News.com.au just clinging to top spot as editor-in-chief exits
News.com.au’s recently-axed editor-in-chief, Lisa Muxworthy, has delivered another number one result for News Corp’s most-read property, but her exit comes as the ABC starts closing the gap between the two news outlets.
While news.com.au grew its May audience by 2.4% compared to the previous month, the ABC managed a 3.1% jump, with just 46,000 monthly readers the difference between the pair.
News.com.au has been the country’s most-read news site since April 2023, and held the mantle between 2016 and April 2020 when COVID hit and audiences turned to ABC for the news. Muxworthy was named editor-in-chief in December 2020, and worked to rebuild news.com.au into the country’s most-read news site.
“It was definitely a tough road,” she told Mumbrella last year, after bringing the brand back to the top. “Did it keep me up at night? From time-to-time, sure. But really, I’m probably thinking about news.com.au 24-7 anyway. It was a tough time.
“We had to ask ourselves some serious questions. Are we telling the stories people want to read? Are we in the right places, in terms of where people are consuming news? Where do we need to put our focus? What do we need to change?
“It made us look at what we could do differently and where the opportunities are.”
Given Muxworthy was shown the door at the start of June, finishing up officially at News Corp last Friday, she won’t be there to stop the surge from the ABC.
Nine.com.au and The Daily Mail both dropped readers during May, down 6.4% and 4.3% respectively, as did The Guardian, whose readership fell 2.6% for the month.
Interestingly, the Sydney Morning Herald lost a whopping 12.3% of its readers between April and May, while The Age gained 12.3%. Not sure if this is a mathematical error, a mass migration south of people who enjoy news to be independent, always, or simply a co-incidence. Either way, it’s curious.
Seven had a modest 0.6% drop for the month, but its newsrooms are currently in the rebuilding stages under new boss Anthony De Ceglie, who ran a news monopoly on the west coast of Australia, and will also front of sizeable attack on news.com.au’s number one spot from his new position on the east coast.
As ABC and Seven mount their claims for the number one spot, news.com.au should probably heed the below advice from the editor-in-chief they just removed, the one who steered them back to number one.
“I do believe it’s good to have competitors,” Muxworthy told Mumbrella last year.
“I think losing our number one spot for that period of time wasn’t a bad thing. You’ve got to be able to look critically at yourself and try to be better, always.
“You’re not challenged to do that if you’re always at the top.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Deputy Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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I’m sure they can just post more unrelated bikini pic thumbnails accompanying yesterday’s popular reddit threads to regain their lead.
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Yeah but with the most shocking online reviews ever, it’s a nothing burger to be No1 if nobody trusts you, go woke go broke news.
https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.news.com.au?sort=recency
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We all know Facebook is the #1 news platform
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Hi Mumbrella any chance you can upload a readable image of the Nielsen graphic?
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Hi Reader,
You can click the image to enlarge it so it is readable.
Thanks,
Lauren – Mumbrella
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