Will the last person to leave the Croydon Guardian offices please turn off the lights?
Nick Hitchens: has opted to leave Newsquest’s south London free newspaper group
Friday was the final day in the office for the former chief reporter and later assistant editor who had been promoted to the role of deputy managing group editor (which probably was never quite as grand as it sounds).
Hitchens had worked on the Sutton and Croydon titles since 2011, and had developed a reputation for delivering some hard-hitting exclusives of genuine importance to south Londoners.
Hitchens is the fourth member of staff on the Croydon-Sutton titles known to have quit the papers, amid a dispute over management policy which union officials have described as “slash and burn”. Rather than struggle on with a management which has a determined policy of disinvestment, reporters Dan O’Mahoney and Andrea Downey left earlier in the month, and as had been trailed by Inside Croydon, Chris Baynes, the titles’ news editor, has now also left.
“It’s been fun, interspersed with relentless toil,” Baynes tweeted on Friday. “But mostly fun.”
Some of the journalists have quit their (low-paid) jobs without alternative employment to go to immediately, so demoralised have they become working for highly profitable Newsquest.
On titles which were already struggling with a skeleton staff, it is hard to imagine how the Croydon Guardian will manage to appear, online or in print, in any credible form even when the strike action is over.
During the strike, Newsquest management has been publishing a few press releases and generic news stories culled from the interweb. The industrial dispute was re-activated by the National Union of Journalists after the management failed to show up for their promised talks.
Newsquest has been operating a “ghost paper” in neighbouring Streatham for some time; there is no print edition any longer, with its costly paper, ink and delivery to be paid for, but management has maintained an online presence, utilising generic local content generated by the handful of journalists retained elsewhere in south London, interspersed with a bit of clickbait and a few press releases, to fit around its paid-for advertising.
Some of Newsquest’s multi-million-pound revenues come from advertising on planning and other matters, which local authorities, including Croydon Council, are obliged by law to place with the newspapers to fulfil a public information remit. The statutory regulations mean that ad rates may be being paid out of public funds for circulations which have not existed in any real terms this decade.
Says it all really
“Newsquest is proposing to pool all the reporters at its south London titles together, with none of them covering specific patches,” one NUJ member explained.
“They want 12 reporters covering 11 papers, the consequence being none of the reporters will have any relationship with any patch and will rarely get to leave the office or do anything resembling meaningful journalism, instead just churning out press releases for the company to sell ads around.
“Unsurprisingly there has been several resignations across the newsroom and almost everyone eligible has applied for voluntary redundancy.”
Those opposing the Newsquest cuts have taken to tweeting this riddle:
What has 0 journalists, 0 photographers, 0 leisure, 0 features, 0 sports reporters and 0 editors?
To which the answer is the title of almost any Newsquest “news”paper in south London.
Pointedly, the protestors have tagged @FaureWalker in their tweets, being the handle of Henry Faure Walker, the CEO of Newsquest.
Newsquest Media Group made a pre-tax profit of £58.7 million in 2014 on a turnover of £279 million.
- Still Croydon’s only independent news source, and based in the heart of the borough: 1.97 million page views 2013-2015
- Inside Croydon: Named among best regional media campaigns, 2014
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, a residents’ or business association or local event to publicise, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
The obituary for the Croydon Guardian should have been written many years ago. It has not been a recognisable newspaper in any sense of the word for many years, simply an agglomeration of tedious advertising tenuously linked by some thin and sketchy, vaguely local stories.
RIP Guardian…you will not be missed.
We should all be mourning for the passing of an era of a genuine traditional local press— of paper local papers.
The online versions are a sad agglomeration of advertisements of direst naffness.
RIP Guardian, and I really hope that those principled journalists who have said enough is enough, get decent jobs quickly in what ever field they choose.
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I mourn the passing of a local, independent press as much as anyone. Unfortunately, it has been ages, eons, since we had a truly independent, courageous, enterprising local newspaper. The Guardian ceased to be even a pale simulacrum of one many years ago and deteriorated into a cut-and-paste support for meretricious advertising. The Advertiser lost its cojones just as long ago and never did anything, said anything, supported anything that might possibly alienate its advertisers, local politicians, the Church, local religious organisations. our saintly Westminster representatives, property developers and any form of community group. It too ceased to be anything but chaff ages ago. Its amazing that Liverpool can support a vibrant, local paper like the Echo, Shropshire can support real local papers with an independent, individualistic point of view but Croydon, the largest and most diverse of all the London Boroughs, larger than many cities and with more residents than many counties, can’t even support a give away paper! Inside Croydon (not being sycophantic…I have no shares!) is the only truly local, independent newspaper!
Flattered, Arno. Too kind.
But we’re not a newspaper, never have been and probably never will be.
We’re a news and views website. It’s the 21st century, after all.
Yes,true…but you are what a newspaper should be….independent and sensibly opinionated! Being that is what keeps me alive at my advanced age! Don’t change.
This is a terrible blow against local democracy. Without any local journalists, this rag will not be read, advertisers will not buy space and it will surely sink. Croydon Tories get their activists to plant letters in the Croydon Guardian which is then distributed free of charge throughout the borough. With a dwindling member base, and only 1500 or so Twitter followers, what are they going to do for free publicity?