The NFRN says: The National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN), which accounts for 30 per cent of newspaper sales, condemned the newspaper publisher for the move, which sees the Halifax Courier, Northampton Chronicle and Echo, Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, Peterborough Evening Telegraph and the Scarborough Evening News move to weekly publication from the end of next month.
Johnston Chief Executive Ashley Highfield, who has publicly admitted that he had no newspaper experience having spent his working career in the cable industry, at the BBC and with Microsoft, said the move towards “platform-neutral” publishing would revitalize the papers while growing the publications’ websites. He has also been quoted as saying that this strategy would give local audiences what they want.
But in response NFRN National President Kieran McDonnell (pictured) said: “I’m not sure what this means but I know that local newspapers are an essential part of community life. They are the fabric of their towns and villages and we cannot allow such a vital source of local information to disappear.”
Local daily and evening newspapers were also a key product for independent newsagents as well as providing jobs for thousands of news boys and girls, he continued.
“This is yet another assault by Johnson Press on the livelihoods of local news retailers. Moving these five titles from daily to weekly publication represents a potential loss of 420,000 copies a week. This will have a massive impact on the revenues of hard working newsagents as millions of pounds are wiped out of the retail market.”
And he added: “That’s not all. Delivering evening newspapers is, for many teenagers, their first taste of work. With these five papers now set to appear on a weekly basis only, thousands of young newsboys and girls could find themselves out of a job.
“For all these reasons the NFRN is demanding an urgent meeting with Mr Highfield,” Mr McDonnell said.
This latest move comes just weeks after Johnston Press angered newsagents in Yorkshire by raising the price of the Saturday edition of the Yorkshire Post by 10p and cutting the margin that retailers receive by 1 per cent.”
