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Turmoil at the Telegraph
154/Tim Gopsill
The NUJ is balloting for strike action at the troubled Tory title, writes Tim Gopsill, editor of the The Journalist.
DATELINE: 14/11/06It is no exaggeration to say that the owners of daily newspapers in Britain - national and local - are in a state of panic. All of them, without exception, are losing sales hand over fist. Even more importantly, for them, they are losing advertising, and they are looking over their shoulders at the mugger coming up behind them: the internet.
Newspapers are still making piles of money, especially in the provinces where profit margins are almost obscene: some are over 30 per cent of turnover. But this has been achieved by constantly cutting costs. Staffing levels and salaries in the provinces are now so low that there is little left to go if they are to produce newspapers at all.
That's the question they are asking: do they go over to websites, and how? The "quality" nationals have already taken the decision and have embarked on the process known by the new buzzword "integration". (The "red-tops" are not so bothered. Their readers aren't so web-savvy as yet and no-one goes to their websites for news.)
There is anxiety and turmoil in national newsrooms: journalists at the Guardian, Financial Times and the Telegraph group have all threatened strike action over the changes being foisted on them and nowhere is there more unrest than at the Telegraph.
It's just 20 years since the upheaval of Wapping when in one of the worst industrial rises of the 1980s newspapers the four titles title owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International were switched to computerised production at a new print centre overnight. Five thousand print and clerical workers were sacked and the journalists were split over whether or not to go along with the changes.
This time the job losses are fewer, though still in the hundreds. But the impact on the quality of the journalism will be massively greater. The 1980s revolution, in which journalists effectively took over the typesetting from printers, did not directly affect the nature of their work. Now it most certainly will.
The Telegraph too is moving to a new cutting-edge production centre, a huge newsroom in Victoria, central London, in which print and online production will be "integrated", side-by-side. No longer will journalists work to evening deadlines for the next morning's paper. Instead their output will be determined by four "touchpoints" each day, for which they will generate material for various online production - web pages, blogs, podcasts and video.
For journalists used to afternoon and evening work this will mean rotas starting at seven in the morning and work on Saturdays. It will mean more work, but 54 journalists have just been sacked - along with 80 other staff in non-editorial jobs. Asked how fewer can produce more, managers simply reply: "We will have to work smarter."
The changes involve dispensing with the traditional role of sub-editor, the skilled technician that has always crafted reporters' words into newspaper pages. The managers' assumption is that the writers themselves will process their work - a fantasy the newspaper bosses have fallen for before, invariably with disastrous results. The 40-plus Telegraph subs are being succeeded by 21 "production journalists" who are unlikely to be able to ensure that quality is maintained.
The NUJ is balloting for strike action against the way the new work is being implemented and is expecting a strong response. (The Union is not against the technological changes and it's too late to strike against the redundancies because managers sent the 54 journalists packing with large sums of money.)
The severely destabilised survivors don't really know what their day-to-day priority will be. When competing demands are made by online, print, podcasting and video, what will they do? As well as being concerned about their jobs and working conditions, they are worried about the effect on their journalism. It might seem strange to those who regard the Telegraph as a right-wing Tory rag but the paper has a solid reputation for the quantity and quality of its news, in which its staff have always taken great pride.
One worry is that the journalism will come second to the commercial endeavour of the new enterprise. In a little-reported speech to the Association of Online Publishers' conference in London in October, Annelies van den Belt, the Telegraph's new media director, spelt it out. She said new production "touchpoints" were key to advertising plans.
"We have done a private study to understand our new way of working and come up with 32 products that we can match touchpoints to during the day. The challenge is that there is such a wide range of products out there, such a wide range of ways you can reach the consumer, that you need to find a platform that is quite close to your brand."
She added that it may be necessary to increase the number of daily touchpoints to meet the demands of the consumer, which would in turn give multi-media advertisers the potential to better reach to their target groups. "The digital age is a tool to understand much better what consumers want and how to be relevant and that may mean in some cases blurring the line between editorial and advertising". Hurriedly she added: "Blurring the lines does not mean that you have to compromise on the quality of your editorial."
The Telegraph's new integrated newsroom, she said, would be "complemented by a trading team to manage day-to-day advertising sales and an integrated solutions team that responds to the needs of clients and approaches advertisers with new ideas about using the Telegraph's multi-media outputs."
Marketing people always talk in this kind of language, of course, but it is no wonder that journalists are suspicious. Those moving to Victoria - the process will be completed in November - are having their working lives turned upside down. They have watched the brutal sacking of dozens of respected colleagues, including seasoned foreign correspondents, among them the Paris correspondent Colin Randall, who had actually adapted with flair to the digital world and had created a popular blog about France.
When Randall was sacked the blog was last week inundated with angry responses from disgruntled readers. "I think that perhaps them wot rules at the DT are perhaps rather ashamed of their behaviour, and so they bloody well should be," said one.
The Telegraph is the paper of "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" of course. If he (or she!) is now disgusted at the Telegraph itself, its commercial future may not be as rosy as its starry-eyed technological and marketing evangelists believe.
LINKSAssociation of Online Publishers
Last modified: Tuesday, November 14, 2006
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Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
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Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
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