I can do no better than repeat today's posting by Andrew Grant-Adamson when he asks: "What is going on at Northcliffe?" He cites the roll-call of editors deserting Northcliffe Newspapers published by Press Gazette. It begins with the latest, Brendan Hanrahan, leaving the Torquay Herald Express and then runs through the following list:
Barrie Williams, the Western Morning News in Plymouth; Mike Lowe (Bristol Evening Post); David Gledhill (Bath Chronicle); Sean Dooley (Stoke Sentinel); and Terry Manners ( Western Daily Press). Last week Graham Glen announced that he is to quit the Nottingham Evening Post.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one editor may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness; to lose seven smacks of corporate irresponsibility on an unparalleled scale. I was delighted when Northcliffe agreed to hang on to its chain after failing to sell it. Now I'm not at all sure. I have always thought the company's managing director, Michael Pelosi, to be a courteous man and I thought, despite lacking a journalistic background, he had been with Northcliffe's ultimate owners, the Daily Mail and General Trust, long enough (18 years, since you ask) to understand the value of journalists in general and editors specifically.
I wasn't too enamoured with last year's announcement of a £20m cost-cutting programme known as Aim Higher. That corporate-speak title sounded like spin for Manage Decline. Before the end of the year that had been increased to £30m. Then came the fiasco about putting the company up for sale and, in February this year, the decision to take it off sale again (except for the Aberdeen operation). Soon after, Northcliffe announced that the savings must reach £45m. The restructuring required to accomplish this is obviously terrifying editors. I know many of those of who have walked - Terry, Barrie, David and Graham - and have the highest respect for their journalistic work. They cannot have made their decisions to quit lightly.
What is going on at Northcliffe? I'd say that it is ruining the papers it has previously cherished by cost-cutting in order to please the City and therefore doing what all the other newspaper chains have been doing for years. It's business, folks, the clinical, even cynical, operation of commerce at the expense of the product itself. And what did Oscar Wilde say about that? "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."
