“Let us demand the kind of press that we deserve”The Lord Mayor of Oxford speaks out as the jobs and titles cull continues across provincial newspapers More than seventy people turned out for a lively public meeting in Oxford Town Hall to hear about what is happening to our local news services, and to discuss where the problem lies and what can be done to safeguard quality local news.
Nick Davies, an investigative journalist, who addressed this issue in his best-selling book Flat Earth News, talked about the profound effect that the changing picture of ownership has had on quality. “Three to four decades ago, all across the country, in every community, there was a family that owned a local newspaper. They have almost all been bought up by one of four corporations, Newsquest being one of them. If you want to understand why we get so many stories wrong, it is because newsrooms have fallen into the hands of big corporations, who have usurped the logic of journalism – the idea of finding the truth – and replaced it with the logic of commercialism,” he said.
Profit-driven agendas have led to successive cuts in editorial staff, while at the same time the number of pages has been rising – often in the form of colour supplements – to increase revenue from advertising. The net result, according to research into the quality nationals, is that on average every journalist today has to produce three times more copy than used to be the case in 1985. This translates directly into another finding of the same research – 80% of all news stories are generated from material emanating either from public relations officers or press agencies. Journalists who should be following events in their own patch, keeping up with events and digging out stories end up regurgitating material from other sources, and often lack the time to check whether those stories really stand up.
David Horne, a long-serving reporter for the Oxford Mail and Times and Witney Gazette presented a local perspective. Horne is one of five journalists who left the paper in January as part of the latest round of redundancies, “I’d had enough.”
When he started at the Witney office, around 30 years ago, there were three reporters there and
the paper had an office with a receptionist and a visible presence in the town. In those days, said Horne, the paper had houses for district reporters in Wantage, Chipping Norton, Thame, Wallingford and Didcot. “District offices are very important,” he said. “Today, they have no receptionists. They have locked doors. We are an invisible presence. The Didcot office now has three reporters covering Abingdon, Didcot, Wantage and Wallingford. When I started there were offices or houses with reporters in each of those four.”
Seek out the contentious stuff
What is lost when there are too few journalists is quality coverage of contentious issues, said Horne. “We should seek out the contentious stuff. Journalists must challenge editors to get the time to do the job properly.”
Oxford’s Lord Mayor, Cllr Susanna Pressel, looked at the effect underinvestment in the local press has on local democracy and accountability. “I notice that reporters seldom come to council meetings nowadays. They used to, when I first became a councillor 13 years ago. Now they just seem to use the press releases we put out.”
We need journalists to explain the issues
Pressel believes that poor reporting is contributing to the fall in voter turnout, which in some areas of Oxford is now around 11% or 12%. “We need journalists who will explain the issues and help people understand what we do in local government. It can be made more interesting. I know it can.”
“It is often said that we get the press we deserve,” she concluded, “Let’s now demand the kind of press that we deserve and do something about this dreadful state of affairs. I will back anything the NUJ does on this.”
The task of explaining what the NUJ is doing fell to Michelle Stanistreet, speaking in Oxford for the first time since being elected deputy general secretary last year. “Yes, times are tough, the advertising environment for local media is undoubtedly difficult. But our media industry, despite the challenges facing it, is by no means failing, this is not an industry on its knees, taking difficult decisions for its verysurvival,” she stressed.
“Companies like Newsquest and Johnston Press have to wake up to the fact that the years of unsustainable profit levels are over. If the likes of Tesco can make do with 6% profit, and Centrica with under 12%, surely Newsquest can make do with 20%? And if they really cannot see a future in our industry without profit levels of 30% or 40%, let them sell titles on to someone who’s prepared to invest in the future of newspapers and recoup more sustainable profits in return. After all, the appetite for local, national and international news has not died, if anything it has increased”
Alternative models of ownership
The crisis in journalism, said Stanistreet, is fuelling debate about possible alternative models of ownership. She mentioned the York division of Newsquest which, despite making a profit of £4.3 million, has imposed a pay freeze and repeated redundancies. “Journalists at [those] titles are desperate to find ways of finding a new owner,” she said.
Stanistreet also pointed to signs that local companies may be looking to fill the gap left by poor or non-existent local news services, referring to the Bury-based consumer magazine company, Big Spark Publishing. MD Stuart Parker announced plans to launch the Cheshire Independent, a free monthly, to “fill the void left by Newsquest’s pull out from their Macclesfield base,” with hopes it will be the first of several new local newspapers in the offing.
The NUJ, she said, is setting up a commission of media experts – people working within the industry – to talk about the future, to assess alternatives of ownership. It is also using industrial and legal means as well as pressure from local communities, to challenge cut backs and pay freezes across the industry, in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. A ‘Jobs Summit’ organised to help chapels fight back against the cuts had attracted 170 NUJ members the previous weekend.
Journalists need community support
“The NUJ can’t – and won’t – stand by and watch these companies destroy the industry, sucking huge profits out of their workers and customers in the process. That’s why we’ve been acting to help turn the understandable gloom and fear in newsrooms across the media into anger and action.
“That’s why meetings like this are so important in developing a campaign strategy that involves us all – journalists need the support of their communities to make companies realise that journalism really does matter. If we can join forces, stick together and create a national debate on the importance of journalism in a democracy, we can change things.”
AW 2009-02-01
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