I noticed this headline, Jobs under threat as newspaper faces losing government advertising, and had two successive thoughts. Why should reporters be sacrificed if ad revenue drops? Hang on, that's how it has always been, hasn't it. Journalists are not funded from thin air. How on earth can newspapers afford to exist if their income dries up?
The story behind the headline involves the Guernsey Press. The island's government is discussing a plan to close the 166-year-old La Gazette Officielle, which is published daily in the paper. Without it, the Press could lose anything up to £67,000 in annual advertising revenue.
Result? Journalists' jobs must go. Cruel economics, of course, but also a reality check. The gradual withdrawal of "official" governmental advertising - at both local and national level - has been happening gradually for some time.
Let's face it, as print ads dry up the money won't be there to employ the same numbers of journalistic staff as before.
Then again, I hear a National Union of Journalist' voice raised to ask whether reporters, photographers and subs, who provide a paper's content and therefore the major lure for readers, should be sacrificed ahead of profits.
