It was the wayward imprint next to the barcode on the back page that alerted me.
‘The Burnley Express is published by East Lancashire Newspapers at Bull Street, Burnley…’ it read.
Hold on a minute, I’m supposed to be reading the Nelson Leader operating from Scotland Road, Nelson, I thought, what’s that got to do with the Burnley Express?
It was an edition-change error somewhere in the production process, of course, but such a fundamental one.
We all know that group editors and multi-title subbing hubs have rightly or wrongly become the norm for weekly newspapers, as companies strive to preserve profit margins.
But I fear that local identities are being further swallowed up as some papers amalgamate pages across different titles as well to cut editorial and production costs.
Cringe-worthy bloopers can soon creep in without dedicated, eagle-eyed editors reading edition change proofs and the emerging over-reliance on content management systems like Atex.
Roy Prenton is the editor of the Nelson Leader, but you can hardly blame him for the complex nature of titles, editions and page flows that are channelled through a subbing hub 21 miles away.
For a start, he also edits the neighbouring Colne Times and Barnoldswick & Earby Times, the titles already sharing pages like the letters and comment spread where readers are carefully asked to write to ‘Leader Times Newspapers’, the collective name for all three.
The Clitheroe Advertiser is a separate but sister title also edited by Prenton, and all four of his papers’ pages are created and subbed together at Johnston Press’ central production hub in Preston.
The Burnley Express is another sister title, this time with its own editor. But its pages are also laid out and processed at Preston, and it appears to share various sports pages with the Nelson Leader because of readers’ interest in the ‘Clarets’ football team.
This, I’d wager, is where the page-change error crept in, the Leader’s back page lead taken from the Express but without switching that all-important bar code panel.
A small blunder, you might think, but potentially quite a costly one when circulation revenues and ABC audits are considered.
The dilution of brands happened again on page 68 of the Leader, the 2cm strapline in white out of blue reading ‘SPORT: for latest local sports news go to www.burnleyexpress.net’ rather than the ‘www.pendletoday.co.uk’ address used on all other sports pages.
Even this umbrella website points to brand dilution, the hyperlocal Nelson, Colne and Barnoldswick & Earby newspapers strangely regionalised by the wider Pendle name.
Barcodes and brands aside, there was good enough local content in the Nelson Leader’s 3 September edition.
The ‘Schools hit by £60,000 thefts’ splash and the ‘A hero returns’ write-off were both worthy of the front page.
Inside, ‘Bungling burglar gets three years’ on page two, ‘Toxic algae poses a harm to the public’ on page three and the local Battle of Britain featurette ‘Salute to one of The Few’ on page nine were also decent reads.
‘Terrier’s trauma during visit to the vets’ was the headline that grabbed me on page 22, the poor dog having been left in the supposed safety of a vet’s surgery.
If the old “dog bites a man” rule of news is applied, one mutt getting nipped by another would usually be a definite candidate for the spike.
But with cute little Ruby staring out at you from the paper, and a second picture showing huge jaw marks after a Rottweiler ten times her size sank his teeth into her, I softened.
Painful, I’m sure, and distressing for the elderly owners concerned, all making a heartstring-tugging story for animal-loving readers.
I thought the cover price a little steep at 75p for a Leader that contained just 80-odd stories in a 72-page book, including a 24-page ‘propertytoday’ section. That said, I liked the added value of the Burnley FC team picture as a centre spread ‘poster’ pull-out.
My residing thought, however, is that Johnston Press – and others with group editor, central subbing and ‘clever’ CMS operations – must take more care and retain enough resource to eliminate costly and brand-diluting production errors.
According to the Latest ABCs, the Nelson Leader (Series) sells 13,030 a week, down 7pc year-on-year.
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Centralised subbing and regionalisation is going against the grain of what actually makes these titles successful in ther first place. It means they lose their identity and most importantly they lose touch with those who the advertisers want to talk to. Sooner or later the industry is going to need to start thinking of the long game because others will fill the voids they leave behind.
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Header goes here. That appeared quite a few times in the newspaper you used to edit. A bit rich to point out other’s mistakes.
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Mr Pain, there is a difference between pointing out others’ mistakes for the purpose of lambasting them and pointing out the mistakes in order to point out what is inherently wrong with the system put in place. Subbing hubs and duplicated editions may be a neccessary evil, but proper checks have to be put in place.
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Mr Pain: If the editor of any newspaper which made mistakes on his watch was thereby banned from commenting on others, there would be no editors left and no progress would ever be made. Indeed, “head goes here” or “hghghghgh” are quite common headlines and have been ever since subs started making up their own pages instead of passing them to a stonehand – and even, occasionally, before. But as resources are squeezed and fewer and fewer subs are expected to do more and more pages further and further away from the sharp end, the problem will only get worse.
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This happens when you have an industry that is more interested in delivering savings than delivering newspapers.
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Curious reaction to my single comment. Why defend the indefensible? A long time ago all manner of checks were in place to prevent the mistakes I now see on a daily basis, both national and regional. And this is progress? I beg to differ. Editors – past or present – have done nothing to stop the rot.
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Steve Just a suggestion – may be worth reviewing one of the Celtic weekly newspapers who face being run without an editor – and then having a look a year down the line when its happened.
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observer – good idea. Suggest it to Mr Dyson. He appears to be judge, jury and hangman.
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Also worth noting all the stories mentioned had already appeared in the daily Lancashire Telegraph long ago. Worth checking rival papers (or just their websites) when assessing the new content of a weekly I say.
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Central subbing is inherently wrong when it comes to local weekly newspapers. The subs quite frequently have little ot no knowledge of the area they are covering. A case in point was a few weeks ago when the Leamington Spa Courier headlined a story with South town flats etc, when in truth, the area being described (Lillington) in in fact in the North East of Leamington. South Town, as any local would know, is south of the river. Oh, this paper is another Johnston title and I believe it is now subbed in either Northampton or Milton Keynes, neither of which are in the same county.
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@Sly Dig: Just as a point of fact (as some of us do still care about them) the Leamington paper is subbed at the Peterborough hub, which subs a vast number of pages (but certainly not all of them) for all of JP’s titles in the eastern region. The Nort
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Red Smudge. Thanks for the clarification, living in the North West, I’m afraid I don’t quite have my finger on that pulse…although JP have now realised that when they centralised subbing in Lancashire, they cut too many subs and are now very keen to engage a new one….unfortunately too many have already gone. The trouble is, as a former TM man, I too cared but the cuts in staffing and wages but as they say, the b*@!+*%ds finally ground me down. If I could afford to quit this poorly paid job, it is no longer a profession, I would.
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Well said Sly Dig, I think it ceased being a profession some time ago. I tend to think of it more as a factory production line job now, though we actually get paid less than many such production line workers. I’m thinking of having a career change and becoming a miner in Chile, with a cunning scheme to work at it for a few months, then get stuck down a mine for a while, before being rescued, whereupon I shall use all my journalistic experience to write and sell my story around the world and retire on the proceeds
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