An editorial chief has hit out at claims of a “golden age of regional journalism,” insisting today’s journalists are harder-working than their predecessors.
KM Group editorial director Ian Carter, left, spoke out after journalism lecturer Sean Dodson claimed the use of listicles and clickbait by local newspapers was contributing to their “falling credibility.”
Ian said on Twitter that the “tripe” he had seen written about the industry – which also included a comment piece in Press Gazette lamenting today’s “lazy, badly trained journalists” – had inspired him to reactivate his personal blog.
In it, he recalled once turning up at a district office to find a reporter asleep under his desk, and another occasion when he found the journalists has turned their desks upside down to use them as goals for a football match against the ad reps.
Wrote Ian: “Today’s reporters, news editors and editors are harder working and more highly-skilled than those who went before them. At the KM we expect our reporters to gather and edit video for our IPTV service, grab audio for our kmfm news bulletins, file stories for KentOnline, re-nose those stories for print and manage their social media profiles.
“They simply wouldn’t recognise the concept of post-deadline downtime. Sure, some of the stories we write could be deemed trivial. KentOnline today ran pieces about an invasion of horny ladybirds and a model aeroplane crash.
“It also ran shocking coverage of the aftermath of a double murder and a thug who poured bleach on the lover who spurned him. Light and shade, it existed long before the internet did.
“Sure our industry has challenges, and how we deal with the audience-generating, revenue-destroying Facebook machine is chief among them But endlessly harking back to this so-called golden age, and by default implying those left in the industry have lost control of their news sense and their marbles, is lazy, insulting and plain wrong.”
After posting the blog, Ian told HTFP: “I’ve grown heartily sick of people who no longer work in the industry criticising those who still do. I’m not sure if many of the academics commenting on the industry have any real understanding of how multiskilled today’s reporters are.”
Leeds Beckett journalism lecturer Sean’s words have also drawn the ire of Trinity Mirror Regionals digital publishing director David Higgerson.
On his personal blog, David wrote: “It doesn’t paint a true picture of the regional press. Titles I work with push out around 100 articles a day. A quick trawl through the most-shared articles for brands I work with shows a remarkable mix of stories interesting people.
“Council, courts, national politics, health, human interest, transport, death, crime and calls stories are all in there. Plus stories which make people smile. All make people want to share when they are written in a way which makes people want to share them.
“To suggest clickbait and listicles are killing the regional press is nonsense – as any sensible analysis of audience data focusing on engagement metrics will tell you.”
Elsewhere, Alan Geere, former editor of the Essex Chronicle and editorial director of Northcliffe South East, has conducted his own research to discover “the truth” about clickbait and listicles in the regional press.
Alan studied the websites of the Northern Echo, Leicester Mercury, Croydon Advertiser, Norwich Evening News and Northamptonshire Telegraph – counting both the quantity of stories and their relevance to each site’s respective patch.
He concluded: “This research shows claims for the pervasive influence of clickbait appear to be exaggerated. All the sites visited showed an honest commitment to providing local news, sport, information, comment and entertainment to the highest standard.
“If anything, they were somewhat prosaic, lacking the, er, buzz of buzzfeed.com, the sheer breadth and depth of dailymail.co.uk or the clickbait heaven (or hell) of cosmopolitan.co.uk.
“Perhaps because of the eternal ‘time constraints’ or the effect of job cuts throughout the industry engagement with the audience via website interactivity or through social media was low.
“Perhaps it’s time for the regional press to get off its high horse and start to realise the full potential of the ‘new media’ at its disposal.”
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It’s interesting that – in time-honoured fashion – a top exec lauds a lack of downtime as some sort of achievement, when in actual fact that lack of 100mph workload meant journalists could have got out and about, met people, made contacts, and those crime stories he mentioned might have been a whole lot richer with some insider comment rather than police press office spiel.
This is corporate Britain though. Director in our place was recently lauded at a meeting for only taking a day’s paternity leave. Wow, what a hero.
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Well said, Ian, David and Alan.
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And, of course, we always beat the ad reps at football and indoor cricket, which met a sorry end when those pesky computer monitors arrived! Read ‘Clickbait Myths and Realities’ at http://alangeere.blogspot.co.uk/
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Don’t try going down the ‘top exec’ route this time. Ian Carter is one of the good guys, and he’s still trying to make things work as the challenges get harder.
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Jeff, try reading it again. I’m not lauding a lack of downtime as an achievement, I’m saying it’s much tougher for reporters, news editors and editors than it used to be. That’s why I get irritated by people who have left the industry implying reporters aren’t as good as they were in the old days. They’re better, the industry’s just a whole lot harder than it was then.
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Of course there was a golden age of regional journalism. It was the time when the top regional newspapers measured their circulations in hundreds of thousands and presses were not large enough to print all the classified ads.
And the argument as to who worked (or works) the harder is frankly tosh.
The difference in the golden age was that we were not pedaling ever harder to keep the sinking ship afloat. Our readers where not distracted from distraction by the distraction of I-phones, X-boxes, Twitter etc, and so we were awash with readers and their attendant revenue streams.
We worked hard, as, of course, do the multi-faceted journalists of today, but because there was money sloshing around, there were more of us to keep up the quality of the product.
The great pity is that we who enjoyed the golden years were not able to facilitate the transition to the new reality of the newspaper publishing world. Newspapers that are so fond of putting other people’s houses in order, were patently hopeless at ordering their own in the face of the change in social circumstances.
Frankly “senior execs” like Ian Carter would better spend their time in trying to work out what they are going to do when print finally hits the buffers. That, I fear, may be far sooner than we think.
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I think we probably need to define terms in this debate about whether or not there was a ‘golden age’ of regional journalism. Coming to the Manchester Evening News in 1982, I enjoyed what I would describe as a golden age because we were well-staffed, well rewarded, we were in a tremendously newsy area and we prided ourselves on being the newspaper of record for that area.
We tended to have the luxury of devoting ourselves to one story at a time – not an endless to-do list like our counterparts today – and we were allowed to enjoy a little ‘post-deadline downtime’. I was able, quite comfortably, to buy a house and bring up a family on a pay cheque which was well in excess of the national average salary. That seems like a golden age of journalism to me – a good work-life balance in a job which has left me many good memories.
As for the journalists now working at my old newspaper – which I left three years ago after more than 30 years – there are much fewer of them and they work harder than we did across a longer working day and to a wider set of demands. Yes, there is some clickbait and froth among their output, but there is also some seriously impressive proper journalism done on a daily basis. Many of them are every bit as competent as the best hacks in the newsroom I joined in 1982.
What I doubt, however, is that the demands of the job allow them quite as much fun as was had in my early days, and I know for sure it does not allow them the same financial security.
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No-one is saying today’s reporters aren’t as good as back then or lazy, but they are certainly not better. Sutler makes several good points here.
With all that “downtime” taken up with repurposing one story for multiple platforms and then updating their social media profiles, is it any wonder there is any time left for a bit of back-corridor cricket or engage personally with their audience – or go down the pub as we used to call it.
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Ian should know. He once worked for a paper, The Brighton Evening Argus, that in its prime notched about 115,000 readers a day and now sells about 12,000. Good staff levels, brilliant photographers, talented subs, awash with advertising income, beating nationals to scoops. All gone.
Reporters do work extremely hard now and there are some very talented ones, but despite their efforts the end product is poorer. They simply have too much to do to worry about quality. The proof is in the diving sales. The public is not stupid.
Ian is one of the good guys in a crumbling industry, but even he would be hard pushed to call this a golden age.
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Football with the ad reps? I’m envious. I had to content myself with making Airfix models for days on end.
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The general standard of reporting is nowhere near as good as used to be.
Of course there are brilliant exceptions but I’m appalled by this ‘cut-paste-and-move-on’ generation who take no pride in their work whatsoever.
Stories are frequently submitted without one ounce of intellect or understanding.
‘What does this mean’ questions are greeted with an unapologetic shrug of the shoulders and the explanation: “He/she didn’t say”
They can do social media and hold a hand-held phone for videos but the basics of writing an interesting story with the facts in the right order is beyond them… and they do seem to care either.
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Ian, you said:
“Today’s reporters, news editors and editors are harder working and more highly-skilled than those who went before them.”
That’s a generalisation every bit as sweeping as the ones you lament. How do you categorise skills and hard work? I’d say soft skills are every bit as important and they’re only deployed when people have the time to get out and use shoe leather, talking to people, handling people, making judgments about how far to push or back off.
There are good and bad, capable and useless staff in every walk of life and there always was, but the fact of the matter is the industry no longer cares about quality and everyone who does is slowly being rooted out as theough they’re some kind of obstruction to modernisation.
People don’t labour over headlines, over picture quality, over intros, because as you say – they don’t have time. Modern journalism is an exercise in minimum effort for maximum gain. Can I ‘get away with’ using that picture, that headline is ‘good enough’.
It’s like saying a modern naval captain is better than one who was around in the second world war because he has access to long range missiles and computers, whereas the one from the previous era had more crew and was part of an organisation that had the resources and intent to actually perform the task at hand. You don’t have to delve to deep into the argument, you just know one era ruled the waves and the other has seven ships on patrol at any one time and is largely considered a laughing stock. To say that’s the case isn’t to disparage the sailors – it’s simply stating a fact.
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Ooops. Spotted several errors. Please take it as read that I have slapped myself on the wrists – but you get the gist.
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Certainly got some debate going here! Without online websites we had to read the newspapers when I first started and talk to rivals and contacts by going to see them… After the weekly paper went to bed we could all go for a pub lunch – instead of updating the online site. Did we work harder? No we worked differently and if we tried to do it that way again we would be sacked. Do I feel the journalists of today work harder? No I think they are great online secretaries who can spot where someone else has a story and replicate it fast. Do I think this is the heyday of great journalism. No but without them doing what they do with such dedication – news would be dead and we would all be grasping in the dark while those in elected positions ran amok.And boy is it slow to tackle every single issue by Crowdfunding or change.org
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Ian is right, local journalists are working harder than ever. Surely it is indisputable. There are fewer of them and they have two hungry masters to serve – they often have acres of white space devoid of advertising to fill, and the never ending hole that is the website. They are also more skilled because they have to be, it is called moving with the times. They didn’t do video in my era or I would have been more skilled, too. It’s not the number of stories that counts for me but what is in them. I could weep when I see some of the cut and paste web crap put out as stories via Twitter and Facebook. Whether reporters are better now than then is another argument, I believe each era has its own share of top talent…but where are the modern day scoops? On the end of the telephone?
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Ah I recall my golden age of journalism. Early 80s.
Office football
Office cricket
and even
Office showjumping (at the King’s Lynn office)
There may well have been other office sports as well.
I even remember one of our reporter (Ian —— setting up
EFFOF (European Federation for Office Football)
Others who were there may back me up on this.
Plenty of work done in the districts but still time for light relief.
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Today’s reporters may be experts at filming video footage and updating web pages.
Pity it leaves them no time to establish the basic facts of stories, beyond whatever the police press release or fire brigade tweet tells them.
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“In his personal blog, David wrote: “It doesn’t paint a true picture of the regional press. Titles I work with push out around 100 articles a day.”
A classic case of mistaking quantity for quality there.
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Anyone who uses the phrase ‘any sensible analysis of audience data focusing on engagement metrics’, gets my vote.
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Mr Carter seems to think you judge a journalist by their ability to handle multi media. No mention of the court cases that local papers don’t bother to cover. Or the council meetings, or inquests. Too many newspapers rely on reproducing handouts, without any checks.
Yes, today’s journalists can do the modern version of the old comps job, but who is getting the inside stories police and council ofifcials don’t want telling?
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Agree with the points Sutler has made and cannot add further other than to say that office football is still alive and well in some eastern quarters,as was witnessed last year around about the time the photographers were dumped … i mean’ put into consultation’ the ad reps were having penalty shoot outs against the editor and senior editorial chiefs then uploading the photos to social media for all to see,so its good to see amidst all the chaos and dismantling of the regional press there’s still pockets where the focus is on having a laugh whilst all around crumbles
Confused? I was
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I don’t think journalists are lazy at all, especially as I had my own stint of being given lists of listicle content and targets to reach. However what does make me angry is seeing senior journalists writing articles with 90pc of the content copied and pasted from another site. Especially in my own city where there are so many problems with the council, the homeless and crime these articles do the local paper no favours at all. I just think the tones all wrong nowadays and newspapers should be investigating and campaigning not aggregating fluff.
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and just to add I think ‘harking back to a golden age’ is a red herring. It is about Newspapers filling a role in public life. If I want to read about local businesses on Tripadvisor then I have a web browser I will go there! but hardly any one is writing about people having to sleep in shop doorways…
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I currently work on a regional and what I see is a newsroom stripped bare as we push ever harder for more and more likes and shares.
The truth is we still need readers and revenue or we’d all be looking elsewhere for jobs – the overloads have done their research and the best way to make sure share holders get their substantial wedge is to get rid of people, fail to replace them and foist the work onto already stretched journos.
I don’t mind that I am more than a journalist – I am photographer, videographer, sub and a ‘digital champion’ too – which I rather enjoy. Far from being lazy, modern journalists are multi-skilled – and that’s not better just different.
I find listicles (which actually take some time to do properly) quite interesting to do now and again, especially as light relief from serious news stories or meaty features and far from being click bait they can be useful to readers.
But we are under serious pressure.
I have a problem with is the lack of decent remuneration for the range of skills we bring to the table.
Oh for the luxury of one story at a time – you should see the list I juggle on a daily basis.
Working in this industry feels like trying to fill a bottomless pit and as ever you are only as good as your last story.
And don’t forget, everything we do can be scrutinised, analysed and played off against other journos.
In short we are doing the job of many for a pittance and are over a barrel while we do it.
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Quick points.
Why shouldn’t there also be room for fun amidst the hard slog? It’s an essential part of building a team.
Modern journalists have far more skills than we did, but in deploying them some of the old disciplines have been lost.
Jeff Jones: “Can I ‘get away with’ using that picture, that headline is ‘good enough’. There’s far too much of this from what I read and hear. Quality control (through subs or news editors) no longer exists.
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You know what, I think he’s right. Not that there was no Golden Age -he didn’t even say that just, you know, a clickbaity headline. Of course there was a time when newspapers were better quality than they are now At least I hope there was otherwise what was the point… it’s too depressing to contemplate.
But the demands on young journalists now are far greater than at any other time. You need to be very bright and determined to make a career of it these days. It’s just a shame that even the brightest and best no longer get a chance to shine, so bogged down are they in the monotonous rubbish so many editors now feel obliged to pump out.
One can only imagine how good some of today’s reporters could be if they were given a chance to do the job properly.
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I had the benefit of starting out on a typewriter. First para typed out sharpish, an MF for ‘more follows’ on the bottom, a shout to the runner to take it to newsdesk and on with the next para.
The tough deadlines have gone. My daily newspaper, where once we had nine deadlines a day, now has one – the night before.
Journalists of this non-existent golden age, could knock a story out, quotes and all, in minutes. I don’t believe the modern day journalist, spotting a ‘story’ on someone else’s Facebook or Twitter feed can get a retweet or share out as quick as we had to. I know they spend an age writing and rewriting their opening pars, nevermind the rest.
We had to rely on shorthand, our memory and ability to know a story, when we called the desk from court or a telephone box near a major event pre-mobile phones or laptops. When updating, we knew what had gone before.
In my paper, I see rewritten press releases, stories tweeted out hours after they were originally published. I see mistakes. Absolute howlers, some of them.
I see a lack of enthusiasm which must have been the case when I were fresh in the industry, but which the subs and newsdesk would have pounced on hard.
I see a lack of understanding of the population, the city’s history and even the paper’s position in the local community.
And I’m sad.
And I keep my head down and dread the next round of bullets that will make the situation worse.
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The skills are still there and yes, bright young things make mistakes just like old schoolers did. But you had plenty of subs who had time to wipe your bums for you – our stripped back modern ‘business model’ doesn’t have room for the on the job training which characterised many a smoky newsroom of days gone by.
And of course it’s in print one day and online forever – and frankly, online you can make immediate changes if you are digital first.
To bemoan the state of the newspaper industry gets us nowhere – this is a completely different landscape and one which the old schoolers did nothing to prepare young writers for because they buried their heads in the sand and hoped the nasty internet would go away.
We can all sit around and lament the dearth of so-called good reporting but I reckon you’re suffering from two delusions – one that it’s a true statement and two, that it matters.
What matters is there are dedicated, trained journos who can do a deeply moving news story which is factually correct, cover a council meeting and rack up a a couple of listicles on where to get a pizza all in one day.
And they all do it for the love of the job – that’s right love because they are getting paid eff all.
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@notagain so you took the jobs of a sub, web editor and photographer? glad your enjoying it. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh but just wait until they make a computer script to harvest and write news content, which probably will be the next step.. It can’t be too far away with all the identikit news articles floating about nowadays.
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@Blutarsky – thanks for reading my blog on this subject. The point I was making was not a boast about 100 articles a day, but the absurdity of an academic stringing together five or six well-worn examples of stories which some people didn’t approve of and using them to paint a picture of an entire industry.
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II used to give myself a half day every Friday from my district office as before the days of mobile phones so was out of contact.. If anyone asked on the Monday just said was out on an assignment… you’ve got to love the old days!!
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David – Point taken, it wasn’t a boast and I also accept your point about the small sample size.
However, I’m sure if I were to look at your 100 articles a day I’d see a high percentage which were straight press releases with minimal copy input, a high percentage covering off patch news and a high percentage of features which could be re-published twice a year.
Of 13 featured stories my local, a TM paper, currently has to offer on its homepage, four are off patch, two are listicles, two are based on social media posts with very low news value (imo) and two are Crown Court cases filed by an agency reporter. That means there are just two genuine local news stories on its homepage, and one of those is a rehash of a press release about a national pub chain opening a new boozer locally. The picture looks even worse on the paper’s social media channels. Sadly this is pretty typical.
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Does he not look at his own website or the daily comments from readers ridiculing its error-strewn reporting and its absurd use of stock pictures? Today, accompanying a court report of a woman jailed for stealing Christmas presents, is a photo of the Grinch, captioned “How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a book by Dr Seuss”. Doubtless Kent Online’s click ratings benefit enormously from the number of items which get get passed round, not because of any content value but because their inanity is good for a laugh. One would expect an editorial director confronted with such a woeful site to be kicking backsides, not trying to defend it.
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@Web monkey I didn’t take jobs, people have left, retired, have been made redundant which has been upsetting and disheartening to say the least.
Along with colleagues I’ve have had to suck that and the extra work up.
Would I rather my former colleagues had jobs and I didn’t have to multi task quite so much? Probably. Do I make the best of a less than perfect situation? I have to. The alternative is leaving a job I trained for and for the most part, love.
Who knows what is down the line for newspapers, but there are still workers in the industry who believe people need and want proper coverage.
The thing is they also want a bit of light dross as filler sometimes and I don’t see anything wrong with that at all.
As for aggregated news script – that is already happening. But will all writers be replaced by them one day? I doubt it.
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Of course things are tougher now for reporters, subs, editors etc.
Struggle, toil, misery and the constant threat of the cost-cutting boot.
Still better than working for a living though, isn’t it?
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One thing unites everyone in this discussion. Passion for the job.
Without it you might as well be earning more money somewhere else.
Unfortunately passion for the job is not enough to be professional. You need time to do it properly. How many have that now?
Judging by the dreadful grammar and poor writing style not many.
But they do their best in poor working conditions.
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