Newspaper entrepreneur Sir Ray Tindle has sold a majority stake in a 200-year-old Sunday newspaper to his company’s outgoing managing director.
Brian Doel stepped down as MD of Tindle Newspapers on Wednesday after a long career in the industry.
But it has now been disclosed that he has purchased a 51pc stake in one of the group’s flagship titles, the Plymouth-based Sunday Independent.
The Independent, which was launched in 1808 during the Napoleonic Wars, is facing a potential challenge from the decision of Local World to take its own Plymouth-based title the Western Morning News to seven day a week publication.
Said Brian: “I am greatly looking forward to an even closer association with the “Indy.” I live near Plymouth and have been involved with this highly regarded Sunday paper most of my career.
“It was launched in 1808 and has survived Napoleon and two World Wars. It has another 200 years ahead.”
Sir Ray added: “Brian will be missed by the whole staff after so many active and exciting years helping to build this company into perhaps the largest independent family weekly newspaper business in the UK.
“He will not be leaving us completely, however, as TNL will be a 49pc partner in the “Indy” and Brian will be looking after our very successful local radio stations in the Channel Islands and Ireland.
“He may not allow himself any time at all actually to retire but we wish him all the very best in his new ventures”.
It has not yet been disclosed whether Brian will be replaced as Tindle group MD.
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I wish Newsquest would sell some of its papers – large number of subbing redundancies announced in Blackburn.
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I remember when I lived in Plymouth you couldn’t get a bigger contrast than that between the Sunday Independent and the WMN.
The Independent was a trashy downmarket rag, perhaps like some of the wild idiot weeklies you find in London today. In those days I believe the Indie was owned by the Daily Mirror group and the company’s trainee journalists spent a year or so in the West Country before getting jobs on the Mirror in London. Most of them didn’t give a damn about Plymouth or its people and that showed in the product. Its reporting was insincere and fooled no-one. A bit like the Daily Mirror pretending to be left wing.
By contrast, the WMN was highly respected and no wonder. Though rather staid and conservative, it reflected perfectly the community it served. Jam-packed with hard news, its coverage was solid and reliable. Many of its journalists had worked in Fleet Street and had moved west to bring up their families, while lots of younger staffers moved to the capital to serve a variety of media roles.
Shame that the WMN, like all mornings, is losing out.
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Let me guess, End game, you used to work for the WMN. Or you currently work for them. That thing about ‘wild idiot weeklies’ in London is a bit off – there’s some very good papers in London.
Aaaanyway, does anyone else think it’s a touch odd that Tindle is, in effect, selling off a paper? Does anyone else think it’s worrying that Sir Ray (who normally doesn’t do such things) is getting rid of a small part of his empire?
Isn’t that the story?
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As a former Mirror trainee can I refute much of the nonsense that we didn’t give a damn about Plymouth. After the training scheme in 1975 I joined Westward Television/TSW as a programme maker, a route followed by other ex-trainees Jane Wanstall and Jill Husband. Jan Wooster was a highly regarded features editor of the WMN, while Jim Parker has remained in Devon.
But the trainees in Plymouth at the Sunday Independent were only part of the story. There was a core of talented senior journalists who ran the paper and they were locally based and committed to providing a Sunday newspaper packed with Saturday’s sport. The WMN couldn’t supply this sports coverage – indeed during the week they provided mostly national and regional coverage, not the nuts and bolts of any sort of local fixtures.
It was a “temporary” move here to take up a two-year course to further my career. That was nearly 40 years ago and I’m still here.
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Good luck to Brian – when I moved on to the Indy as a Mirror trainee, I was in the Exeter office, which he ran. We did some good stuff, albeit in a style that would no doubt seem horribly dated now. At least one of us trainees in our small office (over a rather nice bakery) went on to work at the Express and Echo, before moving on in her career.
I’ll always remember one bit of advice (command?) Brian gave me: make my phone interviews shorter. Not sure it worked as, although I’m still a journalist, I went on to become a therapist too…
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Yes, Part-Time Hack, I have to come clean and admit that I did once work for the WMN. Thanks for the compliment!
I am not saying that all London weeklies are rubbish. It’s just that of the ones I’ve seen, words and phrases like “Lurid”, “Ghastly”, “Over the top”, “In yer face” come readily to mind.
Regarding it being odd that Tindle should sell off a newspaper, that is actually not always so. He does dispose of newspapers when they don’t make money, but it is done with the minimum of fuss so as not to damage the Tindle independent newspapers brand.
If you want to do some research on this, look up the Fleetwood Weekly News in Lancashire. This was a small family run outfit before being bought by Tindle and sold in 2000 after eight years to the Blackpool Gazette evening newspaper just down the road. It was all very hush-hush.
As for Tom’s comment, what I am saying is that the Independent in my day was a classic case of the management not understanding, or more likely not caring, about the type of reader it purported to serve. It’s journalism was insincere and even the most unsophisticated person could suss this out, but perhaps, as you imply, people bought it to read the sport.
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sorry I forgot to mention Local World chiefDavid Montgomery was also a trainee
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Ok, then – which London papers are guilty of being ‘over the top’, ‘lurid’, ‘ghastly’ and ‘in your face’. Name them. Or have you been in the West Country so long that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about?
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Just let me find my boxing gloves, Part-time Hack, before I answer your question.
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