Newspaper entrepreneur Sir Ray Tindle has declared that the local press industry has weathered the recession and is “almost back to full viability.”
The 88-year-old publisher is due to deliver his company’s half-yearly statement at a management conference in Kent today.
In it he says that the local press has safely weathered the economic storm and that lost national advertising revenues are being replaced at local level.
“We are now totally convinced of the almost complete return of the local press to full viability and to its vital role in the many communities it serves,” he says.
Sir Ray, proprietor of Tindle Newspapers, said he had so far launched 19 new titles since the start of the recession with plans for another new weekly in the pipeline.
He said that revenues were ahead of those of 2013 and that the end of the year will show some “positive results.”
Said Sir Ray: “It has been our duty and obvious primary aim to bring the papers and the staff through these six years and, because we have a magnificent, hard working, and loyal staff, we believe we have safely reached the turning of the tide and the beginning of the recovery.
“We are now totally convinced of the almost complete return of the local press to full viability and to its vital role in the many communities it serves.”
“We naturally lost some job advertisements as did everyone else during the worst of this recession. Those job ads are now beginning to return as are property advertisements.
“The Farnham Herald’s property section this last quarter achieved 80 pages one week in April and has published seven 72’s since. This is the best I’ve seen since I joined the local press after leaving the Army at the end of the Second World War.”
Looking to the future, he added: “What we see before us as the task for local community weekly newspapers is very much what most of the weeklies in the UK have been doing for between 100 and 200 years.
“Little that has happened has changed what our readers want – news of their own immediate locality, their own town, their own village, their own street. They want it in detail.
“Make no mistake about it, the local paper’s place in this country is well entrenched. Forecasts of the early demise of some of us were certainly mistaken. The public still want their “local” and most people will still want it in its present printed form though some may prefer to read it on Ipads or whatever.
“In my 65 active years in local papers I have seen the arrival of a great deal of marvellous new technology which has changed much of our lives. It has not, however, changed the need for the publishing and dissemination of local news in depth and detail.”
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Excellent news. I expect to see good sales figures next time ABC publish their figures
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is he on something?
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He’s probably doing OK as he won’t owe stupid amounts to the banks
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My salary isn’t looking very “viable”.
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Did the new Western Morning News on Sunday come out, adding to the viability of the local press?
There was so much trumpeting locally and nationally in the run-up to launch I find the subsequent silence baffling.
Has all not gone as well as expected? I think we should be told…
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I’d still rather work for Tindle – as I do – than any other group. To answer Jeff’s question ‘Is he on something?’, yes. He’s on the money. By that I mean he’s judged the situation well and maintained a belief in local newspapers rather than throwing everything at a revenue-led, news-starved multi-media platform. Is everything in his empire wonderful? No. But show me an organisation where it is. Compared to the spiv-like antics within some ‘media groups’ things on this side of the press bench look pretty damn good.
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Tindle papers aren’t included in the ABC audit, Scoop. You’ll just have to take his word for it…
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If everything is as bullish as Sir Ray claims, why is it that the births, marriages and deaths columns in all local newspapers in my area have fallen by half in recent years?
BMD’s were regarded as a reliable indicator of a newspaper’s roots in its local community.
Display advertising has declined significantly as well-established family retail businesses have succumbed to online purchasing.
I don’t think people are as interested in “community” news as much as in 1960. People move home far more as jobs come and go so there isn’t the same commitment to local organisations that there once was.
The best of the Tindle papers are in conservative Chocolate Box places in the South and South West and these towns and villages don’t reflect the country as a whole.
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Maybe he is going to sell his and trying to get a better share price talking this rubbish, it is rubbish, newspaper sales and really down,as Delboy would say ‘ What a Plon*** Rodney’
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I’ll have what he’s having.
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Good news indeed for those inhabiting Tindle Towers.
What isn’t trumpeted abroad so enthusiastically is how much profit Sir Ray has pocketed, and why is editorial staff are among the lowest paid in the land.
The recession is over and advertising income rocketing you ‘proudly’ say, Sir Ray, so how about sharing some of the good fortune with those staff on the breadline who helped ensure the company made it to these dizzy heights of profitability?
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Let’s hope he’s right. Local newspapers shouldn’t be lumped in with the nationals, which are vying with 24 hour news for their audience – a battle they just can’t win.
Local newspapers report news which – with the best will in the world – is of no interest to the likes of Sky and the BBC, so it’s still got scoops to dig out and it still has a selling point, if they don’t report it nobody will and Mr Tindle is right – people still want to know what’s going on down their street.
Where newspapers have shot themselves in the foot is they’ve hacked and slashed and spent their money in the wrong places, then bemoaned falling sales figures which are being driven very often not by competition from new media, but by the fact they’re getting rubbish, with rubbish pictures and threadbare reporting from under resourced and overworked staff. You don’t need to be Adam Smith to realise that if your product gets worse yet more expensive, people will stop buying it – they’re not stupid.
There’s still a future for local papers, especially weeklies, if they change their angle. They need to become much more like magazines with in depth analysis and features, not ‘just’ a 150 piece about where that ambulance was heading on Wednesday, chances are you already know by now thanks to the police’s Twitter feed, that’s not what you need from the paper any more.
People who buy their local paper don’t just read it for the news, that’s what – oddly – many at the top of the industry don’t seem to understand. They read it for entertainment, for escapism, to feel close to their neighbours and community. They pick up their weekly paper with the shopping, read a bit, put it down, read a bit on Friday, then pass it to their neighbour, and get it back on Sunday. That’s not a model which is going to be destroyed by an RSS feed anytime soon.
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Any room for 1960s-type journalism?
http://westonmediastable.com/
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Dear Mr Akabussi-Northerner,
A breath of fresh air and common sense, your (mostly) accurate observations were a joy to read.
Your delightful skit re ambulance and Police Twitts, exposed in all its absurdity a scenario many reporters are familiar with.
But then shame on you sir; in depth analysis, features, decent photographs, more staff, more resources, time spent doing things in that long forgotten fashion — properly — by God, those sort of views are almost Labourite (Labour Party — former bitter opponents of the right wing Conservative Party, but now indistinguishable) and will surely lead to the demise of local papers and Western civilisation.
I remain as ever your humble correspondent,
.
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If there were more people like Mr Akabussi about working in local newspapers, then there certainly is a future for them.
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All the groups are still making huge profits its just they are not as huge as before and their financial models are based upon year on year dividend growth with 30% profit margins.
With the growing cost of debt and the fall in profit (but still profit) a lot of these groups made horrendously poor management decisions that forced them all to gut their products until debt repayments became manageable.
The biggest change in the last 15 years in UK media has not been the advent of the web its been the almost complete end of takeovers funded by debt.
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I think the main problem is that the local newspaper industry is run by people who don’t understand (or often care for, newspapers).
They’re obsessed with growing digital audiences yet don’t understand the nuances of those audiences (the biggest being that they’re transient and have absolutely no loyalty to you, beyond an easy share on Facebook), in fact, most newspaper story comments are usually derisory towards the paper in question and/or journalist, so having 100,000 Twitter followers gets you no kudos from me, I’d rather have 5,000 people willing to pay their hard earned money instead.
“What are we doing?” “We don’t know!” “When are we doing it?” “Now!”
Stop bringing in showrunners from HMV and AOL and put newspaper people in charge, then ask the readers – genuinely ask the readers – what they want and go about seeing if you can give it to them again. Stop shining poo and calling gold, at least admit what you’re doing – a quick smash and grab before you flutter off to the next plum boardroom job.
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Mr Akabussi, you are absolutely right.
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So much sense being spoken in this thread. If some of the people on here were running the show instead of the ‘pinstripe prat’ brigade we wouldn’t have half the problems. We just need to do what we’ve always done, and do it well, and accept that sometimes a five per cent profit margin is OK. It’s fine for a lot of businesses. Local ownership of local newspapers, or maybe local businesses run by proper newspaper people on some kind of subsidised/franchise basis has got to be the way forward.
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there is still a place for a quality free weekly ran on a tight budget with full web/sm platform to make money. The big regional paid for dailies are screwed
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Totally with you John – the owners don’t care about quality it’s only profit,well said though!
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Re: John Akabussi Northerner.
I hope you are right, but in my community young and old have all switched off reading newspapers-including nationals.
It’s easy blaming UK management, but the same thing is happening in America, Australia, and across much of the western world.
One problem seems to be that so much of weekly newspaper content is predictable and boring.
“Rubbish photographs” have often been the hallmark of weekly newspapers with uninspiring group shots in the heydays of regional papers.
I can’t seen weekly journalists doing much in-depth analysis. This costs time and money, and most weekly editors are too frightened of libel actions for this to take off.
Weekly journalists I know are scared to death of making any kind of mistake. You’d think they were working for insurance companies rather than hard-hitting “print and be damned” operators.
“Weekly magazines” smacks more of county magazines writing puff pieces about “how pretty my village is” rather than digging out the truth.
As for being close to the neighbours, most people I can think of neither know or care who their next door neighbours are.
I don’t think any of the Tindle titles are famous for their campaigning columns.
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but the truth often hurts.
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DIPSTICK BMD’s now go on social media costs too high to advertise on these.
I worked for Trinity Mirror weeklies and sold advertising for over 20 years and said for years they should look at Tindles model Chocolate boxes hey if it concentrates of specific areas that’s good business not being dictated to by shareholders and having a belief in your staff Carry on Sir Ray 88 years old and got more sense than these so call news people. Oh and any managing editor who tells you digital is the way forward see if they’re still, in post after 2 years.
multimedia has been built on the display and classified advertisers and revenues moved to show growth in multimedia and when the retailers latch on to circulation figures dropping and stop print as printing leaflets will be cheaper then digital will go with it down the pan. People are interested in local news but mostly papers now share content with nearby editions and a re not specific enough
as for the reader who pays 80p for somelses news no brainer there
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Dissatisfaction, cynicism, and issues with newspaper groups are a common theme in this thread. Sadly in recent years as reporters and editorial staff we have been taken in by the cry that the ‘news’ is more important than the people who report it, ‘ work long hours for no extra reward , employers demand, your lucky to have a job, they say, multi task, so we can do away with photographers, centralise sub ing to we lose subs, and so on ad finitum.
And of course the toothless NUJ does nothing, no campaigns, no action, no pressure.
And still the unis and colleges churn out thousands of young people trained as ‘journalists’ — providing a huge pool of young people desperate to work for peanuts — most of whom struggle to get jobs.
The Portsmouth News now has a news room for trainee journalists from nearby Highbury College so as part of their course they can gain work experience (unpaid of course) and work for the paper — nuff said.
But point out the obvious as we do, nothing will change until integrity, honesty, and a genuine enthusiasm for local communities, rather than lip service to papers being local, forces its way back into the mix — and you can stick that across all multi media platforms !!
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Re Dipstick
I think local newspapers have always been subject to lazy stereotypes which don’t always reflect the truth.
There’s some exceptional local journalism being done out there even now and it very often doesn’t get the credit it deserves, to a large extent it never did. A regional newspaper is the only job you will ever do where a total stranger in the pub feels they have carte blanche to tell you your work is ‘rubbish’ and the product is ‘a rag’, it was always thus – it’s a thankless task. Yet the same people get about 70% of their pub conversation topics from ‘that thing they read in the paper’ which you actually dug out, crafted and wrote.
When I was a local reporter I spent 5 months of my own time on a feature which exposed an alleged conspiracy by the US government to target and shut down a local drugs clinic that gave away heroin in the 90s that led to a major reduction in crime and long term drug use, altering the course of the UK drugs war for good. This was paired with an exclusive interview with the creator of The Wire, David Simon, about the parallels with a plot in the show, again, an interview I arranged and basically mithered him for ages about over email. It barely featured on our internet hits and I doubt many people would have cited it the next time they spotted a spelling mistake in ‘the rag’s’ bowling section, but who cares? I enjoyed it and hopefully a few people did too.
A colleague of mine also spent a year of his own time and his own money to get access to files exposing decades of chemical spills which led to widespread cancer cases. Again, little kudos or fanfare came his way, but who cares? He didn’t. Pride is a journalist’s best friend – your name is on it, it should be good and it should be right. There’s more to local newspapers than stories about dilapidated but stops (which are stories though which, in fairness, still matter and impact people’s lives – which is what journalism should also be about).
Regional journalism is often where the last vestiges of ‘proper’ journalism exist. When you go to broadcast news channels the first thing they do in the morning is go through the papers to find stories, that and rewriting newswire copy is their bread and butter – but it’s not real journalism in my opinion, it’s just presentation.
If you want (admittedly less and less) feet on the ground, shoe leather, contacts, building and maintaining trust, sitting in court for days on end and trawling through council agendas – the stories which impact most people’s day to day life – then local papers are where it is, and always has been, at.
I think some of the issues you mention, rubbish pictures and reporters being too scared to write things, are very much symptoms of the modern issues gripping the industry. Real photographers make all the difference, you can’t replicate what they did with UGC garbage, which is what it mostly is, garbage, you can’t easily teach an amateur – and I include myself in this – to frame a good shot, it’s why people pay wedding snappers 3k a pop and don’t just do it themselves on their phones.
The fears of journalists stems from many things, they tend to be young and inexperienced, with the experienced ones having left the profession/trade in droves. There’s also often no safety net for them, with layers of management and news editors removed as entire organisations have been decapitated. Under staffed, under resourced, all those things can be reversed if and when somebody picks up the industry baton and attempts to do things properly – they can also start by curtailing how many stories go online, I can’t think of any other industry that gives something away for free and then attempts to charge someone three days later for the exact same product – total madness.
It’s heartbreaking what’s happened to the job. My partner is a teacher who always wanted to be a teacher, and I say to her ‘imagine someone said they were closing all the schools in five years and you couldn’t be a proper teacher any more, but before that they got rid of half your staff, gave you half the time you need to plan a lesson, took your pens off you, trebled your class size and replaced your headteacher with a ‘head of kids’ based in a school 12 miles away who you never saw and who spent their entire time hiding under the desk praying for retirement.
I can’t think of another profession, except possibly the heavy industries of the late 70s and early 80s, that have been so completely and utterly destroyed in such a short space of time. Upper management are like termites, they’ll take what’s left of quality newspapers and good journalism and when they’ve finished with it they’ll throw it over their shoulder like an empty beer can, and I guarantee, stereotypes or not, local people will miss their local papers then.
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Mr T’s definition of viability and mine clearly differ alarmingly. I suspect he means profit and dividends. I mean decent wages, staffing levels and shining examples of skilled professionals coming off the presses. Shame his circulation figures will remain a mystery. I suspect they don’t support his claims.
This race to the bottom the country’s engaged in, whereby workers get paid to do more and more for less and less is nothing to be proud of.
Printed news circulation is falling in the vast majority of cases. What passes for local news these days is often dull, trite, poorly written and badly presented. I am none the wiser about anything relevant to my life after I’ve read my local paper. Little is exposed. Few wrongs are righted. The smiling faces of people at community events are all very well, but it’s cheap content, easily gathered by low paid journalists (or it’s “user-generated content) and I have no idea why that satisfies reporters as a way to earn a living. To my mind that’s not news. It’s part of the mix, sure. But local papers need to do more than just report a day later what we already know happened. They need to make a difference to our lives and our communities. They need to make us say “wow” more often. But the talent to do that is ebbing fast as well-paid and skilled staff are sacrificed so that papers can limp on, and replaced by lower paid and less skilled staff.
I wish you all well at Tindle, I really do. But what you’re doing all day wouldn’t challenge or interest me as local journalism once did. Towards the end of my tenure it became too easy and too boring. When the time came I didn’t fight for my job because it wasn’t interesting enough to fight for.
I have a new career now. I earn less but I’m excited and stimulated for the first time in years.
If you can say the same about working for local newspaper, then I’m glad. But the scales will fall from your eyes when you’ve left 😉
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Tindle appears to have started to lose the plot.
I’m sure that his papers in the sickbeds of news like Axminster, Crediton and Usk are excellent, but the decline of the South London Press, Yellow Advertiser and Enfield Gazette – newspapers in genuinely newsworthy areas – since he took them over is nothing short of scandalous.
He doesn’t give his reporters pay rises, he doesn’t replace staff once they leave, he doesn’t seem to exercise any kind of quality control – and he demands overworked journalists get together to produce another vanity edition, the sort of thing which tries to turn a proper newsy area like (for instance) Blackheath into some benighted dullhole in Zumerzet without even having the common sense to get some staff in to cover them. End result – proper papers see their standards slipping as there’s not enough people to look after them any more. Couple that with the atrocious pay, terrible management, and it’s clear why so many of his staff are utterly demoralised. Sort it out, Sir Ray!
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A journalist under-estimates the great British public at his peril. There are some intelligent people on this small island, and some of them can take “news” photographs.The average regional newspaper photograph is not rocket science, and you don’t need the artistry of a Henri Cartier-Bresson. In my experience, photographers were often the main supporters of the NUJ, and that’s because too many of them had become institutionalised by working for years on the same dead-dog weekly.
It would be great if it was possible to write in-depth probing articles in weekly newspapers, but you’d have to be very careful.It’s all right for The Guardian to run articles saying policemen get too much pay, or for the Daily Express to say the same about teachers. But at local town and village level you have to go native to survive.If you stuck your neck out too far you’d ostracize everybody in the village and bang would go your contacts, your adverts, and your circulation. The advertising manager would hate you, the proprietor would be checking employment law before firing you, and your wife would be planning to take herself and the kids off to mother. Nobody would appreciate what you’d done. And all because you have an ego the size of a pumpkin.
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