Lost for words: Local journalists rail against corporate owner in pay dispute
Reporters from the county’s two weekly newspapers have taken industrial action as owner National World is refusing to meet pay demands
By Sarah Ward
“We are at a tipping point where our members are saying that the direction of the company is wrong and they need to re-think. There has been an investment in shareholders but not an investment in journalists.”
Reporters from the Northants Evening Telegraph and the Northampton Chronicle stopped their news output yesterday and will do so again in coming weeks in a dispute over pay.
Both papers are owned by National World, which acquired the local titles from former owners JPI Media in a 2021 buy out.
Following a vote of no confidence by National Union of Journalist members against the company’s chief executive David Montgomery in July, yesterday saw official strike action in the first of three planned walk outs.
There were pickets at nine sites across the country and it is the first time since 1976 that reporters working for the Northants titles have taken part in industrial action.
Calls for an inflation linked pay rise have been refused and the union has accused Montgomery of creating a ‘damaging culture’ as he sets about restructuring the business and laying off journalists.
NUJ national organiser Laura Davison, was out on the picket line with the local reporters and said:
“This is the first time we have had a national ballot across the whole company and the first time there has been action by members across the country at one time. It is a historic day.
“The dispute is about pay in multiple ways. It is about the cost of living crisis and the fact the company has imposed a 4.5 per cent pay rise in August. It has £22m in cash reserves according to the companies half year financial report and it has paid out £1.4m to shareholders. It has also made multiple acquisitions.
“What they have not done is invest in journalism in a meaningful way. Pay scales have not altered since 2019.
“There are nine per cent pay disparities between people doing the same job. They are refusing to recognise the importance of a fair and transparent pay structure.
“They [the reporters] want minimum salaries that are decent - senior reporters are on less than £23,000.
“People cannot afford to live on that pay. We know journalists who are having to take second jobs.
She added:
“We are at a tipping point where our members are saying that the direction of the company is wrong and they need to re-think. There has been an investment in shareholders but not an investment in journalists.”
Since buying the JPI media titles in a £10.2m deal the firm says its original investment has now been repaid twice over. In recent months it has been buying up more local news titles and the chief executive says the company is in the running to buy national newspaper The Telegraph. It currently owns prestige titles such as The Yorkshire Post and national paper The Scotsman.
However while the empire is being built, the firm has been making redundancies of experienced journalists.
According to the Press Gazette, National World has reduced its staffing numbers by just over a quarter since the acquisition in 2021, now employing 1100 staff.
In recent weeks the company has been making more redundancies, with many long standing journalists quitting the company.
One of the Northants reporters taking industrial action yesterday, said:
“All journalists who work here rely on a partner who earns more money than them.
“We are doing this because we care about the newspaper and we don't want it to go under. The Northants Telegraph has been here for 125 years.
“We are just asking for a pay rise in line with inflation. This is where we are saying to the owners - enough is enough, we are done.”
Another said:
“What is going to happen to our local newspapers? I don't think people are aware of the state of the industry. It is one of those things, when it is gone, it is gone and it won’t be coming back.”
The Labour parliamentary candidate for Corby Lee Barron, who is also Midlands regional secretary of the Trades Union Council, went along to show his support to the NUJ members.
He said:
“The company is exploiting the good nature of its staff. Terms and conditions are being driven down. One of the reasons they are out here is not just about the pay and conditions, it is about the future of the industry.”
The PR firm that handles National World’s media has been contacted for comment.
NN Journal view
The pay dispute by National World reporters is part of a wider issue about the decline of the local news industry.
Since social media took hold in the mid 2000s, the industry has suffered hugely, with advertisers taking their money away and in turn the large corporations which own most of the country’s local newspapers have cut back or closed down many much loved news titles, making huge numbers of trained journalists redundant.
That has of course impacted the service the local media is providing to its community, with Northamptonshire’s two surviving newspapers now much diminished in terms of staff. Both the Chronicle and Echo and the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph have also closed down their head offices and today operate from small offices in out of the way areas.
Northamptonshire is now a county without a daily newspaper, a shocking situation, when you consider a current serving member of the now weekly Northants Telegraph can remember a time when the then Northants Evening Telegraph was selling 49,000 copies each day.
News has not gone away, rather the reporters who bring you that news are disappearing.
It is NN Journal’s view that local news in Northamptonshire is heading towards a crisis. It has already been marked out as a news desert by a number of studies and the increasingly rare job adverts for news reporters often fail to get any candidates in Northamptonshire, as there are simply not enough qualified reporters out there willing to work for the pay on offer. Working in public relations or media communications is vastly better paid.
Social media, with unchecked, unverified and often untrue information cannot replace a local news service and our communities are much less well informed than they were twenty years ago.
As the slogan of The Washington Post says, Democracy Dies in Darkness and Northamptonshire’s communities need their local media to keep shining a light.
So please support your local news by buying your local newspaper and if you can please help ensure the future of our independent news effort by considering a paying subscription.
As an oldie who helped lead the last local NUJ action back in 1976, I fully sympathise with the put-upon reporters. But I must say it's a shame that NNJ is the only county news outlet still presenting what I call real journalism. Both papers are pale shadows of what they once were. That's not going to change anytime soon!
There is an issue that the print journals do not have that much news in them. Often reporting is regurgitating press statements with little comment.
NN journal succeeds for me because it's is proper investigative journalism so worth investing in.