? In his own words, as told to Press Gazette, Edgecliffe-Johnson fancies serving the ultra-elite market to “give them something distinctive and something valuable”.

A side point: The CEO Signal is sponsored by PwC and in this week’s Economist magazine (yes, I still sometimes read print) I spotted ads from McKinsey and Bain, two other leading management consultancies and ones that don't often lower themselves to placing ads, preferring to trade on reputation. It speaks of the opportunity for these firms to provide their wares in the uncertain world of Trump 2.0 - and gives premium media's ad teams a good revenue stream to go after.

3. The Traitors stays faithful to linear TV

Finally, last Friday was the finale of The Traitors on BBC One. Media commentators have been talking for years about how the streaming age has largely killed off the water-cooler era - when everyone would watch the biggest shows at the same time, providing conversation fodder for school and work the following day.

By contrast, BBC bosses scheduled the last episode of The Traitors for Friday night, with no opportunity to watch it earlier on iPlayer. And, I noticed, they used every tool at their disposal to try to turn it into ‘an event’. Alongside discussions on Beeb radio stations were BBC News push alerts before and after the episode, directing people to a live blog. Then I spotted that the fourth and fifth top stories on the BBC News app on Saturday morning were Traitors-themed.

Did trying hard to make The Traitors happen work? I’m not sure but you can’t blame the BBC for trying. Above all it shows the challenge of creating water-cooler moments and the growing scarcity, in a fragmented media world, of the mass cultural events that once fuelled national conversation.

Thanks for reading and see you next week.