Changes Ahead for Cynon Valley Leader and Aberdare
March 8, 2008
Trinity Mirror - the media Corporation which owns the Cynon Valley Leader - has announced Financial Results for the year ending 30 December 2007 painting a bleak picture for the group’s advertising revenue in 2008. The news portends big changes in the operations of local newspapers such as Cynon Valley Leader, based in Commercial Street, Aberdare.
Chief Executive Sly Bailey was keen to emphasise the progress the group is making in ‘going digital’.
In 2003, when Sly Bailey became Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror, digital revenues represented less than half a per cent of the group’s total revenue. Today, digital revenues account for 3.7 per cent of the group’s total revenues.
Trinity Mirror said in its financial results statement that “going forward, our aim is to increase substantially digital revenues as a proportion of total group revenues”.
Trinity Mirror is one of Britain’s largest publishing groups, owning over 200 regional newspaper titles. In October 2007, Trinity Mirror re-branded their portfolio of business in Wales as Media Wales, which took over from the company name of Western Mail and Echo Ltd.
Media Wales is responsible for 16 print titles in Wales, a portfolio of magazines, and a fast-expanding digital presence. The company also claim to have invested heavily in a new state-of-the-start news facility in Cardiff on the site of the Thompson House building. They have dubbed the project a 24×7 ‘around-the-clock’ news operation.
How will these Changes affect the publication of news in Aberdare ?
As Trinity Mirror operate as monopolistic publishers of print news in Aberdare and surrounding Valleys, their changing corporate strategy deserves intense scrutiny.
The Cynon Valley Leader newspaper is a limb from a corporate media leviathan that shapes democracy in Aberdare and elsewhere across Wales.
Massive capital investment by this corporate leviathan in a central location far removed from Aberdare will inevitably mean even less local editorial input and local content via the Cynon Valley Leader.
Churnalism - Recycling Aberdare News
Over the past decade, the journalistic content of Cynon Valley Leader has taken a nose-dive and all but evaporated with an increasing reliance on recycled copy from the PR departments of other local Corporations, in particular, Rhondda Cynon Taf Council.
This is not particularly unusual for Aberdare as it affects all newspapers.
A recent study (published in Feburary 2008) by Cardiff University School of Journalism highlighted the fact that the ‘news’ content of the majority newspapers is nowadays around 80% recycled PR copy. In other words, your ‘news’ is in fact advertising packaged as a news story. They call it churnalism.
Final thoughts
Aberdare has had a print newspaper published for 106 years, but there is no guarantee this will continue for evermore. Trinity Mirror’s financial results reflect a keen awareness that it must innovate in the digital market to survive. Whether the increasing reliance on new technology and a digital presence leads to better journalism OR more churnalism in the Cynon Valley Leader is a moot point … and left as an exercise for the blog reader!
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Useful References
Financial Results for Trinity Mirror Plc (owners of Cynon Valley Leader) available here
Flat Earth News book by Nick Davies
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