News Letter’s new editor appointed
Former newspaper and UTV television journalist, Darwin Templeton, has been appointed as the new editor of the News Letter. What does he need to do with the paper to build on the progress of Austin Hunter?
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“… he just doesn’t make me think which is what I want from a columnist.”
Sounds like too tall an order for anyone.
Interesting Fair_deal – each of those three points could equally be applied to the Newsletter itself –
3rd grade uup bashing, editorial parrots the DUP line, endless rehashing of DUP press statements.
No critical analysis at all. No real political comment beyond Kane and Gavin Robinson.
It certainly needed to get away from the pro-Agreement bias, no argument about that, but the problem is it’s now gone so far in the opposite direction that it’s news coverage is practically an extension of the DUP press office, – and the rest of the paper – it’s features, sports coverage etc is really beyond 2nd grade.
Add to that the poor presentation, the lack of colour throughout and you can see why it’s become a running joke among Unionists, even those who buy it daily.
I have no problem with it reflecting the unionist community’s views, but a good paper also challenges the consensus view and makes us think.
It doesn’t need to be editorially neutral but I wish it would occasionally challenge the DUP and air a much wider range of opinions from within unionism – not just the UUP but why not from others in civil society as well, including nationalists, and those alienated by traditional unionist politics.
If I was a Sinn Feiner I’d still buy the Irish News over Daily Ireland, because the Irish News is a fresh newspaper, with a wide range of views, that would challenge my thinking. I’d like to see the Newsletter, as the Unionist paper of record, to go down this route.
The slender thread that has held the weight of the entire News Letter for years if not decades is the farming edition on a Saturday. It still sells in big numbers. Other than that the paper is an economic disaster. Imagine if it had to try and survive without those who buy it from a sense of unionist loyalty and nothing else. I know a few people who buy it every day but barely bother to open it.
Wee ulsterman
The problem in terms of the political coverage is they lift both parties statements verbatim not a particular skew.
IIRC the electoral commission research showed the UUP still received more coverage than the DUP during recent elections so I don’t buy the line that everyday political coverage has gone totally DUP and nothing but. This is too much of it a whinge harking for the good old days when it made the press office’s life easy plus its to hide the failure of the UUP to actually have a coherent strategy (let alone a media one).
To be fair it isn’t because the workers of the press office haven’t been beavering away. It is because they are operating in a strategic vacuum. The UUP post trimble hasn’t defined itself. Sir Reg has adopted a little bit of everything strategy which leads to a message that pulls in every direction – one day the DUP has sold us all down the river, the next they say the DUP is incapabale of making a deal.
Understandable because of the ongoing flux but it needs to find a role for itself beyond being a group of people with a historical attachment to it combined with those who hate the DUP.
Given that the Newsletter’s new owner, Johnston Press, is renowned for its 35% profit margins and serial cost cutting, I doubt the Newsletter is likely to get the investment that it needs. I find it interesting that both the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday’s editors left pretty sharpish after Johnston bought them up, and the Newsletter was clearly not long behind them. Will Darwin have to put in the same cost cutting measures, redundancies etc that many a Johnston paper has to experience?
“the Newsletter has gone so far downhill”
hmmm…The News Letter was the only newspaper in the UK & Ireland over the last couple of years NOT to post decreasing sales figures and infact was 1 of only 2 in the UK to post a rise in sales last year.
Strange how republicans think they are qualified to tell unionists what sort of paper they should have.
The sales have gone up the paper has improved greatly in the non political arenas – not that anyone in here would notice such banal things.
I read both the Irish News and the News Letter and I like them both – I do not agree with much of what they say but isn’t that the point of buying a paper to see different opinions.
Alan2
Yes, you are absolutely right. But you have to admit that it couldn’t have fallen much further than it had already without flatlining.
If anyone can turn the Newletter around it is
darwin templeton…he may well bring back something of the glory days when figures of the calibre of Omar(Hammy McDowell) Norman Ballintine, Ken Nixon, Ralph Bossence et al
put the spotlight on the province and its news of the day and on that day.
Some may say it will be an uphill struggle. If he nurishes his country/rural readers and instils a
healthy news balance he will win back readers who are probably not buying any Northern Ireland
bases papers at the moment.
Why…..these publications have little of interest in them for someone who wants to read more than photographs. ………..DRACOS