Comments on: Oakley hits out at industry over Fish4 debacle

By: Bean Counter

Bean Counter — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:11:13 +0000

So in summary – build a time machine – go back 10 years – create a few top notch pureplay classified verticals….ooh and keep you eye out for investment opportunities in Google, Facebook and a slice of Apple….and we’d all be just fine.

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By: Gazetteer

Gazetteer — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:10:44 +0000

Editor-turned entrepreneur – an oxymoron methinks. Why did the regional heavyweights pay up 20 x to acquires free sheets in the mid to late 70′s – it was for their revenues, it was the people who launched them may have been initially not editorial savvy … but they were already forging a new ethos – page yield … new technology .. target-ing demographically. No, I think anyone who was in the business will agree that entrepreneurs could possibly end up becoming editors, but rarely vice versa. I was around to witness the stupid sums settled free newspaper owners … who sometimes bought them back again for a much more justifiable price.

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By: Ill-informed

Ill-informed — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:27:52 +0000

It’s interesting to get a take on what went wrong in the past but I’d be more interested in Oakley’s views on what local media owners should be doing now to sustain / grow their businesses.

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By: outofit

outofit — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:37:57 +0000

How has Oakley got the nerve? He was one of the architects of the asset stripping of Yorkshire Post Newspapers with his iniquitous RIM that started a decline which seems to being finished off by the woeful Johnston Press.

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By: John Bull

John Bull — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:51:56 +0000

Ah, Chris Oakley, who spotted an opportunity to make money, inflicted more cuts on what were good performing “big” newspapers. Just look at the sales performance of the Birmingham Post, Mail and Coventry Telegraph today compared to the days when his lot were in power? Methinks people like him should look in the mirror and wonder how they’ve played a part in the decline of “big city” regionals in the Midlands.

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By: Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:01:56 +0000

At last, someone gets close to the truth! That, and allowing (group) editors to move beyond what they should have been doing – looking out for their papers’ interests – and moving into the realms of senior management. Editors as much as executives should take a heap of blame for not being aware to threats to the business and in many cases being utterly out of step with changing technology. I repeatedly said in the early 2000s at my Northcliffe regional that we had people in charge who were old-school newspapermen, not modern thinkers and students of the multi-media revolution. When video came in, they jumped on it like it was the greatest development of all time. That was old hat in the mid 2000s and they had to look deeply at the changing marketplace. Alas, they were rooted in the era when everyone read newspapers. They couldn’t get into the heads of those who had been brought up with access to info at their fingertips. Not saying I would have done much better, but then I didn’t go online until 2000 so I was a dinosaur in terms of new technology. But blind loyalty to the old guard was just plain wrong. Content may have been king, but so was the ability to understand what was happening. Ah well!

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