Jeff Jarvis recounts how the Philadelphia Inquirer has decided to hold all but breaking news back from the website to protect sales of the newspaper. It made me wonder how many newspaper groups in the UK still have their heads up their backsides as the Web 2.0 juggernaut approaches from behind at 70mph.
It didn’t take long to find out. The first one out of the sick bag is the Isle of Thanet Gazette - a Northcliffe-owned title in Thanet, a depressed area of north east Kent. They’ve got an absolutely cracking splash this week about some decidedly unsavoury deals that have been done by elected officials to bring an arm of the Chinese government to set up shop on the island. The details of these deals and the meetings with the Chinese were found in a plastic bag on a landfill site.
Great story. But there are two things that are wrong with it. Both of them strongly suggest that the Gazette will not be with us in two years - and, quite frankly, the goons who are running it deserve to go to the wall as fast as possible:
The story you can't read on the paper's website
1) It was broken on a series of amazing local blogs days ago after the local papers had wrung their hands about what to do with it. Because of the work David Hewson and I did on save-wye, several weeks ago I was contacted by the editor of another local paper who had the documents and was being prevented by “the management” from running the story on the advice of lawyers. I suggested he use the Freedom of Information Act to confirm the details in the documents or, failing that, hand it over to one of the island’s thriving independent local news blogs. Perhaps he did the latter - I have no idea because he never came back to me.
2) The Gazette puts some of its stories on the regional group’s website - www.thisiskent.co.uk - but unbefuckinglievably not its splash because it wants its poor readers to pay 55p to maintain sales. SO YOU CAN’T READ THE BEST STORY IN KENT THIS WEEK without driving to the other end of the world to buy this pisspoor paper.
Except you can - even though these idiots picked this story up from the blogs, they apparently believe that none of their readers or potential readers do the same thing. So they try to stop you reading it without shelling out money and petrol.
Let’s spell it out to the owners and management of the Isle of Thanet Gazette - you are killing your paper and wrecking the future of the poor sods who work for you. Journalism is alive and well on Thanet - here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It’s just that you - Northcliffe - haven’t the faintest idea what is going on around you.
Your pathetic attempts to hold on to a few hundred sales will ensure that there is no Isle of Thanet Gazette on the island within two years.
Idiots.
Thanks for the vote of confidence however I would say this in The Gazettes defence they did ring me as soon as I posted, which was the first they knew about the story so they couldn’t have posted any earlier.
I have urged them to put all of their stories up on blogspot when they publish, it would cost them nothing and immediately be better than most of the other newspapers interactive websites.
Advantages, immediately goes to the top of google, everyone is familiar with blogger and most serious posters belong to it so don’t have to fill in any forms, one can, as a member of blogger maintain continuity of identity and no one can pretend to be you when things get heated.
Any chance of getting a hard nosed investigative journalist onto the subject?
I think to suggest that Papers like the Gazette are at risk of closure within the next year or two as, a result of news rationing on there web site is unrealistic.
What will kill them is reduced advertising revenues, although I’m sure our local authorities in these parts will do their best to continue spending big 8mill from Kent council which I’m sure your aware.
I feel that the Gazette did a first class job, others had a clear lead and dropped it.
As for us bloggers we don’t have the resources that professionals can lean on,
I received a threat of legal action by media company often fronted by a world renown celebrity, its complete bollix of course, there are overt links with political organizations quite a story in fact, would a professional write it up ?
Earlier in the week I had a bitch over the Gazette’s menagerie of animal stories in the previous edition. I don’t like their adversing policy which allows suspect adult advertising of a type sometimes associated with people trafficking. But this week the journalists did a first class proper job.
Blogging is complementary to what you professionals do, sometimes bloggers come up with the goods, but lets not kid ourselves!
The best thing we do is come up from a different perspective, no advertisers to piss off ! Keep up the good work
Michael - Much as I’d love to do some more digging and publishing the results instantaneously on the web, I’m afraid I’m absolutely up to my neck in other stuff … jobs, rebuilding old houses - that kind of thing.
The kind of thing you are doing is changing journalism - for the better, IMO. It’s instant, it’s fearless, it’s free and it liberates people from the agendas of the traditional media and the people that seek to control the news agenda. You have no idea how important what you are doing is to the future of journalism in this country.
Tony - The Gazette may have done a first-class job in publishing the story but it did a shit job in making that story available to more than a few thousand people who bother to buy the print edition. There is no future in this kind of publishing model - readers and advertisers are migrating to the web faster than at any time since the internet age dawned in the early 90s.
And see my answer to Michael above - you are doing an incredibly important thing.
Far be it for me to rush to the defence of the poor old IOTG, but they did publish the story while other papers in the area appear to have lost their bottle, as my fellow Thanetian bloggers have pointed out. Of course, I was slightly miffed as someone who’s normally paid for my writing services not to at least get a mention, especially as they lifted much of their front page verbatim from my blog. Truth is, though, Michael Child and another, anonymous blogger have done much more digging than yours truly so they’re the ones who really deserve the accolades, even though they seem to be far too modest to claim them.
As for the IOTG’s ludicrous policy of holding the front page from their website, I couldn’t agree more with your sentiments. And they don’t even update their site ‘on the go’ as other local rags do.
I’m with Justin (you may be surprised to learn). Whether local newspapers are out of business commercially or not in a few years is irrelevant. Their place as part of the watchful guardians of the democratic process has been usurped by stalwart local bloggers like you chaps. Without you local government in Kent would be even more rotten than it is because the burghers would think they could get away with murder.
The Wye scandal happened because those behind it, principally KCC, thought they had the local media in their pockets. What they learned from save-wye.org was that ordinary citizens can question, disclose and criticise their dubious activities without needing the permission of the letters page editor of the Kent Messenger (there’s a job and a half). More power to all your collective elbows… You don’t need investigative reporters (there aren’t any much any more). You just need to keep asking good questions and pointing out when they don’t prompt any good answers.
The situation for journalists on local papers I guess is that they must be constrained on what and when they might write things since they come into direct contact with their papers advertisers.
The depth and effort which went in to the Save Wye website is exceptional, but then your both (Justin and David) professional’s (that’s not meant in any derisive way either).
David you mention corruption, in Kent, and I’m sure there is, whether its driven by money or by a more innocent “we know best motive”.
Professional writers future depends on individuality as there are leaps in technology which will presumably kill off the lazy in the media industry also I would guess that however adept computers become at harvesting news and repackaging it, much has to originate somewhere, preferably from paid professionals, bloggers do this for fun (I speak for myself) hopefully after a days work.
IOTG WAS owned by Mirror Group.
NOW owned by Daily Mail Group.
Nuff said.
[...] with the Isle of Thanet Gazette and the splash that doesn’t appear on its website, there are plenty of local newspapers which are still clinging to the wreckage of a business model [...]
Justin is completely right. The thisiskent website is absolute shite. It has no news on it what so ever, unless you are interested in stray dogs and village fetes.
My limited efforts tend to be dependent on KoS and a few intrepid reporters. Covering the whole of Kent is harder that it looks. If something happens in Tunbridge Wells, will someone let me know?
[...] has fallen from 112,000 copies to 86,000. Is there any way back for the news organisation which won’t publish its papers’ splashes on the group website for fear of losing newspaper sal… I’d say not - Northcliffe tried to offoad its regional newspapers last year but there were no [...]
[...] “This is” websites to go alongside the 106 it currently publishes. The question is: will they be allowed to publish the splash of the local paper that Northcliffe currently serves the … Tagged: Northcliffe, web [...]
[...] news online in any serious way and many still refuse to publish their best news online (take this incandescant rage at Northcliffe’s Thanet Gazette from Justin Williams as proof) because they are “protecting their business [...]