Background: The Daily Telegraph is one of the UK’s most prestigious newspapers, founded back in 1855 and now Britain’s largest broadsheet by circulation. But despite its legacy, the paper has been sitting in a weird limbo for years... rumours swirling about buyers, shutdowns, and ownership uncertainty.

What happened: Last week, a US private equity group suddenly pulled out of its attempt to buy The Daily Telegraph. Within days, the owner of the Daily Mail, DMGT, swooped in with a £500 million offer. And despite its new tabloid-adjacent parent, the Telegraph is expected to remain editorially independent.

What else: This move is another example of how legacy media companies are trying to stay alive in a digital world where attention is eaten by Google, Meta and TikTok.

What's the key learning?

💡Consolidation isn’t just strategy anymore, it’s survival. In a world dominated by Google, Meta and TikTok, individual news outlets simply can’t compete at the same scale .

💡We’ve seen the same strategy locally: Nine’s $4.2 billion merger with Fairfax in 2018 created a media powerhouse across TV, newspapers and digital. This gave them far greater scale and stability.

💡So for many old school media outlets, consolidation has helped them spread risk across multiple brands. If one title is struggling, another may be thriving - ultimately creating a more resilient media ecosystem.