A few months ago a company posted an offer on the site’s ‘Any Takers’ section offering journalists the opportunity to go and take part in a project designed to help save one of the world’s seemingly growing number of endangered animals. Maybe it prompted some to think should journalists and in particular travel journalists be added to the list!
It has been estimated during 2009 local newspapers shed over 1,000 journalists while a new website has just been set up to try and help the estimated 6,000 people who have left the TV industry over the last three years. While not all of the latter will have been journalists many will but it just goes to underline the pressure the media industry is under.
Some salutary figures underline how things are changing, and fast. In 2003 the Nottingham Evening Post’s circulation was 80,000, today its 42,500; while the Leicester Mercury has fallen from 97,000 to 56,000 in the same period. Turning national newspapers the mighty News of the World has slipped from 4m to 2.9m and the Daily Mirror 2.1m to 1.2m. In simple terms it seems falling circulation = falling revenue = falling headcount.
Looking at those regional titles fewer and fewer have anyone with the title – ‘Travel Editor’. Yes they still have travel pages to fill to support relevant advertising, or should it be advertising to support the relevant editorial?
But now it appears a journalist will be given the travel pages to fill in addition to his/her day job. Or, horrors of horrors, the editor’s secretary will do it! So they spend a couple of hours a week ringing some nibs out of press releases and dishing out the odd press trip which makes the main feature. But with falling circulations how much longer will travel companies be happy to offer freebies?
What about the nationals? Are they the last bastion of the Travel Editor or have cracks also started to appear there? Do they have their seat at the editorial conference or are they in fact working from a desk in the spare bedroom and doing everything by email? Can freelancers with stories to sell easily get the ear of the travel editor or is the response from the temp answering the telephone – ‘just put it in an email’ – which never gets answered?
Newspaper circulation is falling and journalist jobs are going - could there be a connection? After all people don’t buy a newspaper to read the advertisements do they.
There is a lot in what you say. I feel that struggling newspapers are missing a trick with their travel pages. When people can receive all their "hard" news via TV and radio, those who buy newspapers are looking for something different. Travel pages should become a highlight of newspapers, written by experts in the field. Instead travel trips are often handed out like toffees to employees, some of whom don't even write for a living - Alan Hart, freelance travel writer.
ReplyDelete