The History of the Provincial Press in England

Rachel Matthews

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781441156464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Regional newspapers around the globe are fighting to survive in the face of challenges to their economic model, due to the constant influx of new technology. At the same time, while studies of the national press have created a continuous narrative on the newspaper, the history of the regional press has been subject to relatively little academic scrutiny, despite being a significant industry in terms of a readership, circulation and profit. By focusing on provincial English newspapers, Matthews makes the case for the larger issue of the future of local newspapers worldwide. She argues that a comprehensive approach to the history of the regional press can result in a conceptualization of the industry in terms of the shift in emphasis between the key elements of state control, ownership, social influence and production techniques. They can be categorized into six distinct stages: the local newspaper as opportunistic creation; the characterization of the local newspaper as fourth estate; the impact of New Journalism; the growth of chain control, the shock of the free paper and new technology and finally, the current picture, the search for a new business model.

1

Introduction

The provincial press: The contemporary conundrum

When film director Ridley Scott imagined a dystopian future in his 1982 film, Blade Runner, he made the cars fly, but put the hero on the street corner reading a printed broadsheet. Sommerville (1996) comments that, in the way fish did not discover water, we think of news as being an essential part of social consciousness and for many that is still inextricably linked with a product printed on paper, despite the expansion of digital technology. The newspaper is, therefore, embedded in the landscape to the extent that it is hard to envision a world without it. This is particularly true in England, which has traditionally had one of the highest consumptions of newspapers per head in the world.1 At a local level, this translates to the notion of the daily or weekly newspaper as a faithful friend, the regular appearance of which is a ritualistic part of community life. This ubiquity though is a chimera; despite their apparent fixedness in the place in the cultural imagination, the newspaper – whether at national or local level – has never had an absolute presence, and currently its reach might be described as fragmentary at best. As I write, the circulations of printed newspapers are in such a continued and long-term state of decline that the dominant narrative surrounding their future is one of extinction. This is particularly so in the face of the impact of digital technology which has disrupted long-standing assumptions underpinning the perceived relationship between form, content and purpose.

It is this fragmentation which has prompted this retrospective look at the provincial press in England. Just as we are now more likely to search for a new house using the internet than via the pages of these papers, these titles are also available online, so that websites now outnumber printed products. Additionally digital technology has challenged this once-definitional relationship with place2 and has undermined not only our reading and buying habits but also revenue streams for these titles, which further problematizes the definitional process. Provincial is here a term particularly suited to the discussion of newspapers in England, which is overwhelmingly dominated by a London-centric view of nationhood. In England, the prevailing definitions of newspapers connect to three main characteristics: frequency of publication, geographical reach and business model. In turn, these characteristics have been linked to a hierarchical ranking of newspaper forms aligned with their perceived significance. Accorded first place within this definition are the daily, ‘national’ newspapers – which are themselves subdivided into ‘quality’, mid-market and tabloid. National titles are here defined as those headquartered in London but circulating across Britain.3 At the bottom in terms of status are the local free sheets pushed unrequested through the letterbox. Provincial therefore signifies those titles which are based outside of the capital and is contiguous with the definition of ‘local paper’, used by the Newspaper Society, the body which represented such titles until recently.4 The ‘local press’ as a whole relates to those newspapers which define themselves as circulating within a defined geographical area; within this classification they are usually further subdivided to the ‘regional press’, which circulates across larger geographical areas such as English counties, meaning the ‘local press’ is largely understood to focus on a town or district level.

These titles claim fealty to the locales in which they operate via their names, which also proclaim their role as information purveyors. Their circulations range from just a few thousand to those which sell more than 90,000 a day.5 Thus they are the Derby Telegraph, the Plymouth Herald, the Newcastle Chronicle the Rutland Times or simply The Cornishman. Such is the nature of the business that titles coexist and overlap so that one county can host multiple titles circulating within its boundaries, ranging from those daily organs which are seen to have status and influence, such as the Manchester Evening News or the Yorkshire Post, to the smallest titles, like the Herne Bay Gazette, or the Grantham Times. The relationship between paper and town can run deep, and the loss of titles can prompt protest and anxiety from those who feel bereft of a paper they might not even buy. For those readers who have stayed loyal to the habit of local newspaper consumption, the title will be the place where they look to for news of their area. These range from reports of those landmark events and issues which shape our physical and imagined environment to those personal details which resonate with us on an individual level, such as the deaths of those we know. And they are served up by teams of journalists who are themselves perceived as embedded in those areas, dedicating their hours to solitary attendance at countless ‘parish pump’ events.

It is this conception of the local newspaper which those working within the industry foreground in their memoirs of their experiences. Perhaps unsurprisingly for those who have made a living out of writing, personal accounts of time spent on newspapers abound, as do works on varying issues such as training or production. Some offer a useful insight into the industry; Morris (1963), for example, who captures his foray into the provincial news industry in I Bought a Newspaper, describes in detail his battle to establish an independent title in the face of opposition from group-owned newspapers in the 1950s. His account heroizes the campaigning editor, committed to his locale and dedicated to giving a voice to the voiceless. Richard Stott (2002), who progressed to edit national titles including The Mirror, offers an insight into the life of the local reporter when he recalls his training on the Bucks Herald in the 1960s. His nostalgic view positions the committed local journalist at the heart of the community, describing the chief reporter Phil Fountain as ‘a local newspapermen (sic) to his fingertips, who could have made Fleet Street without any bother. But he loved Aylesbury and he knew it inside out. Local councils and courts were meat and drink to him. Immaculate shorthand note, all the councillors and the coppers at his beck and call, the holder of 1,000 borough secrets’ (2002: 90). It is a view epitomized by Clive Joyce, editor of the Kidderminster Shuttle, writing to publicize the annual Local Newspaper Week. ‘We must never forget that a local newspaper stands and falls on its relationship with its community’ (Newspaper Society 2009). These partisan recollections, mediated by memory, contribute to the mythology of the local newspaper as a steadfast pillar of the community. As such they can themselves become stitched into the fabric of the values which underpin the provincial newspaper industry and the attitudes towards it, which this history seeks to interrogate.

Beneath this apparent simplicity, then, is a heterogeneous and numerous accumulation of titles, which would lay claim to being a local newspaper, and it is this variety of responses which makes telling the story of this particular media form challenging. Defining what it is to be a provincial newspaper, as this history will demonstrate, is not as straightforward as those memoirs would have us believe. Few answers are to be found within the canonical body of scholarship, which so often passes over the provincial newspaper in favour of the metropolitan titles, despite the fact that the latter is eclipsed by the former in terms of circulation and profitability for much of its history.6 This book then seeks to reappraise the status of the provincial press by taking a longitudinal approach, which not only exposes the fragility of the distinction between provincial and national titles but also begins to unveil the claims to legitimacy which the provincial newspaper industry has constructed. As such, those claims which underpin the place of newspaper in the national psyche – such as its ability to serve the interests of democracy, or as an ‘objective’ narration of the latest events – are contextualized within a historic framework which enables us to revisit those ‘absolutes’ with a reinvigorated critical engagement.

The central position of this book is that the provincial newspaper is, and always has been, a commercial venture to its core. This is in itself not new; in particular the evening newspaper, which dominated the provincial press for much of the twentieth century, has long been acknowledged as the financial powerhouse for the provincial news industry as a whole and, indeed, for the national industry where those titles were co-owned. However, my argument goes further to suggest that profit is the principle around which all other elements of the newspaper – including its name, content, relationship with the reader and, significantly, social standing – are organized. Such is the power of this principle that it has governed the centrality the provincial newspaper claims for that ill-defined notion of ‘community’, despite the fact that the commercial structure of its business model can precisely undermine this position. This interpretation is at odds with the established construction of the role of the provincial newspaper at points in its history; in particular it conflicts with the dominant narrative of the twentieth-century newspaper to serve the ‘good of the community’. Such is the sway of this value that it is embodied in professional norms and values – and perpetuated in training and standards of practice – and continues as an ideological justification for much local journalism today. This historicization, therefore, critiques the absoluteness of this value and instead suggests that it has been used to shore up the social legitimacy of what is in fact a highly commercial product. In doing so, it challenges the apparent immutability of these concepts by revealing that they are in fact highly contingent and even wrought with contradictions. This is particularly apposite in the current landscape where the contradictions are increasingly apparent.

A key example of the fracturing of the ideological justification for the provincial newspaper industry is the way in which news workers increasingly feel unable to meet the value of serving the good of the community, which they see as core to their raison d’etre. This position is perpetuated not only via training but also via the justification for routines which underpin local news practice, such as the understanding of the newspaper as a watchdog, which means local titles scrutinize local institutions such as courts and councils. This position is itself wrought with the contradiction inherent in the conceptualization of commercial circulation areas as some sort of homogenous community with an apparent unified set of interests, which can be served by journalists. These tensions are explored at length in the closing sections of this work in relation to the twenty-first-century provincial news workers. But such is its significance to the industry for nearly 200 years that, in addition, this claimed relationship between journalist and community has become the motif of this study, which seeks to establish the path by which it has become embodied as an ideological value, defined by a discourse of public service.

The thesis set out here is that the relationship between the provincial press and the community has been overstated and oversimplified by the industry, which has drawn upon it for its justification since its emergence in the nineteenth century. During that era, the marriage of the newspaper, which was positioned as an institution, with other civic institutions was largely one of convenience; this coincidence increased the status of newspaper owners, and their products, and the coverage of those institutions ensured a regular diet of content for the purpose of newspaper production. But there was nothing in the nature of the provincial newspaper which made that relationship absolute, and so, any claims to serving the public interest of a community were always tempered by the primary purpose of the newspaper as a business. Additionally, the notion of ‘community’ itself has been presented as a non-problematic ideal by the local newspaper, whereas, in practice, the notion is largely aligned to a constructed advertising market which developed in confluence with people living in a geographical area. This commercial nature of community at once stripped it of any claim to absoluteness, and this history demonstrates at key points how the newspaper addressed different publics at different times in order to expand advertising revenue. Again, this makes any claim to serving the ‘public interest’ questionable because of the ill-defined nature of the newspaper’s public itself.

Therefore, this work also charts the emergence of the critique of the extent to which the provincial press performs this social function. Significantly, this position holds most sway at times of overt commercialism for the newspaper business. The first Royal Commission into the Press in 1947 was specifically related to fears about the impact of consolidation on the ability of titles to work in favour of their communities. Similarly, Jackson’s seminal work (1971) focused on a provincial press which had been through an extensive period of consolidation and was largely owned by a few, huge corporations. As a result, he understood that, for these titles, the good of the community was a conscious strategy whereby papers – and in particular the highly successful evening papers – located themselves geographically with a content and commercial strategy of reaching as many people as possible in an area, thereby creating a targeted readership to ‘sell’ to advertisers. These papers specialized in a varied ‘diet’ of local content, which enabled them to attract large volumes of advertising and so run at a healthy profit. As such they presented themselves as a local ‘watchdog’ even though their centralized and remote ownership was weakening their ‘licence’ to make this claim (Bromley and Hayes 2002: 199).

However, while these criticisms address the way in which newspapers might be able to enact their service to the community, what they do not question is that status of this purpose in relation to the provincial press. This assumption of its centrality suggests that, such was the power of the ideological value that it became entrenched and established as absolute as these critiques emerged. Therefore, in calling for the 1947 enquiry, journalists and MPs did so to preserve the ability of the newspapers to serve their communities. Similarly, when Jackson wanted to demonstrate what a community loses when its newspaper ‘dies’ (1971: preface). This perspective continues to be articulated in contemporary debates about the state of the local news industry in the wake of digitization. Complaining that ‘clickbait’ had replaced reporter-generated copy for the Croydon Advertiser, editorial worker Gareth Davies articulated this position when he said, ‘Local press should be a vital part of democratic accountability and a force for change, not an exercise in generating clicks by any means’ (Ponsford, 31 July 2016).

The issue here is the ‘should’ in Davies’ statement. As this work demonstrates, there is nothing implicit in the provincial newspaper business which makes serving the public interest a necessity. Indeed, the significance of advertising revenue to the finances of this sector means that for much of its history, the reader – in whose interest it would claim to function – is significant only as a target for that advertising market. That is why the free newspaper works. The irony is that the relationship between newspaper and community, which might best be described as adventitious, has developed to have such significance for those within and without the industry. In particular, the extent to which news workers see serving the good of the community as part of their professional ideology must be recognized. There is no doubt that for the thousands of often poorly paid and overworked journalists working in local and regional news rooms, the idea that they are serving some sort of public good has motivated them to continue in what can be a thankless role. Davies described himself as ‘heartbroken’ by what he saw as detrimental changes to his title, and I see no reason to doubt the sincerity of his statement. The problem here is the very demand for social purpose from a commercial entity whose primary goal is to generate profit; at times an avowed social role might have helped that primary purpose, such as during the era of the Second World War. At other times, though, this has not been the case, and in particular, the contemporary picture for the industry is one in which the form of journalism which supports the social purpose is simply too demanding of editorial resources for the current business model to support.

Jackson’s work is particularly useful for the way it facilitates a deeper analysis of the way in which that ideology of news workers ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Printers’ Papers: Profiting from the Commerce of Information
• 3 The Provincial Press and Political Patronage
• 4 The Impact of ‘New Journalism’
• 5 The Corporatization of the Provincial Press
• 6 The Provincial Press in Wartime
• 7 The Deunionization of the Provincial Press
• 8 The Digital Turn
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright