Three upbeat predictions for the local press, from Sir Ray Tindle

Sir Ray Tindle quotes recent research from Brand Science into the effectiveness of local paper advertising.
He says that, with newspapers, advertisers see £6.23 in new business for every £1 they spend, compared with £2.23 and £3.57 in other media.

Tindle Newspapers has bought or launched 12 weekly titles since the start of the downturn
If there is a problem, says Sir Ray. it's local authority newspapers: “These propaganda sheets are a real menace to local democracy.”
The video covers part of a talk Sir Ray gave at the Local Heroes conference organised by Press Gazette and Kingston University

Video Masterclass: The hyperlocal solution for ailing local papers

Sir Ray Tindle has turned round numerous papers by going back to a firmly hyper-local approach.
In this video, of part of a talk he gave at the Local Heroes conference organised by Press Gazette and Kingston University, he tells the story of the Tenby Observer.
It was in receivership when Tindle Newspapers bought it, and had published it's last edition. You'll find the full story on the video, and more on the topic of the local press and what it offers trainee journalists in the Masterclass section of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide.
But Sir Ray begins by outlining how he bought his first paper, the Tooting Gazette, with a £300 gratuity received when demobilised from the army at the end of the Second World War.

Next video: The power of the local press

How I launched three titles into the recession: Sir Ray Tindle on a business model for hard times

Sir Ray had a London title that had lost £192,000 over 10 months. He says the normal solution to such a problem would be either closure or mass redundancy. He chose a new tack, to create three new, very local titles, and to target advertisers who could not afford, or did not want, the exposure the one original wide-ranging title offered.

'The local press is rock solid': Sir Ray Tindle

Sir Ray Tindle, owner of the 230-title Tindle Newspapers group, shrugs off assertions that 50 per cent of the press will be dead within five years, and says: “The local weekly press is rock solid, with revenue rising again and looking forward to another 200 years of serving their readers.”
Sir Ray was speaking at the Local Heroes conference, organised by Press Gazette and Kingston University.
Sir Ray says he’s been hearing about the dire state of the press for 63 years, and makes a strong case for why it will survive and thrive.
Find out more about what local papers can offer the trainee journalist in Masterclass 10 at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk

Journalism can be a class act, or a middle class act. It can't be both

So here’s a thing. Many, many people now have the means to publish their text, video, audio and still images. And yet journalism has become one of the most exclusive middle-class professions of the 21st century.

So, while the journalistic tools are now available to the many, professional journalists are drawn from the ranks of the affluent, well-connected, well-educated few.

Why?
The debate over the causes of the increasingly elitist nature of journalism has been rumbling on all week. It was sparked by an all-party report, Unleashing Aspiration, which revealed that social mobility in Britain has gone into reverse.

The underlying reason for journalism becoming a middle class profession is that the industry handed training over to academia.

Over a generation, the traditional pattern of school-leavers entering journalism via indentured training (apprenticeships weighted towards on-the-job experience) was replaced with a default model of an entrant to journalism having a first or second degree in the subject.

Roy Greenslade has reflected on how, when he joined his first local paper, staff from cleaner to editor were working class. Today, he says: “We have reached a position in which the working class do not even consider ‘the media’ as a career possibility.”

What got lost in this transition is sight of the fact that journalism is not a profession, it is a craft. You don’t have to be a genius to be good at it. You don’t have to be someone who thrives in an academic environment to write a sound, compelling news story, cover an event, review a book or movie.

Someone with an Oxbridge first might become a brilliant journalist, but they might just as easily be a lousy one. Likewise, a kid from a sink estate with a mediocre academic record could be a very bad journalist – or they might become a great one.

The only meaningful distinction in journalism  is between those who can do it, and those who can’t. And academic performance is not a reliable indicator of that.

So what’s the solution? Unleashing Aspiration says universities must do more to end elitism by admitting thousands more students from poorer backgrounds.

Another proposal is to pay interns, so you don’t need to be rich enough to work for free to get on the first rung of the journalistic ladder.

Dominic Ponsford of Press Gazette has some practical advice. Instead of a City MA at £7,000, he says, go for an NCTJ fast track at £900 as a much more cost-effective way of training.

All good, but to my mind the real solution lies with journalists themselves: specifically those who hire other journalists. They must hire on the basis of demonstrable ability as much as, if not more than, academic prowess.

Let’s put this into the wider context: young people don’t read newspapers any more, nor do they watch or rate TV news. They do use Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the rest. They do, in an unschooled way, create journalism which is popular with their peers.

If we can’t attract these people into formal journalism, formal journalism will become increasingly marginalised.

So here’s what has to happen: journalists who hire, training organisations and universities running journalism and media course need to attract those who show a relish and a talent for the multimedia publishing opportunities that are open to them. They should worry much less about a potential student’s academic background.

Teach these people well and we’ll protect and reinvigorate mainstream journalism. Fail, and journalism fails.

You can read about my contribution here

This week, the futures look like this

The future is free. The future is citizen journalism. The future is print. The future is video. The future is high-value content for which you will be charged a subscription.

The future is a many-splendoured thing.

Many alternative futures beckon journalists. We just don’t know - depending on whether we are in TV, radio, local newspapers, national newspapers, consumer magazines, B2B magazines, or whatever - which version of that future will prove to be our destiny.

So here’s a snapshot: one week in multimedia journalism that shows the sheer diversity of solutions that are being sought and ways forward that are being followed.

But let’s bear in mind that next week’s futures could be different.

The future is premium content sold at a premium price

The FT has gone against the trend by increasing its paper cover price from £1 to £1.50 and, while some of its online content is available to subscribers who can register for free, most is protected and available only to those with a paid-for subscription.

The results: paper sales up 2 per cent year-on-year in the last six months of 2007 to 440,000; FT.com paid subscriptions up 13 per cent to 101,000.

Chief executive John Ridding told Press Gazette: “We have always believed that quality journalism is a viable business ...People will pay premium prices for premium journalism.”

Expansion of video production on FT.com has been a revenue driver in 2007 – with 100 videos published a month generating 500,000 views.

“The rates we can charge for sponsorship are several factors higher than what we can for the same number of page views in normal web traffic.”

His tip on surviving: “Be as different as possible...differentiate yourself and focus on what makes you different.”

The future is hyper-local websites run by readers.

The Glasgow Evening Times network of community websites, launched this week, will eventually be run by trained members of the public. There will eventually be 80 sites – 12 have been launched so far – covering ultra-local news and listings.

Evening Times assistant editor Graeme Smith told Press Gazette: “We felt we should do this because we wanted to own the Glasgow online audience before anyone else made a move.”

The future is hyper-local but with reverse publishing into print

On Teesside, Trinity Mirror's Evening Gazette launched 16 free titles last year, the content of which was reverse published from 20 websites, each based on a postcode.

The future is TV

Men’s Health, the monthly men’s lifestyle magazine, is to launch Men’s Health TV with 90 workout videos. It’s online ABCE was 300,000 unique visitors in January. The printed version’s average circulation for the second half of 2007 was 240,315.

The future is free, and not free

The Manchester Evening News has a total circulation 0f 180,900. Of that, 98,455 copies are given away, 82,445 are paid for.

The title has 73,304 daily unique users on its web site.

The plan had been to give the paper away in the city centre, where few copies were sold anyway, and charge in the suburbs. But suburban buyers didn’t like the sound of that: why pay for something you can get for free? So the number of giveaway copies has been increased.

The future is print

The Swindon Advertiser was the best-performing evening newspaper in the latest ABC figures. It owes its success, according to editor Dave King, to two things. One is digestible news: “our stories aren’t overwritten, you have side bars, there are lots of nibs, the pages are busy, every page counts.”

The other is a reader acquisition programme that has boosted home deliveries. These factors have won the paper a .4 per cent sales rise to 21,951 year on year.

The future is distribution via Facebook

Click through to York University student newspaper York Vision’s online edition and you go straight through to Facebook. The entire web presence of the paper is embedded into the social-networking site. Ian Withers, one of the students involved, said: “We decided to take our content to where students generally loiter online, rather than set up a stand-alone website... Facebook is by far the best way to distribute our content.”

The future is everything

Trinity Mirror has launched 34 websites, 24 magazines, 23 books and five events/exhibitions in 2007.

The future is B2B

Where did I get my snapshot? Everything in this post I read about in the print edition of Press Gazette. Business to business magazines still deliver.

The future is too bloody much

One problem with all this is that there is now just too much for us to read, watch and listen to.

Keeping up with the news – for journalists, or anyone else who needs to know things for their work - is tough.

What we need is help. We need an editor. Someone who knows what we really need to know and selects it for us, providing handy links to the essential news items of the week.

That’s another future.

Hang about, isn’t that what journalists were invented for in the first place?

Shome mistake, off-shorely

Ugly word, off-shoreing. But I like the sound of it.

In what the NUJ believes to be a first, News International is exporting much of the work done by 30 TV listings journalists to India.

It’s been happening to call-centre staff and others for some time; now it seems it is the turn of some sectors of journalism.

The work has been sub-contracted to PA, Press Gazette reports, which has two production centres in India, as well as one in the north of England.

Presumably this is not going to be an isolated event. Many more such moves are likely to follow. When I was at the Sunday Express, many subbing jobs were transferred to Preston, so it’s only one small step further to shift them abroad.

But here’s the question: Is this a threat, or an opportunity?

Obviously, if your job could be whisked from under you, it’s a threat. But that can’t happen with many journalistic jobs. The pool of those who can do high value reporting and editing, for an English-speaking audience, is severely limited.

Many currently UK-based journalists will fall into this highly-valued category. But while they need you – or someone of your calibre - to do your job, you often don’t need to do it in the UK.

So the smart move might be to off-shore yourself.

After all, for many journalists these days, where you are based is not important. Unless you have to regularly make face-to-face contact with the people you write about, or attend some form of proceedings routinely, you can work from pretty much anywhere, as along as there is broadband.

Last week I was in the south of France, training journalists for a company that decided, a few years ago, that it could base its web publications anywhere. So the founders decided where they’d like to live, and moved.

It certainly seemed a step up from cold grey November London as we sat outside a restaurant for lunch. At under 10 euros for two courses and a glass of wine, the meal was a damn sight better than what you’d get in your average office lunch spot in England.

Could all publishers up-sticks like this? Maybe not all – but plenty.

For many of us, the world really ought to be our lobster. There is really no reason why we can’t live and work somewhere warm, where the food is fantastic and the wine cheap, where it’s 10 minutes from the airport to the office, crime is low and property a fraction of UK prices.

Off-shoreing? Don’t mind if I do.

Pay, local rags, and trade mags

David Montgomery may have been wrong about the value of subs, but he was quite right when he said journalists in the regional press are grossly underpaid.

Speaking at a German embassy reception for journalists on the George Weidenfeld Anglo German exchange programme, he said wages on the UK’s local papers were appalling.

The evidence is clear. As an example, compare trainee journalists on regional papers with their compatriots on trade magazines.

On newspapers, trainees routinely start at around £15,000, and toil for a minimum of 18 months before taking their NCTJ National Certificate Examinations. If they pass - and only 50 or 60 per cent do, first time around - they get about £18,000.

On magazines, new recruits simply take a pre-entry course that can be as short as nine weeks. In their first job they can expect to be paid between £18,000 and £21,000. It could be more. They don’t have to take any further exams, as newspaper journalists do, and they aren’t classed as juniors for 18 months, as they would be on a local rag

So, which is the more attractive route into journalism? As the Americans might say: You do the math.

It would be understandable if the trade press entry route were the preferred choice of the most talented and ambitious young journalists. Trade press reporters are becoming increasingly successfully in climbing the greasy pole to what used to be called Fleet Street.

True, few young journalists – in mags or local papers – are motivated primarily by money. Just as well.

Those I meet who are on newspapers aren’t interested in the trade press. But, increasingly, many bright young entrants recognise that it can be as fascinating to get to know the intimate workings of an industry as it is to discover all that is happening in a town.

And, while a local paper can begin to equip you very effectively as a generalist, trade magazines can give you a head start in developing a specialism. And it is a specialism that will make you employable.

What our audiences will value is an expert’s analysis of the meaning of events – not just an outline of what has happened.

The young journalist who has taken the trade mag route will develop these skills far faster than the local rag cub reporter who spends 18 months grinding along the golden wedding, court, council committee, flower show route.

And, a couple of years down the line, they’ll already be at least £6,000 richer.

What have the subs ever done for us?

David Montgomery has opened a debate in the pages of Press Gazette by questioning the usefulness of subs.

Press Gazette quotes him saying: “Never before has a journalist been able to reach out to their audience without intervention.”

Funnily enough, I remember being told exactly the same thing when I joined the Independent prior to its launch in October 1986.

In the early days, The Independent had no subs – part from one or two that wily department heads slipped through the net.

The reason given for avoiding them was very similar to what Montgomery, who these days is chief executive of European newspaper giant Mecom, argues now. It was that technology had made them, and their craft, unnecessary.

Monty says: “I see a situation where experienced journalists that can be trusted have no barrier to communication with their audience.

“Sub-editing is a twilight world, checking things you don’t really need to check…Senior people will always monitor the content, a core group will create the product.”

I was deputy features editor in The Independent’s early days, and when I suggested subs were really rather useful, I was told that they were no longer necessary because of full page make up on computers called GT68s.

The Independent, which pioneered this technology in the UK, hired a group of bods called GT68 operators – largely from the regional press– whose job it was to draw up the pages electronically. Then, each writer could file their copy directly into the file that had been set up for them, press a button and bingo, job done.

It was said there was absolutely no need to sub the copy of highly intelligent, educated, experienced Independent writers.

That held for a few months, with those of us who were employed to commission also having to do a huge amount of unacknowledged copy subbing.

I can pinpoint the moment when things changed in features, and we were allowed to hire our first sub. It was during party conference season. The leader writer, having toiled with the Tories at Brighton (or it may been Blackpool) then went off to cover Labour at Blackpool (or it may have been Brighton).

I can’t remember now, and he couldn’t remember then.

He got the town wrong, in his opening sentence. The chiefs were incandescent. How could such a competent journalist have made such a fundamental mistake?

Less judgemental was the senior executive who had read and approved the leader before publication.

So, slowly but surely, we were allowed to hire subs.

The thing is, when your brilliant writer or your thrusting executive cocks up, you need someone to carry the can – and subs are really good at doing that.

We tell the postgrads on the PMA magazine course that their blog is read by the industry, but they never quite believe us. How handy, then, that Press Gazette's Axegrinder should pick up on Tori Hunt's blog account of a talk given to the students by an NUJ rep:

Axegrinder drugs special: The National Union of Junkies?
Posted by Axegrinder on 15 August 2007 at 12:02pm

NUJ freelance branch representative Humphrey Evans gave PMA students taking a postgraduate course in magazine journalism a pep talk on the importance of joining the union.
According to Humph, any NUJ member could even expect the union to defend them should they be alcoholics or drug-takers.
"It would be reasonable to expect the employer to agree for you to go into rehab, rather than be fired," Evans assured his audience. "Obviously, no one wants drug-takers snorting cocaine in the office loos, but let's face it, if you're having to wait around in the cold for your witness to come home, of course you're going to start drinking. It's warm and welcoming."
One of the wily students, Tori Hunt, then wrote this up as a story on the PMA blog. No doubt the NUJ would support her pursuit of a scoop.

See Axegrinder here http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/axegrinder/

There is a link to the PGs blog on the right