Newspapers are huge success says president at Society of Editors conference speech
A summary of the opening speech by Donald Martin, president of the Society of Editors from its annual conference taking place in Glasgow this morning.
Giving the opening speech to the day, Donald Martin, president of the Society of Editors asked why UK titles were still willing to put each other down while experience of the recent tough times but believed that papers could still be considered a ‘success story’ on the world stage.
He continued to say that papers had had to adopt ‘new ways of operating’ to survive, which has been ‘painful’ with publications ‘not working as effectively’ as they had thought. He underlined this, highlighting the amount that was being spent on production rather that in producing content with a great deal of ‘duplication of resources’ being found in most companies.
“We needed to put time and effort into delivering to the audience that we want,” he said of content provision.
Martin also touched up on the News of the World phone tapping scandal that has been at the forefront of media news in the last year.
“There has been an overabundance of speculation and the danger of this is that it is at the forefront of the public’s mind and that it drags on for years,” he warned in discussing the damage that could be done to the trust that readers have in journalistic truth.
“The question is for those who are concerned for quality journalism is, is it happening now?” he added. “It is time to move onto more current matters.”
Martin went on to say that he felt the mindsets of newspaper must continue to change and also revealed that the society was close to agreeing new methods of working with the police which it hoped would open up new channels of communications between journalists and the police.