The Observer’s Salt Path investigation put the “fresh approach” of the digital version of the 234-year-old newsbrand on the map under new owner Tortoise Media.
Press Gazette understands that the investigation resulted in a significant uplift in print sales week on week and was a major traffic driver to the website – an important milestone less than three months after its takeover by Tortoise Media, when The Observer launched its own digital presence away from former owner The Guardian for the first time.
The investigation by journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou is also believed to have generated more than a million video views across The Observer‘s social media accounts.
The Salt Path was initially a non-fiction book detailing Raynor Winn and her husband Moth’s 630-mile journey along the South West Coast Path after they lost their home and he received a terminal diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD).
On Sunday 6 July The Observer published allegations that major elements of the book were fabricated or misleading, including that the couple had embezzled money and that there was scepticism around Moth’s illness.
The Observer’s head of investigations Alexi Mostrous told Press Gazette the story “raised certain issues that could have legal ramifications and editorial issues”.
“There was an argument that, because [Raynor] had never faced charges or a criminal prosecution, she was entitled to privacy,” he said, “but there’s some journalist defence [against] that.”
He added there was “countervailing public interest” when looking at the “disparity” between how Moth’s illness had been presented in the book and what Hadjimatheou was being told by neurologists.
“One of the arguments that we put forward was that CBD sufferers could have been given the impression that walking or communing with nature could make a real difference to their disease, whereas we were being told that it probably wouldn’t.”
To tackle the legal hurdles, The Observer attempted to communicate with the couple “as much as possible, mainly through their lawyers,” Mostrous said.
“We’re keeping that channel open because we’re continuing to publish. They keep asserting their rights to privacy and dissuading us from publishing.
“We tried numerous occasions all the way through the investigation to meet them – we’ve tried very hard, despite what Raynor said in her statement.”
Salt Path story ‘wasn’t clickbait – it just caught the public’s imagination’
Hadjimatheou told Press Gazette she had discussed with Observer editor-in-chief James Harding whether the story met the public interest test and merited the time and effort she would have to put in.
“We weren’t considering clickbait,” she said. “It just so happens that it caught the public’s imagination.”
The timing of the story helped it gather momentum as it came just over a month after the release of a movie based on the Salt Path book starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
The initial tip for the story came to Hadjimatheou from a member of the public who’d met the couple – but they had no evidence for their claims.
Hadjimatheou said the story took a long time to come to light because nobody had “asked the right questions” before. When she eventually found a significant source for the story, Hadjimatheou was told her call had been expected “for years”.
“There were rumours swirling round the town, but people didn’t know where to go or who to tell,” she said.
Hadjimatheou said the reaction to the story was a “shock”, and she received around 150 messages in the first couple of hours after publication.
“Why has this story taken off so much?” she asked. “It’s because people always suspect they’re being lied to… and people feel they’ve been misled.”
Newspaper first, time-consuming podcast later
The paper had spent time strategising on how best to reach people with the story across various platforms.
“We’re a podcasting house that’s bought a newspaper, so it’s quite exciting to have those different platforms to play with with this story,” Hadjimatheou said.
Before buying The Observer, Tortoise Media was known for narrative and investigative podcasts like Hoaxed (about a conspiracy theory about a paedophile ring in North London), Sweet Bobby (about a catfisher) and Pig Iron (about the death of journalist Christopher Allen in South Sudan).
The story has already been converted into two podcast episodes but not a full series.
“I didn’t feel that there was enough [material] to sustain an entire podcast series,” Hadjimatheou said. “A narrative investigative podcast is a very specific beast, and it requires lots of moving parts and interviews to sustain multiple episodes.”
She added: “The paper gives us that freedom to put something out quickly, and then consider a complex and time-consuming podcast afterwards.”
The paper did put out a seven-minute Youtube video on the case a day after the print publication.
“Video is a new medium that we’re taking much more seriously now that we’ve got The Observer,” Hadjimatheou said. “We always had a small unit, and now that’s expanded. Tom Larkin is the head of Observer TV now, which is a new department.”
Hadjimatheou added the multi-platform approach to telling the “real” Salt Path story is a part of bringing a “very fresh” approach to the newspaper.
“The Observer is a very old name, but a new newspaper,” she said. “It’s exciting to suddenly feel that we’re making our new iteration of this paper.”
One platform the team didn’t consider for telling the story was through a novel – though someone else did.
“The day after my article came out, a book appeared on Amazon, claiming to be the real inside story of Salt Path,” Hadjimatheou said. “What kind of a world are we living in?
“I think it’s expected that other news outlets will want to cover the same story, and we’re happy with that,” adding that “almost everyone” else has correctly credited The Observer.
She added the book “must be” AI-produced, and that she “wasn’t prepared” for this outcome.
“How do you write a book in a few hours? It has an author attached to it. The details of that are above my pay grade, but our head of IP is looking at it.”
Raynor Winn has accused The Observer of pursuing a “highly misleading narrative” and called the story “grotesquely unfair”. She said it is “utterly vile, unfair, and false” to say Moth made up his illness.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
