So how’s our press getting on in 2023?

The last time I wrote for Slugger on the performance and prospects of our three local daily newspapers was in March 2021. At that point in the aftermath of the defection of Allison Morris and Sam McBride to the Belfast Telegraph from the Irish News and News Letter respectively. I haven’t contributed on the industry in the subsequent two and a half years as I’ve felt – frankly and regrettably – that there was little to be added to my thoughts then and little likely to be. However a couple of things in the past few weeks have tempted me back on to the subject.

The first was the announcement of the imminent retirement of Noel Doran as Editor of the Irish News after what will be an incredible 25 years in the job. A quarter century tenure is a significant achievement in any year, but to do so in the most traumatic era in the history of printed media is incredible. His achievement was acknowledged when in 2020 he was voted “regional editor of the (21^st) century” by readers of the Hold the Front Page website. I worked with an Editor in the North East of England who deservedly ran him close but there’s no doubt Noel was a worthy winner, particularly in the manner he managed the decline of his print copy to such a degree that under his tenure it went from a lower third level paper to the second highest selling regional daily in the UK. A position it still holds as other papers – many of whom sold over three times as many daily copies as the IN as late as the mid-2000s – continue in continue to accelerate their freefall. It also had the smallest decline (-8%) of any officially declared daily regional in the UK in the second half of 2022.  So congratulations and best wishes to Noel Doran. Its not my paper or my community’s paper but no rational person could fail to recognise a good job very well done.

The second was when someone pointed out to me that next year is the thirtieth anniversary of the first PIRA and Loyalist ceasefires. That took me back to 1993 when as a newly promoted member of the Belfast Telegraph senior executive team I voiced the view that if there really was to be a permanent end to the Troubles as was being speculated endlessly, the paper would need to change immeasurably if it was to have any relevance in a more normal society where front-page news would be a lot harder to come by. Events of the past few weeks brought it home to me how badly our local press failed to rise to the challenge of a new era.

In my 2021 article I concluded with this opinion of our three Belfast dailies:

“Generally they reflect the views of a specific community and are unapologetic about it. The Irish News has done it superbly under Noel Doran’s editorship and continues to do so. The News Letter did it badly and inconsistently for a couple of decades under previous owners and editors and paid the price. The Belfast Telegraph strategy under Gail Walker’s editorship was taking it in the right direction of trying to broaden its base largely within the pro-union community in the way the Irish News has always done within its own community.”

First the positives (there are some).

1. All three papers remain good on local sport, with plenty of space allocated to both news and analysis of whatever sports or clubs they feel are relevant and of most interest to their broad readership. My sport is football and I can confidently say that in all our media here there are journalists doing a good job in promoting the Irish League and international team(s). Some have also done a very good job promoting the Women’s game in Northern Ireland. So deserved kudos for that.
2. We also have some of the strongest columnists you’ll find anywhere in these islands. The Belfast Telegraph is strongest in this area with the likes of Suzanne Breen, Sam McBride, Malachi O’Doherty, Gail Walker, Allison Morris. The Irish news has Tom Kelly, Mary Kelly and a very good political correspondent in John Manley. But it also heavily promotes the likes of Patricia McBride, Brian Feeney and Chris Donnelly who are there in my view to play to the gallery and to reinforce rather than reflect the prejudices within their community. But its worked so far. The News Letter – possibly due to the nature of its ownership and a lack of investment in print – does not really boast columnists of the profile of the others. It was the paper that identified the value of Alex Kane but lost him in 2021. That was a shame. I noticed it had an opinion piece last week from Jamie Bryson. I don’t see the logic in that. It certainly won’t broaden the paper’s appeal.

Those are the positives, and they count. But they’re not enough to even slow the decline of the hard copy press as internationally it stumbles helplessly into its final days. That’s where my memory of 1993 was provoked. When combined with front pages over the Twelfth the memory saddened me. Because ultimately the challenge they all faced with the ceasefire has been one they failed to meet.

Simply put, the written press in general is incapable of breaking news through its print editions any longer. So in many cases – not just in Northern Ireland – it has fallen back on a very predictable and lazy form of populism in its news stories. When we look at the front pages of our ones over the Twelfth one could almost cynically suggest they were written at the start of the month with the news journalists given the Twelfth Fortnight off. You could have predicted them all:

• Irish flags and election posters on bonfire shocker.
• Republican says ”up the Ra” near an unlit bonfire shocker.
• Man falls off bonfire and hurts himself shocker.
• Man in GAA short provokes band shocker. Or nasty band provoked by man in GAA shirt shocker (delete as appropriate)
• Men at bonfire sing anti Catholic songs at bonfire shocker.
• Derry City supporters sing “up the Ra” shocker.

The first thing all these stories have in common is that they are not news! However we may feel about them they are things that in one shape or form happen all over Northern Ireland at various times of the year and that we all know happen and know will happen again.  So not news that will stave off or slow the decline.

The second thing they have in common is that by and large they relate back to videos posted by individuals on Twitter. That’s not unique to the Belfast papers. The nationals all do it endlessly with various degrees of honesty. But again they are not news and are not going to enhance the brand – in print or online – in any way.

This takes me back to my 1993 conversation on the need for newspapers to adopt to a post Troubles society. The simple fact is that even if they tried in the immediate post GFA era, ultimately they failed and gave up. Our papers (as with our broadcasters) are if anything arguably more dominated by our community divisions than even in the 80s. To a level of pettiness that wasn’t there during the darker but much easier era when big front-page stories were guaranteed most days with more than enough of them to go around. That has to show a tremendous lack of foresight and imagination in a lot of  Boardrooms and editorial conferences.

So that’s why there’s no real point analysing the future of our (or any) daily papers now. Despite the best efforts of a lot of good people, there’s a very real sense that we’re in the final stretch. Ultimately that’s been driven by the internet and the instant availability it provides and many good editors have my sympathy for the challenges they have tried to face down when really all they were able to do was try to push water uphill. But at some point there are still people who’ll need to take a deep breath when asked “what did you do in the last days of newspapers Daddy/Mummy?”