Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Russell Whitehair, Mr David Newell, Ms Santha
Rasaiah, Ms Lynne Anderson and Mr Edmund Curran OBE
Q640 Bishop of Manchester:
Would you be able to provide specific figures for us?
Ms Anderson: We could. We could look back on
mergers and acquisitions within the industry to see if we can
relate those to those specific years when there has been more
activity and come back to you.
Q641 Bishop of Manchester:
I think we would find that very helpful, thank you. The second
question is again specific. We have been talking a lot about news
and journalism, do you have any figures for investment in the
editorial context and has the pattern of investment in how much
is put into editorial comment and opinion gone up or down?
Ms Anderson: We do not have figures on that
I am afraid. We have figures on investment in printing presses
and technology and systems which could incorporate editorial systems,
but it would be very hard to quantify an investment in editorial.
Mr Curran: I can only argue in a general sense.
In a general sense, to come back to a point I made earlier, my
experience is that newspaper proprietors are using some of the
funds they have managed to save in other aspects of the newspaper
to improve the editorial content of the newspaper. People say
to me, for example, as a kind of veteran editor, "Your newspaper
isn't what it used to be" and I say to them, "You're
absolutely right, it is not what it used to be, it is about ten
times better than it used to be". I am not saying that now
as an editor because I have moved on from being the editor, but
the current editor of the newspaper that I edited is doing an
infinitely better job than I was and in fact his predecessors.
The classic example of that is the fact that on the wall of our
board room are some of our historic back pages and front pages.
I was looking at one one evening and it is of Dame Mary Peters
on the day that she won her gold medal at Munich in September
1972. I happened to be re-reading it and my eye caught the number
on the back page of the Belfast Telegraph on that evening.
There were 14 pages in that paper, the whole newspaper, including
classified ads. That would not have been unusual for a big regional
evening newspaper in those days. There was another back page from
10 years later from a world heavyweight title fight or something
and it was on page 20. This week we will produce on a Thursday
evening a newspaper with probably the equivalent of 180 to 200
equivalent tabloid pages. That is how far we have moved. I think
the same applies to a huge number of other regional newspapers.
What has happened in the past 30 years is that we are actually
delivering far more to our readers than we ever delivered before.
We are doing it more economically. We are using the resource that
was wasted in terms of the huge money that went into the production
of newspapers, first of all the print unions in the old days and
then more lately having huge armies of sub-editors and people
designing pages in every corner of the newspaper empire. That
has been rationalised and is being focussed now on the people
who are actually producing the content of the newspapers. That
is a general point I am making; I do not have any specific figures.
Q642 Lord Inglewood:
I would like to move onto editorial independence. In your written
evidence you stated that the regional and local newspaper industry
upholds the principle of editorial independence. You go on to
say that local and regional newspaper proprietors do not—and
indeed in practice could not—dictate editorial and news
content. For example, to personalise it, if in breach of our board
policy I, as chairman, tried to do that, what do you think in
practice would stop me?
Mr Whitehair: I think first of all a general
business sense would stop you interfering. Whether it is a large
company or a small company editors are responsible for the content
of their newspaper title and they will be responsible for ensuring
that the circulation of that title is maintained to the highest
possible level, that the readership is increasing. Those decisions
are best left to the editor. I do not think that there is one
instance that I can recall as an industry where we feel that there
are companies that are interfering in the editorial integrity
of their newspaper title. Each newspaper company will have a different
ethos but by and large they will have the ethos of not interfering
in the decisions of locally based editors.
Mr Curran: I think I was probably in a unique
position in that regard, to be the editor of a newspaper in Belfast
where you come under quite considerable political pressure from
one side or the other and you might well assume that a proprietor
of a newspaper would also take a keen interest and want to ensure
that his editor was towing a particular line. I have to say, hand
on heart, that none of the three major proprietors—Lord
Thomson followed by Trinity Mirror (which is Philip Graf who was
the Chief Executive) and now Sir Anthony O'Reilly (who is my boss)—has
ever picked up the phone and attempted to interfere in the editorial
side of the Belfast Telegraph. I think it was in that instance,
for example, a tremendous advantage to have a large organisation
in control of a regional newspaper in those circumstances whereby
perhaps an individual proprietor, living in the community, might
have come under considerable pressure from one side or the other
to try to tow a particular line. I think that was a terrific advantage.
Personally I think that the large plcs have brought that attribute
to wherever they produce newspapers. In the case of Independent
News and Media we produce newspapers in South Africa—Johannesburg
Star—and in New Zealand. I have spoken to the editors
on those papers and visited them and exactly the same pertains
as pertains with me.
Q643 Lord Inglewood:
Would it be fair to summarise what you said, that the key underpinning
of editorial independence is the fact that it would be commercially
foolish for proprietors to get involved.
Mr Whitehair: In the long run I think that is
the case. There is nothing to stop a proprietor in Carlisle or
anywhere else from saying to an editor: "Don't run that,
run that" or "Have than angle on it" or whatever
they want to do, but in general terms that would be commercial
suicide in the longer term because the paper, particularly if
it has a long history, will be founded on the trust that it has
within its local community and most local newspapers, whether
they are big or small, will recognise that as being the controlling
feature of interfering in editorial issues at their peril.
Q644 Lord Inglewood:
You would argue that the proof of that is the fact that you do
not get editorial involvement of the kind I was suggesting.
Mr Whitehair: I do not think there is any evidence
to suggest in local newspapers that there is significant interference.
I do not think there is any significant interference.
Mr Newell: Could I just add to that that as
most of you will know the law in relation to newspaper transfers
has been a complicated area of law and the Competition Commission
when it has examined newspaper takeovers—I am talking about
regional and local newspaper takeovers—has in particular
always looked at the antecedents of the company that is going
to acquire another company. I cannot recall any Competition Commission
report indicating that there had been editorial interference by
a regional and local newspaper publisher with his or her editor.
Part of the ethos of the industry, as underlined by the Competition
Commission, is a very, very important part of the culture of the
regional and local newspaper sector and it is precisely because
of that that I believe that regional and local newspapers do have
that trust factor that we referred to earlier.
Q645 Lord Inglewood:
Could I leave the question of proprietors and move onto advertisers.
Is there any evidence that advertisers manage to affect editorial
matters?
Mr Whitehair: I think the same principle applies.
There may be some short term decisions by some advertising staff
or editorial staff to say, "We won't take that advertiser"
or "We will take it on" or "We'll be under pressure
from that advertiser because he wants to run some editorial alongside
his advertising" but in the longer term publishers will recognise
that they cannot be put under pressure by advertisers in that
sense because it would be commercial suicide in the longer term
to misplace the trust that they have in their local communities
which is the predominant factor.
Q646 Lord Inglewood:
There is no evidence that you know of of advertisers exercising
any kind of control or direction over editorial matters.
Mr Whitehair: No, I do not think there is. I
think you will have evidence from a larger publisher in our sector
later next month that will bring specific examples of where they
will not be held to ransom by advertisers in that context.
Q647 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
The next question has mainly been answered in your opening remarks,
which is the evidence that consolidation of ownership has affected
the local nature of news provided. I do not know if there is anything
you want to add to that before we move onto the next point.
Mr Whitehair: I would just reiterate the point
I think. Consolidation brings great advantages to our industry
but it does not detract from the localness of what we are all
about and it is not a question of big or small, it is a question
of retaining your coverage of the local community and retaining
trust within that local community. If that dies then the newspaper
dies.
Q648 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
The next question really goes back to the emphasis on the need
to remain commercially interesting to your readership as against
maintaining high standards of the news that you are producing
and whether it is commercial pressures that would tend to mean
that you were emphasising soft news at the expense of the harder
more serious news. We have found that in other spheres.
Mr Whitehair: I think there is a huge diversification
between what happens in London on large urban titles as to what
might happen on a small weekly newspaper title say, for example,
in Congleton. So you have large urban titles in Birmingham and
Manchester, you will have large titles in London, but you will
have the small community newspapers in Congleton or wherever else
there may be and they will have a balanced view in terms of their
output of news. They will have a different view in terms of how
they are reaching across the board to a broad family readership
that they are trying to attract. In the larger urban centres they
may become a little bit more sensationalised, they might become
a little bit more celebrity orientated but there will be a huge
range of approaches across our industry from very small communities
who are very locally based, who are very balanced in terms of
their viewpoints, in terms of reaching family audiences, but in
other areas you may find that there is a requirement from the
local community to become a little more sensationalist, a little
bit more celebrity based. Again they are reflecting each community
that they are serving so each newspaper will be reflecting a different
community.
Q649 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
That raises another very interesting point, the extent to which
you are reactive to what you think the reader wants and in a way
more didactic in publishing material that you think the reader
needs to have.
Mr Curran: Every editor starts from the premise
that his newspaper is to some extent a reflection of the society
which he serves. In the case of the big regionals I think they
go a bit further than simply saying it is a reflection, they also
like to provide some kind of leadership and guidance. That is
where opinion and comment come in. To take Russell's point, the
vast number of small weekly newspapers would simply wish to provide
an information service to their readers in a fairly impartial
and balanced format. It may look a bit boring but it is extremely
attractive in terms of the circulation of those newspapers. In
my case, in the big regional newspaper sense, your newspaper is
continually evolving. When, for example, Northern Ireland was
at war our newspaper was full of stories about conflict and now
there is peace it is about a new, different society. It is the
trick of the editor to try and not stand still, to constantly
be moving the newspaper forward. I think the same applies in all
our other large centres in the UK. Our interests are constantly
changing. People today, for example, have a great deal more interest
in lifestyle and pastimes et cetera and want a lot more information
from their newspaper in all of those things so feature sections
of newspapers have grown. If you looked at the newspapers in the
1960s many of our large newspapers did not have any features in
them at all. That has now become one of the central points. They
need guidance on finance, on business, on leisure pursuits, on
entertainment. All of those sections have grown immeasurably in
the past 10 to 15 years in our newspapers and that is why editors
are trying to widen interest in the newspaper away from just the
daily news. Of course comment and opinion in the large regional
newspapers has come into it. Some people might argue where do
you draw the line between comment and reporting. I think it is
important to do that but we get the opinion that our readers do
want more than simply straightforward reporting today; they also
want to be guided, they want good writers and they want people
to give them opinions.
Q650 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Mr Curran, I was very struck by what you said about the difference
in size between the newspaper in 1971 and the newspaper in 2007.
I think you said that in 1971 it was 14 pages and in 2007 it was
280 which is a conveniently easy multiple which suggests that
the newspaper is actually 20 times better now than it was in 1971.
I cannot quite believe that that is what you meant but it does
lead me to the question that I want to ask which is that actually
in the end the size of the newspaper cannot really be any guarantee
of its quality surely. The content is what makes it a good newspaper
and you, as an editor, would subscribe to that view. You were
touching on this question about the difference between comment
and news and there is certainly a view abroad, promulgated to
us by the Institute of Journalists, that newspapers increasingly
are more interested in promoting comment than news as such. Do
you think that is a trend that is inevitable? Do you think it
is particularly visible in local journalism? In answering that,
can you reflect a little bit more on the notion of newspapers
as leaders of opinion rather than followers?
Mr Curran: I think in terms of the weekly newspaper
market, I am sure if you examine the hundreds of weekly newspapers,
many of them still do not carry any editorial whatsoever. They
do not see that as their role and they are very much simply providing
information for the local community. When you get to the larger
regional newspaper groups for example the Belfast Telegraph
or the Manchester Evening News or any of these larger newspapers
then there certainly is more comment and more opinion in those
newspapers today than there was before. I do think that it is
still kept well apart from the actual general reporting of events.
I would not say the same thing about the national media. In the
national media I know that if I read the Daily Mail or
I read the Independent or whatever those newspapers kind
of blur the edges between comment and reporting and they make
no apology for doing so, but you have a choice of national newspapers
and you can decide whether or not to buy one. In the regional
press I do not think we are in that position. I do not think,
for example, we are trying to ply one particular line of fire.
We are certainly more campaigning than we were in the past. Sometimes
our campaigns are popular with our readers and every now and again
we have a campaign that is possibly unpopular. If I go back to
the Northern Ireland situation—which I do not want to harp
on about—our campaign for 30 years was to be in the middle.
That was the newspaper's ethos, to actually be in a position where
the voters in Northern Ireland were not. You could argue that
every night we were actually saying something that the vast majority
of people in Northern Ireland disagreed with. We were on the side
of the aliens, as it were. We make no apology; that was our position.
Many people would have said to us over the years, "If you
go down one line you will get more favour with one side or the
other" but we did not. I am sure that applies in the case
of many of the campaigns that are run in Britain by many of our
regional newspaper editors. I agree entirely with you that size
of newspaper is no valuation of its quality, but I would say that
if you look at the newspapers 25 or 30 years ago they were providing
no guidance to people on business and finance, hardly any guidance
to people in terms of property owning or their leisure pursuits.
They were simply reporting and that is why they were quite small.
The sports pages, for example, in 1972 amounted to a full page
of racing plus about a page and a half covering all the sports.
Nowadays we have supplements. There are more pages on a Monday
night on sport in the Belfast Telegraph than there were
in the whole newspaper in 1972 when Mary Peters won her gold medal.
That is how far we have moved. I do think that that is a service
that the regional newspaper market is providing that it did not
provide before and it is one that is deeply valued by the readership
and by advertisers too.
Mr Newell: On the news provision I think one
must emphasise the role that regional and local newspaper websites
are playing and will continue to play and develop. There are over
a thousand regional and local newspaper websites now and of course
from a weekly newspaper's point of view it now means that when
there is breaking news or there is a particular issue—whether
it is a flood or foot and mouth—the regional and local newspaper
can actually be an information provider 24 hours a day which it
was not able to do when it was just a weekly newspaper. In that
sense the web has meant that weekly newspapers can become news
breakers for the first time for a very considerable period of
time.
Q651 Lord Maxton:
Could I just say that coming from Scotland I am not quite sure
what the definition of a regional newspaper is. I am quite certain
neither the Herald nor the Scotsman consider themselves
to be regional newspapers, but their sister evening papers presumably
are and then there are local papers below that. What about your
circulation figures overall? Is it a trend downwards, or is it
some down and some up?
Mr Whitehair: Across the industry—and
we are a very diverse industry—you will find that there
is pressure on daily circulation. Regional dailies and regional
evenings are suffering more than the weeklies that are actually
holding onto their circulation. In the last ABC round the weeklies
are actually showing marginal increases in their circulation.
Again Lynne has the more detailed figures on that.
Ms Anderson: I think you are right. In common
with all main stream media the regional press has been affected
by the explosion in media choice, competition and pressure on
people's time and over the last 10 years there has been a gradual
decline in paid-for circulation, mainly among the dailies I would
say, they have been more affected. The weeklies as well are fighting
to maintain their circulation levels. I would say that publishers
are more focussed now on increasing their total audiences rather
than just purely on the print circulation level. They are layering
their markets with all the niche publications and supplements
that have been talked about; they have their websites as well
and they are growing audiences like that. They are also adopting
in some cases part paid/part free distribution models. The rise
of the Metros has in some instances found new readers that
were not reading a traditional national or regional newspaper
and so some newspapers like the Manchester Evening News,
quite a large regional evening, have become part paid/part free
and they would say that they have grown their overall audience
as a result of that which in turn the advertisers like, that means
they can hold on and grow their advertising revenues which in
turn funds the local journalism.
Q652 Lord Maxton:
What are the major factors which led to the decrease? Is it the
internet? Is it ethnicity? Walsall is an example where a fairly
major change in the ethnic make up of the community would have
changed the nature of the local paper presumably.
Mr Whitehair: I think there are huge changes
in people's life styles and people's expectations in terms of
what they are consuming in terms of national media, local media.
At weekly level their expectations will be different in a small
community as opposed to a large urban area and life styles are
changing to have more instant news, more accessible news and generally
people will not want to be paying for news. If they can get it
on the internet free they will access it free on the internet.
There will be huge pressure on local newspapers to match that.
David was saying, quite rightly, there are over a thousand websites
locally so we are matching that expectation. There will be the
Metros that have been launched not only in London but Liverpool
and Manchester and these other larger urban areas where people
are getting free news to a certain extent matching their local
community but not as in depth as the Manchester Evening News
would be. There is a huge pressure on the larger titles to match
the expectation of the readers for free local and regional news.
That, I think, is probably the largest impact as well as the fact
that people do not have quite as much time and they are not prepared
to read as long an article or as in depth an article as they were
probably five to 10 years ago. They really just want a snippet
of news, they want to have a highlighted piece of news and then
they will want to move on. There are huge impacts on that area
of the business.
Q653 Lord Maxton:
Classified advertising is very important both in terms presumably
of your revenue and in terms of circulation. The fact that increasingly
if I want to sell something I am more likely to do it on e-bay
than I am to put an ad in the local newspaper, has that been a
significant factor?
Mr Whitehair: It has and I think if you look
at the American market you have Craig's list and you have other
huge internet sites that are severely affecting the ability of
local newspapers to maintain their revenues through classified
advertising. We are a different market place in the UK and I think
the depth of penetration of the internet in the UK in certain
areas, particularly some rural areas, is not quite as high as
it is in America at the moment. However, there is going to be
more pressure on local newspapers to justify why people should
be using not only print medium but their web offering. As Lynne
said, as an industry we are promoting the fact that we have over
20 million unique users as an industry on our internet sites over
each month and we are now entering that area rather than saying
that we just have paid-for circulation, paid-for readership, we
are now offering a portfolio of readership across a whole spectrum
of publications.
Q654 Lord Maxton:
You have raised the perceived problem with the BBC. It seems to
me the real threat comes from what I would term generally local
internet which will come and will be available not just on your
computer but will be available through your computer onto your
television set.
Mr Whitehair: Absolutely. Since the Second World
War the local newspaper market has been threatened by television,
by radio, by the rise of free newspapers, by other publications
coming in and trying to attract classified advertising in particular
in the local market place. We are a very flexible and forward-thinking
industry in that we are able to offer I think as good as anyone
can, a local offering based on all the things we talked about
earlier which is 300 years of trust, 300 years of people believing
in the local newspapers and we are now transferring that through
our local website offerings and people will be transferring that
trust through to our websites.
Q655 Lord Maxton:
What I am suggesting, however, is that the local organisations
whom you at present report on are already using websites to put
their news out, whether it be a local sports club or whatever
it might be. If I am interested in the local rugby team, which
I am, then I will go to their website where I will read the fuller
report than I will get in the local newspaper and where, not yet
but within the foreseeable future, I will probably be able to
watch the video highlights of the last game.
Mr Whitehair: There are one or two things there.
The local website for the local council or the local rugby team
will be putting out its own perspective and it will be putting
its own angle on whatever it is that it is doing. The local newspaper,
from its perspective, will be publishing an independent view and
a trusted view across the board in terms of where the local council
is coming from, where the local rugby club is coming from if you
like and views on whoever they are, so you will be getting an
independent viewpoint from the local newspaper that I think people
do buy into and the research shows that we have the trust of the
local communities to give that independent view. If you want to
go onto the local rugby club website you will get their perspective
and their point of view, and it will be their point of view only.
Lord Maxton: I have to say that if I
go to that website I get a page and a half of the report; if I
go to the local newspaper I get an edited version of that, in
other words the version in the local newspaper has been supplied
by the local rugby club.
Q656 Chairman:
You have been such excellent witnesses and we have been very ambitious
in the ground we want to cover. We have about five minutes left
and I was going to suggest that we leave out questions 18, 22
and 23. There are two or three important issues here that we would
like to get onto in the last few minutes that we have.
Mr Newell: Could I just make one brief point?
In terms of advertising and the questions asked, there is a concern
that we do have and that is that if you look at regional and local
newspapers both their print versions and their website versions
clearly our development is dependent on being funded by advertising
revenue, 50, 60, 70, 80%. A lot of that advertising revenue comes
from the public sector in terms of jobs and public information.
There is a trend within the public sector to remove that advertising
from regional and local newspapers to put it directly on local
authority websites and public sector websites. In fact we have
to make our case to public authorities that we are the best place
to advertise in; we accept that. However, if that trend does continue
and is not looked at as a public policy issue, the funding pattern
of regional and local newspapers and the blend of information
that they give to the communities will become distorted. We hope
that the message about the value of regional and local newspapers
is understood by local authorities and the public sector. We have
to market those advantages but if we do not succeed in marketing
those advantages it will undoubtedly have an impact on the sector.
Q657 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
I think it would be very interesting for us to know what proportion
of revenue the local newspapers is, advertising versus sales and
I think you said that 50 to 80% came from advertising so presumably
the remaining revenue comes mostly from sales. Do you have any
other income?
Mr Whitehair: There will be leaflet income,
so you will be having inserts that you will be putting in a newspaper
title. As a business you will have contract print that you might
be providing to external suppliers on your press. There may be
other income from special supplements and publications you may
be producing. By and large it would be 75% advertising, the balance
would be by and large newspaper sales.
Q658 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
We have been to the States where the regional and local newspapers
have been hit very, very hard. What we have heard from you this
morning is that there is a lot of buoyancy and optimism in your
outlook with regards to the regional and local newspapers and
you have emphasised a lot the trust that your readers have for
this part of the industry. On the other side, it does seem that
the website, the migration of public sector classified advertising,
may be the inroads that the BBC might make to your local output.
Let us hope it is not a very serious threat, but is it right for
you to be as optimistic as you are when other parts of the world
have found it has been very, very serious?
Mr Whitehair: I think the optimism is cautious
optimism and I think there is a huge challenge for the industry
to mount the very steep incline that we now have to face. As I
say, I think that all of the evidence shows—and we have
had research analysts who have suggested this—that the regional
newspaper and the weekly newspaper is probably the best place
to withstand, if that is the right word, the encroachments of
the internet in the future. We have the local trust of the local
communities, we are a flexible industry, we are an industry that
is prepared to adapt and change and we are an industry that I
think has built itself on the trust it has in local communities
to ensure that we retain that trust through local websites offerings.
It is not going to be easy and we are preparing ourselves and
gearing ourselves to meet that challenge, but I think that the
country is going to be best served by a very strong weekly and
local newspaper industry. I think that all of the encouragement
and support we can get from government to enable that to happen
would be welcome.
Q659 Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick:
You have talked about the extensive increase in the number of
journalists that you now have. Are equivalent journalistic budgets
as opposed to operational budgets equally substantial in relation
to the increased number of journalists you have? Could you comment
also on the suggestion that journalists, whether national or local
or regional, increasingly spend time ploughing around the internet
or looking at press releases rather than real journalism out there
talking to, connecting with and understanding stories?
Mr Curran: I think that journalism today is
served well by the internet and I think that our reporters, for
example, are able to obtain information that is relevant to the
reports they are writing and the columns they are writing much
quicker than they ever were in my day when I started as a reporter.
I even think, for example, in terms of simply going to the library,
the physical act of a reporter going to his newspaper library
and going through all the old manila folders to find a little
bit of information about somebody you are writing about. Now,
wherever I am—I do not even have to be in the office—I
can instantaneously get virtually everything there is on the individual
concerned from the library without moving. I think I can write
much more efficiently and reporters can work much more efficiently.
I do take the point that you make about getting out and about
and I do think that is a criticism of many journalists, that they
are rather desk bound. Mind you, I have heard that criticism for
as long as I have actually been a journalist and I have also come
to the conclusion over the years that the best journalists who
worked for me over the years were the ones who did get out and
about but not all of them did.
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