The defenestration of football's local media is upon us

The decision of Reach PLC to make 450 people redundant is a disaster for news coverage of football, particularly below the Premier League.

There may be a defenestration of football journalism taking place in this country. And worse, those to be lost are not the inane, the witless, or even relatively useless hot take merchants like myself, but those who do valuable work in their communities, reporting on clubs who gather little interest from most of the big beasts of the industry, most of the time.

There had been rumours that Reach PLC would be shedding jobs at some point for a considerable amount of time, but when the scale of the redundancies was confirmed on the 8th November it was still shocking. 450 jobs are to go, 320 of which will be editorial positions. It represents almost a tenth of their overall workforce and comes on top of 200 redundancies earlier this year.

Reach are the owners of the Star, the Express and the Mirror, and from writing Mediawatch columns for Football365 before I too bit the dust, buying those newspapers was instructive in witnessing how the depopulation of the news media is continuing apace even when we’re not taking notice, with barely rewritten reports being frequently shared across any combination of the three publications.

But Reach also have a large stake in local newspapers, and it is expected that the highest proportion of these redundancies will come from local or regional titles. And while their stable does include the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Mail and the Liverpool Echo, it also owns a range of other titles, which represent areas that don't have such big name clubs in their catchment areas.

As somebody who’s been writing about football clubs in financial—or other types of—bother for more than a decade and a half, I can give first hand testimony to how valuable the job of the local newspaper football journalist is. Just how important can be seen from scrolling down the list of regional titles that they own.

When Coventry City were in the mire, as they sporadically were for more than a decade, Simon Gilbert and the Coventry Telegraph were the first place to head. When it was Derby County, it was Steve Nicholson (who has since departed) and the Derby Telegraph. The list of titles goes on. The Chester Chronicle’s ongoing coverage was essential during the dying days of Chester City. The Enfield Gazette told the story of the loss of my own club’s ground at the tail end of the 1990s, as well as the birth of Enfield Town FC In 2001. All four of these stories were or became close to my heart. All four are Reach titles.

And the job of the local beat reporter is more valuable than some realise. They offer a degree of scrutiny and vigilance of a club’s well-being that the nationals and independents such as myself cannot pick up in its entirety, from the vital position of the critical friend. Sure, The Athletic will pick up plenty of stories from the lower divisions and even non-league football, but it’ll always be a little hit and miss and regardless, they’re behind a paywall. Even including them, you'll only ever get a snapshot.

Perhaps we all should have been behind a paywall from the start but then, that’s part of the big conundrum behind any media organisation, from most of the biggest newspapers to some bloke sitting in his home office tapping away at a laptop. Ultimately, there will always be a free option, and the majority—often the vast majority—seem inclined to prefer that over a paid but superior option.

Never mind that the idea that media can be supported by web advertising alone was confirmed as a busted flush more than two decades ago. Never mind that jobs and therefore livelihoods are dependent upon it. Never mind that it is, at a fundamental level, morally the right thing to do to pay for content that you enjoy and/or make use of. Never mind that most people agree that local journalism is important work, which benefits communities in many different ways.

And if you’re reading this and can feel your hackles starting to rise, don’t take the above as criticism. We’re all in this together. The number of people who pay for all the media they consume is vanishingly small. This is just the reality of the situation, and it has been for years. The number of streaming and other subscription services that we’re bombarded with is enormous. But there are reasons for that, and they’re nothing to do with the people that have to do this dancing for coppers.

It's not as straightforward as saying, “people should pay for (at least) public interest journalism” when the traditional model of doing so, buying an actual, physical newspaper, already feels like a relic of the past. It can still be done, but not only is getting your news online mostly free, but it's also more convenient. You don't need to trek down to a corner shop. Newspaper ink still comes off on your hands. We can't just turn the clock back and act as though the technology that has come to dominate so many of our lives in this century somehow never happened.

So you have to find a way of paying for online journalism and trust me, if putting up a fully gated paywall was a silver bullet, we'd all be doing it. But it isn’t. The most likely thing that would happen were I to put up a complete paywall here would be a collapse in readership and no way of demonstrating why I should warrant being paid for it in the first place. I can only speak for myself here, but while I do not ‘crave’ attention, I do need an audience, because without that audience I can't build a paying audience. Substack themselves say that 20% of all your subscribers being paid subscribers is a good number. It can be achievable, but it needs the support of a committed readership.

There isn't much of a case for the public subsidisation of me, but there may be one for publicly funding local media. But here we run into an obvious issue. If one of the most important functions of local media is to speak truth to power, how likely is it that those in power will consider funding this sort of function, even through the medium of taxation? Raising sympathy for journalists isn't like raising sympathy for nurses. It's got more in common with trying to raise sympathy for estate agents. Or serial killers, perhaps.

But none of this is about the gutter press or the paparazzi. It isn't even about the hot take merchants (if anything, pithy middle-aged men touring their podcasts is one of the small growth areas in this wretched industry at the moment). It's something which actually carries out vital work. It's about the very nature of a civic society and the functions necessary to keep that society running without falling into the hands of liars, thieves and frauds.

One example of those thrown out of work is Steven Chicken and David Hartrick of the Huddersfield Examiner. They are starting a podcast after being laid off. It is to be most sincerely hoped that they can make a go of their new Substack. Subscribe to it, if you’re at all able. (I should declare a personal interest in that I consider them friends of mine, but that’s rather besides the point; they’re talented and they do an excellent job. They deserve to be remunerated for it.)

Reach PLC had already rendered much of their web presence almost unreadable by smothering them in advertisements so intrusive that they practically served, somewhat ironically, as an unpaid advertisement for ad blockers. Now there will be many fewer reasons to justify visiting their laggy, borderline unusable websites and perhaps if there is a silver lining to this, this fact is it.

But it bears repeating that at smaller clubs, the local beat reporters might be the only people turning up at every press conference and asking questions that supporters want answering. It may well be the case that the local newspaper model has its flaws, but many of those are a result of mismanagement at higher levels. Reach PLC losing this many people is a failure, not of the people who worked for them, but of the organisation itself. Revenues may have fallen, but not by enough to preclude a profit of £36.1m being reported and a dividend being paid to shareholders for the 26 weeks to the 25th June 2023 (PDF).

If anyone needing advice on how to deal with Substack, or help with anything else, just drop me a line. Just don’t expect any money. I don’t have any of that, myself.