I was saddened but not shocked to learn that the bean counters at Newsquest have decided that a features department at the Herald is an unnecessary extravagance.
You can read the Press Gazette piece here.
The mainstream media has been in an age of austerity for over a decade as it is buffeted by the digital disruption.
I have been a lay official of the NUJ since 2009.
During that time, the large media organisation that owned most major newspapers in these islands seemed committed to being in a race to the bottom.
Trying to assist my fellow union members caught up in this shitshow has often been a wearisome experience.
The year I became a member of the Irish Executive Council, I read Ken Auletta’s book Googled.
It should have won a prescience award.
Many times over the past decade, I have had reason to re-visit the chapter where he spelt out what was in store for old media.
Part of my activism in the NUJ was to sit on the New Media Industrial Council (NMIC).
In 2011 the Irish conference of the union invited Professor Roy Greenslade, then of the City University in London.
We asked him to lay out the media landscape at that time and how the digital revolution would impact our profession.
As NMIC’s Irish representative, I chaired the seminar.
It was an illuminating talk, and you can listen to it here.
Like Auletta’s book, it is highly prophetic about what was in store for the print media sector.
Newspapers are essential to the health of any functioning democracy.
The featured image remains my favourite Herald front page.
Sadly the chaps on the sports desks quickly pronounced their public obedience to the bizarre cult of transubstantiation.
In fairness, I know that some of them are Sevco Conversos, but they need the paycheque.
Consequently, they have to pretend that Rangers FC did not die a decade ago.
For the avoidance of doubt, the folks in the features department are not complicit in that Orwellian lie about what happened to Rangers FC in 2012.
Regular readers will know that my adherence to the truth about those events led me to be targeted by one sports desk chap on that title.
A buddy of mine was in the new department of the Herald for many years.
By the time that he took early retirement, there had been FOUR rounds of cuts in the previous TWO years.
That is why I was not shocked to learn of the news today, as shock implies surprise.
Having a vibrant features department is essential to any newspaper of record.
Sadly, someone at Newsquest doesn’t agree.
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Sorry to say that how newspapers acted in the past 10 years is unlikely to have mattered. They are an obsolete industry and this is their green mile. They don’t sell anywhere near enough to afford to pay for real journalism. Even if they did, would it make any difference to readership? Probably not. I am saddened, as news becoming clickbait and opinion is bad for society. But I fear this is now inevitable. Most news stories now are just “X said Y on twitter” which is a daft strategy, reporting on what your main business rival is publishing only encourages one to cut out the middle man.
Little wonder people have no faith in newspapers in Scotland given the length they go to protect one football club .
Yet todays Daily Record run a story about a guy using fake Id and somehow link Celtic to the story .
They never miss an opportunity to drag Celtic into any story however how much frivolous the link .
I haven’t bought a newspaper in years or even looked at one in passing, I’ve no interest in them any more. Newspapers were once the go to source of top stories, proper investigative journalism carried out by hard hitting newsmen and women, true journalists only interested in the truth. Today’s newspapers are merely fanzines and cult of celebrity cheap copy trash rags, helmed by obedient stenographers too afraid to speak the truth lest they end up on “the list”. There is a place in today’s world for a newspaper which isn’t agenda driven, pursues the truth and has the ability and desire to hold power to account, but sadly that newspaper doesn’t exist.
Newspapers have had, admittedly rare, moments of real journalism in the past 60 years. For the most part, the UK press has taken a comfortable middle ground on politics, economy, health, crime and Europe and been very right wing on unions, poverty, colonies, military, religion-C of E evangelical-, and immigration.
Deep dive journalism died under Murdoch, this is the tit who swallowed the Hitler Diaries pish hook, line & sinker and was responsible for the criminality at NI, the corruption of public officials, the tapping of phones and hacking computers, the bribery of police, prison officers, NHS staff, BT/GPO staff, employees of rival newspapers and the destruction of trade unions in the newspaper industry. He was also the shithole responsible for the Hillsborough, Piper Alpha, Marchoiness, Herald of Free Enterprise, numerous rail crashes, Bradford fire deflection/cover up.
Newspapers are worth the paper they’re printed on when they try to tell the truth.
The print media is in its prolonged death throes.
During 2011/12 I honestly thought that at least one newspaper would break rank and report the truth – in the expectation that it would attract significantly increased sales. Never happened.
If the Rangers FC demise had happened in an environment with no print newspapers would the outcome be any different today?
We already see the censorship and shadow-banning imposed by private companies such as Facebook and Google.
Would the ‘Rangers continuation myth’ have been managed online – and as effectively as it has been managed in the SMSM…?
Commercial entities might argue that business needs justify their behaviour.
The publicly funded BBC, however, has consistently misreported the Ibrox shambles and is a disgrace of an organisation.
The BBC is obsolete – just like the newspapers. 😦
Newspapers have to live by the laws of Economics like every other business. The notion they are bastions of truth and righteousness is laughable. They write what their owners and readers and business leaders want to hear. Today we had a headline “Queen said COVID made her tired” seriously this was front page on at least two national newspapers. And there is surprise they are going out of business? Hilarious. “Gotcha” remains another all time low. There are many many more. Most journalists in sport would learn a lot from McIlvennny or Spiers. At least they try to stand out from the usual dross.
If only they had been honest and told the truth i might still be a newspaper buyer.I used to enjoy buying my paper on the way to work.But since thier continuation lie i cannot bring myself to purchace any paper.If they had remeined with the truth i think a lot of celtic fans might have continued to buy.Sad for the people losing thier jobs though.
Maybe losing their feature dept IS totally appropriate, because a ‘newspaper of record’ it most certainly is not.
No newspaper that prints lies daily can, or should, ever be taken seriously, they’ve lost any rights they claim to have of respect or worth by their weak and feeble actions.
Very surprised you give them any of the above, plainly they don’t deserve it Phil.
Maybe it’s your allegiance to the NUJ union that’s driving those thoughts.
For me, and many others, they deserve nothing, you earn respect by giving it, and that rag prints fantasy daily showing their utter contempt for their own dwindling readership.
One day it’ll be their last, that day won’t come soon enough in my opinion.
I stopped buying and reading The Herald & Sunday Herald the day after they sacked Angela Haggerty & Graham Spiers after they had questioned the degree of effort that the new Klumpany at Ibrox were expending (or not) to try to eliminate the offensive racist & sectarian which was common place at all Sevco matches. The bully boys from Govan threatened withdrawal of advertising business if action was not taken against the duo. It’s not much of a stretch to suggest that the craven then is a contributory reason for the appalling behaviour racist chanting we see continue to observe today.