Media academic defends criticisms of Welsh Trinity Mirror titles

Media academic Andy Williams has defended his claims that Wales' two national papers are in serious decline after coming under attack by Trinity Mirror editor Alan Edmunds.

Williams, a research fellow at the Cardiff School of Journalism, wrote a feature on OpenDemocracy last week entitled 'Unholy Trinity: The decline of Welsh news media", which linked to research on Trinity Mirror titles the Daily Post and the Western Mail.

In his report he criticised parent company Trinity Mirror of valuing "the private interests of the City of London over the public interest of the readers and communities it serves". But the findings of his research have been rubbished by its subjects.

Citing the declining circulations of both titles, the Western Mail from 55,000 in 1999 to 33,000 in 2009 and the Daily Post from 41,000 in 2004 to 34,000 today.

Williams claimed Trinity Mirror's reasons for the loss of readers are only "partly right":

"Parent company Trinity Mirror blames a combination of structural changes in newspaper-buying habits, and competition from the internet. They are partly right, but a large proportion of the blame also lies with sustained mismanagement by a company which has consistently valued the private interests of the City of London over the public interest of the readers and communities it serves.

"In marked contrast with newspaper owners in the 1980s and 90s, Trinity seems to display little concern that readers are abandoning its titles in droves."

While profit margins appear to be soaring for the papers, according to Williams' statistics, he claims this has been at the cost of journalists themselves.

"[Profit margins] have mainly been managed by keeping labour costs extremely low and by shedding staff in a series of harsh cuts. Media Wales alone has experienced five rounds of job cuts since 2003, delayed- and non-replacement of staff who leave is endemic, and journalists' pay is extremely low. The number of editorial and production jobs at Media Wales has fallen by 41 per cent in the last decade. The situation here is so extreme that Trinity Mirror's regular rounds of job cuts elsewhere have become known to English regional journalists as "doing a Cardiff."

But his report sparked an angry response from Western Mail's editor Alan Edmunds, who wrote the report was "one-eyed, inadequately-researched hyperbole full of ill-informed statements, old chestnuts, tired cliches and 1970s rhetoric."

"It is almost identical in tone and line to an equally out-of-touch and quaint view published by the same research department a few years ago and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of how we have had to change and modernise to meet the fast-evolving demands of readers and advertisers," said Edmunds.

In Williams' original report, he claimed the quality of news is likely to be "further diminished" by a growing reliance on "re-nosed" press releases.

"Increasingly local stories are making way for cheap homogenous UK national news straight off the agency wires and equally cheap stories about celebrity gossip. This does not foster effective guardianship of the public interest – but it is a direct and predictable consequence of Trinity Mirror's business strategy."

But Edmunds, speaking on behalf on Trinity Mirror, called the accusations "insulting".

"The easily repeated barb about the regurgitation of press releases, for example, is tiresome and insulting to the first class journalists and managers in the regional media," he said.

Williams has since responded to Edmund's criticisms by letter, saying he stands by the results of what he insists is new research.

"I was particularly troubled you thought my point about re-hashing press releases was untrue, and insulting to journalists at Media Wales. Sadly, my comment was rooted in fact. Much (not all, of course) of the news that gets published these days is re-hashed PR. How do I know this is the case at Cardiff? Because journalists there have told me (both in interviews and survey responses). The research mentioned above shows that 92 per cent of survey respondents said the use of PR copy in the news had increased in the last decade."

Williams ended his letter by inviting Williams to debate the issues further "in a public forum".

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).