Newspapers surrendered the ads, then the audience, then the news itself. Now AI is finishing a job that began two decades ago.
Just think – think for a moment – what precious gems we have gifted to the US over the last two decades.
I’m thinking of our local newspapers – dotty, brave and essential.
It was a world close to my heart where I spent many happy years as editor.
Just think of that semi-sustainable eco-system. Local readers would advertise their jobs, cars, hats and houses in the Classified section which funded a thriving local company, employed its people who, in turn, bought a home in the trendy part of town, shopped locally, championed the region and passed on the torch.
Newsprint upcycled.
Now think of the billions siphoned off and sent, not five miles down the road to Mavis at the local office but 5,000 miles to San Francisco. Suddenly Silicon Valley was taking a slice of off your nail salon autumn discount campaign and your publicity push for An Inspector Calls at the Gumption Theatre.
Billions, gone. Drained out of Oldham and Newbury and Leicester and Brighton and Aberdeen.
Slow death of local papers
Some 300 local newspapers have closed since 2005, with vast swathes of towns and villages left as “news deserts”. Some 63 per cent of local authority areas lack a daily local paper. Think, too, of all those dodgy Town Hall transactions happening free from scrutiny (we should add those lost pounds to the red column).
And then, just as the newspaper industry was coming to terms with this gut-punch, it happened all over again. First we exported our ad revenue, then we gave them our attention.
Local news was sold out in favour of the transient rewards of clickbait. The algorithm in San Francisco said – nope, we don’t want your parochial guff about traffic lights in West Street, we demand the latest thoughts of Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert fame; and what your favourite romantasy book says about you; and why this blackhead remover is literally changing lives. Put it under a local banner if that’s what works. Up to you.
And we did. We handed over our local news agenda to San Francisco where they don’t even know what a biscuit is.
What do the ungrateful tech bros do? Go and change the algorithm.
Tough luck, limeys.
- The news agenda is in your pocket – are you ready to deliver?
- How PR can step up as traditional newsrooms shrink
This melancholy rant follows on from the salami slicing of Reach, owners of the Mirror and also some of the great regional press titles, including the Manchester Evening News and the great Liverpool Echo, of which I have excessively fond memories.
Reach saw a 55 per cent year-on-year drop in Google referrals across its online newsbrands. All that sycophancy undone by an AI summary and a desire to keep Google users right where they are. Derby be damned.
In response, Reach has reversed its clickbait policy with a return to “original journalism”.
Too late! Too late!
Everyone’s left the sinking ship
The shoe leather muckrakers and storytellers have moved on. A generation has grown up conjuring viral headlines, re-writing a rival’s story and sitting at the desk all day, churning, churning.
And where have the good ones gone? Some went into PR, some simply got out. Others turned up on Substack, headquartered in San Francisco, naturally, where they discovered that people would pay for distinctive voices, specialist knowledge and original reporting produced with low overheads.
There was a market, see.
I think of Reach’s Kent and Sussex Courier, where I started my career as a trainee reporter and, years later, returned briefly as editor. It sells about 1,500 copies. Across two prosperous counties! £3.30 a week for puzzles, a TV guide and an interview with a Corrie favourite produced out of the windswept North West distribution node.
Gnash those teeth.
Not with a bang, but a whimper
The attention went instead to Kent Live, successor to the website I once edited – for all your Folkestone, Canterbury and Tonbridge news. Now even that is being culled. Kent Messenger won the battle just as AI is about to win the war.
Grrr. To think of our old East Kent rival parking its tanks on our immaculate Tunbridge Wells lawns.
The old local newspaper business was never going to survive unchanged. Print advertising was disappearing, habits were changing and the economics were brutal.
But somewhere along the way we made a much bigger mistake. We gave away the advertising. Then we gave away the audience. Then we gave away control of content.
We gave up so much, didn’t we – and got so little in return.