Journalism academic Andy Williams has produced a lengthy analysis of the parlous state of two daily newspapers in Wales published by Trinity Mirror (TM).
The headline to his piece about the Daily Post in north wales and the Western Mail in south Wales gives a clear indication of his conclusion, Unholy Trinity: The decline of Welsh news media.
He begins by detailing the dramatic circulation declines at both titles over the last 30 years (the Post's ABC sale for July-December 2009 was 32,864 and the Mail's was 30,133) and concedes that TM is "partly right" to blame "structural changes in newspaper-buying habits, and competition from the internet."
But Williams, a research fellow at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, then writes:
A large proportion of the blame also lies with sustained mismanagement by a company which has consistently valued the private interests of the City of London over the public interest of the readers and communities it serves. Trinity's market-led business model has a clear primary aim: the generation of large profits for shareholders.
He points to the company's lust for high profit margins, producing a chart that shows a five-year succession (from 2004-8) of margins in excess of 30% at the Mail's publishing division (Media Wales). Williams writes:
Such bloated returns are unsustainable, of course, and have mainly been managed by keeping labour costs extremely low and by shedding staff in a series of harsh cuts... The number of editorial and production jobs at Media Wales has fallen by 41% in the last decade.
The situation here is so extreme that Trinity Mirror's regular rounds of job cuts elsewhere have become known to English regional journalists as "doing a Cardiff".
Williams contends that the cuts "are having a devastating effect on the quality of the news... Increasingly, distinctive local stories are making way for cheap homogenous UK national news straight off the agency wires and equally cheap stories about celebrity gossip.
This does not foster effective guardianship of the public interest – but it is a direct and predictable consequence of Trinity Mirror's business strategy.
So what of the future? Williams argues that even if TM were to dispose of its ailing Welsh titles, they would not benefit from "a sale to other industry behemoths", such as Newsquest/Gannett or Johnston Press, because "the companies operate in exactly the same way as Trinity Mirror."
He concludes: "The depressing fact remains that as long as proprietors value the pocket books of shareholders above the quality of the news and the welfare of audiences and staff, the Welsh public sphere is likely to be further diminished."
Source: openDemocracy.net