UK local newspaper closures update: 293 now gone since 2005

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Twenty-two print local newspapers have closed in the UK in the past two years.

Press Gazette’s latest research suggests at least 293 local newspapers have closed since 2005.

Four titles were launched in print between the end of July 2022 and the start of August 2024.

The outlook was better for local digital outlets, however, with 20 launches outweighing 15 closures over the past two years (with one title appearing in both lists).

Press Gazette has compiled a list of local launches and closures since our last update in July 2022, based on reports of launches and closures across Press Gazette and Hold The Front Page. Editions of newspapers have been treated as separate titles.

The closure of titles only tells part of the story as many titles continue but with tiny staffs. Separate Press Gazette research has found that the UK’s three leading local newspaper publishers Newsquest, Reach and National World (which publish the vast majority of titles) employ around 3,000 journalists today compared with 9,000 in 2007.

Eight print titles closed in August 2022 alone as National World, Reach, and the smaller Champion Media Group all made cutbacks – coming days after the closure of five titles by Newsquest which made it into our last update.

Reach ended the free Manchester Weekly News, which had editions covering Trafford and Salford, and said at the time it no longer needed to “flood” the city with print to guarantee advertisers had a wide reach as this role is now fulfilled online instead.

The second-biggest spate of closures in the past two years came in January 2023, with six papers ending their runs – five owned by Highland News & Media, with some merged and the coverage of others moved to Grampian Online, and one by Tindle Newspapers.

One of the Highland titles to close was the Turriff Advertiser, a weekly title founded in 1933 to cover a town in Aberdeenshire. It was affectionately known as The Squeak.

Turiff becomes town without a local newspaper voice

Turiff, a town of around 5,000, now is only covered by Grampian Online.

David Porter, who edited the Turriff Advertiser before its closure, told Press Gazette that since the title ceased printing, “they don’t look to cover the area unless it’s something big.”

Porter said the same applies to the other areas where Highland closed titles, explaining: “The Inverurie Advertiser had the same situation, the Ellon Advertiser had the same situation. Ellon and Inverurie still nominally have a print title after the Inverurie Herald and the Ellon Times integrated into a single title. It does still get produced, but it has no local reporters, and it’s literally done by a guy sitting in The Scotsman’s office in Edinburgh; there’s no input locally.”

Regarding the move to an online model, Porter said: “They tried it with us and it didn’t work, because rural Aberdeenshire, like most of Scotland, has an ageing population. There are a lot of people who come up from down south in England to settle. So we have a much older age base here, and they are print readers.”

Porter believes that the lack of established local media outlets will be damaging for any future attempt to revive the art of local reporting. He said: “There isn’t even an opening for people for people who want work experience, there are no positions for them. That route has just gone.

“If you would get a classroom of journalism students, they all want to write on sport. They don’t want to write on local news. Nobody writes about farming, there’s probably only five of us left in the whole of Scotland.”

Local councillor Alastair Forsyth told Press Gazette that, since the closure: “I regularly get complaints from constituents that they’re not aware of the things going on right under their noses, simply because there is no public discourse for that information to be distributed.”

Forsyth believes this has driven people to sites such as Facebook, which has a page called My Turriff, to find local news. While this can help to fill the void, he sees it as less reliable, arguing that “the advantage of the press is that they have methods and systems that authenticate the veracity of news media”.

Newsquest Scotland also shut down two titles in May 2023. According to Hold The Front Page, a spokesperson said: “Closing our print editions will allow us to focus our resource more on what our audience is telling us they want – breaking news, multimedia content and engaging newsletters while retaining a strong presence in our communities.” Those two titles – the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter and the Irvine Times – continued to publish online and no jobs were lost.

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UK local newspaper launches in print since August 2022

Four print titles were launched in the same period, exclusively by independent or smaller publishers, making it a net loss in print of 18 local newspapers.

Of the launches, one was weekly, two were fortnightly and one was monthly.

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UK local news closures and launches in digital since August 2022

Reach’s closure of 13 Live regional websites at the end of 2023 dominated digital closures in the period. All but two of the closures were in areas traditionally served by Reach’s rivals Newsquest and National World.

The closures took place as part of a restructure that saw Reach cut 450 jobs.

Meanwhile Newsquest closed down The National Wales, its news website for the whole nation, in August 2022 after failing to grow its subscriber numbers to a sufficient level. It had been launched 18 months earlier.

And The QT, a subscriber-based website for the North East launched by a former Newcastle Journal editor, ceased publication in July this year just months after its launch.

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However 19 other launches also took place, meaning they outweighed the effect of the closures.

Seven of those were part of an expansion of The Lead, a self-proclaimed “micro-mag” that “aim[s] to cover the sharp angles that define our life in the UK today”, in the North West of England.

National World launched two local titles in the form of Nottingham World and Derby World. Leicester World was said to be planned to follow soon afterwards last year but it still does not appear to be live.

A number of titles launched via Substack in the form of newsletters of various frequency. Newsquest backed the launch of the Glasgow Wrap under editor Marissa MacWhirter in March 2024, advised by Michael MacLeod who launched his own editions for Edinburgh and London. All three are curation-based rather than primarily doing original reporting.

Also on Substack Mill Media, which has been praised for its other previous launches since 2020 starting with the Manchester Mill, went live with the Birmingham Dispatch in November 2023 while an independent group of journalists started investigative journalism-based The London Spy in May this year.

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The post UK local newspaper closures update: 293 now gone since 2005 appeared first on Press Gazette.

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