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Tory MP demands meeting over daily-to-weekly changes

Tory MP Louise Mensch is demanding a meeting with Johnston Press over its decision to take its two Northamptonshire dailies weekly.

The regional publisher announced earlier this week that it was moving five of its daily titles to weekly publication including the Northampton Chronicle and Echo and Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph.

Louise, who represents the Northants town of Corby, has called for a meeting with Johnston Press bosses to discuss her concerns over the plans, which will also see new iPad apps created for each of the affected titles.

She has also succeeded in securing a debate in Westminster Hall next Wednesday on the future of local newspapers which she is urging affected MPs from all parties to attend.

Louise, who first found fame as the chick-lit author Louise Bagshawe, has been giving her reaction to the announcement on the social networking website Twitter as well as on BBC local radio.

She tweeted:  “Lots of Corby folk can’t afford iPads to use an app. I will seek a meeting w Johnston Press to ask if they’ve got this one right.”


Johnston Press declined to comment on her request when asked by HTFP, although it is understood that the company is prepared to meet her.

However the company’s digital platforms director, Alex Gubbay, responded on Twitter saying:  “The weekly paper will be bigger, better & benefit from fresh look and feel. Important to keep it relevant & good value.”

Other reactions to the Northants frequency change have come from the writers Andrew Collins and Matthew Engel, who each grew up in the area.

Andrew, who wrote about his Northampton childhood in the book Where Did It All Go Right? – published as an antidote to so-called ‘misery memoirs’ – described it as “the end of an era.”

He wrote on his blog:  “The Chronicle & Echo, like many local papers, was a daily feature of my life in Northampton. My Dad had [a] letter printed in it, in 1980. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world at the time.

“I don’t imagine the young people of today would give much of a toss. They publish things all the time on Facebook and other sites – who needs a newspaper to do it?”

Cricket writer Matthew, who also grew up in Northampton, wrote about the changes in a Financial Times piece headlined ‘Death by a thousand clots.’

He put the blame for the daily title’s demise mainly on social developments which have transformed the nature of the local population.

“The Chronicle & Echo has died, not because the town is too small but because it is too big. Northampton is no longer a coherent community.

“Though it is by far the largest town in Britain to have lost its daily paper, others will follow, including perhaps – before long – cities as large as Birmingham and Manchester.”

7 comments

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  • April 20, 2012 at 7:59 am
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    I bet Louise didn’t actually buy the paper – if all those who are complaining bought the papers every day then maybe we wouldn’t have got to this point!

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  • April 20, 2012 at 9:11 am
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    JP borrowed billions to buy up newspapers all over the country, all they have done with them is make thousands redundant.
    Silly cost cutting measures like printing the local dailies overnight to be delivered with the morning papers, instead of the latest news of the day.
    Dinnington Press stopped putting the brown underwrap on the bundles, so a paper in each bundle is likely to be damaged, but it saves on brown paper, and there are many more examples.
    This move to make daily papers weekly is another in a whole host of silly cost cutting measures, and will sound the death knell to so many proud and long established newspapers. I feel that the MP’s appeal with JP will fall on deaf ears.

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  • April 20, 2012 at 9:48 am
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    At least Louise Mensch is bringing this whole issue to the wider public outside the world of HTFP and journalism. She gave a good account of herself on the PM programme on Tuesday against John Elworthy of Archant. Good on John though. At least he had the guts to debate the issue whilst JP again ‘declined to comment.’

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  • April 20, 2012 at 4:33 pm
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    I disagree with Barbarossa. I heard that exchange and the MP hadn’t got a grip on the issues or the background. It was a great shame – and very typical – that JP declined to put someone up because John Elworthy, fiesty and honorable as he is, did go on a bit of a rant (well off the subject) and got in a plug for his company despite the whole thing having nothing to do with him or Archant.
    Someone with a vague amount of knowledge about what JP are trying to do would have been able to explain to the clueless MP that even more important to the strategy than the trendy iPad apps is the stuff aimed at smartphones, and just about everyone has one of those, or (crucially) will have soon.
    Certainly JP will be trying to get into the lucrative iPad market, but most of all they will be wanting to get into your phone.

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  • April 20, 2012 at 5:12 pm
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    This is a joke, right? I’ve accidently looked up the Framley Examiner?

    “Lots of Corby folk can’t afford iPads to use an app.”

    Really, Louise? Believe it or not, some Corby folk CAN afford this iPad you speak of. Some even have electricity in their homes AND an indoor toilet.

    Of course, most of us don’t know how to youse either (see what I did there?) but hey-ho…

    And the classic “The Chronicle & Echo, like many local papers, was a daily feature of my life in Northampton. My Dad had [a] letter printed in it, in 1980. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world at the time.”

    Ok, it was the 1980s, but… Get a grip, son. We had new romantics, aging punk, riots, Thatcher, miners, unions, Frankie telling us to Relax… and letters in the Chron… Now that WAS cool…

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  • April 24, 2012 at 12:48 pm
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    ‘Lots of people can’t afford one’ doesn’t dispute that some people can! So
    El Weasel seems to have lost the plot by getting on his high horse over the iPads. The downtrodden Northerner routine is laughable.

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