Mick Temple's Blog

NEWSPAPER'S OBITUARY COLUMN

28-09-2007

Last year, local sports fans mourned the loss - at least in its traditional form - of the Sports Argus, which had been overtaken as a results service by radio, TV and the internet. Now Mick Temple reports on the death of another Midlands media institution.

The death of any newspaper is a sad occasion for those of us who love the smell of newsprint in the morning. It's especially sad when the casualty is a decent local paper and the brainchild of a great regional newspaperman.

On Sunday 30th September the Sentinel Sunday - an offshoot of Stoke-on-Trent's daily paper The Sentinel - will hit the newsstands for the last time.

In my lifetime I've seen many papers die. From the good (News Chronicle), to the bad (Eddie Shah's short-lived second attempt at a national daily, the Post) to the indifferent (Daily Sketch), I've mourned them all. Each one has meant the loss of jobs and, more poignantly, the death of dreams. Crucially, each demise has meant another nail in the coffin of pluralism.

I've also seen a number of new titles being born, some, like the pre-Murdoch Sun, from the ashes of noble predecessors, others in those optimistic early years of the post-Wapping technological revolution which had promised so much and eventually delivered so little.

Only two survive from that brief blossoming - the Independent titles and the Sport, from the very opposite ends of a 'sublime-ridiculous' continuum. Still - the birth of one great newspaper is not to be sniffed at - and don't let anyone tell you the Independent is not a great newspaper.

But I digress.

The Sentinel Sunday was started by Sean Dooley, then the editor of North Staffordshire's Evening Sentinel. Sean had helped revitalise the Evening Sentinel, which under his editorship bristled with life and was never afraid to take the readership's side against vested interests.

Stoke's complacent rulers never knew what hit them and when I arrived here in the early 1990s (to a vastly different city than today) I soon discovered they hated him and the paper. The Sentinel was fiercely proud of Stoke and its people and it captured their spirit, humour and passion.

Sentinel Sunday, launched in March 2000, sought to bring the same sense of pride and spirit to a more 'up-market' audience - the paper was more reflective, had some highly intelligent writers, and soon became lauded throughout the industry, especially for its features.

The late Peter Bossley - a columnist who delighted in confounding your expectations of what a local political commentator might say - won the UK Press Award as Columnist of the Year in 2001. The paper is currently Midlands Newspaper of the Year.

But awards and industry approval have failed to save it. It's a bloody good paper and I will feel its loss - and not just because I wrote the occasional column for it. But the commercial reality is that the paper didn't sell enough copies.

The Evening Sentinel survives, still lively and still Stoke to the core, but as for many titles the steady decline in its readership is a worry. How much longer your local printed newspaper will last is a matter of much conjecture. A knowledgeable associate gives it less than ten years.

In the meantime, I will buy the last Sentinel Sunday this week and raise a glass to Sean Dooley. It was short-lived but fun while it lasted.

Cheers, Sean.