Derek Tucker, editor of the Press and Journal Aberdeen for sixteen years, calmly detonated explosive charges aimed at three of the newspaper industry’s sacred cows.
It was a summation of what he knew, what he believed he had learned in a lifetime in regional journalism.
Print first
Tucker, who conceded that he had “remained Jurassic where the internet was concerned”, made common cause with Rupert Murdoch, at least to the extent of not giving away everything for free online at the earliest possible opportunity.
The Aberdeen Journal imposes strict limits on the uploading of content to make sure that loyal customers receive their copies before online readers. As for those who buy online subscriptions via Page Suite, they simply get their paper by other means.
“Can you imagine any other FMCG manufacturer offering a product for sale and then saying: but if you’d rather not pay for it, we’ll give you exactly the same product free of charge, and what’s more we will deliver it to you before the shops open,” argued Tucker.
As for the counter argument that if you don’t do it someone else will, the Aberdeen Journal editor said anyone who wanted to hire 150 journalists in the north of Scotland to service a website in the hope of attracting advertising could get on with it.
Traditional reporting
Blast two came in the form of a spirited defence of traditional reporting and Tucker must be doing something right because his paper is now the third-largest selling regional newspaper in Britain compared with 13th a decade ago. Over the past three or four years it has suffered circulation declines of about 2-3 per cent compared to the industry average of 5-10 per cent or worse.
“There are many things we continue to do which are considered a little passé either because they require too much staff time or because of the mistaken belief that readers are no longer interested,” Tucker told the conference.
Most days, the Press and Journal will have twelve reporters covering local courts, two staffers at the Scottish Parliament and one at Westminster. All local councils and committees are covered and the numbers of editions has recently been increased to eight a day – a total of 100 broadsheet pages a night.
“It is a huge undertaking, but we believe, from the very top of our company to the very bottom, that a quality newspaper is the foundation on which commercial success is built,” he added.
As for getting rid of sub-editors, it may prove to be the way ahead but Tucker, at least, would be reluctant to go down that route because of the general state of current education and “our industry’s decision to hand over to universities the training of future generations”.
And that led to Tucker’s third rant.
Journalism training
He railed against the fact that a lot of the young people leaving university journalism degree courses “are totally unsuited to the needs of newspapers. Very few possess the street cunning and inquisitiveness that are hallmarks of good journalists and it appears sometimes that English is a second language.”
The industry had washed its hands of the careful selection process which placed the attributes of a good journalist above, or at least equal to, educational qualifications.
“Tomorrow’s journalists must be identified and trained by today’s journalists not yesterday’s enthusiastic but amateur academics,” said Tucker.
The “enthusiastic but amateur academics” in the audience didn’t take the allegation lightly and fought back with venom.
John Mair, senior lecturer in broadcast journalism at Coventry University accused Tucker of being like the secondary modern boy jealous of the grammar school boys taking over.
Tucker brought the house down when he said: “Actually I have a honours degree from Oxford.”
Afterwards Mair suggested he had no such thing and Tucker pleads guilty.
“He (Mair) was spot on first time when he said secondary modern. I just said that (the Oxford degree) to shut him up really.”
In the bar after the conference dinner, Tucker says he would like to have a pint for every person who told him they agreed with his pre-retirement polemic.
On the training issue, Mair now says he believes that a generalist education – ideally PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at Oxford - is the best thing for a journalist.
“Does 14 weeks at Harlow turn out a journalist? The idea that you should just train journalists is a bit redundant,” says Mair who concedes however that you can’t teach curiosity, nouse or mischief.
Tucker is not that impressed that Mair has 30 years experience in television current affairs and documentary making with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
“That confirms my view. He may have a respectable background in TV, but that is a totally different discipline from newspaper journalism. It is akin to having a plasterer teach would-be electricians – both connected with the construction industry but miles apart in the job that they do,” says Derek Tucker having the final word.
One person who believes absolutely that newspapers have to move vigorously online – albeit from a very different perspective than that of the north of Scotland - was Martin Clarke, publisher of the remarkably successful MailOnline.
The rise of MailOnline…
At the Society of Editors, MailOnline announced that in October the website had more than 50 million global users.
Clarke also revealed that MailOnline, which until now has been free to users, plans to launch a paid-for iPad app in the New Year.
On more general paid-for content, Clarke told the conference: “I’m not saying we’d never charge online for anything. And I’m very excited by the various micro-payment systems that are in the pipeline that will give us the flexibility to offer new kinds of content that we can charge for on a pay-per-view or piecemeal basis.
... and fall of TimesOnline
But Clarke, in an obvious dig at Murdoch’s paywall strategy, added that it didn’t take a lot of retail experience to know that you have more chance of selling things in a shop visited by three million people a day than one visited by a few thousand.
The Mail executive emphasised that newspapers should see Facebook as a “gigantic free marketing machine, the same as Google”.
Associated was surprised by comprehensive research suggesting that Mail readers who used the website bought twice as many copies of the papers as Mail readers who used other websites.
“We didn’t quite believe it at the time but it appears to be true,” says Clarke who added that if the website was going to cannibalise any print titles it should be the Daily Mail. In reality, the paper was enjoying one of the most stable print circulations.
Clarke, who is 46, said he was ready to bet that there would still be a Daily Mail printed newspaper when he went to collect his pension.
After all, the Daily Beast website had merged with Newsweek and that was unlikely to be last digital-print merger.
“Paper still has a permanence and prestige that digital media can’t match,” insisted Clarke who added that he was continually annoyed that so many people in the business “seem desperate to write off their own industry”.
Newspaper consultant Jim Chisholm also dug into his archive of statistics to honour the conference theme: Have we got GOOD news for you.
For every 30 minutes people spend reading a paper in print, said Chisholm, they spend two to three minutes in a newspaper website. Forty five percent read a print newspaper, reading on average 40 pages. Twelve per cent read a newspaper online but visit between four and six pages.
“You add up the numbers and this is why the Murdoch paywall will fail. It already has, but I lost my £50 bet that it would be closed by the end of September,” said Chisholm.
The newspaper consultant attributed at least part of the “phenomenal” success of MailOnline to the volume of material aimed at women.
A study by Chisholm of the most successful newspapers in the world showed three quarters had more female readers than male.
Backing the wrong horse
Yet, while DMGT chairman Viscount Rothermere may get his gender emphasis right, it appears his traditional backing for the Conservatives is extremely bad for business.
“The best thing Rothermere can do is vote Labour because every time his paper supports the Conservatives, it does really badly and it is exactly the same for the Daily Telegraph,” said Chisholm who clearly enjoys turning conventional wisdom on its head.
To underline his point – presumably that newspapers do better in opposition than supporting governments - Chisholm said the Times lost 6 per cent of its circulation share when the Tories were in power, as did the Sun.
“The Guardian did particularly well under Margaret Thatcher. She was the best present the Guardian ever had and the Mail gained about 1 million copies when Labour has been in power and lost 500,000 under the Tories,” warned Chisholm.
There was no statistical evidence, he emphasised, that the internet has damaged circulation – those that do best on the internet also do best in print.
The biggest threat newspapers face, according to Chisholm, came from the closure of newsagents and the fact people do not purchase papers often enough.
At least there was widespread appreciation of the favourite news story of Maria McGeoghan, editor of the Manchester Evening News. She noticed the story of the dog that spoke Polish in the Oldham Observer.
The unhappy dog had been donated to the RSPCA. They turned it into a very happy dog indeed when they realised its previous owners had been Polish, so it only understood Polish commands.
New Polish owners. Problem solved. And the story went round the world.
Would John Mair’s PPE students have spotted that shaggy dog story?
