Those of us who blog do so partly to express our own opinion but sometimes equally to engage others in debate and to play our own little part in the wider public engagement needed for any healthy democracy. we of course are but amateurs, often picked up by our detractors for our poor lexicon and spelling.
The real gift it seems lies in the hands of local reporters in local newspapers who offer an insight in to all that surrounds us, not too distracted by the national headlines our locals give us the human life and labours existing right on our doorstep.
For it is with a mixture of dismay, loss and anger that the rumours of the Chronicle and Echo (Northampton's daily Newspaper) demise became the reality.
In what must be one of its most confused stories in its very long history the paper informed us all that:
before going on to tell its puzzled readers that:
"At the same time the websites will receive a light touch re-launch with improvements to the home page and improved social networking and commenting functionality"
It is a cruel irony that in recent weeks I have neglected this blog (partly because I was on holiday) and instead have been commenting online to stories published in the paper on their website http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk
The paper goes alongside another 5 daily titles the local Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, the Scarborough Evening News and the Halifax Courier. More titles are expected to follow suit later this month.
This isn't news, its the end of the news, a disaster for the town, any
town or city that aspires needs a nightly newspaper and this decision by
the Johnston Group shows how little they care for Northampton and its
staff, first they moved the print operation to Peterborough, then they downsized
and put the building up for sale and now they propose a weekly.
I am appalled at this decision and the staff should be up in arms. And an
end of decades in fact centuries of daily news for the town. Johnson's
have asset stripped the Chronicle and Echo and if we can't have a
nightly Chronicle and Echo then it is best they close the whole damn show now as the
proposals above are little but window dressing for a full closure.
This
is not a answer to modern technology and modern times as thousands of people still read the print
version daily and then pass it on to thousands more! What good is a
match report or preview for the Cobblers or Saints when it is either 4
days after the event or 3 days before?
So centuries of history from the Mercury and Herald first paper in 1720, through to the mergers with the Northampton Mail and the the newly formed Chronicle and Echo in 1931 have all come to nothing, or in fact they have come to this, a town with a population of over 210,000 and no nightly newspaper. If Johnston Press car nothing for our history and future then they should still have the decency to sell the title on rather than kill it off.
So centuries of history from the Mercury and Herald first paper in 1720, through to the mergers with the Northampton Mail and the the newly formed Chronicle and Echo in 1931 have all come to nothing, or in fact they have come to this, a town with a population of over 210,000 and no nightly newspaper. If Johnston Press car nothing for our history and future then they should still have the decency to sell the title on rather than kill it off.
I’ve been out of the JP morass for almost 10 years now, bailed out after Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair (allegedly) got ‘involved’ in the politics and news decisions of a good local editor and a good newspaper with 4 and 8 page pull-out editions of the Letter Page, so popular had it become as a campaigning local newspaper.
My guess is that the Hartlepool Mail where I worked for 25 years will be on the list of the next newspapers, along with others in the north east. I’m sure some of my ex-Management colleagues will feel differently, but that was the close-up view of editorial staff JP management, across the group and regions, were all so busy ‘making budgets’ and ‘making savings’ to ‘make bonus’ that they didn’t care about anyone who actually cared about the newspaper rather than ‘the product’
Generally, across the group, very few senior managers lived in the circulation areas, and much less cared about the communities they served.
Swathes of people and jobs slashed left right and centre by ‘managers’, who made their big fat bonuses and then moved on to the next ‘product’ on the next newspaper to make more ‘savings’ and make more ‘bonus’ for themselves… slapping their collective backs along the way.
Grand ideas about content that should and shouldn’t be on the internet, dithering and vague airy fairy ideas about ‘monetizing’ content at the same time as giving it away seemed way beyond the grasp of many of them who talked a good game, but who never played a good game. More ‘out of the box blue sky thinking’ than you could talk about in a month of Sundays .. They all just lost the plot, and lost it a decade ago, never mind recently.
I dearly hope that local newspapers will rise phoenix like from the ashes of the bonfire they have become, that local entrepreneurs and community businessmen will take it on themselves to create a new generation of hybrid newspapers for a new social media and digital age.
Democracy has taken a huge back seat in this country because of the demise of local newspapers .. no one full time keeping an eye on the council, no-one digging into crime stories .. no one making ANYONE accountable anymore, just PR fluff and awful ‘citizen photographs’ taken on an iPhone.
Today, I’m thinking about the many good people losing and about to lose their jobs.
What a mess JP made, what a mess.
