A freelance sports writer who has worked for a Scottish Sunday title for 12 years has announced his resignation online, saying he feared he would be axed from the title.
Award-winning journalist Bryan Cooney has written regular articles for the Sunday Herald but quit the title in a blog post, believing he was becoming too expensive for the paper and could be dropped.
He claimed that the paper’s sports budget had been cut and his initial brief of two or three interviews a month when he started had gone down to one story every four or five weeks this year.
Bryan, who was head of sport at the Daily Mail until taking early retirement in 2001, has now launched a new interview and discussion website, No Grey Areas, with fellow freelance sportswriter Jim Black.
His departure from the Sunday Herald comes after 17 journalists were made redundant from Newsquest’s Herald and Times Group, leading to a dispute with the National Union of Journalists.
In a blog post on his new website, Bryan wrote: “The newspaper game in which I’ve participated for half a century has been declared a bogey. I’ve decided to leave the Sunday Herald – and thus pre-empt its sacking me.
“I had been writing for the paper on a regular freelance basis for twelve years. So, when there seemed little appetite for my contributions, I was immediately alerted.”
Bryan wrote that he had spoken to a friend who works for Newsquest, who claimed the sport budgets had been cut to a quarter of their 2011 levels, meaning his £450 fee would account for more than 50pc of an edition’s resources.
Added Bryan: “I outlined my fears in an email to the sports editor, Jonathan Jobson. Back came a scarcely encouraging response.
“He more or less suggested that I was too expensive to maintain, stressed that he’d be very sad to lose me but would always be happy to run occasional pieces. The mention of the word ‘occasional’ encouraged a cynical smile.
“My initial brief back in 2001 had been for two, sometimes three, interviews a month. By the turn of this year, it was running at approximately one every four or five weeks. Now we were exploring new territory. Were biannual interviews being contemplated, perhaps?
“For once in an admittedly rather turbulent life, I played the responsible card and explained, again in an email, that I had a duty to consider my options.
“Back at my list of options, I quickly concluded that I’d never write another word for the Sunday Herald. Nay, not even if they suddenly discovered extravagance and gave me the kind of dosh that would enable Wayne Rooney to buy the missus another designer handbag.
“So, as Duncan Bannatyne of the Dragons Den might say, “I’m out”. Before I’m kicked out, of course. I acknowledge the rules: no sympathy will be, or deserves to be, distributed my way.
Bryan said, despite being 68-year-old and suffering from prostate cancer and a heart condition, he did not intend to retire and would instead focus on his new website.
The Herald and Times Group had not responded to requests for a comment at the time of publication.
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Self indulgent claptrap
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If one sad case can sum up the malaise of the industry at the moment, this is it. Experienced, award-winning journalists’ work not wanted.
No doubt, they’ll use badly-written, cliche-packed (but free) user generated content in place of Bryan’s work.
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Sad times but to be fair to Newsquest, £450 for one feature seems massive. You could employ a full-time reporter on that and they could bash out dozens of features a week.
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Newsquest has been cutting back on columnists and freelances for a number of years now so this is no surprise. When budgets are squeezed they are usually the first to go.
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I’m surprised he was kept on this long considering his fee is 450 a feature. Good on him for keeping at it, but why say he’ll never work for the Herald again? As far as I can tell the Herald kept him on for a long time and would still consider the odd feature. Not bad for someone approaching 70.
As he said, few will have sympathy with him – especially the thousands of journalists who have been treated much more harshly than him.
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Sorry but that’s the point of the freelancing arrangement – you are not permanent staff and either of you can walk away at almost any point and for any reason, usually with no ill feeling. To write an angry blog attacking a client’s struggling budget is just childish and has cost him £450 a month by the sounds of it. In fact it is probably a lot more… would you feel comfortable taking on someone who would attack your publication like this?
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Couldn’t agree more with all the other comments.
He’s ridden this gravy train for long enough and been far better off then thousands of put-upon journalists across the country – time to get off.
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Assuming the £450 fee is per article rather than per month (otherwise surely the newspaper would have wanted more articles for their money, not less), £1,000ish a month is nice work if you can get it!
And didn’t Bryan ever work to an editorial budget or dispense with the services of a freelance while he was head of sports at the Daily Mail?
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