Midland newspaper group collapse signals bleak times ahead

Mar 16 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post

The world of regional newspapers is reeling from last week’s barrage of bad news which saw the collapse of a Midland newspaper group, closures elsewhere in the country and further job cuts among regional journalists.

Last Monday the Birmingham Post ­reported that Midland-based Observer Standard Newspapers, based in Redditch, had collapsed.

Observer Standard Newspapers, founded by West Midland businessman Chris Bullivant in 1989, had suffered from a catastrophic drop in advertising revenue, the firm’s administrators said.

The group’s 20 weekly newspapers, which include the Solihull Observer, came out as normal last week and a spokesman for the administrator, Grant and Thornton, said on Friday the company continued to trade.

On the same day as Observer Standard Newspapers’ collapse MEN Media, the publisher of the Manchester Evening News and 22 weeklies based in the north west, said it was closing all editorial ­offices of its weekly newspapers and axing 150 jobs.

The grim news at Observer Standard Newspapers and MEN was followed on Tuesday by another regional newspaper group Johnston Press, which owns The Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, warning staff could be facing further job losses on top of a 15 per cent cut in workforce last year as advertising revenues get worse.

Johnston axed 1,130 roles in 2008 after suffering what it said was the greatest fall in revenues in its history.

Those revenues have fallen even further so far this year, down nearly 36 per cent below 2008 levels.

On Wednesday, the Guardian Media Group confirmed it was closing titles and cutting 95 jobs at its Surrey and Berkshire regional newspapers operations. The group announced its paid-for weeklies Esher News and Mail and ­Aldershot Mail were to close and the five-days-a-week Reading Evening Post, whose circulation in the second half of 1008 was 12,879, was to be cut back to appearing just two days a week.

Sue Heseltine, degree leader in journalism at Birmingham City University and former print and broadcast journalist, said she was not surprised by the events of the week.

She said it was inevitable that there would be more closures among regional newspapers and that there would also be more examples of daily local newspapers opting for a less frequent publication.

“The credit crunch has been a final straw for newspapers. For years they have been facing all sorts of problems with circulation and advertising sales declining,” she said.

Ms Heseltine said availability of news on the internet had been one of the major factors in the suffering of regional newspapers, but was confident there would still be a place for print in the future.

“People can get information elsewhere more quickly in lots of places but what people will be looking for is that quality of writing and analysis, which is not as widely available on the internet.”

Ms Heseltine pointed to other factors, aside from the internet, which have ­affected circulation, like the difficulty in recruiting paper boys or girls.

“Also people don’t walk home any more, they drive, so they can’t just pick up a newspaper on the way home.”

Ms Heseltine said that Birmingham City University was preparing journalism students for the realities of the job market for new reporters.

She said online media skills and the ability to market themselves as freelancers would be needed to help aspiring journalists break into the job market.

“Part of what we are doing is make them aware of that. They are not going to walk into a job in newspapers – they are going to have to be creative and enterprising,” she said.