A 2,000-word essay by Local World chief David Montgomery outlining his vision of the future of journalism has been described as a “working document” by the company.
A memo leaked to Press Gazette revealed a series of thoughts outlined by the regional publishing boss about the future role of journalists in the group.
They include giving responsibility for producing smaller weekly titles to single content managers who will “skim” online published content to create the newspaper.
The document also envisages that the majority of newspaper content will be produced by third party contributors, with the journalist’s main role being to assemble it in “attractive formats.”
Local World has described the document as an “internal working paper” and it is understood that it was sent only to a small number of LW staff.
A spokesperson said: “Our strategy is built around enriched content and this internal working paper is to help inform the work on building systems which free our journalists up to focus on creating, sourcing and managing content.”
The document envisages that editors will become ‘content directors’ whose role will chiefly be concerned with content strategy rather than with choosing inside page leads.
Most journalists would work remotely, but larger daily titles would be put together by a group of content managers who would remain office-bound.
Mr Montgomery took over as both chief executive and chairman of Local world earlier this month with the departure of the previous CEO, Steve Auckland.
Company results published today by its biggest shareholder, DMGT, reveal that it made an operating profit of around £28m in the first nine months of the year.
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I’ve read the ramblings, sorry, essay, and if it didn’t potentially affect the lives of many people it would be almost funny. It is over-long, full of jargon, badly punctuated and has the air of someone badly out of touch with reality.
This is another PR calamity for Montgomery. What now must his journalists be thinking ? Does he not think as the chairman or chief executive, or whatever he is, that he has a responsibility to bring his staff along with him ?
This latest episode, and his previous failures, spell very bad news for Local World I’m afraid. Which is sad. It had a lot going for it.
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Mad.
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This is all very dubious. On the day LW announces excellent profits – generated in part by the very staff DM excoriates – this purportedly “leaked” rubbish emerges. The effect of these witless comments will be to demoralise hard-working staff, sure, but also to alienate them and the all-important investors who are seeing a good return on their money.
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All that free junk mail that comes through your letter box. Why not cut it up, arrange it in an attractive format, paste it on a sheet and photocopy it. You could then sell it as a newspaper…. or maybe not.
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Another example of a senior manager thinking they know best for the business with no idea of what is going on in newsrooms (or caring). I could do his job standing on my head. Cut costs, close newspapers, sack people. Easy. When we will see a real visionary who can take us to the next stage.
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In the same week as HTFP is reporting on a weekly in Cumbria trying to save its local fire engine and a business editor putting crooks behind bars, we hear Montgomery wanting to reduce small weeklies to “skimming online content”.
And what is content strategy if it isn’t choosing page leads?
I give up…
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Faintly reassuring to see LW already distancing itself from Monty’s ravings. It’s all pretty mad, but one point stands out on a first reading: if the journalist’s role is to assemble content in attractive formats, it would help if LW actually showed some ability to do that with its own websites, which are an object lesson in how not to present online content.
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