The Stirrer

given the rise of technology and social networking sites; i think local newspapers are a thing of the past. What do YOU think?

Local papers have been even worse hit than the nationals. Partly a cycle of cost cutting = less news = less sales = more cost cutting; partly its down to technological change. Also people's sense of localness has changed; local now means less local than it used to. This isn't just down to the net, but the way in which people travel to work, study and socialise. Ironically, the future for print maybe for more heavily localised micro-papers, whereas the web is ideal (I hope) for regional communication.

Wise words - the one-size-fits-all answer from anybody in the industry to explain the downturn is 'ah, it's the internet'. Fact is that newspapers quite happily survived the advent of radio and television quite comfortably. Indeed, they thrived on it.
The reason is simple. Newspapers were good then, now, as they endure death by a thousand cuts the quality of the product is weakening by the day, less people are buying and less people are advertising.
It's a real shame, but folk need to stop looking to the evil internet if they are to explain this trend.

Nothing like a good newspaper read, I say. I'd be bereft if the Observer were to go, because I just have to get my weekly fix of the Everyman crossword

The rise of buying and selling 2nd hand on Ebay is a big factor for the decline in profiability of local and free newspapers.

Before Ebay, the local papers were twice as thick and heavy on a Thur. / Fri. / Sat with many pages of classified ads - charged at quite a high price per word - now there's hardly any of these adverts as most such sales are now through internet private sales.

Local events, gig guides, are also found on forums like this -- so organisers don't have to pay for advertising now -- that was always very high priced.

I think the future for the printed press is with free papers, locally and nationally.

I've recently moved to London and every f*cker reads the London Paper, London Lite, and Metro on the tube, and in the Camden area you see a lot of people reading the free Camden New Journal.

Unfortunately these papers aren't very good, because people are just looking for something to flick through for ten minutes on the journey home (although the CNJ does have some good coverage of local government).

I wouldn't be surprised to see a free West Midlands evening paper cropping up in the next year or so, which will soon reach saturation on public transport.

I think free evening papers like ThelondonPaper and London Lite are excellent for what they are - free catch-ups on the day's news; and like Simon K I suspect their advent is only a matter of time in the West Midlands. Papers like the Camden New Journal have moved to fill the gaps left by the lack of true local news in the paid-for Evening Standard. Plurality is nothing new in local news coverage - Birmingham and the Black Country traditionally had a wider range of papers than we do now eg the Despatch and the dominant organisations will have to get used to sharing the space again; especially, as Kingy notes, with the decline of advertising.

Local hacks at the Post and Mail fearing the worst as their MD is sacked http://www.thestirrer.co.uk/post-and-ma ... 04091.html

Dutch government funding jobs of hacks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/ma ... ent-payout

Next time I'm standing in for Adrian, I have an article planned with the editor of an ultra-local free newspaper. I told him Stirrers would be interested in what he has to say and now I can direct him to this thread as proof.

Clive Edwards who produces and distributes the Vale Mail to just under 10,000 homes makes his contribution to the debate.

We have two free newspapers in Sutton Coldfield. Both are rubbish, being little more than advertising sheets with some press releases attached. Stories are missed and stories are not followed up. I'd happily pay £2 per week for a true local paper, although I accept that many would not.

I spent the weekend with a friend (a former communications director with a large bank) discussing the press and we both came to the conclusion that local and regional papers were on their deathbeds. The continued cuts in staffing , the subsquent loss of quality and the inability of media companies to attract new readers means that advertisers will look for other outlets. It may take 10 or 15 years but I doubt if Express and Star and the Birimgham Mail will stil be around.
The future is the internet but how you will get people to pay for online news is a major question.
How many Stirrers would pay for access to this site. How many would pay for access tothe Express and Star, or for that matter, any of the national papers?

I wouldn't count on our deaths just yet!! (The Birmingham Mail nor the Express & Star).

Talking to my old editor Ian Dowell about such matters always brings him onto the memory of how the Mail "was dead when they invented commercial radio; it survived. Then it was dead when they invented free newspapers; it survived."

Now we're dead, apparantly, because of the internet; well, we're still here, and there are hundreds of local newspapers across the country STILL surviving and STILL making profits and STILL employing thousands DESPITE the recession... and despite the internet.

Yes, the world is a tad difficult place for all sorts of reasons and for all sorts of businesses atm, and yes, regional newspapers across the country are making cut-backs in order to beat the recession.

But is the internet, in terms of news, doing any better?

Me old mate Adrian Goldberg, (Gawd Bless him), does not run this site as a profitable enterprise. Forgive me, Goldie, but on it's own this site loses dosh.

OK... it's a micro-site full of UGC, but while I love it it ain't in court or council daily, does not send reporters and photographers to every local football match, home and away, does not have 15 community reporters reflecting the news from suburbs across the city, etc.

And look at the giants... BBC online: subsidised, no profit whatsoever. guardian.co.uk: ditto.

Even Murdoch, (Goddam him), is now telling the international media world of which he is King that news online cannot remain free if it is to survive.

What is factual is that we in the media - regional and national - have to reinvent ourselves, and we are only at the very beginning of that process.

Who should own us? Plcs or communities? Local millionaires or not-for-profit organisations?

Whoever, the profit levels have not and will not be retained at 30% ROS levels. They are down, they will remain down, they may even shrink more as the huge change in what we are doing and how we do it and who owns us all takes place.

So will local newspapers be gone in 10-15 years as suggested by 'hacked off'?

Of course not. They'll be different. So will the web. But news costs money to generate, and the platform to attract enough money to run a news organisation is in print, not on the web. Advertising revenue ("swapping pennies for pounds" from print to web, to quote Mirror editor Richard Wallace) remains there in hundreds of millions for print... a rising income for the web but still only 10 or 20% of what's in print, and even then so much of it piggy-backing print revenues. Certainly nowhere near enough to run a standalone (without print revenues) news organisation.

And then there's circulation revenue (two thirds of national newspapers revenue comes from the cover price people buy the papers for; one third for regional newspapers). Take that away with internet only organisations and you have precisley NIL income from such sources (unless Murdoch is right and we can now shut the stable door and start charging everyone for accessing news sites...).

Lots more to say on this one, but this will do me for now.

I'm 41 and will bet anyone anything that newspapers will still be around when I reach retirement age.

(Whether or not I'll be retiring from employment in newspapers is a different matter, as all editors get tapped on the shoulder sooner or later!)

I actually prefer the local papers to the nationals: I read both the Post & Mail for news, events etc, although I do have the sunday papers & guardian, although I rarely finish them.
However, I also get free local papers, The Standard & The Advertiser which are, on the whole, pretty good.
I enjoy local news about people/places/things I know and make sense to me. We need them - long may they stay around.
However, what seems to be missing is a really good community based format (perhaps I should start one); where people can get detailed help, support, info & advice; that's the current void

You maybe right and those regional papers will be around for longer than I have predicted, but in what form?
Already court reporters are almost a thing of the past. Coverage of council meetings and meetings of other public bodies has been drastically cut, reporters have less and less time to find original stories all because newspaper groups seem to reach for staff cuts to meet every challenge they face.

You don't have to be a journalist to see that the cut backs in staffing levels have impacted on quality.
I've heard it said that journalism was 80 per cent press releases and that 90 per cent of press releases end up unused in the bin.
With the cuts in staffing levels I would argue that the odds have swung heavily in the favour of spin doctors.
Increasingly the stories you find in the Mail are almost exactly the same as you find in the Express and Star. This not because of plagiarism but because journalists are becoming so heavily dependent on press officers.

I believe your 15 reporters cover an area taking in Solihull, Dudley, Sandwell, and Walsall and of course Birmingham
A population of around 2 million people?
Not a lot for such a massive area. One reporter for every 133,000 people?

Newspaper sales are suffering. A good result nowadays is holding sales not increasing them.
And advertisers have seen this and are switching their budgets to other platforms.

You're right in saying that internet revenues are 'pennies' compared to that of print but the advantage of the internet is that costs are lower and the precision in reaching potential customers is much greater, so the trend away from print will continue.

And there is the problem of pushing the genie of 'the internet is free' back into the bottle.
It's not just Murdoch that wants to charge for access, I suspect Trinity Mirror wants to do the same.

Some publications, mainly B2B, are overcoming it with online subscription charges.

What will the big regional newspaper groups do to overcome these problems of falling sales and declining advertising revenues.

If past experience is anything to go by, sack more staff, fill with more press releases, regurgitate national stories, fill the pages with celebs from Big Brother or the latest talent show.



Yeah, you might still be able to pick up the Birmingham Mail in 20 years time but when you do I suspect you will be asking yourself the question, 'Where's the news'?

in a word. yes.





the question of monetizing a 'free' for use online presence is something many internet companies or companies with an internet presence have to deal with it at some point. You could argue Murdoch should have some experience of this with MySpace. Is myspace a subscription service ?

internet news provides choice and there are no shortage of participants. If an outlet wants to potentially damage it's online share or divert it's readership elsewhere via implementing a subscription service which is not suitable nor desired by it's readership then there will be plenty of others looking to make gains or provide an equalivent service for nowt.

i don't see why print media cannot exist alongside online news. I certainly don't see the death of print media, far from it. It's just plenty actually get by just fine with the online variety available. For me anyway local newspapers don't have the variety and breadth of news and features of a saturday broadsheet for instance. The latter of which is an occasional impulse buy i have to admit to.

But then i'm not all that into 'local' news. So horses for courses. Others might prefer the local newspapers.

Who is better informed about local politics? Someone who only reads local newspapers or someone who only reads the Stirrer. If you have the wit to look past the grinding of axes, I would suggest the latter.