{"id":33424,"date":"2026-05-11T07:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/33424\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T07:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:52:14","slug":"mediahuis-joins-uk-news-giants-as-founder-member-of-spur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/33424\/","title":{"rendered":"Mediahuis joins UK news giants as founder member of SPUR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mediahuis
\n Gert Ysebaert, CEO of Mediahuis Group, speaks at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen on 28 May 2024. Picture: WAN-IFRA<\/p>\n

Mediahuis has joined the SPUR coalition of major news organisations aiming to develop shared AI<\/a> licensing standards for the industry.<\/p>\n

Mediahuis joins SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights) alongside the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, the BBC and Sky News who were attached when the initiative went public in February.<\/a><\/p>\n

The intention is for SPUR to help shape rules and infrastructure around how news content is used in AI models, creating common standards around permission and payment.<\/p>\n

Mediahuis chief executive Gert Ysebaert said: \u201cThe SPUR coalition addresses one of the key challenges facing our industry today: ensuring that quality journalism is used responsibly in the development of AI. <\/p>\n

\u201cShared technical standards, licensing frameworks and reliable measurement tools are essential to secure a fair and transparent value exchange for our content. <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe this is a defining moment for European publishers as well, to join forces so that together we can actively shape how our journalism is used.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belgian-based Mediahuis is one of Europe\u2019s biggest publishers<\/a> with more than 30 newsbrands in Belgium, the Netherlands, Republic of Ireland<\/a>, Northern Ireland<\/a>, Luxembourg and Germany<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of its best-known titles include Belgium\u2019s De Standaard, Dutch daily De Telegraaf, and the Irish Independent which it bought as part of a \u20ac145.6m buyout deal from Independent News and Media in 2019.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mediahuis is widely experimenting with the use of AI in its newsrooms<\/a> but has not publicly announced any licensing deals<\/a> with AI companies to date.<\/p>\n

SPUR members can still negotiate their own cash deals outside of their participation in the group.<\/p>\n

Although the first founders to be announced were all UK based, they expressed their ambition for SPUR to be a global coalition to deal with a global challenge.<\/p>\n

SPUR<\/a> said it has attracted \u201csignificant interest\u201d from news media organisations globally since it went public and will announce more new members within weeks.<\/p>\n

Since going public, SPUR said it has \u201cprogressed technical work to enable the granular tracking of content usage online, with the aim of establishing industry standards\u201d.<\/p>\n

Its next steps include looking at ways to reduce friction in licensing, \u201cidentifying gaps in the technical tools needed to protect intellectual property, and ensuring that high-value journalistic content can be accessed through rights-cleared, accountable channels\u201d.<\/p>\n

The coalition is not a collective licensing body and will not seek to set pricing for use of content for AI, but aims to come up with a collective view on terms such as pay-per-crawl or pay-per-inference (when outputs are produced).<\/p>\n

Financial Times CEO Jon Slade called for the formation of a \u201ckind of NATO for news\u201d to help the industry at a conference last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the moment, we\u2019re all spending an enormous amount of money, each incremental to last year\u2019s budget, in just trying to hold stuff back,\u201d he told the Deloitte and Enders Analysis Media & Telecoms 2025 & Beyond Conference. \u201cSo there\u2019s a good argument for a lot more collaboration around all aspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \n<\/p>\n

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk<\/a> to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gert Ysebaert, CEO of Mediahuis Group, speaks at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen on 28…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2096,146,15586,15587,9211,8028,15588,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-33424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-bbc","10":"tag-financial-times","11":"tag-guardian-news-and-media","12":"tag-pwfree","13":"tag-sky-news","14":"tag-telegraph-media-group","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116554861310044595","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}