05.12.25
Over the course of the year, our remit has broadened across the publishing spectrum. On one side, consumer publishers at the forefront of digital, testing the line between journalism and that contentious word, content. At the other extreme, risk-intelligence businesses that often adopt the same mantra familiar to many business newsrooms: proprietary information that helps clients make better decisions.
The approach, ethos, and culture of these two sectors could not be more distinct. There is little meaningful dialogue between either industry and the world of business news and information, yet there is a great deal to learn from both, particularly given the new possibilities enabled by technology and automation.
These industries’ relationship with their audiences exists at opposing extremes. Consumer publishers like News UK are built to harvest attention across platforms: news pages, TikTok feeds, and podcasts. On the other hand, risk consultancies pride themselves on privacy: investigations for your eyes only.
Business news lives somewhere between these poles. Its most valuable material is paywalled and private, yet engagement remains a major source of growth and new business. The question becomes: what practical lessons can be borrowed from either end of this spectrum?
talkSPORT, News UK’s flagship sports radio station, offers a useful example. Now a mainstream challenger to BBC Sport, it has built its identity on live commentary and big personalities. Alongside two radio channels, talkSPORT generates more than 200,000 words per day – more than The New Testament. News UK CTO Tom Jackson recently described how talkSPORT now uses AI to retro-tag and segment all references to the “top four” Premier League clubs. Those segments are then re-expressed as short videos and podcast clips for social channels, significantly increasing engagement while allowing hosts to focus on what they do best.
When it comes to automation, business news is moving from experimenting to implementing. The lesson from talkSPORT is not simply about volume or distribution. It is about how technology can reorganise and adapt existing information for different media and audiences, rather than adding to the workload.
Across the industry, publishers are using technology to:
Monitor social media, public reports and datasets in real time
Enable deeper, data-driven reporting and analysis
Retro-tag editorial archives to build intelligent databases
Automate transcriptions, summaries and basic reports
Personalise subscriber experiences by geography or preferences
Risk-intelligence businesses provide an interesting template for this transition. They operate at a different cadence: focused on private investigations for a smaller base of high-value clients. Their “newsrooms” are built around domain experts, for example, former intelligence officials advising on conflict risk, supported by associates who gather information. Many take a tech-first approach, employing data scientists and developers to build systems that trawl, extract and structure information.
The trend of hiring sector specialists into editorial roles has slowed in recent years, but may well return as news organisations look to strengthen authority and insight. The rising demand for data journalists may be an early sign. Over the past year, the growth of risk-intelligence firms has already begun to shape thinking in business news, particularly around:
Starting with customer intent rather than newsflow
Employing data journalists and subject specialists to identify patterns and predictive signals
Building data at scale and bringing genuine market expertise in-house
As this transition continues, the opportunity for business news is not to imitate either extreme, but to borrow as and when advantages present themselves. Consumer media proves the value of structuring output around engagement; risk intelligence proves the value of structuring it around informing the decisions your audience relies on your insights to make. The real advantage will belong to those who can organise what they already know in ways that help their audience act.
Ben Galyas, Associate Director, Media Contacts
Ben Galyas leads the editorial recruitment team and actively recruits for news and information businesses across the UK and US markets.
[email protected]
www.linkedin.com/in/bengalyas-journalism/
@journojobs.bsky.social
@Journalism_Ben
