State regulation scheme threatens future of local press

A blind hatred of parts of the national press could be about to destroy one of the pillars of local democracy in this country – the local press.

Nobody doubts the important role played by local newspapers in holding local councils to account and underpinning the fundamental human right to fair and open justice.  At the end of his 18-month enquiry into the ethics and behaviour of the press, Lord Leveson had nothing but praise for regional newspapers:

“… I must make a special point about Britain’s regional newspapers. In one sense, they are less affected by the global availability of the biggest news stories but their contribution to local life is truly without parallel.  

“… Many are no longer financially viable and they are all under enormous pressure as they strive to re-write the business model necessary for survival. Yet their demise would be a huge setback for communities … and would be a real loss for our democracy.

“…Although accuracy and similar complaints are made against local newspapers, the criticisms of culture, practices and ethics of the press that have been raised in this Inquiry do not affect them: on the contrary, they have been much praised.”

State regulation scheme

Despite this, urged on by anti-press lobbyists, the Government used the Leveson enquiry to introduce a state regulation scheme which threatens to destroy many local newspapers.  Hidden behind the pretence of voluntary self-regulation, the Government is actually attempting to force local newspapers to join a regime which would threaten their very existence. 

Newspapers which refuse to join up will face punitive costs even when they have done nothing wrong.  Complainants will be given a free pass to take newspapers to court because the newspaper will have to pay not only their own legal costs, but also those of the complainant – even if the newspaper wins the case.

This, of course, tilts the scales of justice so far in the complainant’s favour that it is absurd.  Why wouldn’t they go to court?  They have absolutely nothing to lose, even if their case is wafer thin.

The alternative for newspapers is to join a regulator approved under the state scheme, which insists on an arbitration process which allows complainants to ‘sue’ local newspapers.  Again, there is no cost to the complainant, but the newspaper – even if it wins – must pay for the process. 

The threat these alternatives pose to local newspapers is very real.  Mike Sassi, Editor of the Nottingham Post, recently wrote that the likely result of this attack on a free press would almost certainly lead to a situation where local papers could not risk writing anything controversial for fear of having to pay out.

Insulting to local newspaper editors

Those blinded by their hate of some national newspapers, choose to scoff at the fears of local newspapers.  The Chair of Hacked Off, Hugh Tomlinson, QC, responded by insulting Sassi – and all other local newspaper editors – by dismissing their claims, implying they could not possibly believe what they were saying – they were simply ‘dancing to the tune of their masters’.

Revealing a complete lack of understanding of the situation faced by almost all local newspapers, Tomlinson said the costs of the state regulation scheme’s arbitration system would be tiny.  Almost 200 local papers have closed in the UK since 2005, and many of those left make very little profit. Tindle Newspapers, for example, runs about 220 local newspapers, which, last year, made an average of less than £10,000 profit per paper.  Leveson himself said that many local newspapers were no longer financially viable.

An arbitration case for a local newspaper could cost as much £3,500, even if it wins.  If the case has little merit and is dismissed at an early stage, the newspaper will still end up paying out, not the full £3,500, but quite possibly £2,000.  Given again that there is no risk to the complainant, it is not unreasonable to assume newspapers will face a number of claims every year.  Two or three cases a year would be enough to wipe out the profits at a Tindle newspaper.  

And if you think it won’t happen, spend five minutes reading this article by Martin Trepte, editor of the independently-owned Maidenhead Advertiser.  In December, his paper was threatened with libel by a convicted sex offender who did not like the details of his court case appearing in print.  The paper’s lawyers simply dismissed the complaint.  Their advice will not have been free, but it probably cost no more than £100.  In future, papers like the Maidenhead Advertiser face one of two choices: sign up to the state regulatory regime, under which this case with no merit will almost certainly be dismissed, but not before racking up a £2,000 bill to be paid by the paper; or stay outside the state scheme, and risk an even more expensive court case, in which they are forced to pay huge court costs, both theirs and the complainant’s, even if the court finds the newspaper did nothing wrong.

Convicted heroin dealer

It’s a no-win situation.  Oh, and it was not the only complaint Trepte dealt with that week.  He also received a threat from a convicted heroin dealer who did not like the fact that his court case was on the newspaper’s website.  Again, the paper dealt with the complaint, but in future, it would be faced with a bill of, at best, a few thousand pounds … despite the fact that it had done absolutely nothing wrong. 

Tomlinson, in his attack on Sassi, tries to dismiss this by saying: “If people bring bad complaints (whether in the courts or in an arbitration scheme) they will be struck out and they will have to pay the costs.”

This is simply untrue. 

The regulations of Impress, the only regulator approved as part of the state regulation scheme, say clearly:

“An IMPRESS decision to offer access to its arbitration scheme will be based on an administrative assessment of whether a claim is covered by the scheme. For the avoidance of doubt, it will not be based on an assessment of the merits of a claim. “ (My emphasis)

So, when the convicted sex offender seeks redress for libel, Impress does not care whether there is any merit in the claim, only that libel is covered by the scheme.

And there is nothing in the arbitration scheme which allows the costs to be passed back to the complainant.  Indeed, the arbitration scheme specifically says the claimant will not be liable for any costs, and that the publisher will pay the costs even if the claim is “struck out, dismissed at a preliminary stage, or resolved.”

So, in a single week, this small independent newspaper would have faced bills of a few thousand pounds whether it joined the state scheme, or refused to be bullied into giving up its rights.  You might – like Hugh Tomlinson – think a few thousand pounds is neither here nor there, but the Maidenhead Advertiser belongs to a company which made about £100,000 operating profit last year.  Its revenues were down 7.5% on the year before, and it cut its staff by about 10% to cope with the reductions.

Punitive legislation

How can it be right that newspapers like the Maidenhead Advertiser – and the rest of the 1,000 local and regional newspapers - can face such punitive legislation?  The simple answer to that is that it can’t be right. 

And let’s remind ourselves of what we are talking about here.  Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, recognised in many places, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and the UK’s Human Rights Act.  Here’s what the ECHR says:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society.”

The law is clear – governments can interfere with the right to free speech only when it is necessary, and there is plenty of case law to show that any such interference must be proportionate.  In plain language, this means that governments cannot use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, if a nutcracker will do.

Despicable behaviour

So, what nut is the Government trying to crack here?  What the Leveson enquiry uncovered was despicable behaviour by a group of national newspapers.  It was clear that these newspapers had broken the law … and the law was dealing with them.  Despite this, the Government, along with opposition parties, met up with anti-press lobbyists, and hastily drew up a regime which clearly interferes with the right of all newspapers to freedom of expression.

There is nothing proportionate about the solution.  About 1,000 local newspapers are having their right to freedom of expression interfered with, despite the fact that they did nothing wrong and have not displayed any behaviour that suggests that laws are needed to regulate them.  The laws risk denying these newspapers their right to freedom of expression because they will either have to stop writing about anything controversial or risk being put out of business.

It is not just the newspapers, the owners, and journalists whose rights are being interfered with.  The ECHR specifically says the right is to receive information as well as impart it.  Every day, millions of people choose to receive their information from local newspapers and their websites.  The importance of this information is recognised by everyone – including Leveson himself.

It is fairly obvious that the issue that Leveson sought to resolve was the behaviour of some parts of the national press – we have to assume that the Government was trying to do the same thing.  Everyone is agreed that the behaviour of the local press was not the issue. 

By law, any move to undermine the fundamental rights enshrined in the ECHR must be proportionate.

Less intrusive measures

Generally, it is accepted that there are four criteria that must be met for an action to be proportionate.  Perhaps the key one is:

·        Whether a less intrusive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the objective

So, why did the Government cast its net so widely, catching 1,000 innocent newspapers in a regulatory regime in an effort to control so few? 

It was not as if the politicians and anti-press lobbyists who drew up the state’s role in press regulation thought they could not limit the new rules to certain sectors of the news industry.

They specifically decided the new rules should not apply to everyone.  The new regime covers only ‘relevant publishers’, defined as a ‘person or organisation’ which:

·        Publishes news related material, and

·        Publishes material in the course of a business, and

·        Produces material written by different authors, and

·        Produces material which is subject to editorial control

It is not exactly clear who is covered, but it is clear that all local newspapers are included.  No attempt was made to limit the rules to those newspapers castigated by Leveson.  It would have taken almost no effort at all to add another line to the definition of ‘relevant publishers’, limiting the new rules to ‘publications whose primary audience is national’, or something similar.

I personally* don’t agree with the state playing any role in laws or regulations drawn up specifically to limit the freedom of speech of newspapers, but, given the background to the new rules, I do not see how it can possibly be argued that they are proportionate.  And, if the new rules are not proportionate, they are also not legal. 

Leveson spent 18 months looking at the ethics of newspapers and concluded that the vast majority had done nothing wrong.  Despite this, the Government, has brought down a huge sledgehammer which is likely to destroy completely innocent local newspapers, denying both the newspapers and their readers the fundamental right to express and receive information and opinions.

It is simply not right. 

*I am a board member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK.  However, the views expressed above are my own – I have not discussed them with IPSO.  To read IPSO’s view, see here.

*The Government is currently consulting on whether or not to introduce the laws which would seek to force newspapers to join the state regulation scheme – the post above will form the basis of my response to the consultation.  If you would like to make your views known, visit the Government’s consultation page.

Does David Cameron owe his 2015 General Election win to Rupert Murdoch and the Sun newspaper?

• Ed Miliband told Russell Brand that Murdoch is much less powerful than he used to be
• The Sun's daily circulation is down 34% since the 2010 election
• National newspaper sales are down more than 3-million in the past five years
• Newspaper readership is down even more
• Two-thirds of voters do not read a national newspaper
• Less than 10% of voters read the Sun
• The Sun probably directly influences fewer than 1.2% of voters

The Sun did not win the election for David Cameron.  Well, at least, not directly.

In his interview with Russell Brand, Ed Miliband claimed that Rupert Murdoch's power has diminished and many social media commentators went on to say that the then Labour leader was set to become the first prime minister who owed nothing to the media mogul.

It was a point that Brand pushed him on, but Miliband was adamant, saying that Murdoch is 'much less powerful than he used to be.'


So, given that he stood up to Murdoch's papers, and they attacked him mercilessly, was Miliband right about Murdoch's power?

On the face of it, he's obviously right.  National newspaper circulations have plummeted by almost a third since the last general election in 2010,  The Sun, Britain's biggest selling newspaper has seen its sale fall by 34% from just over 3-million to a little under 2-million.  The Mail has lost 20% (down to 1.7-million), and the Mirror is down 24% to just 922,235.

You might think this has something to do with the hacking scandal and lack of trust people now have in newspapers, but the biggest fallers over the past five years have not been the tabloids, but the so-called quality papers.  The Guardian, for example, has lost almost 40% of its sale since the last election with the number purchased each day falling to just 185,000.  The Independent has suffered even more, losing 67% of its daily sale and now struggling to sell more than 61,000 each day.

In total, national newspapers sales are down more than 3-million a day since the 2010 election, falling from about 9.8-million per day to about 6.8-million.

Of course, sales is only part of the story.  Newspapers like to talk about readership because each paper sold tends to be read by more than one person.  Coming up with a readership figure is not an exact science, relying as it does on surveys. So, at the last election the readership figure looked as if it was about 2.5 times the circulation.   However, readership has been falling even faster than circulation - may be even twice as fast.

So what percentage of the voting public was reading which newspaper at the last election?  The following charts are based on the number of  readers for each paper who voted and the fact that there were about 30-million voters at each election.

 And what does that chart look like now?

When it comes to voting influence, we need to consider the number of newspaper readers who voted. In 2010, according to an Ipsos Mori poll, about 64% of newspaper readers voted.  That being the case, in 2010, about 53% of the voters were reading a newspaper.  In yesterday's vote, the number had fallen to 33%.  It is obvious that the direct influence of newspapers is falling rapidly and now two-thirds of people who vote are not even looking at a national paper.

But, of course, it is Rupert Murdoch who is seen as the devil incarnate by most critics of the press - and it was Murdoch who so concerned Brand. So what percentage of voters read his papers: the Sun and the Times?  And is that falling?

According to that Ipsos Mori poll, only about 57% of the Sun's readers voted at the last election, suggesting that the Sun was talking to about 4.3-million voters at the time of the 2010 election, about 14% of those who voted.  This week, that figure had dropped to  2.4-million voters, or about 8% of all voters.

But, the same poll suggests that the Sun has not been able to get more than 45% of its voting readers to vote Conservative in any of the past five elections.

Even when the Sun threw its weight behind Labour, about 30% of its readers still voted Tory, suggesting that it influenced about 15% of its voting readers.  At today's levels, that would be about 365,000 voters, which is about 1.2% of the turnout.

If those voters are evenly spread around the country, it is difficult to see how anybody could claim that the Sun had much of a direct influence on this week's result, let alone that it was the Sun wot won it.  However, it is unlikely that they are evenly spread.

Murdoch

We know for example, that few copies are sold in Liverpool and it may just be a coincidence, but the city was one of the areas which bucked the election trend with incumbent Labour candidates increasing their majorities.

Despite this, my own view is that Miliband is correct in his belief that Murdoch's power is much diminished and, as sales continue to fall at something like 10% a year, that direct power will go with it.  By the time of the next election, sales of the Sun would be down to not much over 1-million if the fall continued at the same rate as the past 12 months.  That would leave it influencing not much more than 90,000 voters by 2020.

Indeed, Labour's former spin-doctor-in-chief, Alistair Campbell is already pretty dismissive of newspaper influence, describing the tabloids' coverage of the election as 'beyond parody,' and saying:  'the media is certainly not trusted like it was.'  According to an article in the Guardian, Mr Campbell said:

“My complaint about newspapers has never been that they are biased, I was a very biased journalist on the Daily Mirror. My complaint has often been to the broadcasters to allow that bias to impact on them.” 

And, that, I believe, is the crux of the matter. The tabloids in themselves - and Rupert Murdoch, for that matter - don't have anything like the influence they once had, but those around them, even those who claim to despise them, give them power by constantly talking about them.  And it is not just the broadcasters and social media, politicians are just as bad.  It's probably true that there is no such thing as bad news for the newspapers when it comes to talking about their influence.

Oddly, Mr Campbell seems to recognise this phenomenon when he says that critical media coverage of Ed Milliband's interview with Russell Brand, simply drove people to watch the interview on YouTube.

“Something like that Russell Brand interview, the mainstream so-called media gave it massive hype, and the fact it was mostly negative hype didn’t matter because people who then decided to watch it made the choice to do that."

And yet he, along with many, many others, continues to prop up an ailing press by constantly discussing it and giving it a power it doesn't have in itself.  Perception is reality.

Some things to remember:

• This is nothing more than a back-of-a-fag-packet calculation.  I don't have the time - and may be the brains - to complete a more detailed analysis.
• I looked at 10 daily titles, but excluded the i, the Metro, anything in Scotland, and the Standard - this was because I didn't have enough data at my fingertips and, anyway, I don't consider them national.
• I made an assumption on readership.  I multiplied the average daily sale of each newspaper by 2.5 to give me the 2010 readership, and by 2.3 to give me the 2015 figure.  This was because of this article.  I think, if anything, I have understated the fall in readership.
• I calculated the number of voters from each newspaper by multiplying the number of readers by the percentage given in the Ipsos Mori poll.
• I have assumed a turnout of 30-million.
• I got the latest circulation figures from Press Gazette
• I got the 2010 circulation figures from Wikipedia even though I constantly warn my students that this is not a reliable source!
• I know News International, or NI, is now called News UK, but I wanted to avoid confusing those readers who don't follow the media business closely.
• The FT's voting turn out is based on 2005 figures because the data sample for 2010 was too small.

Murdoch picture: By Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia (Rupert Murdoch) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Appointed to the board of UK's new press regulator

I have been appointed to the board of the Independent Press Standards Organisation - the new press regulator that has been set up following the Leveson inquiry.

I am honoured, if a little daunted, to be appointed at such a crucially important time for the future of press regulation.

In a press release today, the chair of the independent panel set up to find the first board for IPSO, Sir Hayden Phillips, said: "I am confident the new Directors have the stature and experience to bring into being a tough and independent regulator that will stand the test of time."

The majority of the new 12-strong board are people independent of the newspaper industry, with the other five having knowledge of different sectors of the press.  

According to the press release: "The Board includes people from business, diplomacy, consumer rights, the pensions sector, academia, the voluntary sector and the publishing and newspaper industries. 

"Experience is drawn from across the United Kingdom."

Obviously, my main experience is within the regional press.

Sir Alan Moses, the chair of IPSO, said: “I am delighted to have the chance to work with such a talented group of independent-minded people, committed to provide rigorous and strong  regulation. 

"Now we must start our work of preparation. We plan to use the coming period to listen and engage with the public, experts and the industry before IPSO’s formal launch in September. 

"This will be a new era of self regulation of our newspapers, ready to provide the independent regulation to which the public is entitled.”

Sir Alan, an Appeal Court judge, was appointed to the post of chair of IPSO last month.  At the time, he said there was a difficult balance to be struck between protecting the public and defending a free and fearless press.

"The public and the press are entitled to a successful system of independent regulation. I recognise it is a big responsibility to achieve this. 

"I believe that such a system should be designed to protect the public against a repetition of the  breakdown in standards in some parts of the newspaper industry in recent times.  

"At the same time it should affirm and encourage the vital role of a free and fearless press. 

"I shall do my best to guide the development of  clear, simple but fair rules in an area where there are difficult questions and there are no easy answers.  

"But I am determined that there should be no hesitation in dealing with bad practice by newspapers and providing support and vindication for those who suffer as a result of any future  breakdown.  

"This new organisation will have to listen to and learn from  the Press and their critics in the period ahead.   

"To those who have voiced doubts as to the ability of IPSO to meet the demands of independent regulation, I say that I have spent over forty years pursuing the profession of barrister and judge whose hallmarks are independent action and independent judgment. I do not intend to do away with that independence now."

Those who know me, will know that I share Sir Alan's views on independence.  I have written about it before here on this blog and one of the main reasons I left my previous role as editor was because I believed my independence was being undermined.  Like Sir Alan, I have no intention of doing away with that independence now.

You can see IPSO's press release here, including short biographies of all 12 members of the board.

You can also see the response of HackedOff to the announcement here.

When live help on a website leaves you none the wiser

Live help on a website is a great idea: getting immediate answers is exactly what I want when I'm wondering about buying a new service or product.

But when it's done poorly, it is worse than useless.

Take this conversation I had with 'Andy' on the EE website today when considering switching my mobile from 'three' because I get such poor coverage where I live to EE's 'superfast' 4G service

I ask Andy if he can check EE's coverage at my postcode.  Here's what happened:

Andy: at 16:17:24
I'd be happy to help you on that
Andy: at 16:17:30
May i know your post code
keith: at 16:13:13
my postcode is DE...
Andy: at 16:18:39
you do have finer coverage of 4g but great 3 g
keith: at 16:14:34
Sorry, what does that mean?
Andy: at 16:19:39
you do have fine coverage for 4g only 3 bars and 3 g is great

Ok, that's not exactly clear, so I press on:

keith: at 16:15:37
What difference will 3 bars for 4g make?
Andy: at 16:20:35
It sis fine not great

Oh, now I understand.  Actually, I don't.

keith: at 16:16:53
I don't understand that. What is the difference between fine and great?
Andy: at 16:22:00
I will explain
Andy: at 16:22:21
you will get 4g but the network will not be storng
Andy: at 16:22:31
It may fall some time
Andy: at 16:22:48
And 3g it will be great

Right.  Go on:

keith: at 16:19:17
Will I always be able to browse on the internet?
Andy: at 16:23:55
yes you can\
keith: at 16:19:57
But it might be slow?
Andy: at 16:25:01
yes slow

Now I get technical.  I have no idea what it means, but I ask:

keith: at 16:20:58
can you tell me what speed I should expect for upload and download?
Andy: at 16:26:00
it will be 17 to 19 mpbs speed
keith: at 16:21:52
What would it be if it was great?
Andy: at 16:26:38
21 to 23 mpbs

Sounds impressive and there doesn't seem to be much difference between fine and great.  But Andy has got another idea:

Andy: at 16:30:31
you can go for 3 g plans
Andy: at 16:30:38
You have great fine
keith: at 16:27:02
what speed would 3g plans give
Andy: at 16:31:50
7.2 mpbs

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that doesn't sound anywhere near as good! So I ask:

keith: at 16:28:02
And on my postcode I would definitely get 17 on 4g?
Andy: at 16:32:52
I cannot comment on  that

Eh?  Wait a minute - he just told me that I would get 17-19 on 4g.

keith: at 16:28:42
but that is what you said earlier?
Andy: at 16:33:32
yes but indoors it may be till 17 mpbs
keith: at 16:29:31
sorry, what does that mean? It may be till?
Andy: at 16:34:11
17 mpbs
keith: at 16:29:57
but what does may be till mean?
Andy: at 16:35:01
I will explain
Andy: at 16:35:10
As looking at your coverage
Andy: at 16:35:27
you may get till 17 mpbs speed
Andy: at 16:35:38
It may go higher and lower to

Now, I'm really confused.  And it's not just because 'Andy's' first language is obviously not English:

keith: at 16:31:24
I am sorry, I don't understand 'may be till' - it is not an English phrase
Andy: at 16:36:26
I will explain
Andy: at 16:36:36
As looking at your covarage
Andy: at 16:36:51
You may get speed till 17 mpbs speed

Oh, right.  Silly me.  Then nothing for 50 seconds until this:

Andy: at 16:37:04
May io know which plan you have selected

I press on:

keith: at 16:33:19
Earlier you said I would get 17-19 mbs
keith: at 16:33:30
Are you saying that is not true?
Andy: at 16:38:17
yes as looking at your covrage
Andy: at 16:38:33
Please click here
Andy: at 16:39:01
you can see
Andy: at 16:39:06
If you had fill bars
Andy: at 16:39:15
The speed will be 21 to 23 mpbs

And so it goes on for another 10 minutes until Andy asks me:

Andy: at 16:50:38
Did you selected any plan

The truth is that I am really unsure what he has told me.  He kept saying I would get 17-19mbs, which seems really fast, given that I can't even receive texts on 'Three's' network here.  But when I asked him if I would definitely get 17mbs he said: 'I can't comment on that!'

73 days and counting - the frustrations of the Freedom of Information Act

The law is quite clear: public bodies must respond within 20 working days to a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Despite this, I've been waiting 73 working days for a response to a fairly straightforward request sent to the Crown Prosecution Service on May 10.

What makes me say my request was straightforward?  I asked for information that the CPS stated publicly it had been collating centrally.

I sent my request by email on Friday May 10.  

I heard nothing until July 5, 30 working days later, when I received the following note:

"I am writing to apologise that your request dated 10 May seems to have been overlooked in our mailbox.  Please can you confirm whether you are still interested in the information requested?  If you are I will aim to progress a response to your request as soon as possible."

Encouraged by the apology

I responded on the same day to say that I did indeed still want the information.  At that point, I took the view that the delay was due to a simple oversight.  Human error.  We all make them.  I was encouraged by the apology and the statement that if I still wanted the information the CPS would 'aim to progress a response to (my) request as soon as possible.'

Hmmm ...

Having heard nothing by July 31, I sent another email:

"You said you would aim to progress my request as 'soon as possible' - it is now 18 working days since this exchange - and more than 55 since my original request.  Please could you update me on your response?"

The response on August 5 was not encouraging:

"I am sorry that I have still been unable to provide you with a response to your request.  I have read your email today after returning from a short period of leave.  

I thought I should briefly confirm that my email of 5^th July was to inform you that unfortunately our Department had not actioned your request at all up until this date, because it had been missed.  

As soon as you confirmed, on the same date, that you were still interested in the information requested we started processing it.  

Within the last 20 days please be assured that this has been receiving our attention.  

Having made further enquiries today I am still unable to give you a precise date of when we will be able to respond but as soon as I have an update I will let you know.  

Thank you for your continued patience."

Formal complaint to the Information Commissioner 

 To be honest, my patience was running out.  My request related to something in the news and the delays simply meant that the news was moving on - this is perhaps the most frustrating thing for journalists using the FoIA: information often takes so long to arrive that its impact is lessened.

At this point (August 6), I also sent a complaint to the Information Commissioner: the public official charged with overseeing the FoIA.  I received an automated response ... and nothing since.

So today, I wrote again to the CPS and got an immediate response:

"Sorry for the continued delay.  We have scheduled a further meeting to discuss the request later today.  I would hope that we should be in a position to respond in the first week of September, or possibly by the latter part of next week."

A further meeting?  Clearly the CPS doesn't think my request is as straightforward as I do.

The first week of September? More than 80 days since my original request.

Should I hold my breath?  Any advice on next steps gratefully accepted.

HoldtheFrontPage article on my blogpost

Regional newspaper website HoldtheFrontPage picked up on my post about the interim statements of Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror today and my conclusion that, in the end, readers are going to have to pay for local news.

I did, of course, put a couple of caveats on that assertion, the most important of which was that local news companies would have to produce something which people valued highly enough to pay for - and I did point out that this would inevitably lead to smaller businesses.

The article brought a flurry of readers to my blog and some comment on Twitter, some of which can be seen here on Storify.

Local World's David Montgomery: Local papers are in a fight for survival

Above is a short clip from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing where Local World chairman David Montgomery spells out the issue facing local newspaper companies: it is a fight for survival.

What was clear from all of those who gave evidence to the committee was that they see more cuts coming.  Montgomery caused a furore over his suggestions that much of the 'human interface' will have disappeared within the next three or four years and that journalists currently work using a model from 'the middle ages, virtually', but the starting point for this comment was his statement that 'we can't keep taking costs out, but employing the same production techniques.'

Below is a clip in which he explains his vision for a future without human interface.  Sadly, when the chair of the committee, the Conservative John Whittingdale, presses him on exactly what he means, Montgomery gives a politician's answer and Whittingdale lets it go:

The general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Michelle Stanistreet, described Montgomery's plan as 'a nightmare vision of journalism's future.'

Writing on the Guardian's Media Blog, Stanistreet said:

Amid the management-speak, Montgomery's vision is a chilling one. Does he really have so little inkling that it is high-quality journalism and top-quality writing that is the key to successful newspapers and websites? His thinking is sadly not unique; it is a pattern we are already seeing. Journalists are being reduced to pouring words – sorry content – into pre-determined grids, with the danger of turning newspapers into open sewers.

While many might not usually side with the NUJ, I doubt there are many journalists out there who would disagree with Stanistreet's comments.   She also repeats a gag I've heard from a few Local World journalists recently: 'We call him Rommel' Why? 'Because if we called him Monty it would mean he was on our side!'

It's all good knockabout fun, but, at the risk of upsetting the journalists out there, Montgomery is right.  Well, he's right to the extent that the newspaper companies cannot just keep taking costs out and continuing to do what they currently do .. which is to try to do what they've always done AND a whole lot more with fewer staff.

I've illustrated the catastrophic downturn in revenues faced by local newspaper companies over the past five years on this blog a number of times and pointed out that there was little they could do to prevent classified advertising - the hitherto funder of local journalism - from fleeing to the web where it works so much better.

The companies' response - to cut jobs and the quality of their product (fewer, smaller editions on cheaper paper and with less content) - has inevitably hastened many of their readers' decisions to flee likewise.

And, all the signs are that revenues are still falling (see the interim reports of two companies here) and that is going to lead to more cuts (a fact that was re-iterated by Montgomery in the clips above).  Given that, it is obvious that the newspapers cannot continue to operate the way they do today: people might not like the sound of Montgomery's plan, but nobody seems to have an alternative that makes any sense.

No sign of digital rescue as newspaper revenues continue to collapse

Two interim statements from newspaper companies last week further demonstrate how their digital strategies won't save their businesses.

Here was how Trinity Mirror (PDF) trumpeted its highlights of the first 17 weeks of this year:

• Improving revenue trends, in particular circulation revenues
• Good growth in digital audience with unique users up 25% year on year to 31 million and page views up 36% year on year to 163 million
• Continued strong cash generation with net debt falling by £25 million to £132 million
• On track to deliver targeted structural cost savings of £10 million in 2013
• We remain confident in the outlook for the Group's performance in 2013

Here's my version of the same figures:

• Advertising revenues fell by 13% - accelerating over last year's fall of 10%
• Digital revenues fell by 13% - despite all the focus on growing this area
• Circulation revenues fell by 8% despite significant cover price increases
• High debt levels continue to hamstring attempts to invest
• Cost cutting remains the only way of keeping the business going.

Three days earlier, Johnston Press delivered a slightly more up-front (if equally depressing) set of highlights for the first 18 weeks of its financial year:

• First increase in operating profit for almost 7 years - despite challenging economic environment
• Total revenues down 11.4% on a like-for-like basis - revenue declines slowing month-on-month
• Costs on track to reduce by over £20 million in 2013
• 183 titles now successfully relaunched
• New website rollout commenced for every title
• Continued digital audience and revenue growth in the period
• Focus on debt reduction maintained 

Put another way:

• Total revenues fell by 11.4% - fractionally better than last year's 12.1%
• Advertising revenues were down 15.1% - worse than last year's 12.7%
• Display advertising was down 12.7% - worse than last year's 11.9%
• Classified advertising was down 16.8% - worse than last year's 13.3%
• Digital revenues grew by 8.1% - which is a lot better than Trinity, but is less than the 20% gained last year
• Circulation revenues fell by 0.8% despite huge cover price increases
• Massive cost cutting remains the only way to grow profit and repay debt

There's not enough detail in either report to be too specific, but it is clear that revenues are still falling at an alarming rate.  At Johnston Press, the full year extrapolation of the first 18 weeks would suggest revenue falls in excess of £37 million.

Newspapers losing £21 of print advertising for every £1 of digital

Earlier this year, JP CEO Ashley Highfield stated clearly that he saw online display advertising as the future of the business, indeed he said that by 2015, online would account for £52 million of revenues - just how difficult that task is can be seen from extrapolating this week's figures out for the rest of this year.

Ashley Highfield:
photo by Ian Forrester

An increase in digital revenues of 8.1% across the whole year would bring in an extra £1.7 million, taking digital revenues for the full year to just £22 million.

As I've pointed out before, print revenues are draining away at a far faster rate: it looks as if £37 million will disappear this year - put another way, Johnston Press is gaining just £1 in digital sales for every £21 in print sales lost.

There can be little doubt that newspaper companies are shrinking in size.  Indeed, it is my belief that the only way local newspaper companies are going to survive is if they become small, low cost, digital and print businesses.

Readers will have to pay for journalism

That's not going to happen unless:

Firstly, readers value news enough to pay the cost of its production.  Journalism is expensive. Traditionally, news has been paid for by advertising, particularly classified advertising such as recruitment, property and motors.  That's not going to happen any more - classified advertising works better online than it does in print.

And, newspaper companies that think that they can build big online classified businesses are deluded.

The internet atomises information - someone looking for a job is not going to go to a news site to find it.  They will go to a specialist job site.  Therefore, businesses that want to make money out of jobs advertising do not need journalists to create an audience.  It follows that they can focus all their attention, and marketing, on producing a far better experience online for job seekers than any newspaper company ever will.

The same is true for every category of classified advertising.  Get used to it.

In fact, anything that you can wrap around news in the hope of subsidising journalism can probably be done better away from news.

So, the best way to pay for journalism is for the reader to pay for it.  In print, that means a much higher cover price.  That, in turn, will mean a much smaller readership as far fewer people will value news at the higher price.

Online, it means some form of paywall. But those who will not pay £1 (or £2 or whatever other price is needed) a day for a print package are not likely to pay £1 a day for a digital package either - news providers, particularly local news providers, are going to have to find a way to let people pay for what they want and nothing else.

That is going to mean a much smaller audience.  A much smaller business.  Which takes me on to my second point:

Secondly, local news companies will be owned by small local businesses.  There just won't be enough money in them to make it worthwhile for large national or international businesses, especially for those with big debts.

Warren Buffett: photo by Mark Hirschey
via  Wikimedia  Commons

The current owners look for 20-30% returns on turnover.  Renowned billionaire investor Warren Buffett, recently said he expects a 10% return on local newspapers he has bought, and that he expects that margin to reduce.

It works for him because he says he bought the papers cheaply, but, if he's right, and returns drop to below 10%, it is difficult to see any large business with debt and head office costs, wanting to be part of the local media scene.

If that happens, it seems to me that the most likely scenario is that more newspapers will close down, but will probably be replaced by much smaller, locally-owned businesses.

Newspapers' digital strategy amounts to clutching at straws

[Update: I wrote this post on Sunday and was going to publish it later in the week once I'd had a chance to add a few other points, but yesterday's announcement that another 30 editorial jobs were under threat at Johnston Press, has made me bring it forward]


Johnston Press clearly hasn't covered itself in glory over the past decade as it has cast about for a digital strategy, but has it now found the answer to the devastating disappearance of print advertising?

The company was far too slow off the blocks in the transition to digital and, in more recent years, growth has stuttered with revenue reaching £19.8 in 2008, before falling back to £18.4 million over the next three years.  Revenues finally got back above the 2008 figure last year when JP reported £20.6 million in its preliminary results.

However, what worries me most is that I cannot make the numbers add up.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not claiming to have any more foresight than anyone else and trying to read too much into annual accounts is a dangerous thing as they are complex, confusing and, of course, are there to try to persuade investors that the business is on the right track.

Nevertheless, this is the slide which Johnston Press was most excited about in the presentation it gave to investors last week.

CEO Ashley Highfield was pulling no punches.  This is what he said: "In our digital business, the most important number to focus on is that 39% - 39% growth in local online digital display.  This is the future of our business, advertising online and this, for me, is the most encouraging number in the entire deck."

And again, a few moments later in case you missed it the first time round, he said: "The most important number, the engine of our future growth, digital advertising, digital display, up 39%."

So there we have it - online display is the future of Johnston Press.

It might be the journalist in me, but I always worry when somebody gives me a percentage without giving me a base figure.  Digital display is up 39% - on the face of it, that's great news, but what does it mean in hard cash?

Well, luckily, last year, in the presentation of the 2011 accounts, Highfield gave a few more details around actual numbers.  In 2011, online display amounted to a nice round £5 million.  So, a 39% increase would add another 1.95 million, taking the total to just below £7 million.

It's clear from what Highfield said in the presentation that most of this increase has come from bundling digital advertising along with print advertising.  "When I joined [November 2011], just 10% of the time did we include a digital upsell when we sold a print advert. By the end of last year, 40% of the time we bundled print along with digital."

There's a sum in there somewhere which ought to give us an idea of the potential revenues that upselling might bring. 

In the worst case scenario, the extra upsells (ie 30%, as the upsells increased from 10% to 40%) equate to about £2 million, giving a maximum potential revenue from upsell of about £6.7 million.  

In the best case scenario, the extra upselling was all done in the last month of the year and only accounts for about 8.5% of what is available from the extra 30% - that means that the full 30% would be equal to something like £24 million and the total potential is nearer £80 million.

It seems likely that the upsell has been building through the year and the real potential is somewhere in the middle of these numbers.  And indeed, this is supported by the note in the preliminary results presentation below:

This says that the total increase in digital revenue will be £32 million over the next three years - which is the timespan given by Highfield for moving from 40% upsell to 100% - suggesting upsell of print ads might come in at, say, £20 million as Highfield also makes a big play about new national verticals around what's on (a 'sort of Time Out for the provinces') and a wannabe Groupon.

Whatever the exact figures, my concern is two-fold.  Firstly, even at the high end, digital display would not be the saviour of the business.  JP has lost more than £220 million of advertising revenue ... and the print numbers are still falling. £30 million might stabilise the situation momentarily, but it is not going to give the company the sort of money it needs to invest in the future.  And, according to Highfield, it will take three years to get to 100% upsell: in the past three years, print advertising revenues at JP have fallen more than £75 million.

Secondly, JP is too late to this particular bandwagon.  At least one wheel is probably already off.  Banner advertising is hated by consumers, is almost as unpopular with publishers and barely works for advertisers. Plenty of people who are far more qualified than me, believe the end is nigh for the unloved banner.  And as for Groupon ...

So, what's going to happen at JP?

I wish I knew.  Unless there is an extraordinary turnaround on print advertising (unlikely) or the massive hikes in newspaper cover prices (up to 50%) bring in pots of new money (equally unlikely), there are going to be more cuts.

Indeed, Highfield acknowledged as much.  He told investors: "We don't anticipate, or need, 2013 to be as strong a year in terms of cost or headcount reduction."

Cuts made last year will bring another £10 million of savings this year.  "We are probably going to be making something like another £15 million savings over and above that."

Will £15 million in cuts be enough?  Not if Highfield wants to keep his promise to investors that JP will move back into profit growth and print advertising remains on a downward trend.

Although about £7 million will be re-invested in the business (mostly on 'technology and infrastructure'), that £15 million of savings this year will be painful and will involve more job cuts - it's difficult to say how many, but with average FTE costs of about £25,000, it would take 600 to make up £15 million.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see how this can be the year that JP halts the profit slide without making far more than £15 million cuts if it is relying on its flawed digital strategy.

Let's hope Highfield has a different trick up his sleeve.

Newspapers lose £228 million in print advertising and replace it with just £20 million of digital revenue

The full brutality of the collapse of revenues at local newspapers was exposed in the announcement of preliminary results for 2012 by Johnston Press earlier this week.

The company publishes 13 daily papers including The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post, The Star, in Sheffield, and The News, in Portsmouth.  It also has 230 weekly newspapers.

The most salient points for me were these:

• Advertising revenues at Johnston Press have fallen £228 million since 2006

• Recruitment revenues have fallen £120 million since their peak

• Every lost print pound is being replaced by just 9p of digital revenue

• Total revenue has fallen £280 million in just five years

As a result:

• The number of journalists employed by Johnston Press has been cut by 1,000 to 1,558 in four years

• Overall staffing has fallen by half in five years, from 8,823 to 4,392

• Total costs have been cut by £144 million

• Leaving an operating profit of £57 million compared to a peak of £186 million

Which is barely enough to allow the company to pay the interest on the loans it took out when it went on an acquisition spree in the early and middle part of the decade.

I've said before that the depth and speed of the falls in revenue have been such that the major regional newspaper companies in the UK have had little choice but to cut their costs if they were to survive.  I constantly read comments from journalists who blame senior management for the current state of our newspapers, but it is difficult to see what they could have done.

(See also why I believe newspaper digital strategies are doomed to failure).

Recruitment advertising has gone online because it works better on the internet than it does in a newspaper

Look at Johnston Press - according the company's annual accounts, recruitment advertising has dropped by £120 million in not much more than five years.  That money did not disappear because of decisions made by management: it disappeared because recruitment advertising works better online than it does in paper.

Waiting til next Wednesday to browse through a couple of hundred ads in the supplement of your local paper, just doesn't stack up against the always-there, searchable, thousands of vacancies on Jobsite or any of the other big jobs boards.  Add to that the ability to set up alerts or post your CV and, in truth, it's amazing that Johnston Press still has £14.6 million of recruitment advertising in print.

It's possible to argue that the company - or at least, its managers - have done a pretty poor job of building up the online recruitment business.  While £120 million jobs advertising has disappeared from print, the company has attracted barely £7 million from that category online.  And, while the company seems to take the somewhat quaint view that much of the fall in recruitment revenues is cyclical and will return when the economy recovers, evidence elsewhere suggests that much more could have been done.  Over at my former employer DMGT, for example, its preliminary results (PDF) for 2012 report that its recruitment business, Evenbase, brought in £11 million operating PROFIT.

As an aside, DMGT reported total digital revenues of £93 million as opposed to the £20 million reported by Johnston Press.  JP's business case would look very different if they had grown digital in the way that DMGT has.

However, don't be fooled into thinking this would have saved the journalists' jobs.

It appears that DMGT noted very early on that recruitment online was a standalone business and did not require the expensive baggage of a newspaper - and all its journalists - to succeed. It wasn't just chance that DMGT moved its big classified online businesses away from Northcliffe about 10 years ago. Nor was it just chance that when Northcliffe (DMGT's regional newspaper business) was sold off at Christmas, the digital classified money-makers were not included in the deal.

(I said at the time that I thought that this made it difficult to see how the new owners, Local World, could make the regional business work).

It's also worth noting that Northcliffe's slashing of journalists' jobs has been the equal of Johnston Press.

There was a time when recruitment advertising was the biggest advertising category in a regional newspaper and, combined with the rest of classified (property, motors and other), it made up well in excess of 50% of all revenues.  Back in 2004 (PDF), for example, Johnston's had £117 million of recruitment ads in a total of £281 million of classified ads.  Display ads took the total advertising revenues up to £370 million, with just £70 million coming from newspaper sales.

The perfect storm for regional newspapers arose because they had such a heavy reliance on classified advertising and classified advertising works so much better online than in paper.  Add the fact that without the need for expensive journalism, online classified operators could charge advertisers far less, and it is hardly surprising that almost 90% of JP's in print recruitment advertising has disappeared.

Some classified has fared slightly better, notably property advertising.  This is probably because not all property advertising is about listing properties for sale.  Estate agents have long argued that the main purpose of their advertising was not to sell houses, but to build their brand so that people would put their houses up for sale through them rather than their competitors.

Nevertheless, classified advertising in print has fallen by more than two-thirds at JP in the past six or seven years.

Last year, at just £14.6 million Johnston Press' in-print recruitment advertising had fallen from being the highest category of revenue for the business to the lowest.

Nobody asked cart makers to save carts when Henry Ford came along

I guess the point that I am trying to make is that the problem facing regional newspapers is largely not of their own making.  The disruptive force of the internet has destroyed the very foundations on which the business was built.

People like to compare what is happening to newspaper companies with what happened to cart makers when Henry Ford came along, but it is not the same.  Cart makers could become car makers, or even just service garages for the big manufacturers - nobody asked them to save the cart.  The problem for the hitherto newspaper publishers is that they are businesses, but they are being asked to save the newspaper or, at the very least, journalism.  However, we have to accept that it is simply not their job to save anything other than their own businesses.

Trinity Mirror move to digital focus means 40 fewer jobs

Trinity Mirror's move to a focus on a digital future will see 92 journalists losing their jobs in the company's regional newspaper business.

However, 52 jobs will be created  - 26 at the company's national operation and 26 in the regionals - meaning that the net loss will be 40.

The difference between the value of online advertising and that in the print medium is such that any newspaper company switching its focus from newspaper to digital must make huge cuts to its workforce.

In line with most companies, Trinity Mirror says that new, more efficient ways of working mean that cuts in the number of journalists does not necessarily mean a reduction in the quality of its journalism.

Can that be true? And does Trinity Mirror have any choice?

It is difficult to do direct comparisons with the past because of the number of acquisitions and disposals, but a measure of the collapse in revenues at regional newspaper companies can be found by looking at Trinity's annual accounts for 2000 and 2011 (the most recent available).

Total revenues in the regional business in 2000 grew by 3.7% to £424.7 million.  Last year, they fell by 8% to £139 million. In other words, two-thirds of the revenues have disappeared in the past 12 years.

Revenues have fallen by almost £286 million.  In the 'good old days', profit was £106 million - last year, it was just £16.9 million.

In lots of ways, £16.9 million profit is an amazing performance, but it shows the brutal depth of the cuts that have already been made.  I know the business has changed enormously over the past 12 years, but, if costs had remained at a similar level, the revenue fall of £286 million would have meant the company would have lost £180 million last year!

Add back the £16.9 million profit that the company made last year and you can see that the costs have come down by a staggering £197 million in just 12 years.

Of course, some of these costs will have fallen away naturally: if your circulation falls by 10%, you can print 10% fewer papers (in fact some Trinity titles, like the Newcastle Chronicle, have fallen by more than 50%); if you are selling far fewer advertisements, you can print far fewer pages.

But massive savings have come from reducing staff numbers in all areas of the newspaper.  According to the annual reports for the year 2000 and 2011, the number of people employed in 'production and editorial' has fallen from 6,898 to 3,001 - a fall of 57%.

Again, I have to stress that Trinity Mirror has made a number of acquisitions and disposals during that decade so we are not comparing like with like, but a fall of 57% does not feel out of step with my own experience in the newspaper industry over that period.

(For one view of what the drastic cut in the number of journalists has done to local (and, to a certain extent, national) newspapers, read Nick Davies book, Flat Earth News, which I have talked about on this blog previously)

And that brings me all the way back to Trinity Mirror's statement that changing the way staff work will mean that it can cut the number of journalists it employs without cutting the quality of its journalism.  More than that, while taking out another 40 editorial jobs, the company will launch a drive to increase and improve its digital offerings.

What are the changes that Trinity Mirror will make to create the spare resource to step up its digital work at the same time as further reducing its staff?    They are listed below.  For what it's worth, I think it will simply add to the downward spiral which sees falling revenues matched by cuts in the quality of the product, leading to further falls in revenue ... and further cuts in costs.

So, the changes:

• Closer working between the national and regional titles, with more content being shared across all of Trinity Mirror's newspapers and digital platforms. (ie fewer local stories)
• Greater emphasis on the production of digital content, including breaking news, pictures and video.
• A much enhanced focus in the regional titles on the curation of community content, which has already proved popular with readers. (Plenty of self-interest news)
• A shared content unit based in Liverpool, producing high-quality, non-local material for all of Trinity Mirror's regional newspapers and digital channels. (Non-local content for the local papers?  What could go wrong?)
• The creation of a number of new roles at the national titles for writers and photographer/videographers, plus a number of new digital roles. (92 jobs lost in the regional papers, some of the new jobs (26) going to the national titles, means that, in fact, the number of jobs lost in the regions is 66).  However, it does mean that there are 52 new 'digital' roles - jobs which Trinity Mirror thinks cannot be done by traditionally trained journalists - they want people with a wider skill set.

Does that make the decision to go 'digital first' wrong?  I don't necessarily think so - I don't believe that traditional print companies have much in the way of options.  They have to move more and more into digital: it's clearly where the future is.  From the point of view of journalists, those new offerings at a local level are always going to be a smaller business - we will never get back to the situation where cities like Leicester, or even Derby, can support 120+ journalists for a local news service.

The huge classified revenues that supported the cost of journalism have gone online and they don't require the expensive editorial costs to make them work (they sit on standalone sites like Jobsite or Rightmove).

That pretty much leaves the journalists on their own, trying to make a living out of news.  Perhaps people will pay, but not enough to support big numbers.  The newspaper companies will try to keep their papers going to bring in revenues, but without cuts, they would already be making a loss and, as Nick Davies points out, the big publicly quoted companies simply cannot stomach that.

Newspapers losing print revenue far faster than they can gain digital income

One of the biggest problems facing newspaper companies as they seek to move to a digital future is highlighted by a report published last year by the US Pew Research Centre.

In a study of 40 newspapers - based on data supplied and interviews with newspaper executives - Pew discovered that for every $1 gained in internet revenues, the newspapers were losing $7 in print revenue.

In an article published today, Pew says that the situation has got worse: "By the end of 2012, the numbers were considerably grimmer for the sector as a whole - $16 in print losses for every digital dollar gained."

"The case studies come from  "The Search for a New Business Model" released by Pew Research Center in March 2012," says today's article.

"Based on data provided by nearly 40 newspapers and interviews with executives at 13 newspaper companies, that study found that in general, the effort to replace losses in print ad revenue with new digital revenue was taking longer and proving more difficult than executives wanted."

Despite this fairly depressing outcome, the report did highlight what it thought was a few signs of hope with six 'outliers' either managing to offset print losses with digital gains, or at least coming very close to doing so.

However, even this glimmer of hope may have been extinguished.

"Pew Research tracked those outliers and found, as a reminder of the fragility of the business, that in the course of several months, two had suffered significant revenue declines and three others were part of a company undergoing a major organizational restructuring that made it difficult to draw conclusions about their economic health," says today's report.

Editor tells FT journalists he's cutting jobs to secure a 'world class, financially sustainable news organisation'

The Financial Times is cutting 35 journalists from its staff as it shifts to a strategy which puts the web ahead of its newspaper.

In an email to staff, editor Lionel Barber says that net reduction in editorial staff numbers would be about 25 people 'after the introduction of 10 more digital jobs.'

"We need to ensure that we are serving a digital platform first, and a newspaper second. This is a big cultural shift for the FT that is only likely to be achieved with further structural change," he said.

In an earlier message to staff, Barber had said that 2013 would test the newspaper's resolve to move further and faster to support top quality journalism in a rapidly changing media landscape.

"I now want to set out in detail how we propose to reshape the FT for the digital age. We need to do less in certain areas and more in others, we need to be much more nimble, and we need to reshape our teams.

"Today we have started consultations with the NUJ with the aim of opening up an initial voluntary redundancy scheme. The intention is is to reduce the cost of producing the newspaper and give us the flexibility to invest more online.

"Our common cause is to secure the FT's future in an increasingly competitive market, where old titles are being routinely disrupted by new entrants such as Google and LinkedIn and Twitter.

"The FT's brand of accurate, authoritative journalism can thrive, but only if it adapts to the demands of our readers in digital and in print, still a vital source of advertising revenues," he said in the email sent on January 21st 2013.

Barber revealed that a visit to Silicon Valley had convinced him of the speed of change, with competitors harnessing technology to revolutionise the news business through aggregation, personalisation and social media.  "It would be reckless for us to stand still."

"Of course, we must stick to the tested practices of good journalism: deep and original reporting based on multiple sources and a sharp eye for the scoop.

"But we must also recognise that the internet offers new avenues and platforms for the richer delivery and sharing of information. We are moving from a news business to a networked business," he continued.

The paper will now shift resource from night work and from print to digital.

"I am determined that we do everything we can to secure the FT's future as a world class, financially sustainable news organisation.

"Our earlier decisions to raise prices, charge for content, and build a subscription business have proven to be bold and wise.

"While many of our rivals have struggled to find a profitable business model, and have therefore announced heavy job losses, we have been industry pioneers. This is not the moment to falter," said Barber.

He is now seeking to introduce a number of changes aimed at reducing the resource needed to produce the newspaper so that, despite the reduction in staff numbers, more people can work on the web. Those changes include:

• Common ad shapes across editions to reduce the number of 'tweaks' made to pages
• A more common international edition with common fronts and second fronts (ie far fewer changes in editions)
• A restriction in the number of changes between two US editions
• A 'paring back' of the UK 3rd edition
• Tighter control of pagination (ie fewer pages)

"We must rethink how we publish our content, when and in what form, whether conventional news, blogs, video or social media," he said.

In common with all newspaper companies moving to a 'digital first' strategy - recognising that online revenues are almost always smaller than print revenues around news - the changes are designed to create savings, about £1.6m a year in the case of the FT.

"This will be an opportunity for all of us to think harder about a more dynamic and inter-active form of FT journalism beyond the printed word. This is vital to drive deeper engagement with readers and build our subscriptions business," he added.