Anyone who wants to be a journalist these days must be bonkers, writes former editor of ITV Central News Dan Barton.
Ad revenues devastated with paper pounds replaced by digital pennies.
Journalists paid pathetically.
Reporters chasing clickbait not quality
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Newspaper sales smaller than school newsletters.
BBC cutting local radio that has served communities for decades.
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AI doing the writing and editing.
Young people (and yes older people) getting their news from social media.
It’s so depressing.
Back in the early 1990s, in Birmingham’s Post and Mail newsroom, there was a big noticeboard updated weekly with the circulation of The Post, the Evening Mail and Sunday Mercury.
The Birmingham Post, then a quality daily business broadsheet, edited by the brilliant Terry Page, sold around 27,000 copies a day.
The Evening Mail, a multi-edition tabloid, lead by the redoubtable Ian Dowell, sold over 200,000 a day. A few Mail hacks sniggered at the Post’s smaller circulation.
Then I read in Press Gazette, the (now) Birmingham Mail sells 5,300 a day.
In a city of a million people. Penetration about 0.5pc.
When I first started as a cub reporter on the Eltham Times edition of the Kentish Times Series we sold 4,500 copies a week. We joked it would be cheaper to drive round with a megaphone shouting out the news headlines in the town.
Seems like heaven now.
In the 1980s as editor of the (award-winning thank you) Brighton and Hove Leader, we distributed 140,000 copies a week across the south coast.
That’s more than some national Sundays sell today.
And let’s not forget half the big newspaper groups won’t even publish their circulations because they’d just be embarrassed. Cowards.
It’s long been predicted but we must surely be at the tipping point when many publishers will fold their paper products.
I predict the FT and Guardian will be next to go purely digital.
As to the regionals, once one goes, most will go. It’s like the triple lock on pensions: not fair but no-one wants to be first to say it.
It’s OK, we’re told, because everyone is going digital.
Well, everyone is using their smartphones expecting news, or what passes for it, for free.
It’s great to see The Telegraph doing so well in digital subscriptions, reportedly hitting a million with The Times also charging along. (Full disclosure: I pay for the Telegraph and Times digital subscriptions and they are excellent value for money.)
But who would pay to fight through the appalling regional Reach websites where you need to play Spot the News Story?
As I write this Birmingham Live (it dropped any connection to the heritage titles years ago) has a live blog following a “police incident” in Handsworth.
It says nothing and reveals whatever happened is over. Pointless.
But not as bizarre as the story headlined: Krishnan Guru-Murthy warned by doctors he ‘could drop dead on Strictly dancefloor’.
And now it seems regional newspaper (if I dare call them that) websites have peaked.
What’s piqued is the patience of readers sick of being bombarded with irritating ads, confusing layouts and yes, a shortage of quality journalism.
I note that in May, ITV (full disclosure: I was editor of ITV Central News) said they would be re-applying for their public service broadcast licences for the next decade.
ITV’s corporate press release says:
“ITV’s investment in high quality original UK programming and in news and current affairs programming, especially in the nations and regions, was noted by the Secretary of State as important for viewers…”
But let me make a prediction.
ITV national news will continue from ITN (and excellent it is too) but in the next few years we will hear, just like the BBC and its local radio service, ITV regional news is just so expensive, with only old people watching.
How about we make it on demand, short packages made by video journalists, available on ITVX online?
You know – a bit like Tiktok.
I give it to 2025.
As TV newsman Howard Beale says in the movie Network: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore”.
And the pay is poor. Press Gazette reports that senior journalists at National World are paid £23,000 a year. No wonder they’re striking for better pay.
Meanwhile kids are getting their news from Tiktok. Always important to see what Gordon Ramsey is up to.
No curation, no thought, no idea.
But in the near future we can do it without journalists. AI is cheap, doesn’t need holidays or pension contributions and works 24 hours a day.
The Guardian reported that the CEO of German media group Axel Springer said job cuts lay ahead, because automation and AI were increasingly making many of the jobs that supported the production of their journalism redundant.
“Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was – or simply replace it,” CEO Mathias Doepfner said in an internal letter to employees.
Great. So…
The newspaper groups can’t make the same kind of money they did from print.
They may have already peaked in readership.
Journalists are badly paid, with some exceptions.
Journalists will be increasingly replaced by robots.
When I started, journalism was important. It did challenge those in power. It was part of the checks and balancing of a democratic society.
And, yes, there are still examples of thrusting, brilliant journalism.
Great journalists still break great stories.
But for how long? And what the hell do we do then.
Dan Barton trained as a journalist at The Kentish Times Series, was deputy editor of The Birmingham Post, editor of ITV Central News in the Midlands, later head of corporate communications at West Midlands Police.
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