Examination of Witnesses (Questions 625
- 639)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Russell Whitehair, Mr David Newell, Ms Santha
Rasaiah, Ms Lynne Anderson and Mr Edmund Curran OBE
Chairman: Good morning to you Mr Newell
and your colleagues; we are very pleased to see you. We are looking
forward to what you have to say to us. As you know this is an
inquiry into readership, ownership and news production. I suppose
in a sentence it is about the role of news in an informed democracy
and the need to write across all the different platforms to make
sure this is both accessible to members of the public and also
meets their needs for information alongside opinions. Before we
start, Lord Inglewood would like to say something.
Lord Inglewood: I declare an interest
in that I am the chairman of a newspaper group and I think we
have two ex-presidents of the Newspaper Society on the board.
Q625 Chairman:
I should also apologise for Lord Fowler. Although you may have
heard him on the Today programme this morning, that was
pre-recorded and he is out of the country I am afraid, which is
why I am sitting here. Would you like to say a few words about
how the ownership consolidation has affected your members and
whether the number of regional and local titles are less widely
dispersed in terms of ownership than they were 10 or 20 years
ago? What is the impact of this on readers?
Mr Whitehair: Over the last 30 years there has
been considerable consolidation in the regional newspaper industry
and this has meant that there have been some large companies who
are now at the forefront of our industry, giving the industry
a better resource, a better focus and I think a better capability
to enable us to face the challenges that we all face in the local
communities that we serve. The prime issue around consolidation
and where the industry is at the moment does not really revolve
around a company being big or small, it relates to the fact of
whether it is reflecting the interests of its local community.
The diversity of the industry is preserved, albeit we have had
large consolidations. The larger companies that come into the
industry are very focussed on the fact that local communities
do need to be served as well as they were 10 years ago, 50 years
ago or even longer. I think that the impact of consolidation has
not had an adverse affect on the industry, on the contrary it
has strengthened the industry, given it more resource and the
diversity has been preserved.
Q626 Chairman:
What are the benefits of a newspaper being owned by a large media
plc and how does that impact on the individual titles? I much
take your point that one of the main strengths of the newspapers
produced by your members is the locality of it, in touch with
people where they are living and working. Does it help or hinder,
being part of a bit group?
Mr Whitehair: I think with the right ethos and
knowing all of the companies in the industry as I do, it does
help in that it brings extra resource, it brings economies of
scale but it does not detract from the focus that those companies
will have in serving each local community. Even though you will
have a large company that may have businesses and newspapers stretching
from Scotland down to Devon, they will still operate each of their
local newspapers in a local context but also be able to bring
in economies of scale in terms of backroom functions, production
facilities, printing and all of those things that will enable
a company to be better resourced, better financed and enable it
to concentrate on what is important, which is reporting local
news and providing the information that local communities want.
Q627 Chairman:
The National Union of Journalists in its evidence to us cites
the case of the Walsall Observer, for example. Twenty-five
years ago it had a total of nine editorial staff including an
editor. Now it has one senior and one trainee and the editor is
shared among two other titles. I must confess, looking at that
I would say that you run risks there of not being as closely in
touch with the local community as perhaps you were a few years
back.
Mr Whitehair: I can see the point they are making
but I think the Walsall Observer is probably one example
where things have been cut back to that extent but we do not know
in Walsall whether there are other media in the local context
that are offering local coverage of events and whatever else is
going on in Walsall. Equally, on the other side of things—Ed
might want to come in here from his editorial perspective in Belfast—across
the board, as an industry, we are now employing more journalists
as an industry than we were five years ago. Lynne will be able
to give you the figures in detail if you want them. I think that
you can always pick out one title somewhere that may have reduced
its editorial facilities, but by and large as an industry as a
trend we are employing more journalists than we were five or 10
years ago.
Mr Curran: I have been in journalism for 40
years and I have worked for three large plc organisations, the
Thomson Organisation which owned a huge amount of the regional
press in the United Kingdom, Trinity Mirror and now Independent
News and Media. I think each of them have brought to our organisation
different kinds of attributes. In some instances with Thomson
Organisation and possibly with Trinity it was all the commercial
expertise that the big newspaper group had that they could bring
to an individual title. More lately, to come to the Independent
News and Media and the question you asked about what a large plc
can do for you, in an editorial sense we have access to all of
the independent editorial resources not only the Independent
newspaper (which I know you are going to hear from later on this
morning) but also the Independent newspapers around the
world. Instantly I, as an editor in Belfast, can avail myself
of, for example, an article that appears in the Cape Times
or the Pretoria News or the Johannesburg Star or
the New Zealand Herald. This week, for example, there is
the New Zealand rugby team going back with their tail between
the legs and it is quite relevant to know what the New Zealand
newspapers are saying in Ireland or in Britain. Also, in terms
of the content of the Independent I do not think that any
individual regional newspaper could afford to have that quality
of editorial content. We cannot. We can pick the best of the writers
et cetera and use them in our newspaper when we wish for articles.
That is one aspect. A more general point about the changes that
have taken place, I do think the Walsall example is the exception
rather than the rule. In my estimation the evening and the daily
newspaper market has diversified in the last 20 or 30 years. In
the 1960s when I joined the Belfast Telegraph—I am
sure the same will apply in Manchester or Birmingham—there
was just one great monolithic newspaper and we all existed on
that. Today whether it is Manchester or Belfast or wherever that
company has diversified; we now have a Sunday newspaper in Northern
Ireland and in other centres there are Sunday papers. We have
morning editions that we did not have before for an evening paper.
We have free newspapers that go through everybody's letterbox—community
based newspapers—each week. I think 150,000 homes in the
Belfast area get our free newspaper each week. So there is a huge
diversification which has led in many instances to more journalists
being required on the writing sense, the writing and reporting
side of the newspaper. I would accept that we do not need anything
like the same resource on the production side of newspapers as
we used to do when I first started in journalism.
Q628 Chairman:
Forgive me, is that largely because of the technology?
Mr Curran: Yes, in principle. I think that it
has given journalists their place in the sun. When I began as
a journalist 40 years ago I think we were very much second class
citizens. We were dominated by the print side of the business,
the operational side of the business. The big unions of course
in those days who had all the muscle were the print unions. Today
I would argue that it is the journalists who are centre stage
because they now control the newspaper in a way that they never
controlled it in the past. They have their finger on the button
every day of the publication of the newspapers.
Q629 Chairman:
I wonder if your colleague could say something about the numbers
because I want to try to tease this out.
Ms Anderson: In terms of numbers of journalists?
Q630 Chairman:
Yes. Given that I think you are saying you are employing more
journalists than before, what is it they are doing against the
changes in the technology? I will give you this example as well
because the NUJ argue that the Walsall Observer is not
a one-off. They claim that Trinity Mirror is seeking to merge
its Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo editorial
production with that of the Huddersfield Examiner, its
North Wales and Chester weekly papers to save money. This goes
back to the point you were making earlier which I am well seized
of about the central need for these newspapers to be rooted in
communities. If you get them looking too far over the walls of
that community, as it were, do you not lose that central link
with the community?
Ms Anderson: In terms of pure numbers we know
that there are over 3,000 more journalists employed in the regional
press than there were 10 years ago. Although the numbers of core
newspapers have stayed largely stable—there were 1,351 titles
in 1997 and there are 1,310 tittles today—the reduction
has been largely because of a decline in free weekly newspapers,
dailies and Sundays have stayed quite stable. What those figures
do not show is the huge growth in very intensely local community
titles which my colleague Ed was talking about and which will
all need editorial input. In recent years as well many regional
newspaper publishers are of course integrating their print and
their web publishing activities.
Q631 Chairman:
The journalists writing stories for the print side of this would
normally be expected also to feed the web.
Ms Anderson: Yes, and most of them welcome it.
My evidence, from speaking to journalists and editors, is that
there is a huge enthusiasm, especially for new recruits coming
in. They are delighted that publishers are willing to train them
up in all these multi-disciplines so they can edit video as well
as go out and take video as well as working on the print side.
It makes them a bit more multi-talented in their careers and it
is more exciting I think for the journalists and it takes new
skills now to think: are you going to publish this on the web
first or in print? One nice unexpected coincidence is that we
are finding that web publishing is actually driving newspaper
sales in some instances as well as the newspaper if you are cross-promoting
your web-site, driving traffic to the web-site. It works very
well in instances like the recent flooding where people needed
instant information on where to get the drinking supplies or they
needed a minute by minute account. Journalists would be on the
patch through the night holed up in a hotel making sure they got
that information out to the readers and the technology is allowing
them to do that. It is making it more vibrant as a result.
Q632 Lord Maxton:
I am not clear with local newspapers how you actually define such
a journalist. If you take a local newspaper covering local sport
it may be it is the local school teacher who is interested in
rugby who goes and reports on the local team playing and he then
sends a report in to the local paper on that. Presumably he gets
some small payment for it. Is he counted among the journalists?
Ms Anderson: No, these are full time employees.
Q633 Chairman:
You mentioned about the ethos of newsrooms. What effect does this
consolidation of ownership have on that? I should have confessed
that I started life as a journalist and I have worked on weekly
papers as well. It is quite true that in the last century each
of those newsrooms, because of the characters in them, really
had a very strong ethos. If you are part of a much bigger group
does that help that or change it?
Mr Whitehair: I think it is difficult to generalise
across the board in terms of our industry because it is such a
diverse industry. We will have larger companies, we will have
the smaller companies like my own or the Carlisle Group who have
a different policy towards these issues. It does not necessarily
mean that one is right or one is wrong in how they operate. The
larger companies will still have the ethos of running their local
news centres to match the local requirements of local communities,
whether they are based in Edinburgh or Canary Wharf or wherever
they are. They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they
detracted from that as being the central and core ethos that they
stand by.
Mr Curran: I think there is a distinction to
be drawn. There are two sets of journalists, there are the writing
and reporting journalists who are at the heart of every community
in society. I think generally speaking the people who own newspapers
have preserved them and are preserving them. You referred to a
comment about Trinity Mirror consolidating. I think the key word
there was its "operational" or its "production"
side. It is true to say that on the production side of journalism
there has been rationalisation and consolidation; I do not think
that is a bad thing. If you have a big group and they can produce
their newspapers more economically but still preserve the writing
and reporting teams in each area that is a good thing. That is
what has happened in a large number of the groups. If we were
to go back 50 years and look at all the weekly newspapers in the
United Kingdom and even our regional newspapers, you would see
that they had large teams of people in the big regional newspapers
and smaller numbers in each individual weekly newspaper who were
making up pages, designing pages but not actually writing or reporting
on the community. They were the production side of journalism
and that is what has changed dramatically with technology in the
past 10 years. We can now actually produce our newspapers, still
preserve the community content of them and you can produce them
centrally. I do not think we would make apologies for that. I
think it has actually been a good thing. It has meant that we
can push our resources more towards the writers and the reporters
on the paper and the content of the paper rather than spend so
much money on simply making up the pages and designing them.
Q634 Bishop of Manchester:
On a day when the BBC are announcing cutbacks in their news resources,
do what extent do you see over the coming years the same kinds
of cutbacks affecting regional and local newspapers? Have you
got any examples of when a buy-out has occurred of there being
a serious decline or rise in the number of staff employed?
Mr Whitehair: We are in a transitional stage
as an industry just like most other media and we are facing up
to the challenges of digital and the internet era. I think that
as we are going through that transitional phase there will be
a transfer of job roles towards incorporation of web news as well
as print and media. We are all going through that change now whether
we are small businesses in the local newspaper industry or the
larger companies. Through that change there are bound to be jobs
that have to be adjusted, there may be some lost through that
but others will be created. I am sure that the BBC report today
may mirror that to a greater extent because they have not been
evolving their approach to things but we have been evolving our
approach over the last five to 10 years to meet the challenges
that we are all facing now in terms of the internet. That is a
process that I think will be changing. So far as increasing journalists
on newspapers, I think there has been a recent buy-out in the
south of England where it is likely that on some of the newspapers
that have been bought there will be an increased presence of journalists
on certain titles in Essex or in the Thames Valley or wherever.
There will be increases perhaps in journalists that are going
to be applied to those papers. Again, we have such a diverse industry
and as the Newspaper Society we are not really answerable for
the policies in general or in specific terms for the companies
who are members, but we can highlight the trends to you. I think
that that transitional approach will carry on as we develop into
the internet over the next five to 10 years.
Mr Newell: In terms of the group that has come
along from the Newspaper Society today, what we have tried to
do through Russell—who is President of the Newspaper Society
and represents an independent company in private ownership with
a long historical tradition and an emphasis on both urban but
also rural areas and reflects the importance also of weekly newspapers—and
through Ed—someone who has an editorial background who has
worked for three large corporations over the last few years—to
give you a flavour of the industry in that way. I think the point
that I would like to make is that the future of the regional press
as it evolves across different media platforms and particularly
in the internet era, we believe we can do the job that we do now—which
only we do—provided that the competitive environment is
a fair competitive environment. We have fears that that environment
will not remain fair. The BBC is an example of where we have fears
about the future. Mark Thompson has acknowledged publicly either
to this Committee or in another place that the BBC does not reach
the parts that the regional local newspaper industry does at the
moment in terms of the deployment of journalists locally. The
BBC simply cannot provide an ultra local service as it is currently
constituted. It has plans so to do out of tax payers' money, out
of licence fee money. We have concerns that there is a danger
that if the BBC enters the local market on the back of tax payers'
money to a greater extent than it does at the moment, it will
actually in practice make it harder for the regional press to
evolve in the way it is doing, particularly in terms of its web
presence. Ed comes from an example of a newspaper whose website
has video clips on it, interviews on it and all the rest of it
and that is the way in which the regional press is going. If,
at the same time, other entrants come into the market that do
not have to exist in the commercial environment, it will make
it harder I think for the regional and local press to do the job
that is done so successfully in a commercial environment without
tax payers' money for over 150 years. That is a very real issue
for us. Convergence is very important, it is happening and no-one
will try to put the clock back on convergence but we are converging
as well as other media are converging and the rules that govern
that are terribly important, if what we think we do well can continue
to be done well on different platforms. I think it is quite interesting
that on issues such as trust where the BBC often feel they have
a monopoly on trust, that all the independent survey evidence
that we have done shows that local and regional newspapers are
more trusted locally than the BBC is. It is very important that
we are allowed to evolve in the way in which we have indicated
in our evidence and is reflected in terms of what Ed and Russell
have said so far.
Q635 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
You made the point very powerfully and you may well be right in
doing so, but I wonder whether you could reflect independently
on whether you think that if the BBC did do you as you suggested
and you fear they might do, would they add anything to the supply
of news or information that you currently do not have? Is there
a deficit of existing provisions that the BBC could make up? Or
is this purely treading on your lawn?
Mr Newell: I think if you analyse what Mark
Thompson has said on this he, at the moment, would say that the
BBC does not have the capability of providing the local news service
at a genuinely local level that the regional and local press does,
particularly through its paid-for weekly titles. Indeed he has
suggested that if the BBC did go down the route of ultra local
television it would only be able to provide that ultra local service
if it could do so in terms of coming to cooperation agreements
with regional and local newspapers. I think we are providing something
at the moment that the BBC is not providing. If the BBC did enter
the market the danger is that it would take away the commercial
ability for us to provide what we think we currently provide and
what we feel, if we are allowed to, we can evolve into doing,
particularly in terms of our internet presence.
Q636 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
I can see your point but just to be more specific, is there a
deficit of current local or regional news that you are not providing
that the BBC says it will provide?
Mr Newell: In the experiment that the BBC did
on ultra local television in the West Midlands—the so-called
Midlands Experiment—the BBC shared with us examples of the
programming that they put on in terms of ultra local television.
I and, I think more importantly, member companies in the Newspaper
Society in examining the output—you would say we were partial
but genuinely trying to be objective about it—did not feel
that that which was being produced out of tax payers' money was
materially different to that which the regional press were doing.
Q637 Lord Maxton:
You have used the term "ultra local" several times;
could you define that because I am not quite clear what you mean
by ultra local.
Mr Newell: Ultra local television is a term
of art which the BBC coined. The BBC coined the term wanting to
develop ultra local television by which they mean below regional
and possibly reflecting the footprints of BBC local radio stations.
Mr Whitehair: Which in our terms is not ultra
local at all.
Q638 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
I would like to pursue the difference between the public service
broadcasting obligation that the BBC has and the viable commercial
obligations that inevitably the commercial press has. Presumably,
provided the quality aspect can be satisfied by the local commercial
press then the public service aspect is also satisfied.
Mr Newell: That would be our argument.
Mr Curran: From an editor's point of view, I
think we all have huge regard for the balance and impartiality
of the BBC, no more so than the BBC in Northern Ireland over the
past 30 years or so where it has been a tremendous advantage to
have that kind of balance and impartiality. All we are asking
for from a newspaper point of view is to have a level playing
field. I have often felt that as a newspaper journalist it was
not a level playing field so far as the BBC was concerned. Over
the years I have many experiences of our journalists being pinched
by the BBC at higher salaries. There did not even appear to me
to be sufficient transparency in the way the BBC runs its books.
In Northern Ireland, for example, there is some transparency in
the fact that they do produce an annual report, for example, so
you can find out how much is spent. I think it is somewhere between
£60 and £70 million a year that the BBC spends in Northern
Ireland for a population of 1.7 million people. That includes
all their television and radio programmes. These budgets are vast
in comparison to the budgets that normally people have to operate
under in the general commercial media industry. When, for example,
they were establishing their internet department, they simply
went round the local newspapers in Belfast and pinched some of
their best journalists, paid them more and put them in the internet
department. If we operated like that we would probably go out
of business, but that is what I mean by a level playing field.
We want to work with the BBC but we do not want to be at a disadvantage
to them.
Q639 Bishop of Manchester:
I want to go back and ask two specific questions and I would be
very grateful if they could be answered specifically. The first
takes me back to when I began my original question and it concerns
the impact of buy-outs. My question is this: do you have actual
figures on the impact of buy-outs on the number of journalists
employed and the general number of staff within those newspapers?
Ms Anderson: Not specifically on the buy-outs
but we know that most of the consolidation has happened in the
regional press over the last 10 years and in general terms the
number of editorial staff has gone up. The proportion of editorial
staff to the total workforce has also gone up.
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