Amy MacBeath

It seems that the credit crunch is taking the blame for yet another drop in sales, this time of newspapers.  You may have read that Johnston Press (owners of the Scotsman) have been suffering with shares dropping from 6 pounds to 6 pence in less than two years and regional publisher Northcliffe promising “significant” cost cutting in 2009 after profits slumped by nearly a third ….need I go on?

(Incidently since DMGT (Daily Mail and General Trust) failed to sell off Northcliffe a couple years back and instead sold off parts – one of these been Aberdeen Journals – to family run DC Thomson, the Beano publishers have been coping well.  This is largely thanks to the daily regional the Press and Journal whose sales figures have come out top with only a 1 or 2% fall in readership compared to many nationals at 7 or 8%).

With complaints that empty posts are not being filled and editorial staff cuts across the country, the finger is being pointed (not only at those with the flash cars and comfortable homes) at the lack of decent editorial for the decline in readership.  But is this fair?

As we here on the multimedia course know, the fast moving world of journalism is increasingly heading online with up to the minute updates, blogs and tweets. 

But as we have seen many of these publication simply cannot compete with budgets for multimedia equipment, training and content out of the question, which may be leaving many in the dark when it comes to the public’s daily digestion of news.

The following quotes from holdthefrontpage.com reflect a couple of interesting opinions on the subject of newspapers branching out to include multimedia content:-

“How much longer will it take for the big bosses to crawl out from under their giant pay cheques and realise sales are down because the overstretched reporters just don’t have time to dig out good stories, research them, write them, update the websites, take the photos, make the videos and sweep the office floors while they’re at it?”  Wallace

“Local newspapers want to put out quality video then they should invest in some decent equipment and employ some staff to do just that, produce video news, the BBC guys will not be expected to shoot a video and edit it whilst on route to photograph a cheque presentation, then attend a local football match.” Mr. Baxter

It will be interesting to see what happens as we spread our wings out into the big bad world of real life media!

However bad it may seem guys, I heard that a new reporter at a regional paper managed to crash the pool car today after only being in the job a week!