I am delighted that Frank le Duc has been appointed as deputy editor of the Brighton Evening Argus for two reasons. First, because it's long been his ambition and he is bubbling with enthusiasm. Second, because his 12 years on The Times will surely be invaluable to a paper that has been crying out for experienced journalistic input. The Argus used to sell 105,000 when I worked there in the mid-1970s. Its latest official circulation figure stands at a miserable 35,196. And that's very poor indeed when you realise there is not even competition from a weekly in a city with a population of 250,000.
The Argus has undergone a series of crises in recent years as it has tried desperately to find a way of halting its sales slide. Frank is aware of that, so he knows what he faces. He will also enter a newsroom where morale has been badly affected by the enforced redundancy of its long-serving and popular crime reporter Phil Mills. Rightly, that point is also made in the Press Gazette report of Frank's appointment. But I want to draw attention to the final words in the final sentence in that article, which says: "There has also been a high turnover among the reporting staff at the paper, although that is not uncommon on a regional daily." Not uncommon on a regional daily!
Given that the writer, Sarah Lagan, is the trade magazine's specialist reporter on regional papers, we can assume that she is correct. Her statement certainly accords with my knowledge. The high turnover of staff is one of the key problems for regionals. For a variety of reasons - poor wages, internal cost-cutting, failing morale, lack of job satisfaction, lack of career structure and, not least, lack of public esteem for journalism itself - people no longer find pleasure in working for regional papers. I accept that the provincial press has always been seen as a stepping stone to national papers or to other forms of media. But there were many people who spent their lives working on regionals too. That's increasingly rare nowadays.
I suspect that the owners and managers of the chains that run regional papers do not see staff turnover as a problem. They worry more about bottom lines than headlines. For them, journalism is just a commercial activity rather than a valuable public service. But the lack of a vibrant regional press employing highly motivated journalists should concern everybody. Journalism matters and so do the journalists. Good luck, Frank, you'll need it.
