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- Friday 16th February: 'Colossal decline' of UK regional media
Friday 16th February: 'Colossal decline' of UK regional media
Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Peter.
If you thought Esther’s attempt to cheer you up yesterday was going to be a permanent thing, well, think again bright angel. Today’s newsletter starts with a brutal examination of the ‘colossal decline’ of the UK’s regional media over the last 15 years. New research from Press Gazette shows that, in revenue terms, the sector suffered a 75% decline between 2007 and 2022.
Factor in inflation and the UK’s regional news media is around seven times smaller today than it was just before the financial crisis of 2008 hit. In its research, PG compared 2007 revenue and employment numbers for nine regional media companies which would later be consolidated into 2022’s three players: Reach, National World and Newsquest.
In 2007, the number of journalists employed across nine companies totalled around 9,000 and their collective revenue was £2.4bn. In 2022, revenue was around £590m with around 3,000 journalists employed. The worse news is those totals are probably even lower today.
Our lead story highlights the fact that the decline of the UK regional press has been ‘inversely proportional to the rise of US tech giants operating in the UK media market’. Coincidentally, on the MX3 website, Neil Thackray writes, “It is simply not good enough for them to bleat that some bigger boys have stolen their lunch money.” Read the rest of his delicious rant to find out what he thinks publishers should be doing to correct their missteps.
In case all this angst has brought you down, here’s a nice little story about finding the funny in the clusterf*ck. Grover cheerfully added news reporter to the long list of jobs he’s done, but a sweet tweet reporting his fans are ‘special and amazing’ was met some darkly funny responses. My favourite is, “I regret to report a hedge fund has since purchased Grover’s paper and laid him off.”
OK, here’s a better news story. Literally! This piece from Betternews.org looks at how two newsrooms experimented with new types of feature content that highlighted their expertise in specialty beats - food and nostalgia - to tap into local community members’ passions, boosting engagement and paid subscriber rates.
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