Courier

[Swanseajock]

This is true JD. But I'm wondering if the problem is this?

Every single major commercial company in this country seems to be obsessed with one thing and one thing only - SALES GROWTH. They are not interested in sustaining customer base or maintaining quality of product. Just sales growth, which keeps shareholders happy as it increases their dividends.

So I'm wondering if some ambitious hotshot "Guided Missile" style manager up the road has decided "Hey - I know, if we include stuff from all over argyll, with photos and stories from those areas, people from there, and not just campbeltown will buy it too!! And that will increase sales. And if we half the number of pages and bump the price up to 75p that will cut overheads and increase profits at the same time" Because that's what it looks like to me. Cynic that I am.

I agree with you Mr P. Doon here in Welsh West wales, our evening paper, the South Wales Evenng Post, used to have an early and a final issue and was printed locally. Then the powers to be decided to move all the printing to Bristol, so there is one edition of the Evening Post, which arrives in the morning (trades descripton??) and the news is from yesterday. The content is geting more adverts and less news items. But at leats the web site is free. As an infrequent visitor back to the town I have thought for a long time that the Courier is less local and more Mid-Argyll and getting worse. But as you rightly pointed out, the bottom line is how much the company can make. Is it still a local company that publishes it, or is it a bigger group? The answer to that will tell you where it is going

[Mr Plod]

I dunno about that, but everything in this country is being pinched and squeezed from all directions. Labour costs, raw materials, distribution costs due to rising fuel. Companies are being forced to make savings everywhere and merge services. Hell even local authorities are merging common services across council boundaries so that they can cut costs. I bet everyone can remember when Wagon wheel biscuits were 6 inches across. Now they're the size of a jammy Dodger. So I'm not really surprised at the merging of local news content.

I just think that 10 years ago the Campbeltown Courier was a brilliant local newspaper that everyone really genuinely bought because it had a local story to tell and it was a decent price. Now, it's a shadow of it's former self and I think production costs must be a major factor.

When the Independent brought out the 20p abridged version and claimed it would fill the readers need for short "news bites" snatched over a cuppa at tea break at work or while commuting I kinda thought "OK that's my favourite paper going down the toilet, to be replaced by this orphan thing costing 20p." It has'nt happened yet but I've noticed that the 20p version has 3 times as many copies on display as the original parent paper. Is this deliberate marketing? or is it just that Tesco spotted it was selling more of them and therefore stocked more of them to meet demand.

As I said my wife still buys the courier just in case someone she knows personally has graced it's pages that week, or to see if an event she was at has featured, and is regularly disappointed.

As to where the paper is managed from? In this day and age of computer jiggery-pokery and fast internet connections it's irrelevant geographically where the editor sits or where it is printed, so long as the content is still local to it's readership base (Campbeltown).

But if local content is slowly reduced it will eventually lose it's readers and like a death of a thousand cuts, will slowly become economically unviable. It's a sort of double jeopardy really, as Jamie said, there are a lot of local papers suffering dwindling sales, and the Courier is probably not uniquely immune to those economic pressures. But you'd think that a product aimed at a relatively fixed customer base with no other main competition would want to stick to it's formula that was a success up to recent times.

But there is that thing where most wee toon folk believe there is a kind of Covenant between them and the Courier whereby it should not have outside content unless it has a direct bearing on the wellbeing of the citizens of the town or the town itself. Like when the A83 was closed by landslides for example.

If they return to the previous format of 5 years ago I will happily buy it again, even if it costs a pound.

[Martin]

Our local parer, The Tescoshire Echo, sorry, Lincolnshire Echo has just gone from daily to weekly. It's the same old rubbish but with all the supplements thrown in the one issue. You'd like this one Mr. Plod, many log fires could be lit from it with some left over to hang in the privy.

[smiles]

What a ridiculous letter in the Courier on Friday suggesting the Courier should not be 77p but £1.77 with £1 going to a local cause! If I want to donate £1 to a local cause I'll sure as hell not want to give it to an Oban based company who don't care about Campbeltown.

[jamiemcivor]

I'm not convinced the Courier is any "better" or "worse" in an objective sense than it was in my day. Most of the complaints I hear about the Courier today were made back then too - only then people used to tell me how good the four page broadsheet Courier of old supposedly was.

The story about the Lincolnshire Echo is part of a trend which has been going on in local newspapers across the UK. Daily papers have been going weekly. Similarly a number of supposedly local newspapers no longer have offices within the patch they're supposed to be covering and do too much of their work on the phone!

The reason for all this is, of course, that the newspaper market has been in decline and advertisers have been going elsewhere too. My own bet is that within 10 years the bulk of national newspapers will have closed or evolved into niche products. The cost may seem high - and be too high for some - but Kintyre is actually such a small market it's very fortunate to still have a local paper even if a cover price like that is necessary to make the sums add up.

I'd say to everyone who has a complaint about the content of the Courier to go into the office and offer them a story. Local journalism is a converstation between a paper and its readers - not a one-way monologue. If there's no news from Carradale one week could that be because nobody from Carradale's been in to see them?

By the way back in the mid 90s, the Courier was typically 20 pages in size of which 8 were unique to the Courier and the rest were shared with the Squeak. Now the editorial content of the two papers is entirely separate and only the advertising is normally shared. Even if you don't like the content, The Oban Times group should be commended for doing this as it's certainly a case of swimming against the tide.

[Kintyre Forum News]

I'm not convinced the Courier is any "better" or "worse" in an objective sense than it was in my day. Most of the complaints I hear about the Courier today were made back then too - only then people used to tell me how good the four page broadsheet Courier of old supposedly was.

I have to agree Jamie.

Perhaps people could care to moan more on the Kintyre Forum about the Kintyre Forum and then perhaps we would get some help!

[Jock Strap]

Ali Bone That has to be one of the best name mistakes ever! Still laughing about it, class

[MacMel]

Personally I use the web version at 67.3p a copy for a years sub (34.99).
That does mean I actually pay more as I get every issue whereas if I just buy in Tesco it's far less frequent.
It is a little light on content but what is has is relevant to the area though a lot of the ads seem to have been cross posted from other papers to pad out and increase "coverage" - I really don't want to buy a second-hand teddy bear from Oban

It might want to focus on the positive as has been said as visitors will pick up a copy and it's part of the first impression.