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Bob Satchwell: The future may be tough, but it is not all gloomy

Many obituaries have been written about the local press industry – but reports of the death of local newspapers are seriously flawed, argues Bob Satchwell.

In this penultimate extract from What Do We Mean By Local?, the Society of Editors boss explains why he believes they still have many years of life left in them.


Hundreds and thousands of words have been written in obituaries of local newspapers but reports of their death are seriously flawed. Some people are still full of terminal gloom but I still cannot understand why so many words have been squandered by an awful lot of usually knowledgeable and sensible people who do not often have time to waste.

Yes, the commercial climate remains distinctly cool especially in some parts of the country but in others the doom-mongers are already talking-up the threats of over-heating of the housing market and all that follows. Such dire warnings are one of the certainties of economics. But the only real certainty is that what has gone down will surely bounce back. The grim predictions of those pundits who want us to remain permanently in sackcloth prove it.

I do not doubt local and regional editors and journalists and some of their companies are struggling. It is understandable that they may feel the dark tunnel still seems extremely long for them. They and their staff have also suffered hard and long from deep cutbacks, some of which in themselves may prove to have been over-zealous and, indeed, to have added to the regional industry’s difficulties.

A clutch of good, experienced, dedicated editors have opted for new lives away from their grim coalfaces. They left wearily having had to trim their staffs to the bone, losing experienced journalists on the way. Those who have remained or replaced them are full of invention of the necessary kinds, working with a new cohort of young journalists full of fresh ideas and questions about old ways of working rather than the new ones made required by new realities of reduced revenues and different demands on how news should be delivered and presented.

Yes, there have been some harsh lessons and there are still more to come. But what happened to the prediction that half of our regional press would have closed by now? Why is it that around two-thirds of the adult population is still reading its local news mountain every week and what’s more the level of trust is maintained? And where have all those lucrative advertising pounds that gave local papers a licence to print money for decades been transferred? It has not all gone online or elsewhere so who is to say at least some of it could not be retrieved so long as the still-powerful case for the regional press is delivered properly?

Surviving – in the Depths of Economic Winter

The economy will move. If thousands of cuts were about to prove fatal, how come the boss of one of the biggest regional groups, Ashley Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press, talked satisfyingly about local papers that could still maintain 20 per cent margins in the depths of this economic winter? That is the kind of return most businesses would die for. They are levels which newspapers in the heyday of the regional industry could only dream about as the print unions creamed off profits and stifled invention.

Where are all the new digital media moguls who should be lapping up the revenue? Google, Facebook and Twitter maybe – but before long, and when people are clearly confident enough, the economy will start moving again. Then the penny will drop. Websites and searches alone will not bring all the business in. Advertising popping up on mobiles every few yards while you are walking down the high street will become intrusive and, in any event, can only be part of a sensible marketing mix. Some advertising is, of course, perfectly suited to digital platforms.

Local papers, as much as any other media outlet, are belatedly playing catch-up. But has the traditional appeal of newspapers really vanished altogether? I think not. Whether we are waiting for a friend, sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, waiting for the train to stop, sitting in a traffic jam, watching a movie with clever product placement, we are suckers for advertising … and just might buy as the result of it. Call it what you like, subliminal or the browse factor, it is part of the package that has always been as aspect of traditional media.

The last time I replaced my car I spent hours researching on the web. I got it down to three models after road tests. I was still not convinced. I came home from an early-doors pint on a Friday evening and flicked through the local newspaper. Something stopped me in the motoring section – part of the paper to which I gave little attention. There was a display ad offering a substantial discount for a direct replacement for the model I was swapping at the dealership which serviced my car.

By lunchtime the next day I had signed the lease and the shiny new charger was set for delivery three days later. Am I so different from the rest of the population? We make purchasing decisions based on conservative comfort, whims, research, opportunity, and availability – a whole range of factors. But we have to be told what we should look for, what will suit our brand inertia most, where the best deals are to be found. Most people simply do not have the time for endless mind-boggling research; we need a bit of help from the advertising industry and the media platforms it requires.

And that’s where local newspapers – traditional media – come into their own. They are relatively easy to access and relatively cheap and available. They provide a package to suit a wide range of people. They are there to inform and entertain and to make our lives easier. We all still want to know if a new block of flats or factory is planned for the bottom of the garden, whether a pub we use occasionally is still open, which local firms are doing well and how our kids or grandchildren played at the weekend or how brilliant they were as shepherds in the school nativity play. We also want to know where the best bargains are to be had – whether it’s a car, TV, or washing machine, and we don’t want to travel to buy them.

Importance of Ultra-Local News

The keyword is and always has been ‘package’. When I edited a regional evening newspaper we made sure we carried at least one hundred local stories every day, mentioned a dozen sports each day (and, shock horror, women played sport seriously too!) plus a digest of national news that had relevance for our region. We worked hard to get what is now called ultra local news to every community and we slaved to print on time in order to get copies through the traffic in time for people to buy casual copies or to read the paper between getting home and going out for the evening.

At an average adult reading speed it would take two hours forty minutes to read the whole package but we knew that, on average, most spent only twenty minutes on the paper. They read only about one fifth or one sixth of the paper and they buy it, or pick up their free copy, for a huge variety of reasons. Has anything really changed? Over the 50 years since newspapers were in their primes huge economic social change has affected sales and there are far more outlets for advertising. But it is the dramatic growth in competition for everyone’s time – their twenty minutes – that has had the greatest affect. People have more to do with their increased leisure time and, despite the most recent recession, far more income to pay for it.

But the opportunity for local newspapers is as clear as it always was. It is only the effort and methods of delivery required that are different. Instead of providing news when it suited our production schedules, readers now expect to find their news when, where and how it suits their lifestyles – or they will look elsewhere.

The second keyword is ‘platforms’. The internet and the explosion of broadcast channels may have dissipated audiences for traditional media of all kinds but look at the figures. Radio, television and, yes, newspapers, are still mass media, appealing to millions of people. Examine readership as opposed to circulation stats and there is a clue. Cheer the worldwide, soar-away success of Mail Online in just three or four years and the picture is clear.

There is a future and it may not be just online. The World Wide Web is an ancient old hat, mobile on phones and tablets are the present. Someone is already working on next week and next month and we need to keep up with them. Every newspaper needs a digital correspondent to annoy us with the relentless pace of innovation. Some of his or her output will be terminally boring but we need to know about the spark that will light next year’s trend. We need trained communicators to ensure readers, viewers, listeners, surfers and, above all, editors know what is coming.

The job cannot be left to the techies in the IT department or whoever is in charge of ‘production’, whatever that might mean these days. It is a job for journalists who will see the possibilities for themselves and for their audiences. That surely is the message of the last decade. While some media companies wring their hands, increasingly desperate about how or if they will ever be able to make money again, journalists aided by clever techies have been amazingly creative and adaptive. Those of us old enough to remember green eye shields and the closed minds and strict demarcation in newsrooms can marvel at how today’s journalists, tweet, blog, video, snap and, oh yes, write reports and features, all in a day’s work.

Editorial departments used to be criticised for failing to think about how they did the job and how they should change. Editors were charged with the lack of commercialism – even though we were driven by circulation figures. The last decade has seen a new kind of editor and new kinds of journalism. Freed from old restrictions and given the prospect of communicating with their audiences faster and in so many different ways, they have grasped the opportunities with relish. More people are coming up behind them on the best college training courses. The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) realised some time ago that the whole industry needed a different breed of technically-savvy journalists.

It is certainly not easy, especially in current economic conditions, but commercial managers have got to show similar enthusiasm and initiative. If they don’t believe it how will potential advertisers? They must forget the good old days when ads and revenue flowed in without huge sales effort. One very senior executive who came up the advertising route told me some years ago that for most of his career it was not a matter of selling newspapers but of managing accounts for advertisers who had nowhere else to go.

Regional Newspapers are NOT on their Last Legs

Regional newspapers must not suggest they are on their last legs. Intimating that they are ‘managing decline’ is the quickest route to oblivion. I was once asked if it mattered that gaps were appearing in the local and regional newspaper map. Of course it does, for democracy rather than merely the industry and journalists’ jobs. And I added that every gap left by a closed-down newspaper was an opportunity. Journalists and former editors are filling those gaps especially with ultra-local websites. If they do not someone else will and we should not blame them. More should grasp the nettle, as should local entrepreneurs who want to make a mark in their communities.

The Victorians did it – that’s when many local and regional papers were founded on the back of improving literacy following the 1870 Education Act. Now is the time to build on increasing digital literacy that is spanning all generations. There is that old adage that the best time to start a new business is at the bottom of a recession and who knows which future media moguls have started in the one which we are about to put behind us? There is some force in the idea promulgated by Neil Fowler in this book and elsewhere that the big regional groups should get out of the way if they no longer want to publish local newspapers themselves. While consolidation has been the watchword over the past couple of decades, and may still have a place, so does a resurgence of localism in terms of ownership.

Little local papers with a proprietor who is also the editor, who sells ads and subscriptions and prints or delivers the news, do not have to create as much revenue as that demanded by big groups with high costs, hefty bank loans and demanding shareholders. Look to North America where editor/proprietors with one man and a dog to help them still seem capable of bucking the trend. The big groups could help and benefit at the same time by printing local papers that might start as websites. Some are also supporting local television initiatives to create local media hubs. It requires some creative thought but it is clear that the explosion of digital media also creates new appetites for information – globally, nationally and locally. That should be a cause for celebration for journalists rather than a threat.

But above all local newspaper owners big or small must also get back to basics. They are in the news business and they have to focus on that if they want to stay in the advertising or delivery businesses that can and will produce revenue. They should follow the lead of those who are planning new editions or platforms and they should aspire to increase paginations – as some are already achieving. Who wants to read, let alone buy, a sorry-looking reflection of a previously healthy and vibrant local paper that, sadly, some papers have become. The key factor in the success of any media organisation is credibility. No-one can engender that by producing second or third best.

Yes, gathering news is expensive but it is also essential. Ask Lord Rothermere about Mail Online, the Guardian about its website, the BBC or Rupert Murdoch. They are the investors in journalism because they know that whatever the platform, any news business is useless without content that is lively and relevant to its chosen market. Content requires journalists and editors who are highly skilled and motivated to use their inquiring minds and in-built determination to find ways to uncover and deliver the stories their public want and need to read. If they identify when and how they want to read them, combine comprehensive, accurate reporting with brave investigations and bold campaigns, their audiences will respond. If only more people would try it…

Note on the author

Bob Satchwell has been Executive Director of the Society of Editors, the UK’s leading media lobbying body, since its foundation in 1999. He is also a member of the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee and a non-Executive Director of the National Council for the Training of Journalists. He started his career with the Lancashire Evening Post in 1970 becoming Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for 1977. He went to Fleet Street as assistant editor of the News of the World before returning to regional newspapers to become the award-winning editor of the Cambridge Evening News from 1984 until 1998. The newspaper was selling more copies when he left than when he started.

  • WHAT DO WE MEAN BY LOCAL? THE RISE, FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF LOCAL JOURNALISM. EDITED BY JOHN MAIR,RICHARD LANCE KEEBLE WITH NEIL FOWLER.  PUBLISHED BY ABRAMIS BURY ST EDMUNDS SEPTEMBER IST 2013 ISBN 978-1-84549-593-0 PRICE £19.95 WITH A SPECIAL OFFER TO YOUR READERS OF £15.00 from [email protected]