If we are to talk of the importance to democracy of the existence of a variety of news sources, we must ensure our concerns extend beyond the fears that the HTV news operation will collapse, leaving a broadcasting monopoly to the BBC.
We must also look at the newspaper world.
That may prove difficult. Because politicians are scared of the Trinity Mirror group. And with good cause.
Whatever you may think of the Western Mail, it possesses in fact a near-monopoly of newspaper-journalism in Wales. And the paper has not been afraid to use that power. Remember how they axed then-culture minister Alun Pugh as a columnist after he dared to criticise the paper’s standards.
Currently, the Mail has been throwing its weight around in a non-stop effort to have Nick Bourne sacked as party leader. At the behest of whom ? Surely, right-wing anti-Assembly Tories.
And now we have the news that Trinity Mirror are to combine their Welsh (Cardiff) and North-West (Liverpool) divisions. In a press release (which was NEVER released to the company’s web-site), TM say this has been done “in response to current trading conditions, and it also makes good strategic sense to group both our Wales businesses into a simplified structure as part of one region”.
We all know about current trading conditions.
But this announcement leads to the appearance of a worry about two of the three morning newspapers which will now come under the control of one managing director – Sara Wilde, who previously headed North West and North Wales. The Liverpool Daily Post will stand (or fall) by itself. Over the last few years, it has moved quite dramatically up-market, leaving the Echo, the evening paper, to handle the working-class readership.
The worries focus around the Daily (with a dragon) Post – which is now run editorially from Llandudno entirely separate of Liverpool – and the Western Mail. Would TM dare by so silly to combine the two papers ? TM have, indeed, the reputation of being far short of the best publishers in Britain; perhaps that’s something to do with lacking journalistic expertise on their central board of directors.
If share price (seemingly the chief interest of the company, according to the make-up of its main web page) and finance, rather than journalism are the main concerns of its directors, combining both papers would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.
Printing both papers on TM’s large new press in Cardiff would be physically possible – but the time taken to run the Post up to the North would surely ensure that a more local print plant would be needed.
But that would hardly prevent many of the journalistic operations being combined. The essential sub-editing operations could be carried out anywhere – and not necessarily all at a single office.
The combination (I hesitate to use the word “merger”) of the two papers would have to involve a salami-operation. Over a period, operations would be slowly combined, so that it was not really noticed.
Who knows, a combined paper which rested on the strengths of the Post would end up a better paper than the Mail (in the same way that Wales on Sunday is better for political coverage than its seemingly right wing Tory influenced morning companion).
With TM, anything could happen. Admittedly Ms Wilde possesses a rather beneficent reputation; very different from Cardiff’s MD Keith Dye, who was told to leave the company immediately, on the same day the announcement was made.
But the scene could be being set for a blood-letting, ordered from a London headquarters feeling increasingly under pressure in view of the ever-poorer performance of its most important possession, the Daily Mirror.
Once, of course, the Mirror possessed its own Welsh edition. Not a few people believe that that paper was brought into existence with the intention of blocking any further advance by Plaid Cymru in the Assembly. When it was seen that the advance had been (temporarily) halted, the paper was rapidly axed.
If TM were indeed following an anti-devolution line (as seen in the closure of the Mirror and the right-wing Tory anti-Bourne material in the Mail), the merger of TM’s two divisions could indeed spell dangers.
Sensible politicians would at least ask questions. Perhaps call in individuals for quizzing.
Will that happen ? Am I asking too much ? The politicians blithely allowed Trinity Mirror to gain overwhelming power over the Welsh press a couple of years ago. It’s almost as if they believe all newspaper owners – even, or especially, those based overwhelmingly in the City of London – have all the time the interests of Wales at the core of their hearts. As if…
Comments
Clive,
You’re incredible.
You rightly highlight several incontrovertible points and then draw crazy conclusions.
You’re right that Trinity Mirror chiefs don’t care about good journalism.
They clearly only care about the share price.
As you say, they have dumped their top Wales-based executive and given his responsibilities to someone based in Liverpool whose primary responsibilities are in the North West.
There must now be a fear that a future bright spark will propose sharing Assembly/Wales at Westminster coverage between the Daily Post and the Western Mail, even if merging the titles would be suicidal.
Yet all of this shows that Trinity Mirror board members don’t think about Wales any more than they have to. It’s just another part of the UK where they have papers.
That might be unionist by default but it’s very different from having a deliberate anti-devolution agenda.
The problem is Trinity Mirror bosses don’t care enough about Wales and don’t believe in the power of good journalism.
That’s the opposite of them caring so much they would choose to run a deliberately subversive campaign through one of their Welsh daily titles.
It’d be a far better world if they did.
A number of Welsh Tories believe that the Mail is running a deliberately-subversive campaign against Nick Bourne, the party’s Welsh leader, at the behest of anti-devolution Conservatives. If the long history of a link between Llais y Sais and members of the that party’s South-East based (and I mean Wales) backward-looking backwoodsmen doesn’t raise questions in your mind, it really should do. Running your Assembly coverage (such as it was) without having your own person in the institution for more than four years surely should invite some form of thought as to why.
Until senior managers at the Mail write their memoires (!!!), all we can is speculate.
And when politics (even the politics of newspapers) are involved, it is better to be blunter than some people would like. If the question is not raised in such a form, the whole issue can more easily be totally ignored.
In any case, the world has moved on since yesterday (see my next blog).
The campaign against Bourne has been run not by anti-Assembly Tories, but by other Assembly members after the main chance – names very obvious, but J Morgan prime mover. They have been actively helped by the Tory Assembly spin doctor, who is still seething after Bourne dumped on him over the Rhodri Morgan dossier.
Everyone in the Assembly knows this. You’re losing your touch, Clive.
I’m sorry, but there are two lines of criticism of Bourne involved. And some people obviously can’t read what the Western Mail has been running over a very long time, ie the consistent campaign run by south-east backwoods Tories which the Mail has been assiduously boosting to such an extent for some years that the paper must be listed as anti-Assembly.
Another problem at the Assembly is that strong efforts have been made by almost all parties to keep the senseless and hate-filled antagonistic policits of Westminster at bay.
In the English political culture that so pervades all of Britain, few of those interested in politics can understand anything but purely-oppositional politics.
Bourne has always been weak in Wales at large among his own people. Firstly because he took over an anti-Assembly party and changed its fundamental policy. Secondly, because he replaced a more competent (but at the same time unacceptable because of his activities and views) politician, Rod Richards. Thirdly because he is an Englishman and liable to carpet-bagging allegations. Fourthly, because he has collected around him a group of AMs who stand on the left of the party and who are very pro-Assembly (Jonathan and David Melding are the leaders here). And fifthly, because he disowned the party’s own dissection of Rhodri Morgan (which links with moves towards maintaining a new form of political culture in Cardiff Bay.
With all these factors swilling around the Tory group, I think it is Gareth who is being rather naive, and perhaps believing too much what he reads in blogs.
What is happening at the Assembly demands a PhD thesis…
And any new leader would hardly be Jonathan Morgan, who is due to take the 125 to Paddington immediately after the next election.
The most obviously ambitious at the moment is Darren – but he has faults. One is that he is the same as Mr Bourne – an outsider ie from Chester. More serious, although a strong devolutionist, he hails from the ultra-nonconformist side of the party (check out his recent press releases on a needle exchange in the North). How well will the religious-right (in American terms) fare now that that country has a different sort of president, and how well in any case can they fare on the British scene when exposed to the full blast of publicity ?
Alun Pugh was sacked because he is an unpleasant oaf, rightly kicked out by the electors od Clwyd Northwest. He is also a very poor writer.
I’m sorry Jimjim; you can’t have read the Western Mail closely enough at the time. The minister was sacked by the editor (or perhaps because of the influence of the managing director) because he said the Western Mail was a very poor paper and that the Daily Post was better. I didn’t agreed with the detail of his points. But the fact was that the effective-monopoly newspaper decided to crush a dissenting voice …
Part of the paper’s anti-Assembly attitude ? Of part their policy of doing down anything official – an attitude shared perhaps with too much of journalism ?
I don’t think, in any case, that many would call Alun an “oaf”. He was very pleasant, even if at times seeming rather insecure. Whether of course he wrote pieces bylined as by him, or whether the special adviser grabbed her computer is another issue.
I see you’re censoring fair comment now Clive. Retirement is beckoning you I fear.
And why do you keep confusing Jonathan Morgan with Jonathan Evans?
Making a balls-up with the dashboard doesn’t equal censoring.
In any case, the story is really all about Llais y Sais, as it deserves sometimes to be called, and its hideous campaign over an iPod – which is quite a good way to learn a language, as you surely know.
I am inclined to delete additional posts which lead us away from the original large point.
I do admit by the way getting names wrong – I always have; thus I usually remember people by their geographical location, thus Jonathan Cardiff North and Jonathan Newbridge on Wye (now try and work that one out…I can’t quite remember the precise reason).
Retirement does, indeed, beckon. But not quite yet…
“I do admit by the way getting names wrong – I always have; thus I usually remember people by their geographical location, thus Jonathan Cardiff North and Jonathan Newbridge on Wye (now try and work that one out…I can’t quite remember the precise reason).”
OK, then your comment of 23 Jan about Morgan going to Paddington makes no sense at all.
Why not admit your analysis is bunkum? Listen to people really in the know: Bourne is being undermined by Morgan and the Tory press officer; they were actively assisted by Darren Millar and Paul Davies who have now got cold feet. Morgan, however, is still at it.
To believe that the future of the Conservative leadership will be decided within the Cardiff Bay bubble – as you seem to – indicates a slight lack of breadth of knowledge. The election will by the entire membership. But first have to get rid of the leader – hence the destabilisation by the right-wing. Those who fail to acknowledge the fact of that attempted stabilisation and Llais’s part in it clearly don’t know how politics works.
Well I’m actually in the bubble and I think I know a lot more about it than someone who persistently gets two different people mixed up!
This is nothing to do with the so-called “right wing”. This is all to do with the ambition of three people in the Assembly and the bile of the press officer. The Western Mail is certainly complicit in the plot, but it’s very much an inside job.
You’re wrong, Clive. Pugh IS an oaf. And a stupid one at that. Remember Scrabblegate?
In Colwyn Bay he is remembered with about as much affection as a bad dose of enteritis.