Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield has called on regional press groups to bury their traditional rivalries and usher in a new era of collaboration.
Addressing the Society of Editors’ regional seminar, Ashley said the regional publishing groups had in the past failed to identify the ‘real enemy’ by continuing to focus on competing with each other rather than with the likes of Google, Facebook and Buzzfeed.
He held out the prospect of greater content-sharing across regional groups – highlighting football as one area for possible collaboration – as well as saving costs by collaborating on website development.
Editors, publishers and journalism training leaders from across the industry attended today’s seminar in Manchester which is being sponsored by HoldtheFrontPage
Opening this morning’s session, Ashley said: “The threats to this industry are not from each other.”
He said previous attempts at cross-industry collaboration, such as the combined classified platform Fish4, had “spectacularly failed to identify who the enemy was.”
Ashley suggested that the industry could launch new niche websites based around themed content pooled from all their local sites.
“Why not pool all regional press football coverage into one endeavour, for instance?” he suggested.
Within his own group, Ashley highlighted the Newsroom of the Future project as being about collaboration between different titles.
For example, he said the Yorkshire Post and the Sheffield Star, which historically competed against each other for scoops, would no longer do so.
He told the seminar: “We do need to be inspired by competition, but it’s just not each other.
“Being best at what we do, but doing it together, is the only way to succeed.”
Here is the full text of Ashley’s speech.
Good morning. I’m honoured to have been asked to speak at the Society of Editors seminar this morning – thank you for having me here.
By coincidence, it was a year ago today we concluded the £360m refinancing deal at Johnston Press …a pivotal moment in our history, and the start of what’s been an incredible 12 months for our industry.
Local media has been on the world stage for all the right reasons in the past year (unlike our national counterparts) – and we, as an industry, have risen to the challenge of delivering exceptional content, time and time again – the Tour de France, the Commonwealth Games, Scottish Independence referendum and of course the General Election.
The Elections in May truly cemented the shift to the digital delivery of news – but this wasn’t, as some thought it would be, the coming of age for Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vice or other digital aggregators. When the chips were down, the votes cast, people wanted to know what was going on from media sources they trusted. And in an election where the national picture was hopelessly misleading, an election described by one newspaper Op Ed as ‘a set of contemporaneous bi-elections’, the people turned to us, local and regional press. Politicians realised this too, spending more money with us than they had spent in 2011 across all news publishers, national and local. And much of this new money was spent on targeted hyper local digital messages.
And as interest in devolution in Scotland and beyond shows no signs of abating, it’ll be interesting to see how we rise to the challenge: Our Yorkshire Post editor Jeremy Clifford will be talking today about this, how we build on an industry-first last year when the Northern Echo, Newcastle Journal, Yorkshire Post and Manchester Evening News all came together and published The Pledge – calling on the Government to say what they will give to the North.
I was recently even further North, up in the Outer Hebrides – home to our northernmost title, the Stornoway Gazette – and I was asked by the head of the council there if I thought we were now more a digital business or still primarily a print one.
I replied that we were neither. And in that community, where we still sell papers into 90% of homes, I said that we were what we had always been: The glue that binds the community. Supreme tellers of local news. That we were in the business of informing people. Inspiring them. Campaigning for them. Encouraging them.
And above all else, championing their Islands, their towns, their cities, with superb journalism.
The truth is, if we have nothing relevant and of quality to say, then no one will listen. And without an engaged audience we do not have an advertising business, indeed we don’t have a business at all.
Shortly after joining Johnston Press back in 2011, I outlined our ‘Vision for 2020’ – a world where our consumption came from mobile as much as anywhere else, where digital audiences far outnumbered print (yet where print was still critically important), and where as much as half our content was contributed or submitted.
This would be a world where our business would need to be leaner, reflecting that digital revenues – whilst growing fast – were still going to be smaller than print, and we would need our workforce to be of a sustainable, lower level – relying more on the technology, and more on the community.
Well, every one of those predictions has been realised – but they have come true now, in 2015, not 2020.
And this incredibly fast pace of change has meant that we have had to make necessary adaptations, which have often included reducing the number of people in our teams.
Ever-evolving digital platforms – laptops, tablets, mobiles, and perhaps now, watches – are our future. They are driving vast audience growth – helping us to nudge toward 30 million monthly readers.
But we must never confuse the methods of delivery with what makes our industry unique.
Anyone can produce a website or indeed print a paper. What makes us special, what gives us value, is our knowledge of what our readers want, or perhaps don’t know they want but need, and then the content we choose, that we filter, that we aggregate, to give to them to fulfil that need. And that requires a relentless inquisitiveness nature.
There’s a wonderful quote from social philosopher Eric Hoffer, which goes:
In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
As an industry, more than ever, we all need to learn.
At Johnston Press, those in our newsrooms are currently going through an incredible period of transformation to meet the demands of our ever-more sophisticated readers.
Our Newsroom of the Future initiative is about recognising that we can’t expect ever greater output with fewer staff.
We, like many other media organisations, acknowledged we had to fundamentally change and improve the way we do things. Many journalists tied to their desks, sometimes unknowingly working on the same press releases as their colleagues in nearby offices, is neither productive nor fulfilling.
Our Newsrooms are already reaping the benefits of the Newsroom of the Future changes, producing a better, more focused way of working. And there are enough editorial staff from JP here today so that you don’t need to take my word for it: ask them.
The two news team structures – ‘news desk’ and ‘community content’, which are at the heart of the changes, have enabled journalists to improve the quality and increase the quantity of contributed content coming in from our communities, whist also allowing reporters more time to focus on the news and issues that are really affecting their communities.
Collaboration is easier, sharing is increasing, digital stats rising helped by ChartBeat screens in all the newsrooms, print quality improving from being able to get ahead of ourselves, and crucially, work-life balance is improving. It’s not perfect, we’ll make mistakes, but we are really trying to build a better mousetrap.
Sharing. It used to be thought of as the antithesis of the Scoop. Not now. In the world of social media, the scoop may be confined to history anyway. We can break a story online, sure, but our real value comes in the insight we add, and the way we amplify the story. And that frequently and increasingly requires collaboration never seen in our industry before. This is the culture Newsroom of the Future aims to foster.
Look, we all realise that a local news story in a local paper does not always travel well to neighbouring papers – newspaper readers are hugely proprietorial when it comes to circulation areas.
But a great online story can gather audience across a vast area – without in any way diluting the number of views on the originating site. I was in the Isle of Man visiting our team there recently: the TT races there are keenly followed in our titles in Northern Ireland and the North West in particular, and breaking stories, often unfortunately about breaking bones, can be told across many titles.
Our teams are now sharing content across the portfolio like never before. Content about a pile up on the M1 that is as relevant in, say Chesterfield as it is in Mansfield, only needs writing once. Yet up till now that strip of tarmac separated our journalism teams.
That’s not jeopardising the DNA of localness…it’s giving our readers a better experience as vital journalistic resource is freed up to focus on the next stories and in-depth issues.
I’ve been really heartened that our teams are not only embracing this new way of working – they’re increasingly looking at additional ways to share content and help colleagues.
Growth in social news in the UK is the fastest in the world – and you all know that a news story – a motorway pile-up, a rollercoaster crash – is now more likely to break on Twitter and Facebook, which is why we must continue to look at increasing ways to amplify the news, to add analysis, comment and, in a way Twitter and Facebook can’t, an emotional context.
Now that our teams are able through technology and new ways of working to more easily share – what’s the obvious next step in the evolution of collaboration?
I truly believe that we can, as an industry, share with confidence and help each other.
Informally we already do help each other out, for example, and sorry to continue the car crash theme, but if there is a fatal RTA and the victim is from another news area then we do share content with other publishers, – so if we can do this informally why can’t we have a more formal content sharing understanding.
Trinity share their features content across their titles. JP shares its Weekend lifestyle coverage – is there further scope to go down that route? Can we come together to do some of the things that PA, and in the digital age Taboola, Outbrain do for us?
How should we, as an industry, work more collaboratively with the BBC? They’re not going to go away, so lets put the relationship onto a clear, commercial, regulated, defined footing. One that works for both sides, and crucially, for our readers/licence fee payers.
You’ll hear from another of the JP team, Joy Yates, later on, about how we’re faring with a content sharing scheme up in the North East with the BBC, and whilst there’s work to do, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
What we have, as an industry, are shared values and we are working to a common cause. Combining expertise, and resource, and experience will mean we can travel faster and more effectively.
I would like to see all the regional and local media players working ever closer together on issues as diverse as web platform development and delivery, on sales, on measuring audiences, and on gathering and mining data.
Together we can capture significant economies of scale. We can innovate and transform. We can build an infrastructure which reaches every corner of the UK.
We are not rivals. We are not competitors. Most of our titles operate in non-competitive markets. Our competition is Google, Facebook, RightMove, Gumtree et al.
And, for collaboration to truly succeed, we can learn from the experiences of the past.
The founding five companies of Fish4, now a multi-million pound business wholly owned by Trinity Mirror, spectacularly failed to correctly identify who the enemy was.
The enemy in the Jobs recruitment market came from digital – Reed, Monster and TotalJobs, and by ignoring them, the regional press chose to continue fighting an old, non-relevant civil war amongst itself.
Against this backdrop, the revenue from print was still pouring in and, like crack cocaine, so anaesthetized the group that they couldn’t hear the digital footsteps coming.
Identifying the enemy is ensuring we have a clear idea of who our real competitors are – it’s not each other.
Aristotle said the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Surely that was never more true of the local media industry today.
We are already making huge strides in this direction.
When Johnston Press, Newsquest, Local World and a number of smaller publishers launched the advertising digital trading platform 1XL, we gave advertisers a one-stop digital shop covering more than 800 local newspaper websites and a monthly audience of some 50 million.
None of this joint working takes anything away from that which makes each of these organisations individual: their relationship with their local audiences.
On the contrary, if we are to protect our journalism in a changing world it is more important than ever that we streamline the costs of platforms and delivery so that working in collaboration we better meet the needs of our advertisers.
1XL: massive scale, but highly targeted and hyper local. Simple to get your head around – a great big bucket of quality inventory to rival AOL and Mail Online, but very sophisticated too.
So what else could we do? let me share some of my thoughts on industry collaboration.
I, like my industry colleagues, heartily welcome PAMCO – Publishers Audience Measurement Company – which replaces NRS and sets out to achieve an effective and robust system of cross-platform measurement. A single audience figure for your title across print and online.
By capturing growing audiences for news and magazine brands across all platforms, this new approach will truly reflect today’s multi-media landscape, and enable us to better monetise our digital audience, and report larger, growing audiences to pretty much every one of our titles. It can’t come quickly enough.
What else? Well, why are we all, individually, spending millions of pounds on websites, which are always going to struggle against the investment that the likes of the BBC or the Guardian with their not-for-profit remits are able to make? Could we not share some of the costs, without our websites and apps needing to look the same. After all we all print on each others’ printing presses – lets move this relationship to the digital age.
And is there a reason the industry can’t join forces to create aggregated sites around distinct content areas. We’ve launched WOW24/7, our ‘Time Out for Outside London’, why don’t we all work together on this?
I like Local World’s newly-launched quirker.co.uk – the weird and wonderful website for a young, digital audience which takes the quirkiest stories from its portfolio and packages them on a website. But on its own will it fare any better than Trinity’s UsVsTh3m and Ampp3d –which struggled because of high operational costs. What if there was a content-themed site featuring the best of these stories from all of our collective local titles. Could we then start to take on the mighty Buzzfeed?
And how about coming together on the initiatives that are still so much at the heart of the communities we all serve. The Local Business Awards or Local Hero campaigns. None of us wants to stop doing them – quite the reverse. But collectively perhaps we could campaign harder, champion louder, and dial it up into something of national scale?
Why not pour all of our football coverage into one digital endeavour, especially the content outside the premier league that defines the limits of the National’s backpages. Our local sites football coverage would continue, become stronger, but be supported by a wealth of additional content: stories amplified, traffic increased, and the user experience is all the better for it. Just a thought.
And how could we better work together on the knowledge of our audiences that we are amassing?
Data is increasingly the bedrock of our industry’s success – understanding in some detail who our readers are and might be, what their interests are – and what type of content they find most compelling.
We have always talked about geographic communities as the ones that we serve first. Communities of interest, and of demographic niches, will prove equally critical as we strike up new multi-media conversations with the Millenials, the Mid-Lifers and the Older audiences.
Let’s work on a common strategy across publishers for how to do digital news and look at how to adopt a common view on our future not being ‘mobile first’ or ‘digital first’, but content first. And why not extend that to having a coordinated paid strategy?
Schibstead, The regional publisher in Scandinavia that has successfully transformed its business, owns daily title VG, and they have invested considerably and now use clever algorithmic analysis to work out what content, what stories, drives paid subs online, then ring fences that content out into VG+, a premium paid web site.
The threats to this industry are, as I’ve mentioned, not from each other – we’re rarely if ever each other’s competition. My thoughts on the BBC are well documented but our fight needs to extend beyond the BBC. Joining forces through industry wide bodies such as the Society of Editors are crucial. And the new NMA – the News Media Association – which brings together the old Newspaper Society and the National Publishers Association – is key, and I’m looking forward in my new role as vice chair of NMA to help lead the charge.
And finally – here we are with hundreds of years of collective experience of the media industry, and the best and most respected news publishing industry in the world: Why not take this knowledge, and our emerging experience of how to successfully transform for the digital age and sell what we do best – package it into a one-stop shop for anyone wanting to set up a local title anywhere in the world – ‘newspaper in a box’….Sounds far-fetched? So did Facebook.
We can all bring our businesses back to a growth of sorts by cutting costs faster than revenues fall – and out of necessity we have had to do some of that in the most difficult years.
Or we can draw in new audiences and build new revenues with them. That is real growth. Sustainable growth. The type of growth we are now starting to achieve.
We may have fewer journalists today – and that is unlikely to change.
But those that we do have must have the time, and the freedom; the information, the technology, and the confidence to do what we have always done with such distinction – report on the news with flair and integrity, to take risks, to be brave, to comment provocatively, to entertain.
If we do, then a new generation of audiences will trust and depend on us as much as the generations before them. We can continue to make a real difference to the lives of every single person touched by the stories we write, the video we film and the services we deliver.
Keeping at the heart of our communities, being the best at what we do best, but doing it together, is the only way to succeed.
Thank you
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“He held out the prospect of greater content-sharing across regional groups – highlighting football as one area for possible collaboration – as well as saving costs by collaborating on wesbite development.”
Translation – we can save money by no longer sending football writers to away games and just use copy from the local paper here there and everywhere.
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Nice one, Ash.
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So what happened to competition, consumer choice, independence and the market, driving forward capitalism?
Is the penny beginning to drop with these people that nobody is going to make proper money online and so there has to be a Godfather-style coming together of the mob families?
Not only will readers have no choice between papers in their town but that there will be little to distinguish between regions and home nations.
You only have to see how sharing content across the BBC has produced identikit news. I listen first thing in the morning to my local station news, then Radio 4, then look at teletext and then the BBC web and the news agenda is exactly the same – even down to the words and scripts!
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I thought this is what Local World was all about – and that’s worked, hasn’t it? 😉
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During my 40+ years in the weekly and regional press, rivalry – both friendly or downright bitter – with opposition papers was one of the most enjoyable parts of the job. Now Ashley Highfield wants to lose this. Just another aspect of how the enjoyment is disappearing from the industry.
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Surely this will accelerate the decline? If the three groups in my area started looking the same and reading the same, surely readers will turn away, or go to the cheapest? Competition is healthy, and should be encouraged. There is already heavy sharing these days with the proliferation of UGC. With every publisher printing the same UGC, the same press release, the same tweet, the same police mugshot, the same artist impression of a new development, the same hockey pic sent in by club, the same viral video, the same clip of the local singer on X Factor, we are already living Highfields utopian vision.
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JP is appalling in my area. I’m glad there’s robust competition as it gives us something better to read.
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Why anyone should wish to share ideas from Ashley Highfield defies explanation. When you’re trying to determine who the enemy is, Ashley, I suggest you look very close to home.
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Anything that gets the wage bill down is welcome. Good luck with your plan Mr Highfield.
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Inspiring stuff, like when Tony Blair gives his thoughtas as Middle East envoy.
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Also, how and why on earth is a search engine and a social networking site seen as a direct rival to a newsgathering buisness??
The newspaper industry’s biggest threat are the people pulling the strings and waiting for a payoff, clueless people who’ve got absolutely no idea where the industry is going and probably don’t care.
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Jeff Jones hits the nail on the head again. The powers-that-be have no clue about journalism, no desire to learn, and no compunction about screwing the industry for money while it still comes in and then bailing out of the stricken vessel. Survival, if it’s possible and it probably still is, will involve local journalists and managements operating on local scales again, having got shot of the bloated national behemoths that haven’t made any meaningful investment for at least 10-15 years.
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Warm words Ashley, but collaboration with what ultimate goal in mind? You don’t say…and that’s because it’s the word no senior regional media executive dares to utter in public. Profit.
And not just profit but excessive profit based on the revenues the industry now generates. And the overall position of those revenues will remain static, at best, in an increasingly fragmented, consumer choice-driven, media world.
No-one would argue with a business making a profit, but it is the greed demonstrated by the major players in the past five years which has been at odds with their oft-stated ambition of maintaining sustainable businesses.
They talk a good talk publically about growing revenues, investing in new products and start-ups and backing journalism, but the reality behind the scenes has been cuts, cuts and more cuts to retain margins more akin with the 1980s, when print was a monopoly, than the landscape we see today.
And that is the truth of the state of the industry today. Regional media journalism is dying and it’s being pushed into the grave by the industry’s ‘leaders’. Those leaders are the HQ bosses who very often have demanding shareholders to report to or shareholdings of their own to service, and regional managers who are content to trouser six-figure packages for the 3-5 years they can manage to line their pockets before being found out or moved on.
None of them actually care for the future of journalism locally as a concept. They won’t mourn the unreported council committee which realises it can take decisions without scrutiny. The burglar whose 25th offence remains unreported no longer feels the sanction of public disgust at his name far more than the fine or community service he is ‘punished’ with by the court. The solar farm developer blithely plays the rules and erects his monstrosity, unfettered by widespread public knowledge and protest challenging his plans.
We still, in many communities, have some very good brands but they are being run by very bad people. And where their tentacles have had long enough at the helm they are ruining them, closing them and moving on to the next “downsizing” or “restructure” or “exciting realignment of publishing plans” with their wallets and margins intact.
So, collaboration between these types IS more and more likely as they run out of the ability to tweak their own businesses enough to meet the demand for profits to be squeezed out of brands which could tick over nicely at single figure margins for many years to come.
Good for the shareholders and managers? Depends on your definition of what ‘good’ is. Good for the brands, the journalists working on them and the communities they are still valiantly try to serve up and down the UK? I think we can all agree on the answer to that.
So here’s my collaboration wish for you Ashley. Collectively agree with the other leading players you will exit regional media by the end of 2016 and hand the business back to the people who will really care for them – local entrepreneurs, community interest groups, journalism collectives, charitable trusts, small scale MBOs. And you can all turn your attention to something which gets you the money you want without the pesky problem of running a business which needs to show some sort of community compassion. The arms trade, for instance.
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Regional newspaper groups can never realistically compete with.Google Facebook or buzzfeed ithat would be like putting a Sunday league side against Barcelona. The only group that might have had a chance were DMGT. Whilst the big digital giants take risks and innovate on a grand scale newspaper groups are unimaginative and always will be held back by the demands of their print products and staff with a 1970s attitide the are in comparison directionless. constantly reinventing the wheel with video, business directories and a tired old banner advertising network that just doesnt cut it.
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The lunatics really have taken over the asylum. Not content with wrecking great local newspaper brands through centralisation and “collaboration” the new wave demands we spread this disease across the entire regional industry. The problem we face is the lack of connectivity or engagement with our audience, at a level no one else can provide. Getting bigger and blander isn’t the answer, getting closer to our local roots and celebrating our uniqueness, deep mining the very essence of the community we serve should be the only focus. There’s plenty of homogeneous pap around on TV, Radio and the web, why compete in this arena when with some effort (and benign shareholders) we could stand apart from it?
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After reading the full text (thanks HTFP) I don’t change a word of what I wrote earlier – but it is useful to hear about what is happening to newspapers in the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Man and Scandinavia.
And what is with all the references to pile-ups, rtas and fatal crashes? Perhaps because the motorway network hold-up seems to occupy the greatest space on most 24-7 ‘rolling news’ websites these days?
And wtf is Taboola and Outbrain? I think Ashley Highfield made them up. I bet there were some silverbacks in the room nodding sagely at their very mention, and hitting Google to find out what they were before the next break and suffering an embarrassing moment with a younger delegate by the hot water dispenser.
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Industry Analyst is absolutely spot on – except for one thing. Replace “solar farm” & “monstrosity” with “fracking”. The latter is much more dangerous than the former – ill-looks can’t poison you…
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He and his ilk want the brewing business of the 60s and 70s..
Watney’s Red Barrel and Ind Coope Longlife for everyone…
With Double Diamond as an alternative…
Where’s the Campaign for Real Newspapers when you need them?
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I can’t work out if Industry Analyst is actually Steve Dyson or Jeremy Corbyn….
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How about “sharing” chief executives?
If all regional and local papers are to be exactly the same as each other, surely there’s no longer any need for more than one chief exec for the lot of them?
Form an orderly queue outside HR and don’t forget to hand in your car keys.
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The sad thing is that anyone in such an important position as Ashley Highfield should say “media is” and mean it. If he had a top job in football might he not see virtue in two teams kicking in the same direction? Wlth one goalkeeper, of course and half the pitch sold for redevelopment.
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It’s time for faceless monopoly operators like you, Ashley, to quit the regional media scene and let hyper local journalism start up jobs do the work in future.
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Superb piece, Industry Analyst. Trouble is, the execs are paying any attention. They can’t see past the word ‘GREED’
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It is extremely sad that so many talented and knowledgeable people are leaving there positions after years of hard work. It would appear to me that we are waiting for the ‘storm’ to hit and are very deluded about what the future holds and what it all means for us. Probably a visit from h.r with an envelope across the desk. If a merge/takeover is likely can we just get on with it.??
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Ashley does talk a load of bulldust.
I’ve just left JP for Local World.
At least in my new-found title, we still value what is local and news is news.
There is no editorial aparthied here and decisions are made locally.
My ex workmate at a paper that has just adopted Newsroom of the Future is still stressing out over all the complaints from people wondering when their piece will appear in print.
The communities team in some far flung office that cares and knows little about my old paper still keeps stuffing it up.
It was never was a problem when the now departed editor managed a handful of papers, but our new editor manages far too many titles for anyone’s good.
Newsroom of the Future is Newsroom of the Damned and the sooner it goes the better for not just the readers but ultimately JP’s profits too.
I expect sales will slump at my old JP titles. The bosses have factored it in too. Essentially they expect their own plans will fail.
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In my opinion Highfield is delusional, he is only in JP it to milk as much money as he can. He criticises the BBC because it encroaches onto its patch. He is on an executive board that have awarded themselves some very nice bonus’s indeed. One has to ask oneself how achievable are these bonus’s? Looking at the recent annual report they are far to easy to achieve and seem well out of proportion to what is happening with the company.
The figures produced from the company seem distorted to actual reality. How can JP state that circulation is up on titles that have gone from dailies to weeklys? – I have looked into the figures and they are well down. What JP have done is to take the now weekly figure and compare it to the same day when it was a daily!
Looking at the actual Sales/Turnover of the company it has declined every year since 2007. Operating margins have declined as well. It actually has a tangible book value of minus £314m! The majority of companies have a positive book value, not one that is nearly a third of a billion in the red.
On the 20th May 15 Highfield pocketed a quarter of a million quid from selling some shares (£258k) – hardly a vote of confidence in the company.
What this company needs is someone to come along, buy this company, kick out all the greedy executive board and the many useless moronic managers that JP have been infested by and run this company on an even footing. It needs to delist from the stockmarket and run on a basis like John Lewis e.g. returning some profits to the employees of the company. Hard work is rewarded down to the lowest ranks, not the present system of greedy executives, who just look at further efficiencies that once achieved will give them a nice bonus.
No doubt Hold the Front Page will not publish this as they seem to be in bed with JP at present e.g. sponsoring the seminar listed. Time for an independent voice out there and I am sceptical whether or not Hold the Front Page is an independent voice?
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Fair play to HTFP, Mr Bob Fields, it’s not in bed with anyone and represents all views fairly (I’m not in bed with HTFP either). What’s emerging here is that many of us only discern a future for our industry if it is decoupled from corporations misguidedly (or deliberately for a few last bucks) seeking to earn ever greater profits by destroying their source – i.e. good local journalism and adept production staff whose work will impress advertisers. We simply don’t need any high paid execs with absurd job titles that betray their lack of any specific media/newspaper skill – they should be the ones being made redundant, not us. There’s still money in the business but not so much that we can waste it on useless fat cats any more.
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I think having fat cats running regional media works just purr-fectly….
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So which of our offices does Industry Analyst work in then? They seem pretty familiar with the ‘modus’ around here!
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Guys, guys, guys, like put yourself on the outside of a chill pill. Our analytics show everything is working completely as we expect it to.
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Dear Mr Highfield, this is not the cosy world of the BBC, the organisation you used to work for and the broadcaster, with its outrageous budget, which on a daily basis nicks my stories. You have no credibility having been put in charge of a company which spectacularly got it so wrong so please dont try and drag us into the Johnston Press quagmire. Your Newsroom of the Future is not a way forward … it’s cheap labour peddling rubbish. Enjoy your bonus!
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It’s quite simple… Highfield is struggling in an area he doesn’t have a clue about…newspapers!! . It’s like putting ME in charge of the Hadron Collider at CERN . Unfortunately people are losing their long held jobs, papers that were once proud are now a shadow of their former selves and circulation is falling dramatically because of bad production. His ‘solutions’ are abysmal and as usual driven by cost cutting. Digital is fine…up to a point, but Highfield et al are pushing it further than it can safely go. The rule he should be adhering to is……if it ain’t broke….DONT FIX IT,!!
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Watch out for Ashley’s next rabbit from the hat – all the big groups get together, collaborate and divvy up to take a share of JP’s bank debts!
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JP shareholder. True, they’ve got the wages bill down. But in the process of making so many talented people redundant, they’ve got the quality down of every paper they own. The circulations are down and consequently, so are the advertising revenues. The share price isn’t exactly soaring either. The first rule of business is a quality product. Invest your money elsewhere.
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Good old Ashers with his long experience of the industry. JP workers would follow him to the end of the earth, but only if he went first.
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