Which newspaper proprietor has never made a single journalist compulsorily redundant – ever?
And has never closed a title – at least until now.
He is a newspaper owner who started his own business from scratch and believes that the only way to cope with the worst recession in living memory is to launch new papers.
While acknowledging the power of the internet, he retains an undimmed and unequalled enthusiasm for, and belief in the future of, print.
There can of course be only one answer to such a series of unlikely propositions. The man is Sir Ray Tindle who is 84 and who still presides over a 200-title strong empire of small local newspapers from his headquarters in the Old Court House in Farnham, Surrey.
The business and newspaper philosophy of Tindle Newspapers, founded by Sir Ray with the £300 demob money he received after the Second World War, has hardly changed since the outset.
Debt free
Buy for cash and absolutely never take on a penny of debt. Stay away from Stock Markets so that you can steer your own long-term policy without outside interference. Run the company with a small management team at the centre and devolve control to individual managers on the ground and focus the journalism entirely on local names, faces and news.
When faced with losses, as has happened in London, go more and more local with titles emphasising the power of community.
“I am personally totally convinced that the sort of papers we are involved in – and the majority of papers in this country are small weekly local papers – will not only survive, but I believe they have got an essential future. You see I have no problem with the internet, the big problem is the recession,” says Sir Ray speaking in an office lined with memorabilia and the framed front pages of many of his papers.
It is a large office but the chairman of Tindle Newspapers is rapidly running out of wall space. It is the sort of office where dry sherry is still served to visitors before lunch.
With his unique sense of perspective, Sir Ray says this is the sixth recession he has faced and that after every one, turnover has been greater than it was before. He expects the same to be true this time while accepting that this is the deepest recession he has ever encountered and that some of the situations vacant advertising will never come back.
The highest profit Tindle Newspapers ever made was in 2005 and as recently as 2007 the company was making around £8.5 million a year. That, Sir Ray points out, was despite the fact that this was a time when commercial television and radio, free newspapers and the internet were all sharing HIS revenue.
“I am not one of those who believes that newspapers either because of the recession or because of the internet are on the way out”, insists Sir Ray.
He may be defying economic gravity to a considerable extent although profits are still now running at around £2.5 million a year but does Sir Ray’s unique publishing approach apply only to his small scale titles or are there lessons to be learnt for all publishers?
Never Surrender
“I would suggest with all due modesty that it applies to every single newspaper in the country,” says Sir Ray, whose company motto translates as Never Surrender, in a nod to his political and military heroes, Churchill and Montgomery.
While maintaining his slow, steady and cautious approach, he has watched as his friend Freddie Johnston built up one of the largest local and regional newspaper groups in the UK through a policy of aggressive acquisition using shares and debt.
Sir Ray also watched as Johnston Press shares rose to a high of 570p and then go all the way down to 4p, largely because of the overhang of more than £300 million remaining debt.
That was when Sir Ray started buying the shares, which have risen to more than 6p, and he now owns nearly 8 per cent of the company as an opportunist investment because he believes the shares are undervalued, rather than out of any desire to launch a takeover bid.
“They (Johnston) have some very good titles and they are going to survive. They are paying off their loans at about £50 million a year,” notes Sir Ray.
He jokes that if his Johnston shares rose to 20p, he could afford to retire.
Ashley Highfield, the former head of BBC technology who now runs Johnston Press, is among those who have made the pilgrimage to the Old Court House to see how his large minority shareholder runs his papers.
It is unlikely that Highfield is planning to launch new titles anytime soon as Sir Ray has done.
In the past twelve months, the Tindle chairman has launched three brand new titles the Chingford Times, the Chepstow Review and the Pembroke & Pembroke Dock Observer and the number of new publishing initiatives rises to more than twenty when you include the creation of a range of new local titles from a single larger existing paper. In areas such as Enfield and Barnet where sit vacs have been badly hit, it has made the difference between loss and profit.
“The idea of going more local is so that you can go to the butcher and baker and offer them a local advertising rate,” Sir Ray explains.
All the signs are that one of Tindle’s larger papers, the South London Press, which is believed to be losing close to £500,000 a year, will soon get the ultra-local treatment and be sub-divided into separate papers for areas such as Brixton, Streatham and Tulse Hill.
Meanwhile, revenues are rising at the Chingford Times which launched in June to praise from the new general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Michelle Stanistreet. While Sir Ray’s relationship with the NUJ is described as “robust”, Stanistreet contrasted the Tindle approach with that of many employers who were reacting to the recession by “cutting staff, slashing costs and compromising quality in a process of really just managing decline”.
“We haven’t had to close a paper and we haven’t yet had to sack a single journalist and we are very, very proud of that,” says Sir Ray, although there have been voluntary redundancies and a controversial no replacement scheme in North London which was suspended for six months.
The Tindle Team
Sir Ray chairs a small board of just three people, group managing director Brian Doel, a former Daily Mirror journalist and trainer of Mirror journalists in Plymouth, Wendy Craig who has been with Sir Ray for more than thirty years and company secretary Sue Yates who used to work at News International.
They meet once a week to consider the latest results and then have larger meetings involving all the company’s general managers every six months.
“Brian is in touch with all of the managers all of the time and passes information through and we are all aware what is going on. I am basically here to support Sir Ray. Whatever is necessary, I do it”, says Wendy Craig.
Doel’s approach to the internet is clear. All Tindle titles have their own website but all the paid-for titles charge the same for the online editions as the printed one. There are no discounts and Tindle Newspapers use the PageSuite system which allows online page turning.
“Across the group, we sell (online subscriptions) in the thousands every week – it’s hundreds for every paper, thousands across the group”, says Doel, who adds that if more people want their paper online, the group is ready.
“We are happy with the model we have got because we believe in the future of print and the papers that we have put up online are the printed papers in PDF format, although we add local information and things like motoring videos”, says Doel who concedes that the online operation is just about meeting its cost.
The Tindle managing director notes that when he asked at a Newspaper Society meeting how many people are actually making money from the internet, no hands went up.
But isn’t the threat faced by local high streets also a threat to the Tindle model of local publishing?
“The fact that the high streets are struggling is a problem we recognised eighteen months ago,” says Sir Ray.
The response? A “shop locally” banner across the top of Tindle papers such as the Farnham Herald.
“We are trying to support them and we get to most people in Farnham and they still advertise with us,” the veteran publisher insists.
Tindle on the iPad?
What if people turn to their iPads for even local news in future?
“You can’t get the 48 pages worth that we sell for 50p in the local paper. We have everything about Farnham. Everything and at 50p you can’t equal it. If we are wrong we are wrong”, says Sir Ray who like Wendy Craig does not have an iPad. Brian Doel and Sue Yates both bought iPads with their own money and use them for both business and pleasure.
Will Sir Ray, who will be 85 in October, ever consider retirement?
The reply is firm. “No. Why should I when I love it? What the hell do you do with just sitting on a load of money?
And the succession? Somewhere among the papers on his large desk there is a copy of his will leaving everything to his son Owen who at the moment runs Oxen Heath, his country estate conference centre in Kent.
Sir Ray believes that when the time comes, Owen Tindle, who has worked in the newspaper group in the past, will take over the business.
“If he sells it, I will haunt him forever”, laughs Sir Ray Tindle who promises that 2012 will be another year of expansion for his group – whether the recession is starting to fade or not.
