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Do the Trinty Mirror closures spell doom for our own Newspapers?

Posted by: Montage comms | 25.04.08

News that the Trinity Mirror is to close eight loss-making newspapers in Derby and Peterborough, could mean that the writing is on the wall for some of our own weeklies in the West Country.

The group has decided to shut down the titles, which are all free weeklies and include the Derby Trader and the Peterborough Herald and Post.

It is understood that 23 employees will be made redundant after Trinity’s failed attempt last year to find a buyer for its Midlands division.

This has ominous signs for our own local media giant Northcliffe, who also tried to sell it’s own regional network of newspapers recently too (that includes the Bristol Evening Post and the Western Daily Press.)

Indeed Northcliffe’s intentions for the future of its newspapers can be graphically illustrated with the Bath Chronicle, that has now been made a weekly in order to “focus efforts of their online offering.”

Northcliffe are developing online offerings that are getting industry recognition such as the Hull Daily Mail’s website, which is based on reader forums and excepts user generated content and recently won a Newspaper award for the best use of new media. I think that this approach will be vital in media “black holes” that are left by closures of smaller newspapers too.

Locally, the Bristol Evening Post and Western Daily press have merged the Business Desks so one could speculate that the newspapers teams are to be merged under umbrella sites that cover larger areas to save cash. For example the Western Daily Press’ patch.

Locally our newspapers have yet to develop their online offering to the Hull newspapers level of web 2.0 offering, but apparently this model is due to be rolled out across the Nothcliffe network.

It is noticeable that the Plymouth Evening Herald and Western Morning news have developed a strong social networking presence on the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

So what’s next for the Bristol Evening Post’s website?

Montage blogs.

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