Newspapers must maintain the standards set for “hundreds of years” to thrive in future, according to a regional daily editor.
Keith Harrison, who edits Wolverhampton’s Express & Star, has also called on the industry to “embrace the future” and see the changing media landscape as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
In an editorial for the Express & Star marking Local Newspaper Week, which started yesterday, Keith admitted there were “challenging times” for journalism.
But he highlighted several campaigns and initiatives spearheaded by his newspaper as examples of why the regional press is so important – including its ‘Ladder’ campaign, which has helped more than 1,000 young people find apprenticeships across its patch.
Wrote Keith: “Reader habits and lifestyles are changing and people are busier than ever before. Time is an increasingly precious commodity and, despite my inky fingers, we are well aware that modern readers want – and need – to be served in many different ways.
“The Express & Star is investing in its digital news operations, bringing you stories and information within seconds of news breaking.
“Alongside their shorthand notepad and pen, our reporters carry smartphones to record videos, take pictures and record interviews that a few years ago would have taken a three-man crew.”
A vote has now opened for the public to choose the best regional press campaign of the past 12 months as part of Local Newspaper Week. A total of 32 different campaigns have been shortlisted.
Keith added: “Newspapers aren’t dead. Far from it. They are on the cusp of a new chapter of prosperity, combining traditional strengths with technological advances.
“But we will only thrive if we maintain the standards we have set for hundreds of years, embrace the future and see an ever-changing media landscape as an opportunity, not a threat.”
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Keith added: “Newspapers aren’t dead. Far from it.” Tell that to Trinity Mirror, old chum.
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“…. our reporters carry smartphones to record videos, take pictures and record interviews… ”
that exactly sums up the shift from quality to quantity in the uk regional press by cuting staff and getting the job done on the cheap irrespective of quality, then he goes on to say
“… we will only thrive if we maintain the standards we have set for hundreds of years”
sounds like someone wanting his cake and eating it too
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I agree that there’s opportunities to be grasped here, there can be a good digital future, but it will take time, however it needs to be done properly. Just because something is done digitally doesn’t mean it has to have poor UGC pictures and video, or have to be thrown up without anything more than a casual read over by a senior member of staff.
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Unless somebody finds a way to leap off the seemingly endless cusp and turn a meaningful profit on the Internet pretty darned soon, I fear that Keith’s predictions of a bright future will look rather wide of the mark.
And to tout the carrying of cameras and sound recorder as some manifestation of the white heat of the technological revolution coursing through a re-invigorating regional press may have carried some weight 15 years ago, but now looks a somewhat ludicrous attempt to spin the very serious situation engulfing the UK regional press.
You can talk a bright future, but without the resources to back it up, it ain’t never going to happen.
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On the cusp of a new prosperity? Tell that to all the thousands of media people who have lost their jobs.
My local daily has lost its eight page weekly property guide, its three page jobs spread, and half its motors ads. BMDs are less than half they were five years ago. All the delivery vans have long gone as well as the local offices for ad reps and district reporters.
The online edition has been redesigned and is now mostly about Hollywood, football, and what’s on telly.
Oh…and yes, all the photographers and half the editorial staff have gone!
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“Reader habits and lifestyles are changing and people are busier than ever before.”
This is such a cliche. Are people busier than when they worked down mines or in factories and had to raise umpteen kids?
Now people loaf around in offices posting facetious comments on the internet. Like me.
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All talk and no trousers, as me dad would have said.
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The circulation figures of the provincial press, sadly, tell a different story. All but gone in five years…
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Good points made here but sutler’s cuts to the quick – where is the profit for local news online? Nowhere – it can’t be done! Dinosaurs such as JP, Newsquest and TM will not be able to irrigate their thirsty hierarchies with dribbles of online revenue. If there is a future (and I think there is) it lies in devolved, cost-efficient, locally-owned outfits producing good-quality material in all formats. But no CE, no regional MDs, no assistants to the regional MDs, no Blue Sky Thinking Executives and none of the other paraphernalia so beloved of the corporations. Sorry, guys.
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Our local daily paper is like a leach on Facebook & Twitter and has no identity, compassion or connection with the local community any more.
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Hands up who knew it was Local Newspaper Week?
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The problem is with differing standards. There was a piece on here the other week about a box of KFC chicken being found on the floor. Can you imagine taking that story to a traditional newspaper editor pre 2005 and not getting chased out of the office with a cricket bat?
It’s somehow de rigueur to associate online news with the concept of ‘anything goes’ in modern newsrooms. Stories cobbled together from Tweets, online polls, journalists recruited from blogging backgrounds with very little training, awful photographs sent in from someone’s iPhone while on a passing bus.
Our local paper often Tweets pictures of a sunrise with the words ‘what a lovely sunrise’.
Let’s have online news, but let it actually be NEWS. Researched, with depth, entertaining, good pictures, good video.
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Newspapers repeatedly put their stories on social media, and fail to protect their copyright, thereby cutting their own throats!
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The problem is that most newspapers are controlled by people with very 21st century ideas about democracy, justice and truth; the use of power; corporate and social responsibility; a sense of place and community and the value of the public realm.
And that’s before you even start to discuss the role of the media.
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Reporting, taking pictures and video should STILL be a three man crew to maintain standards! Bosses should NEVER be proud of cutting jobs, let alone at the expence of quality.
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Better to be a snapper who can hack than a hack who can snap
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Ah yes, the traditional values and standards. Like giving all of your content away on Ye Olde Internet and bragging about the number of Facebook likes.
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