Brent & Kilburn Times saved by takeover

 

Some of the many Archant titles

Brent's only surviving local paper, the Brent and Kilburn Times, which during the Covid19 crisis has been asking readers for support has been saved from bankruptcy and potential closure along with other Archant titles. Readers will have noticed how thin the paper has been recently.

The Eastern Daily Press, lead title of the 150 year group, explained the acquisition by Rcapital.

Norwich-based Archant - which publishes EDP, Norwich Evening News and many newspaper and magazine titles throughout East Anglia and beyond - has been acquired by new investors who will provide funding to continue its transformation into a successful modern media company.

The announcement also gives security for many hundreds of Archant pensioners and their families, and protects the hundreds of local businesses Archant trades with, who may otherwise have suffered losses 
had the business, hit hard by Covid-19, been forced into bankruptcy.

Simon Bax, Archant’s Executive Chairman, said safeguarding the interests of local suppliers and customers, and its near-1,000 employees had been his priority.

Archant and our newspapers and magazines are an intrinsic part of East Anglian life. Not only do we employ hundreds of people in the region, but we are also an important part of hundreds of other local businesses who supply us, or depend on us to help grow their business.

Like so many other businesses, Covid-19 threw us into a very difficult position. Naturally, I am very sad this deal marks the end of ownership of the local families who founded our company all that time ago. But equally I am happy we have found a new partner who respects our heritage and is able to nurture Archant’s future.

I would also like to thank the Colman and Copeman families who have been the custodians of quality journalism in East Anglia for so long – their legacy is a modern media company that will continue to proudly serve the region.

The new owners, family-based firm Rcapital, specialise in backing companies with immediate financial challenges but who otherwise have ambitious and compelling plans for commercial success.

Chris Campbell, partner at Rcapital, said:

We are incredibly pleased to have worked alongside Archant’s management team and KPMG to put forward a plan that will restructure finances and inject fresh capital into one of Britain’s oldest local newspaper brands. We are hopeful, that with the support of its creditors, Archant will emerge from this challenging period as a stronger business that continues to provide a vital service to its clients and readership. Today’s announcement marks an exciting next phase for both Archant and Rcapital - I am looking forward to working with Simon and his team to deliver on the transformation plan.

Like many other businesses in the UK, Archant had become increasingly hamstrung by multi-million payments required to pay down the large deficit in its long-defunct company pension scheme.

Under the deal, that pension scheme has been transferred to the Pension Protection Fund, a public body responsible for managing almost a quarter of a million pensions in the UK.

Shareholders in holding company Archant Limited, which has been placed into administration as part of the change of ownership, have been informed their shares are now of no value.

There is no interruption to publishing in the business, which continues to trade as before.

Clearly it is early days and we will have to wait to see what the 'transformation plans' will mean in terms of jobs and the survival of titles. Closure or transfer to on-line would be a blow against local democracy. The group have this week launched a campaign backing local councils' demands for adequate post-Covid funding.

Newsquest makes Christmas cuts & redundancies as boss pockets £1million plus

As readers will know the local press is in crisis. The Wembley and Harrow Observer went over to on-line only with extremley limited coverage of local news and the Brent and Kilburn Times is much reduced in size and coverage as a result of staff cuts.

Now Newsquest, publisher of local newspapers is making staff redundant as this press release from the NUJ reports:

Newsquest’s chief executive Henry Faure Walker’s pay and perks have passed the £1m mark, but scores of journalists face being made redundant just in time for Christmas. Others have been told their meagre overtime and anti-social hours’ payments will be pared down.  

Newspapers throughout the group have been told jobs will go and payments for working bank holidays and weekends and mileage rates will be cut. This follows a year of job losses, title closures and cuts which have all taken their toll on staff, as a group-wide stress survey has shown. Reps said the latest round was “potentially hazardous to health – both physically and mentally”.

The Newsquest November cull has become such a regular feature that it has been given its own festive hashtag of #Scroogequest

Union reps met on Monday 27 November to discuss the situation. Newsquest refuses to consult the union on a national level, despite it being obvious that all its newspapers are controlled centrally by the group. One rep called the latest round of cuts “insane” since it will be impossible for the remaining staff to take on the extra work.

Staff at Darlington have decided to ballot for industrial action and the ballot will start on Thursday 7 December.

In York, where The Press, Gazette & Herald, York Herald and Yorkshire Living are published, three staff jobs are at risk of redundancy, including the popular arts editor, and no editing staff will work on Sundays. At the Bradford Telegraph and Argus the five roles are at risk with three newsdesk jobs to be cut to one, and an edition dropped, while the number of journalists on the Craven Herald and Ilkley Gazette will be reduced from three to two. In south London the staff’s work-to-rule is one year old. A sub-editor and freelance photographer have recently been cut. In Glasgow, several long-serving staff have agreed to leave, with some negotiating freelance contracts with Newsquest. After the editors of The Herald and Evening Times step down in December, Newsquest's flagship titles will be run by a single editor-in-chief, Donald Martin.  

Newsquest plans to shut the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard’s office in Cirencester with two editorial roles at risk of redundancy. The company also plans to reduce the number of sports editors working at three sister titles – the Standard, the Gloucestershire Gazette and the Stroud News & Journal – from three to two. Consultations will be completed at the end of the month and the Standard’s office will close at the end of December if the proposals go ahead. Fears that cuts would inevitably follow the sale of the Isle of Wight County Press have proved correct – Newsquest has called for voluntary redundancies four months after it bought out the independent publisher.

The Newsquest NUJ group chapel said: “Reps from around the group met and relayed an appalling array of job cuts in key areas of the newsrooms and arrogant moves to strip away the small recognition staff get for the sacrifices they make for working bank holidays and weekends.

“The cuts are relentless and pitiless and are potentially hazardous to health – both physically and mentally – as the comprehensive NUJ stress survey completed just a few months ago showed.

“We demand that senior managers carry out their legal duties and take a grip on the clear safety concerns that are flashing red throughout the group. They cannot be Pontius Pilate and wash their hands of the implications of their demands to local managers to meet unrealistic financial targets. Our members deserve safe and healthy workplaces where they have the resources to produce quality journalism and have enough pay to support themselves and their families. This cannot be too much to ask when their boss has just celebrated his pay package yielding £1 million with the meter still ticking and the year-end still a month away.”

Chris Morley, Newsquest NUJ group co-ordinator, said: “Newsquest is addicted to cuts in a way that gamblers are to fixed odd betting machines. This is no strategy for the short-term – never mind the long-term. Savage cuts have not worked in the past 10 years, so why do they think it will turn the company’s fortunes around now? We strongly urge senior management to take matters in hand. Give long-suffering staff the break they so desperately need and reverse the strategy into one of investment. With no debt, the company can clearly afford this, but what it can’t afford is a broken and demoralised workforce that is driven into the ground.”

The survey, which used a traffic light system to evaluate the levels of stress, took place during the second half of August and September 2017 among Newsquest NUJ members and attracted a strong response with 115 completed surveys.  

In a letter relaying the results to Newsquest, Chris Morey said: “I would hope that you recognise the fact that five of the seven categories of ‘stressors’ - demands, managers’ support, relationships, role, and change - were all red – was extremely serious. Even in the remaining two categories – control and peer support – the amber score showed that there was a ‘clear need for improvement’. Of the 32 questions asked, only one, ‘I have a choice in deciding how I do my work’, was scored lower than red or amber.”

Anonymous comments from journalists taking part in the survey said:

“I often feel stressed, under pressure and don’t take enough screen breaks, or breaks in general. Even taking holidays, because of lack of staff, is a stressful business. I work very long hours. Because I often work remotely, as they closed our office, I am alone and isolated.”

“The lack of organisation, harassment of colleagues and a bullying line-manager have created unprecedented stress levels.”

“Pressure of online demands means working at lightning speed for up to 12 hours a day with no real break.”

“I am concerned that cracks are appearing in my health that are directly linked to the job.”

Chris Morley concluded: “It is a fundamental legal responsibility of management to provide a safe and healthy working environment. It is the NUJ contention that, in many Newsquest centres, the company is at risk of not complying with this legal requirement. To date, we believe the company’s response has not been adequate, particularly as there is a lack of faith that anything positive will be done to address failings locally, given the relentless corporate pressure of cost-cutting and staff reductions.”

Find out how much Faure Walker has made using the NUJ’s pay meter - many of his staff haven’t yet hit £20,000 

https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/proper-pay-matters-meter-is-ticking-on-newsquest/

Times changing for the better at the BKT?

This week's edition

Our local newspaper the Brent and Kilburn Times will be without News Editor Lorraine King  by the end of next week and reporter Nathalie Raffray has already gone to the Ham and High. Lorraine will become Editor of the (deep breath!) Barking and Dagenham Post, Newham Recorder and the Dockands and East London Advertiser. 

Where does that leave us in Brent?  As part of Archant's shift towards digital and its cut back in jobs a junior reporter (we used to call them 'cub reporters' in the old days) will be all that is left. He will face the daunting task of reporting on a major London borough of 325,000 people (and growing), one of the most diverse in the country, with great potential as well as major social problems, covering huge and often controversial regeneration projects, and an almost 'one party' Council that needs fearless scrutiny.

Some people  have told me of their envy for Camden residents who have the lively Camden New Journal and say we need a local paper like that in Brent.  Local papers are under financial pressure through loss of readers, loss of advertising and competition from the social media, but they also need good management and excellent distribution. Both the latter appear to be missing. I was told by a newsagent on Kilburn High Road only last week that he had stopped stocking the Brent and Kilburn Times because distribution was so unreliable. It is given away at some supermarkets,  stations and  estate agents but there are no longer house to house deliveries and the paper is often not to be found in newsagents.

All that said, local newspapers need to be supported by residents, not only through buying them but through writing letters, phoning in stories and encouraging a robust attitude towards upsetting local big wigs.

As someone remarked to Lorraine on Twitter, 'If you don't put some backs up you are not doing your job.'

Lorraine King announces her departure from the Brent and Kilburn Times

Lorraine King

Lorraine King announced on Twitter over the weekend that she will be leaving the Brent and Kilburn Times at the end of this month:

Sad to say I'll be leaving the @bktimes on January 31 after many, many years. I'm really sad to go but as they  say onwards and upwards

Lorraine has been reporter, news editor and digital editor at the Kilburn Times and will be moving elsewhere in Archant.  Her tweet immediately drew tributes from Brent residents' associations, councillors and many  Kilburn Times readers.

Fans will still be able to hear her DJing on Colourful Radio on Saturday mornings. http://www.colourfulradio.com/

Lorraine's strength as a reporter and editor is that she is a Brent local with strong roots in the community and cares deeply about  what goes on in the area.

There have been times when her passion to fight for the community through campaigning articles has not made her popular with the local council (of whatever political hue) but the role of a local newspaper is to help hold politicians to account and that she did well.

These are difficult times for local newspapers and Archant is going through a second round of  restructuring and has reduced reporting staff with more pooled stories and a move towards 'digital first'.  The Brent and Kilburn Times has become thinner and distribution is sometimes patchy but I believe that it is essential that it survives for the sake of local democracy and part of the glue that holds a community together.

Here are some memorable front pages fom the Kilburn Times:

PS Lorraine, I resisted mentioning the shoes.

NUJ: Archant redundancies will mean more work and more stress for already overburdened staff

The National Union of Journalists  has just issued this statement on the Archant redundancies:

Archant has announced changes to its content operation which could result in the loss of up to 57 jobs and the creation of 40 new roles. Design and production of the company’s newspapers will be separated from the content creation function with a centralised production unit in Norwich responsible for all print titles.

Archant publishes 50 weekly newspapers the south of England and four East Anglian dailies: the Eastern Daily Press, Ipswich Star, East Anglian Daily Times and the Norwich Evening News.

Andy Smith, NUJ national executive member, said:

We are extremely concerned by the news of the proposed job losses at Archant.

The union has yet to meet Archant management formally to discuss the proposals, but the there is little in the reported statements from Jeff Henry, chief executive, or Matt Kelly, chief content officer, to indicate how moving to an ‘audience first’ approach can justify the loss of at least 17 jobs.

Putting 57 staff at risk of redundancy, particularly at this time of year, will be incredibly stressful for them all, and our first responsibility is to support our members through this process. Though the consultation is at a very early stage, it is difficult to see how these proposals can have any other effect than to impose more work and more stress on an already overburdened staff still coming to terms with the effects of the photographer redundancies made earlier this year.

Quoted in the Press Gazette, Matt Kelly said: “Editing the newspaper will be done with a very light touch from title editors – I do not want editors spending hours deciding between the page 9 and page 15 leads, or coping with the perennial last minute need for dozens of fillers to complete news pages.”

He said the new “content rooms” will be “less hierarchical” under the proposed changes.

Archant redundancies likely to hit Kilburn Times

Norwich based Archant, publishers of the Brent and Kilburn Times, and many other local papers, has announced a new 'audience led' strategy which will see News Editors replaced by 'content editors; who will oversee a system in which digital content will feed straight into the printed paper.

Redundancy notices were being issued today by email and are likely to include Lorraine King, veteran news editor of the Brent and Kilburn Times.   King's strength has been the fact that she is firmly part of the local community and has been unafraid to campaign on issues such as retention of local libraries, saving Stonebridge Adventure Playground and the future of Central Middlesex Hospital.

Importantly King has not given in to pressure from Brent Council's political leadership to adopt a more friendly approach to the Council. LINK

Staff will be only offered statutory redundancy pay.

There was a wave of redundancies in 2011-12 at Archant which eventually left the Kilburn Times with the equivalent of 1-1/2 reporters, now the combined role will be equivalent to one person running the newspaper AND website.

Readers will have noticed how the number of pages of the BKT has shrunk in the past few years which means that many stories that are published on the web do not make it into the print edition. This can be frustrating for local people who want to see their cause given publicity.

Archant seems determined that they will not suffer the fate of the Wembley/Harrow Observer which switched to 'digital only' and in the guise of Get West London LINK has all but disappeared.

Matt Kelly, Archant's chief 'contents officer' said LINK :

Our strategy to be more relevant than ever before is not dependent on platform.

Our strategy begins and ends with our audience. That’s why we describe our approach, quite simply, as audience-first.

Editing the newspaper will be done with a very light touch from title editors – I do not want editors spending hours deciding between the page 9 and page 15 leads, or coping with the perennial last minute need for dozens of fillers to complete news pages.”

I think the results are stunning, and that both you and – even more importantly – our readers will love them.

Senior reporters and specialists will be encouraged to publish direct to digital and – liberated from the domineering task of filling the newspaper – I expect to see us create even more content than we do today.

To facilitate the easy production of the newspaper, we will create content in pre-ordained styles that will both look great online and in print. But the practice of holding content back for print will end, with very few exceptions.

In a nutshell, I am asking us to stop editing a newspaper, and instead edit the community we serve.

This sounds remarkably like a print edition of the web-pages and with the accompanying centralisation perhaps less sensitive to local issues.

A spokesperson for the NUJ told me this afternoon that they were still in meetings about the changes but stated that they were very concerned about the impact on the quality of journalism and the service local newspapers give their readers.  In particular they had had nothing from Archant on how the remaining staff would cope with the new workload and were concerned about their members' well-being.

I hope the NUJ, as they did in 2011, will put up a fight for their journalists, but meanwhile I salute Lorraine King and her other news editor colleagues for the job they have done in maintaining a robust scrutiny of local democracy and publicising and often backing local campaigns.

Our democracy cannot afford to lose this essential service, unfortunately with one person being left to cover the whole borough and the inevitable impact on the quality of the newspaper, I can see the eventual demise of the Brent and Kilburn Times.

Brent needs healthy local newspapers to hold Council to account

I have written about the importance of the local press for democracy before on this site. Here in Brent we have the Brent and Kilburn Times, owned by the Archant group and the Wembley and Willesden Observer, owned by Trinity Mirror. In some parts of the north of the borough the Harrow Times also circulates.

The number of reporters on the Brent ands Kilburn Times has reduced from the paper's heyday and readers will have noticed that the number of pages has also been reduced. It is sold in newsagents but also distributed free at some supermarkets, estate agents and elsewhere. It does not always contain a letters page which is often a good indicator of a newspaper's engagement with readers.

The Wembley and Willesden Observer is rather different as it is a local edition of the Harrow Observer series and despite having a great local reporter in Hannah Bewley is usually dominated by news about Harrow. A reader has to double check on stories beginning 'The Council...' to see which Council is involved - more often than not it is Harrow.

The paper's  door-to-door distribution in Brent is very patchy and its price of 90p where sold is unpopular with readers when they discover it contains very few Brent stories.

Trinity Mirror has gone through a difficult period and earlier this month told West Londoin staff that the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle, Westminster Chronicle and Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle were to close.

Trinity also  announced that their titles in Uxbridge, Hounslow and Ealing are to switch from door-to-door to 'pick-up' only. The Harrow Observer will remain distributed door-to-door but as I mentioned earlier this does not cover the whole borough of Brent. The newspaper's office is being moved to Watford.

Trinity are going through the process of making staff including reporters, photographers and sales staff redundant and the outcome for the WWO is awaited with some trepidation.

Clearly this is a gloomy picture, not only for the staff concerned, but for the health of local democracy and the important role local newspapers play in holding local councils to account.

Laura Davison, national organiser of the NUJ said about Trinity's closure announcement:

This announcement has come as a terrible shock to the hardworking staff of these titles.The speed of it means there is little time to look at meaningful alternatives to closure.Trinity Mirror should not simply be able to shut down these titles and lock them away after years of starving them of resources.It will leave some communities with no local paper, depriving them of a way to access information and hold local power to account. Readers and the Trinity Mirror journalists who serve them, deserve better.

Martin Shipton, chair of the Trinity Group chapel (NUJ branch), said:

These closures would leave many communities in the outer London area without a local paper, as well as Fulham, a significant and densely populated part of the capital. There is a compelling need for journalistic scrutiny of the budget of local authorities which cover the circulation of these papers. Instead of shutting them down, Trinity Mirror should be investing in quality journalism, for which the public undoubtedly retains an appetite.

I agree.

Support local democracy - buy the Kilburn Times

 Regular readers of the Brent and Kilburn Times will have noticed that the paper has been a lot slimmer recently.  This is the result of cost saving measures that also include a reduction in reporting staff. The Archant Group, along with other local newspaper groups such as Trinity South who produce the Wembley and Willesden Observer, are facing economic difficulties as a result of the loss of advertising revenue in the  recession and declining leadership.

The increase in free distribution of titles is one way of boosting circulation and thus making the papers attractive to advertising. As the remaining pages have to carry the advertisiments this reduces space for news item. The Letters Page has been a casualty of this squeeze on space in the BKT recently so it is good to see it back this week - not just because a letter I wrote about Central Middlesex A&E and schools was published! There was no editorial his week, presumably to squeeze in more letters, but it would be a shame to lose this feature as in my opinion they have been very influential in the past.

Letters pages in local newspapers are part of the lifeblood of local democracy and vary a great deal. The Ham and High and Camden Journal in our neighbouring borough have particularly lively pages and are often the first pages turned to by readers.

So far the slimmed down BKT has continued its high standard of reporting and they continue to originate stories and break exclusives  rather than recycling press releases which unfortunately is the role of many local newspapers with reduced reporting staff.

Our local newspapers  are particularly important in these times when both council and government cuts mean community is losing vital health, police and fire services and many families face hunger and  homelessness. With a weak opposition in  the Council the BKT has a vital role in holding our local politicians to account.

Help keep them going: buy it and advertise in it.