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 ?
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The people behind Y Byd project had some not very nice things to say about Rhodri Glyn Thomas today.
Dyddiol Cyf. the company behind the project to launch a Welsh language daily newspaper today published a News Release today attacking the Welsh Assembly’s Culture Minister.
Rhodri Glyn Thomas’ decision not to give them the grant they wanted – around £1 million – to set up a daily Welsh language newspaper has irritated them. So they’ve hit back hard and low.
They invoke the One Wales political agreement of 27th June 2007 between Labour and Plaid Cymru, claiming that Rhodri Glyn Thomas has reneged on a “promise” within that manifesto.
And they claim (in Welsh) : Rydym fel cenedl yn haeddu papur dyddiol. Mae angen llais newyddiadurol ychwanegol ar Gymru er mwyn sicrhau plwraliaeth o fewn y cyfryngau. (We as a nation deserve a daily newspaper. Wales needs another journalistic voice to ensure pluralism within the media).
This is bunkum. Wales does not need a printed Welsh language daily newspaper subsidised by the taxpayer. The driving force behind this project is greed and vested private interests.
It is exactly a year since we wrote about
the forgotten people of Hirwaun. In our report we tried to convey the basic facts which went unreported by Trinity Mirror, publishers of the Cynon Valley Leader.
The willingness of working people to respond to the challenge of overdevelopment in Hirwaun was a story we could not ignore.
Events have moved on swiftly since then : the English housing developer seeking to build several hundred homes in the last remaining green space in Hirwaun (the Gloucester site and nearabouts) had their planning application rejected by Rhondda Cynon Taff Council. They have since appealed against that decision, and this has led to the decision being reviewed by the Welsh Assembly.
There will therefore be a public inquiry at Hirwaun on Tuesday 23rd October 2007, held at Hirwaun Community Centre. Starting promptly at 10am. The Public Inquiry may run for two days.
Why should you bother to attend such a public meeting ? Karen Morgan of Action for Hirwaun puts it eloquently and passionately thus : “Please, please give some of your time to help save the Gloucesters by attending some or all of the inquiry and having your voices heard. If we all continue to stand together as a community, we have a good chance of winning and we’ll have some kind of legacy to leave behind for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.”
Heed the whispered warnings of ghosts, listen to their advice and co-operate with them. They tell us about the past and foretell our future.
In the photograph there is a misty view across the Cynon Valley, from Cwmbach looking down the hill near St Margaret’s Church, towards Aberaman and Aberdare. The photographer has failed to capture a ghost, so instead offers to sketch some notes.
In Cwmbach the first Co-Operative Society in Wales was formed in 1860. On this little Welsh hill there was a magnificent Co-Operative store that lay at the heart of a vibrant Welsh community ‘growing-up’ in the era of industrialisation.
Borrow a Welsh Mam today
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Nearly fifty years ago John Kenneth Galbraith published his book The Affluent Society (1958) about the haves and have-nots of modern capitalist society.
The postcard on the left with images from Cwmbach is a reminder of the differences between the haves and have-nots.
Affluent Society was a book about contrasts in the economy. In Aberdare, the gulf between rich and poor has been transformed into a grotesque chasm in the past three decades of hyper-capitalism under Thatcher and Tony Blair, her ideological heir.
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Newspapers love to play games with a pliant readership.
The most common game played is Hide the News Story.
Take a recent example …
Did you catch the news story there ?
Page 26 of the Cynon Valley Leader, November 16 2006.
Had it been pushed just a little further back it would have ended up in the darts or football results section of the newspaper. But that might have drawn attention to the story.
About the size of two or three postage stamps.
No ? Then try this … Read the rest of this page »
