Problems in the Newspaper Industry – what’s the alternative?

With the continuing financial problems facing the press, I’ve been turning my thoughts to different models of financing.  Here’s an extract from the Scott Trust’s website (the owners of the Guardian) about this:

“The Manchester Guardian (now the Guardian) was founded in 1821 to support social reform in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre. The newspaper gained an international reputation under long-serving editor and latterly owner CP Scott (pictured above).

The Scott Trust was created in 1936 following the death of CP Scott and his son Edward in 1932. Edward’s brother John was left as the sole owner, and was faced with the threat of death duties, which would have crippled the business and jeopardised the future independence of the newspaper.

To avoid this, and to secure his father’s legacy of the Manchester Guardian’s independent liberal journalism, John Scott voluntarily renounced all financial interest in the business for himself and his family, putting all his shares – worth more than £1 million at the time – into a trust.

This extraordinary act of philanthropy resulted in a unique form of media ownership in the UK, which has now lasted more than 70 years.

The core purpose of the Scott Trust is:

• To secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
• All other activities should be consistent with the central objective. The Company which the Trust owns should: be managed to ensure profits are available to further the central objective; not invest in activities which conflict with the values and principles of the Trust.
• The values and principles of the Trust should be upheld throughout the Group. The Trust declares a subsidiary interest in promoting the causes of freedom in the press and liberal journalism, both in Britain and elsewhere.”

Some people have recently argued that in Scotland, one way to consolidate the the Herald and the Scotsman might be to merge them and put on a similar foundation. However whether the political and financial exists to put aside media firm (and Scottish East West) rivalry is extremely unlikely. In addition, recent troubles at the Observer – sister paper of the Guardian, have put the financial advantages of such a trust in a less than perfect light.

Pressure increases on BBC as BNP given Radio 1 coverage

Increased pressure is being put on the BBC following what is being argued as shaky handling of the British National Party in terms of broadcasting rights.

Recently two officials of the BNP were interviewed on BBC’s main youth channel Radio 1 Newsbeat  as ‘young supporters’ of the far right party. A link to the BNP website was also provided from the Newsbeat on-line page. No equivalent link however was given to the anti-nazi research group Searchlight who specialise in examining the activities of the BNP and other far-right groups

It is known that the BNP has been cultivating a youth audience for several years, and critics feel the interview was far from challenging to the claims made by the neo-nazis. Critics also feel the BBC was guilty of giving a false impression to its listeners given the true identity of those interviewed was hidden.

This was condemned by Cabinet minister Peter Hain who wrote  in The Guardian:

“BBC executives have told me of their obligation to respect the right of a minority who have voted for the BNP. However, that right is already adequately upheld in BNP party election broadcasts, and when they are interviewed on political programmes such as Today or Newsnight – although the recent Radio 1 Newsbeat interview with two ‘young BNP members’ casts serious doubt on the BBC’s grip of the subject.”

Hain points out that  the BBC did not reveal that the individuals were BNP publicity director Mark Collett (who with Nick Griffiths had previously stood trial for inciting racial hatred – something else not mentioned in the interview) and Joseph Barber, who runs BNP record label Great White Records.

Hain said: “If the content were not distasteful enough – descriptions of the London-born England footballer Ashley Cole as ‘not ethnically British’ and ‘coming to this country’ passed without proper challenge – even more worrying is the revelation that these members, still introduced simply as Joey and Mark on the BBC website, are key members of the BNP hierarchy…Would the BBC allow any other party’s spin doctors to appear anonymously? The interview was in clear breach of basic journalistic practice, and of official BBC and National Union of Journalist guidelines. [Read more]

The Difficult Future of Regional TV news.

Regional TV news – a critical part of Public Service Broadcasting, is facing a crisis according to OfCom figures.

In late September the media regulator warned that providing regional news programmes on ITV could cost broadcasters up to £64m per year by 2012.

They argue that this will make the provision of local news on ITV unsustainable by 2012

Publication of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report in June indicated government support for a series of independent consortia consisting of local media as an alternative to the BBC in the UK’s regions and nations.

Despite the work done by the Scottish Broadcasting Commission earlier in the previous year, Carter’s report seemed woefully ill-informed about the work already done by this commission.

Now it appears that three pilot projects are to be launched in England, Wales and Scotland – with STV and a collection of Scottish Newspapers expressing interest in bidding for one of the pilots.

At present however this is complicated by the legal action between ITV and STV where the latter is being sued by the former to the tune of £38m.

OfCom have argued such pilots could be financed by top-slicing the licence fee – something opposed both by the BBC and the BBC Trust.

Mail on-line most read UK brand worldwide

For world-wide readers of UK newspapers, the Mail on-line continued to be the most read brand in July of this year with 29.9 million global readers, according to the Press Gazette’s ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) figures.

For readers based in the UK however, the Guardian remains the favorite on-line site, with 9.9 million unique readers – on a worldwide scale they have a reader base of  27 million.

Current ABC circulation figures for hard copy National Broadsheets were:

Dailies:

Daily Telegraph: 814,087, down 5.4 per cent

The Times: 576,185, down 6.0 per cent

Financial Times: 395,845, down 5.2 per cent

The Guardian: 311,387, down 6.4 per cent

The Independent: 187,837, down 18.3 per cent

Daily Sunday papers:

The Sunday Times: 1,164,831, down 0.72 per cent

The Sunday Telegraph: 599,131, down 3.1 per cent

The Observer: 361,761, down 12 per cent

Independent on Sunday: 160,809, down 18.3 per cent

Google is no newspaper vampire

Or at least that’s according to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO in a long interview with Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com. In a week when Rupert Murdoch seems to have slightly eased his attacks on  ‘Internet News Thieves’ Schmidt claims that Google actually helps newspapers by pointing its visitors to ‘sources of quality content’. He further claims that only existing mainstream news institutions have the resources and established trust to do deep journalism. Surprisingly although he acknowledges that new online publications have emerged and that there are journalists working independently of large companies, his faith, according to Sullivan is ‘still with the old school, so to speak’.

Schmidt also claims in the interiew that critics often target Google, when their real target is the internet:

“I think in this case Google is a proxy for the internet as a whole. So the people would make the same statements about the Internet as they do about Google. Substitute the internet for Google and you get that idea. And because we play such a central role in information, we’ve become somewhat used to being blamed for everything. In some cases people don’t understand that we’re a conduit to other people doing things. They think Google did it when in fact somebody else did it and made it available.”

In terms of solutions, one that he suggests is Google Fast Flip. Readers can try it here.

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