Regional Newspapers

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing a debate on this issue, which is unusual in that there is pretty much a consensus on it across the House—clearly, there is an issue about the ongoing demise of regional and local newspapers.

Members will not be surprised to hear that I am going to start by talking about my local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo, which is one of the oldest in the country, having started in 1873. It is still a daily paper, although it no longer has three editions a day or area editions. That, in itself, is a dramatic change to the way in which the paper has operated, and that has all happened in the past 10 or 15 years.

The paper is, however, still a hugely important part of our life in Sunderland; it is the main communicator of news to the people who live in my city, informing them, keeping them up to date with what is going on and entertaining them. That is particularly true of elderly people. Although, as has been said, some elderly people have engaged with, and embraced, the internet, many have not, and many in my constituency cannot afford the facilities to do so. For those people, particularly if they are housebound, getting the local paper of a night keeps them in touch with what is happening in not only the city, but their local community. That is an important part of what the Sunderland Echo does.

Over the years, the Sunderland Echo has been at the forefront of campaigns to secure things for our city. Ten years ago, it led a campaign to secure funding to provide ongoing support for the Durham miners’ gala. The gala is one of the most famous trade union days in the country, and more than 100,000 people turn up to it in July every year. There is not a mine left in the Durham coalfield, but the gala is about history, tradition and a good day out for the people of the area. More recently, the local paper has led a campaign to secure a children’s hospice, which is now being built in my constituency.

Those are important things, but there are also the much smaller issues, such as appealing for information when there are road traffic accidents or when things go missing. The national newspapers simply would not engage in such communication, but it is important.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Does the hon. Lady agree that local newspapers are a catalyst in raising millions of pounds every year for good causes and local charities?

[Julie Elliott]

Yes, absolutely. The children’s hospice I mentioned is funded entirely from donations and is set up as a charity. The work done by local newspapers on such issues is hugely important.

The problems faced by my local paper, however, are massive. As I said, the number of editions has gone down, but we still have a daily paper, which I am keen to keep going. So many dailies have moved to being weeklies, and that is when we lose the real link with local communities, because what a weekly paper provides is very different from what a daily paper provides.

The rise of the internet has been a threat. Although I look at the news on the internet, I like to read a newspaper as well—the two are not mutually exclusive. The loss of advertising revenue has also caused massive problems, as has the loss of readership—people cannot afford to buy newspapers when their price is going up all the time. Those losses have impinged on the quality of newspapers in some areas.

Most recently, the Sunderland Echo has suffered significant job cuts. It is owned by Johnston Press, which is doing its best in difficult and challenging circumstances. However, since the summer, we have lost 13 jobs in sub-editing and design. Significantly, we have also lost the printing press. Our paper was printed in Sunderland until the beginning of November, as it had been for the entire time it had existed. Sadly, the printing has now moved to South Yorkshire, which is two and a half to three hours away by car. People might think, “Well, the paper’s still being printed,” but 83 jobs have gone, and such changes also have an impact on the quality of the newspaper. Previously, the deadline was on the morning the paper was printed, but if it takes three hours to take the paper somewhere, the deadlines go back, and the freshness of the stories declines. I totally understand the economic arguments for that rationalisation, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the paper.

Local papers are some of the most popular printed materials. Some 33 million people read local papers every week, which is a huge number. There are 1,100 regional newspapers, although that is significantly down on where we were even two or three years ago, never mind 10 years ago. Local papers are a large employer, employing 30,000 people, and that is quite apart from the value they add in terms of the people working in newsagents and other things related to newspapers.

As colleagues have said, local newspapers are a good training ground for journalists. Many quite prominent journalists on national papers started their careers in local papers.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about local newspapers. Most corner shops and newsagents are under pressure, and newsagents get 27% of their income from the sale of newspapers and magazines, but that will be lost if we lose our local newspapers.

[Julie Elliott]

Absolutely. I could not agree more. I always try to buy my local paper in my local shop, and not in supermarkets, which have a much broader range of products to sustain them.

Sunderland has a university with a large, well-respected media department. When people leave, some go straight into the national media, and we get a lot on to national training programmes, but many like to go into local news, because it is almost an apprenticeship in the art of journalism. People learn how to investigate properly and how to communicate properly with people. If they go to a national, they will get the very small stories, but in a local paper they have the opportunity to pick up anything they hear about living among the people they write for. That will all be lost if the demise of local papers continues.

We must remember that once papers go, they rarely come back, so we must do everything we can to secure what we have. Local papers are too important to our communities to lose. I cannot imagine how people in Sunderland would find the information they need to go about their daily lives if we did not have the local newspaper. We must do all we can to save papers such as the Sunderland Echo and the others that have been mentioned.

I wholeheartedly support what colleagues have said about an initiative to bring Departments together. There are things the Government can do, and statutory notices, which have been mentioned, are a hugely important part of local papers’ funding. There must be other things we and the Government can look at to try to secure the future of local newspapers. I might have a different view on subsidies from the hon. Member for Burton, but in this case, the value of something that is partly a service, rather than just a business, must sometimes be taken into account when looking at imaginative ways of doing the things that central and local government do in any case, to help keep local papers as they are.