Blackpool Gazette owner Johnston Press have today released an interim management statement showing that digital revenues were up 12.3% compared with the same point last year. Despite this, advertising revenue slipped 7.1% with recent plunges blamed on the general election and financial boffins at the struggling publisher have indicated that more job losses will need to be incurred to balance the books.
It is forecast that the election will continue to have a detrimental effect on revenues until the third quarter during which time a growth is anticipated.
Johnston Press owes £419.1m to a cartel of banks including RBS and Lloyds and their shares plummeted 98.5% between 2007 and 2009. They had forecast to save £10m this year with job cuts and efficiencies, however they have now revised this and are aiming to save a further £5m; putting frontline staff on tenterhooks once again whilst their boardroom award themselves monumental take-home pay rises of up to 80%.
This is the latest in a string of cuts made by the beleaguered Scottish giant, whose management have in recent years have relieved 2000 staff of their positions. Indeed, 18 months ago the National Union of Journalists chapel at the Blackpool Gazette complained that the paper was suffering “systematic destruction” at the hands of its owner; seemingly this is to continue after chief financial officer Stuart Paterson – paid £655,000 last year – claimed that it was “inevitable” further jobs would be lost.
It has been claimed by one columnist for the Press Gazette that due to its spiralling debt mountain, Johnston Press has fallen from a publishing company to being a “machine for generating profits on behalf of the masters of the universe”.
As regular readers of the Gazette will be aware, their online presence – in particular the comments section – is laughable. Aside from the often dubious copy, their site permits anyone with an axe to grind or a desire to spin an argument to delete any comments they disagree with at their leisure. This discourages constructive contribution and also makes the paper appear to endorse a particular viewpoint.
Aside from a few of their columnists their paper copy isn’t much better, with stories such as “man opens door” and “drunk swears at policeman”. But don’t get me wrong, it provides a limited news service to the local region, and without it how would we find out what mind-altering substances the council’s visionary art department have been consuming?
Whether the latest cuts in jobs will actually fall at the Blackpool Gazette remains to be seen, and whether they’d make a difference to the quality of the paper itself is another story entirely. It does make you think, though: what would happen if the Gazette were to fold?
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I had an email from one of the website team when I made a complaint about that obnoxious pain in the arse ItzNotWotItWoz and they said the Gazette will soon be getting a revamp like the LEP to stop this malicious deleting. But my big question is why did the LEP get it first when it is clear even to astronauts out in space that it is The Gazette that has the big problem. It is too little too late as far as I am concerned.
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I think all JP productions suffer the same deletion problems and it’s probably not fair to say any one paper deserves the new system more than any other.
It’s something I personally would have dealt with before implementing a website platform because it was patently obvious that it would happen, but hey, that’s just me.
Seems odd that the Gasjet staff are telling people the new site is coming but you will remember I mentioned on April 19th that it would be about two weeks before the new site arrived. This was based on a similar Gasjet staff communication.
Begs the question, where on earth is this new site?
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Perhaps the Gazette has to pay for the new site (internal costs) and I can certainly imagine them struggling more for revenue than the LEP. Also if the Gazette is particularly short of money (and I must admit I don’t tend to buy it as it has very limited news for its cover price) then they won’t have someone to implement the changes needed to switch to a new site, assuming manual changes are required whilst they do it on the cheap.
Without local press the public just won’t get to find out most of what is happening in their area. It will be a real shame if this paper folds, regardless of the dubious quality of its content.
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Well said Frustrated, we do need a local paper, but I would rather it was of a higher quality; no more of this Labour bias, report on proper news instead of sensationalism like the ridiculous amoungt of coverage and hype they gave that worthless deathtrap St Georges Baths (for one example).
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To be fair it must be difficult to drum up quality journalism in a town where there’s very little of particular interest.
I notice there’s a lot of stories about things that people have done, for example a school doing a play or whatever. But I would prefer some more in-depth journalism where a journo gets a bee in their bonnet about something, goes and does their homework and then writes about it.
One example would be this Trinity Hospice paintings cock up. The Gasjet successfully engineered a witch hunt resulting in the boss resigning. Great success. Or was it? Why didn’t a Gasjet journo go to the hospice and ask the patients whether the art was a benefit to their care?
Or perhaps they could take a leaf out of Blackpool Aloud’s book and do an article about the history of Blackpool’s heritage buildings, such as the town hall, Grundy art gallery, Imperial Hotel, Abingdon Street post office and even that god-awful bus station! Perhaps they just want us to buy their book.
What about a roundup of the condition of the green spaces in Blackpool with a campaign for the council to create more, particularly in the centre? I bet you didn’t know that there’s a huge scheme to completely revamp Claremont Park (or maybe you didn’t care), but there is, and the plans are pinned on the outside of the Claremont Park Community Centre.
It’s not barnstormingly controversial by any means, but it’s informative for locals and far more interesting than little Sally playing the donkey in some nativity play whilst her parents sit there clapping like seals.
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The Lytham St Annes Express seems to be going downhill as well. Cuts have had to be made because they raised the cost of advertising so much that a lot of the major estate agents formed their own free brochure instead though other more minor agents have seemed to replace them (but for how long?)
It has a people page, a health page, an education page and so on that is religiously stuck to every week whether there’s enough information to make it of any interest or not. And it’s become a very thin publication for its cover price and is generally rather uninteresting though I think the new editor did come in with great plans. Perhaps he’s just not got the staff.
The reason we get little Sally playing the donkey is because parents buy the photos afterwards or at least the paper. Then we have “cute kids”/”cute puppies”/”good gardens”etc competitions to try and generate interest when I don’t if they work but they certainly don’t do anything for me.
Campaigns for people to form “friends” groups to help bring about improvements to local facilities would be a great use of a local paper along with reporting of their achievements. Reporting what goes in local council meetings would also be great for community involvement and knowledge (plus it’s really easy copy to write quickly once they realise where it’s all published online anyway). Other easy pickings would be to look at the political campaigns this time as to what the PPCs thought was wrong with the place and get public interest stories based on these points. If political groups have been around asking what people care about to base their campaigns on it seems a little strange to ignore it for news purposes.
I agree re the Trinity Hospice story – this could have been gone into, in great detail in the Gazette. The real problem for me in buying the Gazette is that there’s very little news in it, even less for LSA, and what there is has already been on their website with no extra detail, information or pictures in the paper version. Surely the Gazette online should report a tempting taster of the story with a much fuller report in the paper that night – but too often (probably to save time) it’s just exactly the same thing.
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To be fair, the Gazette is one of the better local news papers, out there, I’ve seen a few in other towns and they are poor.
Re the comments, they should use the powers of citizen journalism and appoint some volunteer mods to remove any posts which don’t meet set guidelines.
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Re quality of journalism
An example of a paid for listing advert at the back of sister publication the “lytham st annes express”
All typesetting (line breaks) as in actual ad
FENCING
Supplied & erected free
ests Phone…..
I can imagine that phone ringing from pensioners seeing if there’s a free grant for that now.
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