Spare me the anguish, the news business isn't on its knees

SPARE me, please, the over-the-top headlines about the plight of newspapers.

Things really aren’t that bad … although the endless gloomy obituaries being written might have you believing otherwise.

Our wellbeing came under intense focus at the end of last year when Reach, the country’s biggest publisher of regional newspapers, announced about 320 editorial redundancies.

The job losses followed the closure of several newspapers in 2023, although there were launches of new titles too.??

So, yes, news is going through tough times. Revenues aren’t what they were. But we are not alone in that respect. A great many other industries have been severely disrupted by the internet and the economic turbulence that has rocked us since Brexit, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Liz Truss’s reckless bet on trickledown economics.

Worrying times, for sure, and it is important to recognise the devastating effect that has had on many people in the business. But we who remain are rolling up our sleeves, fighting our corner in the face of unfair competition from the US tech giants, and tackling adversity with determination and optimism.

Which is why I was disappointed to read a story in The Guardian bemoaning the “collapse of local media”.

One sentence especially jarred: “Local newspaper barons are largely extinct, with much local news local in name only – an amalgamation of copy from news agencies, repurposed content from sister titles, press releases and letters”.

The truth is that the picture is much more nuanced. The regional press, regardless of today’s economic climate, has always had a pecking order headed by bigger titles able to fund more pages (in print and online) and more journalists than the rest.

I edit the Hereford Times, one of the country’s largest traditional weekly newspapers but a minnow compared with, for instance, Reach’s Manchester Evening News.

Nevertheless, we post more news than the doom-mongers suggest. For instance, in January our local democracy reporter (funded by an excellent partnership with the BBC) wrote 81 stories about local politics.

We send a reporter to Hereford Magistrates Court almost every week, and we search court listings around the country for cases with a relevance to our patch. We also cover crown court trials and sentencing hearings. Last month this amounted to almost 100 stories.

Reporters don’t attend every parish council meeting in Herefordshire (there are lots of them!) but they do sift through the agendas to unearth newsworthy items.

Findings from Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and food hygiene inspections are also dutifully reported. We cover inquests into deaths, treasure inquests, prevention of future death reports, employment tribunals, teacher misconduct panels, medical practitioner hearings, Nursery and Midwifery Council hearings, Air Accident Investigation Branch findings and more.

Of course, we also write about the more general goings-on that are the staple of local newspapers, making a point to include a quota of positive stories to balance what some might regard as ‘bad news’.

The Guardian quotes industry advertising revenues falling by about 70 per cent in 10 years but fails to mention that the costs of producing newspapers have also fallen in that period, though the rising price of newsprint is countering some of those gains. We also now have new revenues streams from subscriptions, magazines and events.

It is also worth noting that Newsquest Media Group, publisher of the Hereford Times, grew its revenues in 2022 (latest figures available) and stayed in profit despite the jump in energy and?newsprint costs.

We are not deluding ourselves about the challenges we face, but while others peddle obituaries we are getting on with writing our own future.

Read more: What Henry Faure Walker, chief executive of Hereford Times publisher Newsquest, told the the Lords Communications and Digital Committee about local news quality.