Manchester Evening News editor Sarah Lester has said she is “fed up of playing algorithmic games” with Google as the regional newsbrand launched its first major paywall in a revenue diversification effort.
Last month the MEN became the first of an “ambitious” programme of paywalls to be introduced to Reach websites as the publisher adds new revenue streams alongside its model based on page views and advertising, which has not led to growth in several years.
Two weeks after launch, Lester told Press Gazette subscriber sign-ups on the MEN were “slightly ahead” of expectations and “better than I hoped for” although she could not share actual numbers. Listen to the full interview on Press Gazette’s Future of Media, Explained podcast.
The Liverpool Echo has since become the second premium paywall launch at Reach, with Wales Online set to come next and more to follow in 2026.
Public interest journalism and breaking news remain free but “premium” articles are now paywalled. On the MEN so far these have included a feature about controversial Youtuber Charlie Veitch, the start of a series of interviews with “remarkable people who have survived extreme trauma”, an interview with poet John Cooper Clarke, commentary on “apocalyptic” A&E hospitals (on top of its free reporting) and “pub of the week”.
The subscription, which costs £4.99 per month or £39.99 per year, also gives users less advertising with the aim of attracting people fed up with Reach’s often ad-heavy websites.
Reach and its leaders have frequently spoken about the democratic importance of keeping news free for those who cannot afford to pay, even as other publishers including regional groups Newsquest and Iconic (formerly National World) added subscriptions.
Speaking about why they felt they now needed to incorporate subscriptions at Reach, Lester told Press Gazette: “I think we still do believe that a certain portion of news needs to be free because we do have people who can’t afford to eat amongst our readers and we think in a democracy there’s a certain amount of public interest journalism that has to remain free…
“But the landscape has changed and the behaviour of big tech and referrers and the volatility that has been around that means that this has been something that we’ve wanted to try.
“I might be wrong, but I don’t think it [subscriptions] will ever sustain the size of newsroom that I need to do what I need to do. What regionals, big locals, do is quite unique in that I have to have staff from 6am until midnight, seven days a week, to be at every cordon or the council meetings or the courts, and in order to do that you need a certain amount of journalists.”
‘We need to start talking about the value of journalism’
The MEN currently has a team of about 50 including photographers and video, but not including the centralised teams of sport and the new Reach live news network.
Lester added: “We hope that this will give an added value. And also, I think what’s been increasingly apparent and has changed over the years is the need to start talking about the value of journalism. I think in a BBC era, people are used to free media, aren’t they? Free news. And we need to go, actually, to train and look after a journalist and manage a journalist, it takes skill and it takes resource.
“So for me, the line and the argument, and I firmly believe this, is that you can either pay for your journalism via heavily-added sites, or actually, if you think they’re too added, which quite a few of our readers do, you can pay for a low ad, and we’ll give you some premium content as well, and some other things that we’ll probably throw in as this develops.”
The MEN began a previous experiment with a metered paywall on its app in 2023.
Lester said: “We learned lots from that. We learned days of the week that work better and content that is more likely to convert and what people wanted. And we still kept that running in the background. But this is much bigger. We’ve also partnered with Piano… so the data that I’m seeing is next level from last time – I can understand what converts [people to subscribe].”
Lester added that the new paywall launch “feels like a proper ambitious programme to try something different that will add to the revenues… which I like because I have lots of different levers to pull when it comes to working out how many journalists I can have in the newsroom, as in how much money I can bring in.”
Google algorithm creating ‘really serious crisis’ for local news
The Manchester Evening News has a monthly audience of 12 million people, making it the most-read regional news website in the UK, but Lester noted that for some major local breaking news events its reach has been stymied as Google has failed to prioritise original, on-the-ground reporting.
On the day of a deadly synagogue attack in Manchester in October the MEN was at times on page eight of Google’s search results for “Manchester synagogue attack” behind global publishers like CNN, Al Jazeera and Le Monde.
[Read more: Google appears to prioritise global newsbrands over local ones for breaking news events]
This is despite the MEN having eight people on the ground, about 29 people covering the story in total, and a unique knowledge of the patch.
Lester said this is a “really serious crisis… for me, the Google algorithm failed completely there because it’s supposed to give the best, most accurate [information]”.
She noted that thousands of other publishers were linking to the MEN. “So all the signals that Google’s algorithm should have read around that just didn’t work – I mean, significantly didn’t work. And that continued.
“And that’s really sad because I think people missed out, if they’d Googled, on getting really unique coverage and live coverage. But what worries me is where that leaves us democratically.”
Lester noted that three times as many people as usual visited the MEN website regardless. “So we know that people just came to us because they knew that we would do it… But we would have done even better. And Google would have served its customers, readers, whatever you call them, much, much better had their algorithm worked.”
She added that although on this occasion it was a major news event, it happens “every day” when Google surfaces other websites that have ripped MEN exclusives.
“Google say that they prioritise original sources. We just don’t see that. There’ll be a live incident and our coverage will not be there.
“I don’t think readers or users or people who live in this country understand that we’re in quite an Orwellian world because what they see, and that is across all social platforms and across Google, is so heavily controlled by an algorithm we really simply don’t understand. We try, but we don’t really understand it. We can guess. And it doesn’t do what they say it will do. And so where does that lead?”
Lester also raised concerns about Google’s AI Overviews, where it “effectively takes the content, uses it” and shows people the information they wanted at the top of search results without them needing to click through to a website. She asked: “So eventually, who’s going to fund that content if we don’t get the click that funds it?”
Lester said traffic to the MEN’s informational (for example health) content has been among the most affected by AI Overviews but that the website has nonetheless grown its reach in the North West in the past year and still reaches more than half of adults in Greater Manchester at least once a month according to Ipsos iris.
This suggests the website is losing fly-by visitors who find its non-local content through third-party platforms but has hung onto local audiences.
Lester said: “I’m a bit fed up of playing algorithmic games when actually my job is to provide absolutely the best possible content for this area and represent the people in this area, some of whom are having a really, really tough time.
“I want to tell the stories, the happy ones, the sad ones. I want to make sustainable journalism. Sustainable journalism is literally the whole point of my career.”
Manchester Evening News editor: Trust between media and PRs is broken
Lester also raised concerns about the rise of AI-generated, often inaccurate, articles from spam websites appearing in Google Discover, saying: “That’s not what Google says it wants to do.” Google said last month it was working on a fix.
Lester said the MEN’s “Discover traffic has been incredibly challenged, incredibly volatile”. She said it had been “really important” for lifestyle and “sense of place” content about Manchester.
Lester also responded to Press Gazette’s months-long investigation into fake (often apparently AI-generated) experts making their way into the UK national and regional press. Often they have landed in journalists’ inboxes from PRs and make it into publication without sufficient checking done to ensure that they are real people with expertise in the given area.
A network of questionable experts speaking on behalf of the trades-booking business MyJobQuote resulted in at least 600 pieces of often AI-generated and misinformed commentary published over the past four years. Of these Press Gazette found eight articles published by the MEN.
Lester said in response: “The relationship between PRs and the media has been one of trust traditionally. And I think the trust is broken now and that’s going to challenge a lot.
“We always verify video or tips or pictures now because we know about AI. I don’t think we realised that this was such an issue and it’s damaged that relationship now. And so we’ve put processes in where proper checks are carried out and it just can’t happen.”
Lester also spoke about how the Reach shared live news network is going, the positives and negatives of content creators on Youtubers and Tiktokers, and why she gets frustrated listening about the portrayal of the regional press on BBC Radio 4.
Listen to the full interview with Lester on Press Gazette’s podcast The Future of Media, Explained.
The post Manchester Evening News editor ‘fed up of playing algorithmic games’ appeared first on Press Gazette.
