The i paper

In two short years inews.co.uk has built a strong digital subscriber audience, grown its reach to 11m users a month and broken some of the biggest scoops in UK journalism. Through deep reporting, incisive commentary and must-read lifestyle journalism, inews.co.uk has seen digital subscribers overtake print subscribers for the first time in 2023. This extraordinary success comes despite being a relative newcomer to UK digital publishing and is testament to inews.co.uk’s sharp user experience coupled with a relentless focus on subscribers. Over half the digital audience is under the age of 45 [54%] and the same proportion are female – a successful diversification of the existing print audience. inews.co.uk’s digital reader revenue strategy began with an unmetered paywall restricting access to some locked content such as subscriber-only newsletters. Since then, it has evolved into a dynamic paywall built on Piano's propensity modelling which tracks user recency, frequency and volume. Core to all this has simply been great content. Dean Kirby’s investigation into prepayment meters exposed a scandal: energy suppliers inusing court warrants to force entry into the UK’s poorest homes to forcibly fit prepayment meters – leaving vulnerable families in the cold and dark as energy bills rocketed. In 40 stories, Kirby’s investigation changed Government policy, sparked multiple Ofgem investigations and led to one of the country’s most senior judges to instruct every court in England and Wales to stop granting the warrants immediately. On the world stage, reporter Richard Holmes revealed how a Russian agent was living in London after using Britain's Homes for Ukraine scheme. During a six-month investigation, Holmes tracked the man to a luxury apartment in the capital. i's front page exclusive was widely followed, sparked diplomatic turmoil and led Ukrainian officials to file extradition requests to the UK asking for the alleged Russian spy to be returned to Ukraine to face justice. Politically, i has a unique pledge: only one national news outlet has never endorsed a political party. That means spiky reporting which holds all political leaders to account. i has used this independence to lead scrutiny of Labour’s (scant) policy pledges. With the party in position to take power at the next election, i revealed it had dropped a flagship plan to end the charitable status of independent schools. i also revealed billions in unfunded spending planned by Labour. As for the Conservatives, i revealed a pensions raid; a fresh round of public spending cuts before Jeremy Hunt could announce them in his Autumn Statement; and that Rishi Sunak’s wife held shares in a firm set to benefit from the Budget. (She subsequently severed the link.) inews.co.uk punches far above its weight, competing successfully against older news publishers with bigger (but less impactful) newsrooms. This year i's reporting set the national news agenda with stories that are demonstrably in the public interest. Fast digital growth has led to subscriber numbers doubling and audience reach, passing 10.7m. inews.co.uk is delivering trusted, non-partisan public interest journalism time and again.