Page 14 - Newspaper of the Future Case Study

Scotsman Staff

2005 322 journalists

2006 280 journalists

In 2008 editorial and production head count at the Scotsman were combined in
the annual accounts and showed a fall from 456 to 414 in 2008. By the end of
2011the number of journalists had fallen to 196. In contrast JPR Group
employed 7,538 people, of which 2,435 were editorial staff. By the end of 2011,
overall head count was down to 4839 of which 1800 were editorial.

By January 2016 JP had shed some 1000 journalists since 2009 in its attempt
to deal with its debt mountain and a sizeable hole in its pension fund. This was
against an industry background where the number of newspapers purchased in
the UK was declining:

Newspapers bought daily in the UK

13 million 2006

12million 2010

6 million 2016

“In a world that rewards journalistic product by volume, we go back
to the divide between Who/What/When/Where journalism and the
higher-value How/Why, with the latter clearly more useful to
citizen readers as they try to make sense of disconnected facts (“The
newsonomics of how and why”).

The following extract helps to highlight problems of journalistic
independence.

“Nine months after a massive propaganda campaign based on outright lies,
the BBC quietly sneaked out
http://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications/ an
admission on its website tucked away in “corrections and complaints”. As the
BBC went all out to galvanise support for bombing Syria, the memo was
pumped out relentlessly that opponents of bombing Syria were evil and
violent misogynist thugs, bent on the physical intimidation of MPs. Leading
the claims was Stella Creasy MP.