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Newspaper faces ‘Last Post’ less than year after launch

A newspaper started last year by two ‘old school’ journalists with a century of experience between them has lost its battle to survive.

Mort Birch and Steve Evans, who first became colleagues nearly 50 years ago, are now working on the final edition of the Nuneaton & Bedworth Post.

The monthly not-for-profit publication, started last October with the ideal of “striking a chord in the hearts of the people of our two proud towns”, has been unable to attract the advertising revenue to sustain its continued existence.

The pair joined forces with five other like-minded co-directors from the borough to create a “no politics, no crime” paper designed to support the local community by giving profits to local good causes.

Last month's penultimate edition of the Nuneaton & Bedworth Post

Said Mort, 71:  “Twelve months ago, seven of us had a dream. We set out to produce a newspaper that was different.

“Now the stark facts are that The Post is no longer financially viable and will cease publication after our August edition. I’m personally gutted and very sad that we have not been able to keep the paper going.

“All of us are volunteers and our aim was to create something that would cherish our heritage, look to the future and educate and entertain.

“We knew from the start that it would be a perilous project, but we pressed on undaunted.

The paper, based in the Citizens Advice Bureau in Bedworth, brought together the combined talents of two journalists who have devoted their entire careers to the Nuneaton, Bedworth and Coventry news areas.

Mort started on the Bedworth & Foleshill News, before becoming the chief sports writer on the Nuneaton Evening Tribune. In 1979, with Nuneaton Observer sports editor Alan Robinson, they launched the independent Bedworth Echo weekly.

They tasted editorial and commercial success – selling out in 1993 to their bigger neighbours, the Coventry Telegraph.

Mort stayed on for a while as the paper’s editor before joining the fledging Heartland Evening News which latterly became the Nuneaton News after being bought out by Iliffe Media.

After retiring two years ago, Mort has just gone back to help the five-times-a-week daily to launch Archive – a four-page nostalgia supplement published on Thursdays in the News.

Steve, his co-director at the Post, first met Mort in 1967 when he began his newspaper career at the Nuneaton Evening Tribune at the age of 16 after being the school correspondent at Keresley Newland comprehensive.

A move to the Coventry Telegraph saw Steve, 63, win provincial sports journalist of the year and become the only reporter in the paper’s history to hold the posts of football and rugby chief writer – covering the Sky Blues and Coventry Rugby Club in their heydays.

The Bedworth-born friends, who’ve clocked up 100 years in newspapers between them, added: “We both loved this paper. And the passing of the Post will leave a big gap in the marketplace.

“The people, particularly those in Bedworth, took it to their hearts. Now we’ve started telling them it’s folding – they are quite shocked. One woman even offered to house the operation in her front room.”

“As a not-for-profit venture we had plans to hold a gala night each year and hand over any monies, above and beyond our costs, to worthy causes. We expect they’ll be a few hundred pounds left at the end of all this.”

The Post’s final front page will say “sorry folks” for its demise and thank readers, community groups, advertisers and newsagents for supporting the venture.

The splash on the last edition’s cover says: “This is something we desperately didn’t want to happen. We did not want to disappoint the loyal readers. It has been a real roller coaster of an adventure and we would not have missed it for the world.”

17 comments

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  • July 30, 2014 at 8:10 am
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    Sadly ‘good news’ newspapers just do not work. They cannot reflect the true nature of a community unless covering crime, courts, bacsliding councillors, defrocked clerics and so on… Sorry Lads. In Peterborough we are lumbered with a JP title, they’ve cut back so much the remaining reporter gets dozens of bylines in each once a week issue… sheer madness

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  • July 30, 2014 at 10:03 am
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    Sadly, it was doomed from the launch. During my several decades in journalism I can recall numerous newspapers which “invented” the idea of only publishing good news. They all proved to be flops.
    Readers expect their paper to reflect all the news in the area and not to act as some kind of official censor by failing to print crime, fires etc etc

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  • July 30, 2014 at 10:21 am
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    No politics, no crime, no news, no wonder it went belly up.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 10:28 am
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    Alas, Observer50 and bluestringer are both spot-on. People say one thing and do the other.
    At every WI meeting I spoke to as an editor they always clamoured for more “good” stories.”We don’t want to read about those horrible car crashes and what the council is up to,” they insisted.
    So I experimented with a “good news” edition one week and saw 300 copies instantly wiped off the circulation.
    I never did that again…

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  • July 30, 2014 at 10:43 am
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    Just shows that 50 years experience can count for very little – these ‘good news’ papers are dull as dishwater.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 10:58 am
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    Sad to hear it didn’t work out, lads. Still, knowing your enduring love for the game, I’m sure you’ll find another enterprise to keep the juices flowing.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 11:26 am
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    clip art? clip? art? on the front page? clip art? that’s reason enough for failure.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 1:10 pm
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    Very sorry for Steve and Mort after all of their hard work. As for the first three critical comments, pay no attention to people who dare not use their real names! Courage of convictions etc!

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  • July 30, 2014 at 3:37 pm
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    The problem appears to be a lack of advertising revenue rather than shortage of ‘nasty news’.
    At least the demise is a good example for editors to quote the next time an ad manager pipes up with the claim that they struggle to sell into their particular paper because there’s not enough good news in it.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 4:00 pm
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    Nice try, but give me a warts and all view of life as opposed to the rose-coloured spectacles outlook any day. I much prefer the true picture even if it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 8:14 pm
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    Good news is always bad news for newspapers.
    I recall experiments like this stretching all the way back to the early 1960s. Every single one went t*ts up within a few months.
    The road to ruin is paved with good intentions. Readers don’t like ‘doctored’ news. They like it straight, preferably with a controversial edge to it.
    I lectured a police conference once when this subject arose. ‘Why don’t you stick to happy news stories?’ asked one senior officer.
    “Which paper would you buy off a newsstand?’ I asked, ‘The one headed ‘Ten-year-old wins spelling bee’ or the one reporting ‘Six die in knife horror’?
    There was a very long silence which was finally broken by a splutter of laughter on the back row. Soon the whole room had erupted in laughter.
    The subject didn’t arise again.

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  • July 30, 2014 at 8:17 pm
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    No politics, great idea.(no lies and no puffs).
    No crime, not so clever.
    Readers like bad news. Sad reflection on human race but still true.
    Good try though.

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  • July 31, 2014 at 11:08 am
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    Sorry to hear this, especially after all of the hard work put in by Steve and Mort.
    It’s a shame that most of the critics who have posted on this site don’t use their real names. Put your money where your mouth is!

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  • August 1, 2014 at 8:20 am
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    Shame advertising lets you down, even for a good cause, thanks for your good work Mort Birch and Steve Evans !!!

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  • August 7, 2014 at 11:05 am
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    Sincere thanks for all your comments – warts and all. The perception is that Mort and I launched a “good news” paper. Not true. We have carried death and destruction stories (two pensioners in their 90s, for example, one who survived the biggest disaster in maritime history – see Lancastria, Reg Brown – and a crime victim aged 95 who visits prisoners to turn their lives around). Our problem was simply advertising revenue. We were a charity MONTHLY newspaper competing in a marketplace of two evening newspapers and one weekly newspaper. Against that opposition, I guess our monthly voluntary endeavour was always doomed. But we tried….at least we tried.

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  • August 28, 2014 at 12:17 am
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    Seems to me that a lot of the critics are making very generalised statements. I for one enjoyed reading a paper that wan’t full of doom and gloom, crime and bad news. I enjoyed reading the Post as much as I used to enjoy reading the Bedworth Echo years ago.

    I’ll miss the Post, ad I know other people that will miss it too.

    Maybe you could do something similar on-line?

    Anyway, well done for trying, I say. You did a good job.

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