Prince Harry, King Charles, Jeremy Clarkson and Meghan Markle. Pictures: Shutterstock
Why is the Oxford Mail enjoying booming traffic in stark contrast to wider industry trends?
In August, the Newsquest title was the fastest-growing top-50 news website in the UK – up 90% year on year to reach 6.5 million Britons per month .
This was in a market where most news websites are losing traffic year on year as the likes of Google and Facebook work ever harder to keep readers within their own ‘walled gardens’.
In Press Gazette’s daily email newsletter, I speculated that Google search and Discover algorithms may be favouring local breaking news. “If only this were true”, was the response of one industry insider who got in touch to put me right.
Great local news may be part of the picture for the Oxford Mail. But it helps a lot if that news involves one of the many high-profile celebrities with links to the region.
And I understand that Google Discover, the smartphone aggregation app, remains a huge part of the picture in terms of delivering traffic to the Oxford Mail. Discover can reward publications which build up expertise in particular areas – and it may help that the Oxford Mail usually has a local connection to the trending topics it covers.
The Oxford Mail was also helped in August by the prodigious output of one star reporter – trending news editor Edward Burnett who alone was responsible for around half the site’s 20 million page views in August ( according to internal data he shared on Linkedin ).
This was the all-time record for a single Newsquest reporter in one month, beating his own previous record of five million set in August 2025.
This was clearly an exceptional month but what can others learn from the success of Burnett and the Oxford Mail?
More is more
Fewer, higher quality stories is a strategy being pursued by many paywalled publishers ( including The Times ). But for the Oxford Mail, where ad revenue still likely outweighs paid online subscriptions, more appears to be more.
Burnett had around 250 Oxford Mail bylines in August listed on the journalists database Muckrack (see full table below). That is around ten stories per day. According to a limited analysis of his output using AI checker Pangram, these appear to be entirely human written.
Much of the Oxford Mail output comprises follow-ups of articles featuring high-profile figures with an Oxfordshire connection that have appeared elsewhere.
Many of these stories are then syndicated to other Newsquest sites and Yahoo News, which is a lucrative source of additional advertising revenue for publishers.
Get celebs at front of headline (preferably more than one)
The Oxford Mail may not be blessed with a Premier League football team but its patch includes the Cotswolds – home of Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and all-round magnet for high-profile celebs.
Many of Burnett’s stories combine multiple high-profile figures in a single headline to provide added juice for the Google search and Discover algorithms. For instance:
Emma Watson spotted visiting George Clooney’s villa (Watson is, or was, a University of Oxford student)
Pop legend Elton John enters Beckham feud with private yacht (The Beckhams live in Oxfordshire)
And
Geri Halliwell owes over £1m after Horner’s F1 sacking as debt rises (The couple live on the Oxfordshire border near Banbury).
Jeremy Clarkson is box office
The success of Amazon Prime TV show Clarkson’s Farm has supercharged the clickability of stories about Jeremy Clarkson, and the Oxford Mail never misses an opportunity to write about the county’s most famous farmer.
Burnett wrote 42 stories about Clarkson during August ranging from:
Jeremy Clarkson’s pub no longer serving ketchup after dispute
to
Jeremy Clarkson has to pay for his own Amazon Prime account
The Oxfordshire Mail also claims King Charles as a high-profile resident because his main residence, Highgrove House, is in the Cotswolds (albeit in Gloucestershire) meaning coverage of the UK monarch features nearly as frequently as former Top Gear host Clarkson.
Where possible, the Oxford Mail always puts the keywords – eg Clarkson, King Charles, Geri Halliwell – at the front of the headline.
News that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were planning a move to the Cotswolds provided a more traffic-driving opportunities for Burnett with articles including:
Prince Harry and Meghan ‘want Cotswolds move with £5m security costs’
And
Questions over who will pay for Harry and Meghan’s Cotswolds security.
It should be noted that Burnett also found the time to write plenty of non-celebrity-related local news in August covering crime, transport and other general news items.
Google Discover
According to Newzdash data seen by Press Gazette, the Oxford Mail punches above its weight in terms of visibility on Google Discover and is ranked 11th in the UK for prominence on the platform.
Posts from Google-owned Youtube dominate followed by X.
Stories with a celebrity or royal angle dominate the list of Oxford Mail articles indexed by Discover in August according to Newzdash.
See Burnett’s full record-breaking August output of bylined stories in the Oxford Mail below.
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