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‘Our flame will burn on’ says Liverpool daily

A regional newspaper pledged that its ‘flame will burn on’ today as it published its last daily edition.

The Liverpool Daily Post is relaunching as a 100-page weekly from next Thursday after 157 years of daily publication.

It signed off with a front page which made no mention of the forthcoming frequency changed, splashing on plans for a £28m biotechnology centre in the city.

However in a leading article which also praised Liverpool-born press inquiry judge Brian Leveson, it promised that its “flame” would continue to burn.

The paper warned:  “These are dangerous times.  Some of the basic rights, indepedent checks and balances that still make Britain a democracy that is the envy of much of the world are under subtle, but insidious, assault.

“Our newspapers are one of the bastions of free expression and independent thought, yet they are under assault on so many fronts that their very survival is under threat.

“It is fashionable among some  elements of the chattering classes to  disparage newspaper journalism, with the hacking scandal providing the perfect stick with which to beat it.

“We can take some comfort from the fact that a judge with the excellent antecedents of Liverpool’s own Brian Leveson is chairing the inquiry into  this scandal. He is not a man to have his judgment coloured  by mass anti-press hysteria.

“All of this has come at a time when  our independent newspapers face  massive economic challenges to their  survival. The digital age is fundamentally changing the ways in  which we receive our information,  with many young people never  looking at a traditional newspaper.

“There are towns of significant size  in Britain today where the local newspapers have already gone out of business, taking with them their online companion websites.

“The Liverpool Daily Post was established  157 years ago as an independent voice  for the people of this city and its surrounding region.

“Today, we  publish for the last time as a daily  newspaper, thanks in no small part to  the economic problems with which  this industry is confronted.

“We are changing, but we have not been silenced. Our journalism continues, keeping our audience informed live every day through our website of the important  events that affect their lives.

“And, on Thursday, the new-look  Liverpool Post will appear for the  first time, carrying on the 157-year mission to inform, and defend, the  people of our city region.

“It is a mission we believe in as  fiercely as our forefathers did when this newspaper was launched in a  very different Britain during the  Crimean War.

“We are changing, but the flame our  journalists have carried with pride  for the past 157 years burns on.”

The paper, which had an average daily sale of 8,217 according to the most recent ABC figures, is the fifth daily title to go weekly in the past six months and the first outside of the Northcliffe Media stable.  Six jobs have been lost as a result of the change.

Its website will still be updated every day.

12 comments

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  • January 13, 2012 at 11:26 am
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    Shame.. I worked in the circulation department in the seventies when sales were over 100,000 copies a day. Yes, a day!

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  • January 13, 2012 at 12:18 pm
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    It’s a sad, sad time. I’m afraid the decline in the print press as a medium for news is being reflected in my own role as a press officer where the drive from management is to target social media and not newspapers!

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  • January 13, 2012 at 1:15 pm
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    I don’t follow the logic of targeting social media. Yes, it targets the younger generation but misses communicating with a great swathe of folk of 50 and beyond who have better things to do with their lives. Websites provide info to everyone with a computer… but the vast majority of websites are run by newspapers. Social media as an add on is fine but news organisations should always be the first port of call.

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  • January 13, 2012 at 1:30 pm
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    Luddite, if you imagine social media as a pub, it should make sense. If you could get people in a pub talking about your newspaper, and they then went to the shops and bought a copy each, we’d all be happy.

    Online, social media is that pub. We have a chance to get our stories out to people via social networks and talking about us. Hopefully, they then click on a link and come to the source of the news – us – rather than going to someone who has lifted the story and is using it elsewhere.

    It’s not social media v news website, it should be being on social media leading people to our work

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  • January 13, 2012 at 2:18 pm
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    Luddite, I’d take issue with two things,

    “the vast majority of websites are run by newspapers”

    The point is, they aren’t. Newspaper websites are (and have always been) struggling to catch up with companies like Facebook, Google (blogger), Twitter etc who have led the way in website development.

    At some point you’ve got to go with the flow, accept that people are talking about news in other arenas and make the best of it to try and get people to visit to your copy amongst the many other sources of news they now get.

    and it’s not just about computers, it’s increasingly about mobile phones and tablets now.

    I’d also take issue with your assumption that folk over 50 aren’t interested in using computers, I think you’ll find there are a great silver surfers that are and that will just increase as the first generation of personal computer users who are 40+ now age.

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  • January 13, 2012 at 2:27 pm
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    “On” or “Out”

    We’ll just have to wait and see.

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  • January 13, 2012 at 4:46 pm
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    At my paper we embrace social media and have had many exclusives through Facebook and Twitter. In the past fortnight we have got wind of three exclusive stories via FB that we then syndicated and only last night I was able to get on top of an RTA story in our patch using Twitter. I had a more complete picture of events than the Police Press office within an hour of the accident happening. Further to that I’ve managed to get hold of a man who narrowly avoided being involved in the crash this morning using Facebook.

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  • January 16, 2012 at 9:03 am
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    Um…so we should all rely on Facebook, Twitter and Google for our news now according to press offices…
    Where on earth do you think they get the content that people share? From news organsiations you doughnuts. Get rid of all of them and Google News isn’t going to be quite so interesting is it?
    And don’t talk about citizen journalism. It’s a myth wrapped in a legal minefield.

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  • January 16, 2012 at 12:27 pm
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    the flame will only burn on if the Post has journalists who can get under the skin of the city, doing what journalists used to do, pound the streets and drink with the locals, looking and listening. If they’re stuck in the office, churning out press releases, then I give the new weekly five years max, maybe three.

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  • January 16, 2012 at 12:29 pm
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    Trouble is Sou’Wester, everybody’s already read it on Twitter/FB, so why buy a paper?

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  • January 16, 2012 at 1:55 pm
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    If you can read it on Twitter, then so can everyone else. Jeez. I used to get p*ssed off with bloggers ripping off the work of hacks, in your case Souwester it’s the other way round.

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  • January 16, 2012 at 4:29 pm
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    Seenthelight, reading facebook updates & tweets isn’t encouraging anyone to buy newspapers. Hearing that there has been a crash on a certain road, an ongoing police investigation in a town or the local sports results on a Saturday evening is enough for most people these days, especially youngsters. They don’t want to pay to go & read a 300 word report on each story as well. They’ve had the news that they want for free, it’s commercial suicide.
    It wouldn’t be so bad if the newspaper websites that people are directed to by social media made enough advertising revenue to maintain profit margins & sustain current staffing levels but we all know that is never going to happen.
    Where I work we’ve been told that we have to think of the title as a brand rather than a newspaper & embrace social media. The problem is, what’s the point of a brand that doesn’t make money because they’re giving their core product away for free?

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