A regional daily editor has warned the loss of experienced counterparts at other titles will lead to a decline in the quality of regional journalism.
Keith Harrison, left, of Wolverhampton’s Express & Star, made the comments amid a spate of senior departures from the industry.
Already this week it has emerged that the Sunderland Echo editor John Szymanski is facing redundancy while Michael Beard of Brighton daily The Argus is leaving for a PR role.
Last week it was revealed that Colin Channon was stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Echo, which serves South Essex, and sister daily the Colchester Gazette, to take up a role with a motoring magazine.
Their departures now mean a total of seven regional daily editors have now left the industry since May.
Taking to Twitter after reading of Michael’s departure, Keith said: “Regional newspaper industry can’t afford to keep losing experienced editors like this and expect to maintain quality.”
Michael had served in his position for nine years, John for 20 months and Colin just nine months.
The other four editors to leave daily titles in the past six months are Richard Bowyer (The Sentinel, Stoke), Alun Thorne (Coventry Telegraph), Richard Bettsworth (Leicester Mercury) and Tim Gordon (South Wales Echo).
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weeklies have been running without editors for years, and it shows so desperately. Content editors, often based 15 miles away, and group editors, mostly office politicians, just don’t cut the mustard. The truth is that papers like Michael’s Beard’s Argus are not proper regionals, they are city papers scraping a few cops and court stories from the rest of their patch to fill. It used to be different, but that was then…
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A tad late in saying quality standards will fall… they began to fall after 2008
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Don’t tell us, Keith. Tell those idiot number-cruncher bosses at JP & Newsquest. But hey, they don’t care about editorial quality; when some of these long-serving redundant eds were trainees, the sort of editorial rubbish quality we get everywhere today was confined to upstart freesheets with “shopper” in the title. Launched by admen, staffed by “marketing professionals”, run by ad salesmen, aimed purely at advertisers, editorial was just to fill the gaps between the ads. We, and our managements then, regarded them with contempt & horror & noted that most of them ended up in the bin, unread. The rapid decline in paid-for circulations today is the modern equivalent of that bin.
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GladImOutOfit is right. the things we laughed at scornfully in freesheets are now staple diet in paid-fors. Some of JP freepapers, eg Weekender, are so pitiful they are not worth nothing.
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And let’s not forget, of course, the many talented senior and excellent journalists who have been relieved of employment at the, er, Express & Star, within the last decade…
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It’s interesting that after the mass culls in newsrooms over the last 15 years, editors are now starting to fear an impact on their own positions. They seem to have forgotten that many enjoyed accelerated promotion during those culls.
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Onthefence has a point. Some poor editors who had begun losing readers ten years ago through being too complacent should have been found out during the culls. Instead they got promoted, some of them with zero passion for journalism but a talent for carrying out the board’s bidding.
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It’s been obvious for years that management ‘suits’ have no regard for editorial quality. Making the bottom line look acceptable to shareholders is today’s prime priority.
However, short-sightedness will kill the industry. Even in this dumbed-down age, readers recognise shoddiness and lack of professionalism for what they are.
Newspapers are now in a downward spiral, helped along by management donkeys. Sorry, but it’s true.
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It already has caused a severe decline in the quality of newspaper journalism! And it can only get worse.
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Yes, but if the Express & Star’s sales have dropped by more than 50% in seven years, are they in any position to give advice?
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