By John McLellan
Anyone looking at looking at the newspapers stand in their local supermarket on Friday – and in the case of The Herald on Sunday today – could not have missed the multi-coloured array of front pages of all the daily titles, all saying the same thing; stay at home.
The same wrap-around covers will appear with all weekly newspapers this week, the start of a multi-million pound partnership between the UK Government and the newspaper industry which aims to get the safety message to as wide an audience as possible.
Writing in The Times yesterday, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport minister Oliver Dowden explained the campaign would “maximise government communications aimed at helping keep the public safe and the nation united throughout the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Describing it as an “unprecedented advertising partnership” he added that at a time when newspaper advertising revenues have declined by as much as 90 per cent, the campaign would “also help alleviate the pressures felt by the loss of those commercial advertising revenues”.
The majority of the money will go to regional and local publications, many of which now face the very real prospect of permanent closure because both advertising and sales revenues have collapsed. Of four Scottish publishers I spoke to last week, the best cited a 70 per cent fall in paid-for advertising and two reported it had all but vanished.
Last week two other Scottish weekly papers were forced to suspend publication, the West Highland Free Press and the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, and while their publishers have every intention of returning to print there are no guarantees. So the money from the UK Government advertising campaign can’t arrive a moment too soon.
Mr Dowden has also written to producers of the UK’s 100 biggest brands to make sure their online advertising policies do not block ads from appearing next to news about the pandemic, as some have been doing, because not only is the information providing a public service, but virus stories are so dominant that such a block is effectively an advertising ban.
So Mr Dowden and Michael Gove in the Cabinet Office – a former reporter for Aberdeen’s Press & Journal – are doing what they can to help the newspaper industry survive the crisis, but the Scottish Government also has a role to play. The Scottish Newspaper Society has been in constant dialogue with Scottish ministers and civil servants for the past four weeks to try to achieve similar support for the sector here, and among the requests are an extension of the business rates holiday to news publishers, a support fund and more government advertising as the UK Government has just done.
Other countries have launched news support programmes, like Denmark where the government is paying compensation for advertising losses of up to 80 per cent from a media fund worth £21m, and the devolved Flanders government in Belgium, which also has a compensation package for lost revenues as part of a £174m fund for sport, culture and media. A package is also under discussion in Ireland and most other European countries are working up support programmes.
The Scottish Government included newsagents in the list of permitted retailers and acknowledged that journalism and newspaper production is a key service, a crucial recognition which allowed publishers to continue printing, distributing and selling their titles, so there is no doubt that ministers accept the sector’s value. With some 4,000 people working full-time in Scottish news publishing and 90 per cent of all adults using Scottish news brands every month, it would be quite something if they didn’t.
On a very basic level, those 4,000 jobs depend on it, as does the flow of trusted and authenticated information, but so too does community cohesion and the continuity historic titles provide in recording and reflecting events large and small in momentous times such as we are experiencing now.
However, recognition will count for nothing if news businesses are no longer financially viable, so we hope the Scottish Government will follow the example of legislatures across Europe and beyond and back up their words with deeds.
“Newspapers are at heart of the British media and essential to its vibrant mix,” wrote Mr Dowden. And that certainly includes Scotland.
John McLellan is Director of the Scottish Newspaper Society
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