A sports journalist who took redundancy from a group of weekly newspapers has hit out at what he called their “complete lack” of non-league football and cricket coverage online since his departure.
Jon Phipps, left, who worked as sports content editor for four of Trinity Mirror’s former Local World titles in Kent until June, criticised his ex-employer in a series of outspoken Twitter posts.
In particular, he highlighted what he claims is a decline in coverage of non-league football clubs Margate and Ramsgate, as well as Kent County Cricket Club.
Instead, Jon says content is focused on league football club Charlton Athletic, as well as non-league Dover Athletic, who are covered by a freelancer.
Jon tweeted his criticisms following the launch of Trinity Mirror’s ‘Kent Live’ website earlier this month, which saw eight newspaper companion sites in the county amalgamated into one.
He wrote: “I feel the need to say a few things. But before I do, I need to point out that I have nothing bad to say about my former colleagues. I still count several of them as really good friends, and what has gone on is a million miles from their fault.
“But this week ‘Kent Live’ appeared and took over all the old paper websites. Although very late in the day, I think it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense, though, is the sport coverage. Or rather the complete lack of it. Charlton. Dover. That’s it.
“I had a brilliant time covering Margate FC and Ramsgate FC, but now they have no coverage. Online at least. I was expecting this and that is why I left. There are newsworthy things happening, but because thousands don’t flock online, they are left.
Added Jon: “I’m so sad that local journalism is becoming an endangered species in this quest for web traffic. Yes, sport in Kent can be hard, but jeez, to just ditch it? It’s absolute bloody madness. The beginning of the end.
“No coverage of Kent cricket either, due to the mantra of web being all important. And I just hate to see it all. Fair play to the guys sticking it out, they’re just doing what they are told to pay the bills. But I’m glad I’m not there anymore.”
Jon, who was in charge of sport for Canterbury Times, Dover Express, Folkestone Herald and Isle of Thanet Gazette, left the company in June and now works as a content officer at the Police Federation.
He told HTFP: “I built up a great rapport with the fans and clubs at Margate and Ramsgate, and a lot of people are really disappointed with the lack of coverage they are now getting.
Jon added: “I was brought up in Kent and have always been a staunch believer in the value of the local papers. It’s far from a sporting hotbed, of course, but to keep titles running in the area and abandon the sport because it doesn’t attract thousands online is staggering – especially as the Isle of Thanet Gazette is Margate’s main shirt sponsor this season.”
Trinity Mirror has declined to comment.
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I can envisage TM’s execs facing lots of sleepless nights over this.
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I’m not sure he’s making a great case here – If no one is reading the articles online – why should time be spent on creating them?
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“If no one is reading the articles online – why should time be spent on creating them…”
Utterly muddled and wrong-headed thinking. Application of Webmonkey’s logic would mean that coverage of Watergate (not the bay in Cornwall) would never have got started and Nixon would never have been busted. (That’s the late US President, not the late magician)
Analytics are a great way of generating evidence to justify reducing expenditure on editorial resources, and that is their primary value in the commercial equation of publishing. Their secondary value is that they provide useful intelligence for targeting those reduced editorial resources. But that hierarchy is immutable.
Finally, because I really must get back to work, the illogic of Webmonkey’s statement is most unfortunate; “If no one is reading the articles online – why should time be spent on creating them?”.
When you think about it, one cannot know that no-one is reading an article UNTIL one publishes it.
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I know from experience that very few people read the cricket scores and non-league coverage online (covered by reporters not submitted btw)
We still put them on here but not sure why.
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“I’m so sad that local journalism is becoming an endangered species in this quest for web traffic. ”
Oh, come on. If nobody’s reading it, it makes zero sense to continue.
No company in their right mind would spend time/resources creating something nobody wants.
News company devotes resources to clubs and sports with bigger fanbases. Shock horror.
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The point with covering very local sport is that it is most read by the handful of participants and their family, friends and just a handful of supporters. But although each piece is read by relatively few people, a DIFFERENT few people read each piece. Cover enough local sport and it adds up to a lot of people.
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I don’t think my argument was illogical Kevin, my point was that if you write six or seven articles along the same lines every week (say a local football report) and you are getting no readers or interaction – and your next article will be pretty much the same – does it make sense to keep flogging the same dead horse?
I think it is a bit of a stretch to go from the value of local football/cricket reports to investigative journalism.
It might be ok for a blogger or a fan publishing articles that no one will read, but newspapers are a business.
Another way of looking at analytics is that because these are now available that the types of content that have been written about in papers for years don’t actually have the audience the newspapers thought they did.
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What has been missed in this article – which I did mention when approached – is the knock-on for the papers. I used to produce 17 pages a week. They now do seven, produced in Essex. People still read the papers in Kent – certainly in Thanet – but they’re not getting any coverage in print or online. Perhaps that hasn’t come across clearly enough, but to have two pages of sport just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
Yes, it doesn’t all get hits online, but it is still read in print form. But it’s all or nothing with TM.
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I am convinced that much local sport coverage is purely for people who like to see their names and picture in the paper. Very few people could give a damn who scored a goal for a minor football side.
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@Delighted to be ex-NQ: Really? Ok, so we print the name and possibly a photo of the person who scored a goal for a ‘minor football side’. So he or she buys a copy of the paper. Their mum and aunties, et al buy a copy, and hey! they might also buy a copy of a photo to go with it. Ker-ching! There goes the cash register. Now repeat that process hundreds, if not thousands, of times per week. It’s called local news, or in this case, sport. It’s what sells papers. If you don’t do it, you won’t sell papers. It’s quite simple, really.
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As a local newspaper editor and low level cricketer, I got it in the neck from teammates and opposition at weekend because my title had tailed off in printing cricket scorecards. This is a blip due to submission issues, but you get my point. Readers expect a lot from their local titles and it’s important we continue to deliver.
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So according to some posters on here, I spent half my 46 years in regional newspapers providing copy that hardly anybody read.
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