And then the greed set in...

The decline and fall of the local press - and why that's a huge threat to local democracy

Does this building symbolise the death of the local newspaper in the UK? This was where I started my career in newspapers back in 1981, the Galloway Gazette print works in Newton Stewart in south-west Scotland. In those days dozens of people were employed in that building and the title was owned by Iain Brown, the third generation of his family to do so.

Does this building symbolise the death of the local newspaper in the UK? The three first floor windows along the right of the building are where the editorial offices used to be.

Working for the Gazette and for 'Mr Brown' as he was known by even senior members of staff, I learned about the intimate nature of the relationship between a local newspaper and the community it serves. We had time - even if we didn't think so then - to put together good stories that reflected all sides of the issue we were writing about and we were encouraged to write great features about the community and its people.

Oh Mr Brown was ruthless - he had a reputation for it. If he didn't like something his newspaper made sure people knew about it but underpinning those strong views was his belief about what was good for Galloway. Put another way, if it was bad for Galloway then it was bad for his business and the people he employed

When I was in Newton Stewart recently, I walked up Victoria Lane to see what had happened to the old place. I was shocked by the extent of the dilapidation and just felt very, very sad. That one building seemed to sum up the state of the newspaper business in our country. The Gazette has passed through a myriad of ownerships including Johnston Press twice. The title is now owned by the Annan based Dumfriesshire Newspaper Group, there is still a print edition but it no longer has the intimate relationship with the people of the Machars and Rhins of Galloway that ‘the Gazette’, under the ownership of the Brown family, used to have.

So what happened to local newspapers? Why did they fall from grace and why was that decline so rapid? What follows is a very personal view based on what I saw during my own career.

After my stint on the Gazette I went to work at the other end of the region for the twice weekly and at the time very well respected, Dumfries and Galloway Standard. The editor who recruited me was Alastair Warren who had been editor of the influential Glasgow Herald for ten years during the 1960s and ‘70s. When I was there the Friday edition of the paper sold between 20,000 and 21,000 copies a week with the Wednesday edition standing at something over 12,000. A quick check of the current ABC figures will show the Friday edition selling 3,951 and the now Tuesday edition selling just 1,941 copies - how can ‘papers with circulations at that level have any relevance to the community they purport to serve when only a tiny proportion of the people in their circulation areas actually bother to buy them? Simple answer is they can’t.

Interviewing government minister - and one of Mrs Thatcher’s right hand men - Peter Morrison, when he visited Dumfries - from the jacket I’m wearing I think this would be around 1986.

Going back to my days at The Galloway Gazette there would be a queue of people at the door of the print works on a Friday morning literally desperate to get their hands on a copy that was hot off the press. Another title I worked for was The Galloway News and in its main towns that paper had a market penetration of more than 100 per cent. How does that happen? I asked a newsagent, the redoubtable Mary Purdie, and she explained that while many households had the ‘paper delivered the man of the house was often out to work before the ‘paper arrived so would buy his own copy along with his fags and whatever else on the way to work. That’s how desperate people were to find out what had happened to their local sports teams at the weekend, find out who’d been in court and of course to check the ‘hatches, matches and despatches,’ (births, deaths and marriages). It was also their only way to find out.

Training on the Gazette was a testing time - just ask any of the dozens of young reporters who didn’t stay the course - but oh my god was it a fantastic grounding? I was thrown quite literally in at the deep end.

My brother, who at the time was a reporter on the Edinburgh Evening News, told me not to expect to be doing any court for a while, ‘…you need to be a superstar before they let you loose on the Sheriff Court…’ he told me. Not at the Gazette, bang! Within a couple of weeks there I was sitting on the press bench in the court of Sheriff Norman Ramsey, studying the back of the neck of Procurator Fiscal Frank Walkingshaw.

I recall being sent to cover the Annual General Meeting of the South of Scotland Landowners Association that was being held at the Turnberry Hotel. I was 20 and chugged up to the amazing and imposing hotel in my ten-year-old Austin 1300 and found a place to park, or perhaps hide it, among the Rolls Royces, the Bentleys and the Astons - those were indeed the days. You developed a confidence and an ability to speak to anyone, anywhere - that’s the kind of training we were given and I’ll be forever grateful for it.

When I moved to Dumfries to work for ‘The Standard’ in 1984 the emphasis was still on keeping it very local. Owned by Scottish and Universal Newspapers, a company ultimately owned by Lonrho (find out more here) we still put the readers first and although we might not have thought it at the time we had loads of time to work on stories, develop features and win awards! I still have my Law Society Silver Quill award rosebowl after all these years.

So what went wrong? It’s too simple just to blame the internet. Yes the internet played it’s part but the rot had set in years before.

At the end of the last century and in the early years of the current one big publishers went on a spending spree and bought up lots of small independently owned titles - ones like The Galloway Gazette that had been in family ownership, often since their inception - for huge amounts of borrowed money. It all looked like a safe bet, publishing local newspapers was almost like printing money: there was loads of classified advertising revenue; houses, cars, jobs, services and a virtual monopoly on disseminating local news and information, it all seemed pretty well sewn up and the profits were expected to keep rolling in.

And then the greed set in…

When I left ‘The Standard’ for the second time in 2001 I was Regional Features Editor, a grand sounding title but the job didn’t really live up to it. I left because I was in a rut, I’d just turned 40 and needed more out of life. My departure was timely because although I didn’t know it when I decided to go I’d probably have been made redundant within nine months or so as the position of regional features editor was to disappear (in fact I don’t think I was ever replaced when I left) with features for all Scottish titles from Perth to Dumfries, Kilmarnock to the Scottish Borders being produced by a central unit! Result? The start of the delocalisation of local papers. Putting cost saving in front of service had begun. While I use The Dumfries and Galloway Standard as an example the things I’m writing about were happening in local newspapers all over the country as Johntson Press, RIM (remember them), Trinity Mirror etc al chased ever bigger profits.

We local journalists prided ourselves on being accessible. We worked out of town centre offices, it meant readers could drop in with stories; with old photographs they’d found in the attic, or just to tell us about something going on in their community and asking us to investigate - oh yes and they could complain to us as well. But those offices, despite providing a vital link to our communities were deemed too expensive and in the case of Dumfries the editorial team was shunted from an easily accessible location out to the print works and administration centre on the edge of town. More than that though, any hardy souls who drove out to us, or took the bus, couldn’t then just walk in to our offices, oh no they had to report to reception, we’d be summoned through to meet them; all that casual relationship building and developing conversations that might yield a story, feature or useful contact for the future was wiped out in one fell swoop.

We had two photographers, one left and wasn’t replaced. Reporters left and rather than recruit straight away the vacancy was left open, and left and left… and those remaining had to take up the slack.

Then titles started merging. No longer did each title have its own editor. No - one editor would cover two, three, or even more titles. For me though moving local newspapers out of the towns they were there to serve, towns that the ‘papers had taken the name of, had fought for - moving the offices and staff of those titles to a town 20 or 30 miles away was a step far too far.

In Dumfries ‘The Standard’ was merged with the Galloway News. Initially one editor worked across two sites and with a team that was dedicated to each title, then it was announced that The Galloway News office in Castle Douglas would close and the editorial staff were to be relocated to Dumfries, 18 miles away. The Galloway News covered Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie and Kirkcudbright; Kirkcudbright was 30 miles from Dumfries! How can you meaningfully provide a proper service to readers when you effectively turn around and tell them you don’t care about them enough to have local points of contact?

Working in local newspapers there was time to have a bit of fun. When Sir Clive Sinclair launched his C5 they were sold through the Comet electrical stores and the local manager asked us if we’d like to test drive one. Well of course I volunteered for that job straight away!

Then the rot really set in.

Of course as your local paper ceased to be as local so it ceased to be relevant. People began to ask if they really needed it? Circulations stalled and then started to fall. That saw circulation revenue fall and with fewer readers there was pressure on what big advertisers were prepared to pay for their pages. Those big profits for the big publishers started to look anything but guarenteed.

I’m not sure anyone at a senior level in the industry ever stopped to ask what the actual purpose of a local newspaper was because with every cost cutting measure they imposed those papers became less unique to their own local readership, less relevant and more easily done without.

As we sauntered our way through the early 21st century cost cutting rounds came thick and fast. Local papers stopped covering council meetings and they stopped going to court. While it’s considered that that accurate reporting of court proceedings helps maintain public confidence in the justice system, the reporting of council matters is often the only way local people find out what their council is doing, and more significantly spending, on their behalf. I really believe that without coverage of local council our local democracy is under real threat.

It would be foolish of course not to recognise the impact that the internet and social media has had in decimating the publishing industry and I’ll come back to look at that in another piece but the big players were unprepared; they saw the internet as a threat rather than as an opportunity, in the early stages they fought it rather than embrace it. They hadn’t a clue about whether they should provide content for free, ask people to pay for it, or make it a mix of both. There were many false starts and among all this dithering disruptors came in to disrupt and to change the local media landscape and by the time the big publishers noticed what was happening they’d lost control of a space which they had dominated for a very long time.

Who remembers Cliff Michelmore? I was sent to interview him when he was in Dumfries filming something or other. The only time he could see me was in the evening, at his hotel. He was a lovely man, very generous with his time and even asked me - a young whipper-snapper - to join him for dinner.

Has anyone tried to read a story on a website of a publication from the Reach stable? It’s an exhausting process as you navigate adverts after almost every paragraph. And another thing! We were trained to explain the story in the first paragraph not these days! In the age of the clickbait headline and to ensure you’ll read all the way to the end to ensure you see all the adverts, the subject matter, the meat of the story that created the headline you clicked on is right there in the last paragraph - oh how times have changed.

These are not the ramblings of a dinosaur. I love digital publishing - well I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Digital publishing offers so many opportunities but the legacy media squandered many of those and I’m not sure how, or even if, we can ever get them back.

In recent years I’ve been asked to help local people who have something to promote or a campaign to mount. Thirty years ago it was simple; get the local paper on board, get a story and picture in and 80 per cent of your target audiecnce would see it and know what you were doing. These days, down here in Hastings, if you get a story in the local paper only about seven per cent of the target audience will see it. So if you’re selling something, or campaigning against something (back to local democracy again) it just takes so long to spread your message across all the relevant facebook groups, on X, on Instagram and even TikTock - ah for the good ol’ days!

In conclusion you might have picked up that I’m desperately sad, frustrated and angry about the state of our local media - it didn’t need to get to this! I’ll come back to this subject again and talk about some of the digital strategies we tried in my own publishing business and how since retirement in 2017 I’ve been playing around with hyper-local websites, podcasting and even video. But one big worry I have about the future is that given the direction of travel this industry seems set in I don’t think people these days understand the difference between a news report and an opinion piece. When I was doing daily updates on Hastings In Focus and even though I always balanced my stories in the old fashioned way, readers seemed to think anything I published was my opinion. Journalists these days seem less interested in ‘reporting’ than in expressing an opinion and that tars us all with the same brush!