A daily editor has criticised the “poor state” of much of the English regional press, claiming some newspapers are becoming “vehicles for unchallenged views.”
Mike Gilson hit out at what he described as “supine” journalism in an editorial for Brighton-based daily The Argus, headlined ‘Why journalists must always be a nuisance.’
He said that although there were “pockets” of brilliant work being done in the industry, some media outlets had become “too cosy” with local institutions.
Before taking on his current role in February 2015, Mike spent five years as editor of the Belfast Telegraph, and held the same position at The Scotsman prior to that.
Mike wrote that in post-conflict Northern Ireland, journalists “have an important job in holding authority to account, tackling vested interests and speaking up for the man and woman in the street”.
He went on: “But in leafy Sussex is this really quite so important? Aren’t we doing pretty well and is there really that much to question, to uncover, to campaign for?
“My answer is an emphatic yes. Since returning to England after almost 10 years in Scotland and Belfast I have to say I have found much local journalism in regions every bit as important, economically and culturally, to be in a pretty poor state.
“The industry is going through huge transformation at present but I’m not really talking about these seismic changes, I’m talking about a state of mind.
He went on: “There is much that seems supine about some journalism at present. Of course this is a generalisation, for there are pockets where brilliant work is still being done.
“But somewhere along the way some of us seem to have forgotten what our primary role is. That is to obtain information and pass it on to you our readers, to tell you things you didn’t know. News is often something that someone else didn’t want you to read. Do we still have this as our mantra?”
“It is not healthy for any journalist to have too cosy a relationship with the leaders in our community, its institutions, the movers and shakers if you like.
“Respectful yes. Give credit of course. But simply become a vehicle for unchallenged views as some media outlets seem to be today?
Mike added: “Journalists are outsiders. The safeguards that govern democracy demands it be thus. Show me an editor who wines and dines regularly with the powerful, or with whom they are on constant speed dial and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t really understand the job.
“Journalists, post Leveson Inquiry, are not exactly clutched to the nation’s bosom at present. But their role in society is worthy of debate.
“Forgive me for sounding pompous about my own trade but if journalism is to survive the communications revolution we are all living through it must be clear-eyed about its purpose.
“If it is not it will have no right to thrive and at local level, where we all live after all, the democratic deficit will be real.”
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
Part of the problem may be lack of resources. One high-profile Home Counties series, part of a big national corporation, is not replacing reporters when they leave, although there’s plenty of money for legions of “executives”, of course. Where does this process end? And is there any time for those left to do the job other than in it crudest form of cutting and pasting press releases? Down, down, deeper and down, as Status Quo once memorably aid.
Report this comment
Mmmm, okay for Newsquest’s ‘Golden Boy’ Gilson to pontificate like this about the importance of journalism, but has he seen how his paymasters treat the rest of the estate when it comes to resourcing their papers? I tire of being told “take a look at what the Argus is doing” by those supposedly leading my business when everyone with half an abacus would know we have been cut back beyond the point of being serious about serving our communities with a decent package.
Report this comment
Mike Gilson is correct,many editors are far too cosy with their local politicians,councillors and business big wigs,and more afraid of losing even more readers and alienating community leaders for things to change
With regional press groups run by commercial people and with the priorities being profit,revenues and “keeping the advertiser happy ” this will only get worse and whilst editorial dinosaurs remain afraid to challenge this remit,the decline in local paper publishing will continue apace.
Report this comment
You don’t have to look far to find examples of newspapers and their editors being too cosy with local leaders and prominent figures.
Just one look at the Coventry Telegraph and you will quickly understand how journalism has been cast aside in an attempt to please advertisers and the moneyed individuals in the upper echelons of Coventry’s corporate domains.
The editors bow down to the authorities at the expense of the readers, and indeed the paper’s own reputation, losing great journalists to competitors along the way.
Report this comment
Personally, I think everyone is right. Our paper is becoming just as ‘we’ll roll over and you can tickle us’ as the rest, beholden to local businesses – sorry, ‘media partners’ – and full of two working day week-ers sat on their butts all day churning out the press releases and running home at 5pm.
The causes we know, the effects we know and the lack of good and interested management we see, and we see the effects…
Report this comment
I wonder if Mike had to order up the template of the page to write his missive on five days in advance and then wait for it to be drawn, amended, delivered and corrected before sending it to the press? Everyone else does around here…
Report this comment
Damn right! It’s only a handful of years ago that I was working on a title which gave the local authority a hard time, week after week, and yet maintained a good relationship with them. These days, as staff numbers dwindle and those left behind have to hit web upload targets as well as filling pages, no-one seems to have enough time.
Report this comment
Supine or pro-active like the Barclay brothers, Murdoch, Richard Desmond and the relentless Daily Mail and General Trust? Which is best? FIGHT!
Report this comment
And this sort of editorial would be relevant to the locals of Brighton for what reason? This is inward looking soapboxing at its best. Presumably the Argus is doing brilliantly? Top story on its website this morning, a live news blog from 7.30am which finished at 9am and which had no comments despite requests for them. No more news today?
Report this comment
He’s right, but it’s because of a lack of resources and the fact experienced and talented staff aren’t valued.
I was recently on the other end of the experience. Having left journalism, there were layoffs at our company and the local paper carried the press release explaining why they were needed almost word for word, not even a comment from the union.
Report this comment
This smacks of ‘LOOK AT ME, AREN’T I THE BEST’
I wonder if someone could remind me of the circulation of the Argus?
Report this comment
This is all very well but to have an opinion that would be taken seriously you do need to have experience – a wider world view, so to speak. The people writing the stories must not only take a stance but know why they are doing so. More often than not local paper journalists will take a call from someone complaining about the council and then tag on the council’s weary response at the bottom of the copy. What they don’t ask is: are the council in the wrong? And does person complaining have a reasonable argument.
Of course to do that takes time and effort and knowledge. When newspapers only hire 20-somethings straight out of college, because let’s face it on the wages that most locals pay they are the only people who can afford to work on them, you are not going to get the kind of specialised knowledge required to take on the powers that be (at least in many cases).
Report this comment
Dick Minim first comment again! It’s like he lives on HTFP!
Report this comment
It’s down to resources and attitudes. One weekly paper in my area has cut out all freelances etc and relies too much on “contributions” from readers and others so councils etc go more or less unchallenged. A sorry state of affairs.
Report this comment
Let us hope this change of heart is permanent. It certainly wasn’t evident during his brief tenure at The Scotsman. As for journalists always being a nuisance, I presume he excludes their fight for better pay and decent conditions.
Report this comment
What about all those army press releases the regional papers have published for generations saying how good life is in the military? You know the sort of thing: Some local boy or girl has joined up and is loving every minute of it. The releases often come with lavish photos taken in exotic locations.
I’m not saying these handouts should never be printed, but there should be more balance.
Report this comment
“It is not healthy for any journalist to have too cosy a relationship with the leaders in our community…” So true! Local and regional newspapers used to agitate, irritate, expose hypocrisy and challenge wrongs. Now too many of them just top and tail press releases and do what local business leaders and the council bosses ask.
Report this comment
More power to Gilson. We should fight these people with what little resources we have left but mostly we don’t. Papers support hated council policies because they would rather leak readers than lose advertising or patronage for their awards nights. Resources is one of the factors, also pressure from above. Lack of will-power and self-esteem is the result. If an editor is getting congratulatory emails from the power-brokers and plaudits in the House, then he/she is not doing the job properly.
Report this comment
All are so right …. resources are just not there at present …but it’s the state of mind that is more worrying; a state of mind by too many editors who are kow-towing to their own managements and shareholders. The BBC is hardly a good example either – failing to stand-up to bullying politicians. It’s hard when they are threatening to take away your Charter mioney but hey, it’s time for all good editorial leaders to be proud of who they are and the job they do.
Report this comment
Well said Mike Gilson. Always a good journo but words are cheap. Let’s hope he follows up with action.
Well said Voice of Reason. As for local papers topping and tailing council press releases, if only. My local (Hartlepool Mail) doesn’t even do that. Council press releases regularly go in word for word often with accompanying pics of local councillors grubbing around for votes.
Report this comment
Of course resources have a part to play but the state of mind point is equally important. Often, not always, a lack of resources is used as an excuse for lazy journalism. I can think of several papers which still employ dozens of reporters but which rarely publish anything beyond the predictable.
Perhaps it’s a lack of on-the-job training or an absence of more senior journalists to learn from, but the worry is that we’re developing a generation of journalists who think churning it out is the norm.
You can’t expect new trainees to come in and immediately generate genuine exclusives on a regular basis without support and encouragement from their news editors who are all too often complicit in the easy-win story culture.
Report this comment
One of the top editors in a company that has done more to harm journalism in this country than any other says journalists need to work harder.
Disingenuous, hypocritical and disgraceful.
Report this comment
When I was in local papers the then-editor spiked a decent, hard-hitting story about the waterboard because he was playing squash with the firm’s chief exec that evening. Says it all.
Report this comment
It’s not about resources; it’s about attitude. The rot starts at the top. A supposedly seasoned former editor of mine who shall remain nameless began his tenure on the patch by accepting a seat on the ‘independent’ committee which decided whether members of the generally despised city council should get an increase to their already grotesquely undeserved allowances. And, when it decided they should, ordered us not to run letters or stories critical of the decision. Lions led by donkeys.
Report this comment
Editors,chief reporters and community editors afraid to question,challenge and fight for their communities on issues that matter are not worthy of the name yet are all too common in the industry. It appears to me that some are hanging on as long as they can, taking the safe route and not ruffling feathers for fear of compromising copy sales or ad revenues yet more than happy to jump on any passing bandwagon that might put them in a positive light or help sell a few papers.
With the whole media landscape changed beyond all recognition it’s surely time for changes with people more attuned to today’s society and modern media and better able to reflect the needs and demands of local newspaper publishing at community level.
Report this comment
One of Trinity Mirtor’s first acts down here was to get the editors to chop their budgets meaning contributors whose voices made the papers distinct and a ‘go to’ for the readers are now disappearing from the pages. And we are now witnessing the rollout of a ghastly ‘one size fits all’ comic-style design for the weeklies. So yes, plenty of supine journalists Mike…but most of them at the top.
Report this comment
Mike Gilson correctly identifies the symptoms of this editorial malaise, but perhaps he should be looking in a different direction for the cause.
For many years now, newspapers have been happy to live off press releases/tweets from councils, the police, the armed forces, trades unions, etc, without seeking to add to or expand on what has been offered.
This is not due entirely to inertia, as cuts in staffing and resources have made it increasingly difficult to deliver the sort of coverage that might be seen as worthy of the journalistic profession.
It is unlikely to change until newspaper owners see and accept the need for a skilled, well-motivated editorial workforce, able to actually send out reporters instead of confining them to a desk and give them the opportunity to produce quality material.
It won’t happen, of course. Newspaper offices — where they still exist — will continue to be simply production hives for the few overworked busy bees who survive..
Sadly, even the intervention of well-respected editors will not alter this scenario.
Report this comment
Rich this from an editor of a paper within Newsquest – a company that notoriously does not give the workers a chance to publicly air their views or give a right of reply in all its numerous disputes.
Report this comment
BilliBilli: thanks for praising my alacrity and, indeed, I do live within walking distance of this site. Now you have got my interest it’d be fascinating to hear your considered opinions on the topic actually under discussion here as I am sure they are balanced, insightful and intelligent.
Report this comment
How many journalists does The Argus now employ?
Report this comment
“…to obtain information and pass it on to your readers, to tell you things you didn’t know. News is often something that someone else didn’t want you to read.”
Not sure I fully agree with that today. It’s now become more about being relevant.
Let’s look at the Panama Papers. I have no idea who ran the scoop on that, nor do I care. Every news source is running with it and I go to the ones I feel most comfortable with or that are most relevant to me. That might be a particular paper, TV news channel or website.
The same applies locally. It’s not really about having information someone didn’t want me to read or even to tell me things I didn’t know. The trick is getting me to think that my local newspaper, in print or online, is the place to go to get that information.
Without that, all the hard work done by brilliant ‘nuisance’ journalists will just go to waste anyway!
Report this comment
Whilst it is difficult to fault Mike Gilson’s sentiments, we would be as well to consider them in the context of the situation in which the regional press finds itself.
To pursue the style of journalism he espouses requires at the very minimum a core of trained, highly motivated and dedicated staff who are given time and financial resources to pursue stories that do not falling like autumn leaves from PR press releases.
Considering that a good many of the aforementioned staff have already been consigned to the dole queue, and the few that remain are constantly looking over their shoulder for signs that they may next in line for a P45, makes his noble sentiments rather academic.
The truth is that until somebody comes up with viable new business model for the regional press that can restore a little of its financial muscle, Mr Gilson is whistling into the teeth of a cold, and strengthening wind.
Report this comment
If Mike really wants an increase in quality on local papers he should give his reporters more time to work on better stories. Forget the kind of nonsense that’s on The Argus website right now… use time spent producing that claptrap on proper investigations.
Today on theargus.co.uk we have:
“Parents reunite with crew who helped deliver baby”
“Medals for twinkle-toed teenager”
“Jesus Chris Superstar gets youthful touch for all saints production”
“Warning to dog owners as palm oil washes up on beach”
“Blind veteran in line for national award”
Who cares?
Report this comment
The real problem is too few staff overworked looking for easy stories fed to them by the same faces. I haven’t seen any investigative stuff locally for years, reporters don’t have the time. I can’t imagine the Argus will have many staff as they sell around 13k, must be frustrating for someone with high standards.
Report this comment
Gilson should know. Which paper carried a front page puff from no less than David Cameron? I forget now.
He would do far better to fight NQ for his over-worked journos and get some more staff to help them produce a better paper rather than knock others. Clean up your own back yard first, as my mum used to say.
Report this comment
Luka. The Argus sells just below 13,000 across the whole of East and West Sussex. Should do better.
Report this comment
Anyone read my lonevcomment on this story on HTFP yesterday?
It’s an issue rife thought the regional press and this event is a classic case of it
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2016/news/health-secretary-to-address-regional-political-journalists/
Report this comment
Daily paper chief reporter here. Fascinating debate.
Mike’s comments regarding cosy relationships are all too familiar. However, we deal with sensitive politicians who throw a strop at the first sign of criticism and literally refuse to speak to us anymore.
There’s a balance, isn’t there? Hold them to account but keep a good relationship? Are council leaders and MPs more sensitive than they used to be?
I spent nine years teaching myself how to be tenacious, but now feel out on a limb when I start poking around and making a nuisance of myself.
It’s all about the web hits, and you simply won’t get 10,000 people clicking on an article about low-level council corruption.
Report this comment
I wonder what the MD’s face will look like when the kick-ass journalism upsets a big advertisr who storms off in a huff with his lovely money,never to contribute as much as a pound to the welfare of Gannett.
Report this comment
Onteresting comments from “Off Spin”
That sounds suspiciously like something someone with an axe to grind with the Coventry Telegraph would say. Perhaps an embittered former journalist whose ‘glory days’ are well and truly behind them?
You mention losing reporters to competitors? There are no other Coventry-based newspapers to my knowledge?
Certainly there isn’t another newspaper with Coventry in the masthead that’s signed up to IPSO.
Quiet laughable for any such newspaper to claim to hold others to account when they are unaccountable themselves.
Report this comment
There’s a disturbing tendency nowadays for journalists to ‘tread softly’ around a whole range of issues. I gather trainee journalists are even taught on some courses that this conciliatory approach to politicians and others is a good thing.
Political correctness and an eagerness to appease major advertisers at all costs are together eroding our freedom of speech and reducing sections of the media to a state of timorous compliance. This is a very bad thing, not only for the media, but society as a whole.
I believe in the great journalist H.L.Mencken’s contention – that words are meant to ‘go to war’ in pursuit of the truth and in bringing society’s bad men to heel.
The press is the only institution with the will and wherewithal to perform this crucial task, and it requires able, dogged, cussed, no-nonsense journalists to dig the dirt on corrupt politicians, crooked lawyers, dodgy doctors and other miscreants in the ongoing fight to make society better.
Without the vigilance and commitment of a good press, the bad men (and women) have free rein to make life miserable for everyone.
My credo as an editor was: I want to be judged not on the approval of my friends, but the disapproval of my enemies, because you know you are right if the scum of the earth are against you.
It was an approach that served me well for many years.
Report this comment
You don’t have to look much further than the Coventry Telegraph when it comes to finding a fine example of a newspaper holding those in positions of power to account.
Superb exclusives on ethics code breaches by the council’s chief executive, the level of child abuse and neglect in the city, paedophiles targeting youngsters in parks under the police and council’s nose and the ongoing Ricoh Arena train station saga have demonstrated they hold those in authority to account like no other.
Thank goodness us residents don’t have to rely on the one-eyed, hate-fuelled, personal agenda-driven reports which appear in the down market weekly ad-rag.
We’re grateful to have a newspaper which focuses on the bigger issues rather than uninvited publications forced through our doors which have allowed themselves to be used for petty point scoring in order to settle personal scores.
Report this comment
The main part of the problem is not just a lack of resources but modern management who think they know how to run editorial when, as happened in the 1960s when I started in newspapers, they did not dare poke their noses into what the editor or his staff were doing provided circulation was good enough.
Report this comment
Love it, Brassington. Love it.
Report this comment
The Argus is a pale shadow of its former self which had some gleam, gumption and bite. Staff cuts cause – plus poor leadership?
Report this comment
Someone said …
“Presumably the Argus is doing brilliantly? Top story on its website this morning, a live news blog from 7.30am which finished at 9am and which had no comments despite requests for them. No more news today?”
Is it only me who simply does not believe the smoke and mirrors that is regional newspaper website figures. While the Argus will be telling all and sundry that it has a zillion uniques every day, these stories attract about two comments. Yet this story we are discussing in a very narrow interest industry website gets nearly 50 comments!!!
Report this comment
Gilson, once a fine editor, does not argue from a strong position. His own paper, struggling to sell 13,000 a day instead of its peak 115,000, is barely read outside Brighton and Hove nowadays and all too often shows all the signs of something cobbled together by far too few, but hard working, hacks. As someone else said, sort out your own paper before attacking others. The decline of the once superb Argus has been disgraceful.
. Step up to the plate Mike and sort it.
Report this comment