COMPELLING local content, holding those in authority to account and supporting the community – they’re all key aspects if a local newspaper is to be successful.

And Tindle Newspapers, the publisher of the Wellington Weekly News, is well placed to do all that – and more.

At a time when many media groups are struggling, Tindle – launched by Sir Ray Tindle after the Second World War with his £250 demob money – continues to look to the future with confidence.

Danny Cammiade, the firm’s chief executive, has a lifetime’s media experience behind him.

Starting off as an advertising rep in West Sussex, he rose to become chief operating officer of Johnston Press, one of the biggest publishing groups in the country.

So he has seen it all and done most of it – and says he is excited by Tindle’s capacity to meet future challenges.

In today’s exclusive interview to mark Journalism Matters Week, Mr Cammiade looks at how the media landscape has changed, why small is beautiful, how Tindle continues to thrive – and why the company is better placed than most to evolve and succeed.

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How confident are you about the future of local newspapers?

The great thing about Tindle Newspapers is that the core ingredient for sustaining local media – which is rich, local content – is there in abundance.

And it’s there in abundance because we have maintained our teams – leadership teams, journalists and sales people – in local territories. And we will continue to do that. 

And the reason that’s so important is because that is the DNA of a successful local media product. Those people live in those towns, they care about those towns, they participate. They belong. Their families are part of the economics of those towns. And we’ve been able to sustain that through a very challenging period in our industry and for the UK economy. We’re well placed to maintain that position.

 

Most of the industry has become digital first. But Tindle has held back from doing that – it still sees newspapers as king. Was that a deliberate strategy?

You can’t ignore the social change that has gone on. You’ve got to recognise things people want to look for from a commercial perspective – cars, property, things for sale – are best served by the digital world. And that’s been reflected in where advertisers have put their money.

That is separate from how can you put your company and your brands in front of prospective purchasers by selling the benefits of your businesses.

Newspapers still – and will do for some time to come – have significant audiences. Small, weekly newspapers particularly have a significant audience in each market for that to be a benefit and deliver results for those advertisers. 

If you can keep that, you’ve got a great opportunity. And the best way of keeping that is to capture that rich local content about what goes on in your community. 

That doesn’t mean you should ignore the digital revolution that’s going on – and it’s not just the impacting the media, it’s impacting everybody’s business – but we need to use those tools to the best of our ability and to add value to our customers. 

So we will be in the digital space and increasingly we will do more things in the digital space, but it will be as well as, and not instead of.

 

So the two should complement each other, rather than compete?

Absolutely. We’ve got to be alive to what’s changing, we’ve got to be part of that. But first and foremost, we provide local news and information at the heart of every community we serve, and that’s about the people.

Our people have to be part of those communities – participate in, belong to, care about.

It’s not any different from when I first started in the industry all those years ago. It’s the DNA of it.

 

Have newspapers almost gone in a full circle? In the past they used to be very, very local – if an ambulance shot past the end of the road, you’d buy your paper to see why.

I do think that being very localised gives you an advantage and gives the advertisers the best opportunity. There is lots of evidence that small parish pump-type publications are rising, and growing. 

The second thing is you have to be within an ownership structure of your company that understands those communities and spaces.

So your master needs to be sympathetic and understand the required culture, which is why Tindle is so well placed.

 

Sir Ray Tindle’s mantra has always been names and faces sell papers…

As an organisation, we haven’t moved away at all from what Sir Ray created and we’re pretty determined to keep the legacy of what he was able to do.

That doesn’t mean we won’t change with the commercial necessities we have to face. But that’s really about using technology to help people do their jobs.

It is true that advertising revenue has dropped by more than half in a relatively short period of time – less than ten years – and you can’t ignore that.

But this organisation has a culture and a set of values that will enable our newspapers and our products to continue to do what they have always done – provide an important source of local news and information in relatively small communities. 

 

The industry has changed so much since your early days when you started … have they been good changes?

I’ve worked in newspapers since 1978. I know I’ve been an incredibly lucky man. I was able to start doing the basic things in a small weekly newspaper in my home town and I was able to grow right the way through the organisation.

So I’ve pretty much done every task – I’ve even written some stories – in newspaper publishing.

The biggest change has to be the digital revolution that we’ve had to address, and the speed of which it changed the business model. 

Newspapers were fundamentally classified based, from an advertising point of view, and now they are almost solely display based. 

That’s been the biggest change.

 

Were papers slow to catch on to the digital revolution?

Yes. I think if you were looking for reasons why we weren’t able to maintain our unique position, it’s because we held on to certain things that we shouldn’t have done. As an industry, they couldn’t get past the fact they needed to work with their neighbour rather than compete with their neighbour. And that, I think, has been perhaps one of the damaging aspects of it all. And they still find it hard now, truth be told. 

But in all the tasks I’ve had, I’ve never moved away that unless you provide rich local content that creates an audience, and creates traction in community – a stickiness in the community – then you won’t survive. Tindle is very well placed for that. 

 

Are the days of newspaper sales growth gone, or are there still opportunities out there if things are done properly?

Newspaper sales have been a challenge for the industry for a long time, and there has been a slow decline for many years. I think overall, the answer is yes – but there are areas where we should expect to do better that would create growth.

You can’t be King Canute – you can’t push back social change – but we have to make sure we don’t move from our core principles, which is to be at the heart of any community we serve.

So that means being in the high street, having sufficient resource to report and engage in those communities, and taking the longer view rather than a short-term view.

 

Will there be newspapers as we now know them in ten years’ time, 20 years?

If only I knew! There needs to be a solution for editorial content to be paid for, because it can’t be supported by advertising alone, like it once was. 

So the holy grail is to ensure we are holding our councils to account, we have sufficient resources to do things, to investigate things at a local level, and that it is maintained – but it needs to be funded and we have to find a way of doing that.

In Tindle’s case, we’re in a better position to do that – and we’re in a better position this year than we were last year. And last year we were in a better position than the year before, so we’re making good progress.

 

So how does heading up Tindle differ from heading up a business like Johnston Press?

It’s very different. Being the chief executive of Tindle Newspapers is a big privilege, as was being chief operating officer of Johnston Press. They’re very different tasks, but they’re both just as enjoyable. 

And I feel humbled the Tindle family asked me to do it. We have good people and we have the right culture and values. And we are evolving change in a way which gives us a strong foundation.

 

Sir Ray through his whole career was acquiring papers here and there and growing his empire. Are those days gone now?

I wouldn’t rule out us having more newspapers in the future than we have today. But I don’t think it’s a necessity.

The most important thing is that we maintain, where we can, what we do today, and then if opportunities came along, then of course we would look at them.

But it’s not necessary for us to be sustained. 

There definitely will be changes in the ownership structure the UK industry. There will be consolidation – there has to be, because for them to drive the benefits of their own ambition in terms of digital and things like that, you need a bigger scale.

And that will create opportunities for those newspapers that don’t quite fit their model. 

And that might be of interest to us.

But it might not, so…

 

Is it still fun? 

Yes, goodness me yes. I’ve always been a person who loves to come to work and that hasn’t changed. It’s probably more fun now.

I had a great period at Johnston Press with growth and learning new things every day. But we also had a period of quite a lot of challenges and difficulties, and a lot of that sat on my shoulders. 

So that bit was less fun, but I still learned from it.

But everything I’ve been able to do, I’ve always been able to get the right balance, I think.

 

The days of 30 per cent returns in the industry are probably gone forever now, so is it a case of managing expectations?

For us to be sustained in the longer term, we have to be profitable. Making losses is not the future. We have to be profitable. 

That might mean we have to think carefully about what we do and where we do it. But I’d be very surprised if margins were an issue for Tindle Newspapers. 

We must make a profit. If we don’t make a profit, it’s very difficult to see how we could get further investment.

 

Are you confident about this year?

I’m a half full guy, so yes. It’s going to be difficult. It’s not easy. But we’ve set ourselves up well, we’ve planned better and prepared better. We’ve got a good structure. We know the areas where we think we can do a bit better and we know the areas that are doing very well. 

So we’re in a better space. 

 

When you go around the country looking at the Tindle newspapers, what still gives you a buzz?

All the company’s papers come to me and I look at every one every week. I read stories that engage me and I read stories from towns I don’t know very much about. But I enjoy the stories. 

Equally, I see stuff I think could be done a bit better, or don’t really understand why they did it that way, and I’ll ask. 

I was looking through some of the papers this morning and I saw some really good stuff. So I’ll send them a note, that their paper was really great. 

And there was another one when I saw something I thought did not quite work. I sent an email asking for their view.

It’s about showing we are bothered and interested, which we really are – it’s not a fake thing.

  

So the bad news for Tindle editors is that you’re as hands-on as ever…

Actually, I’m less hands-on here because the job is different to others I have done. There’s more empowerment here and we have a good team around us, with a blend of new and established people. I think my job is to guide more and to think more about the future, and let others whose job it is to ensure the day-to-day stuff is delivered in the right way to get on with it.

I think bringing on people, giving them the space to learn and grow, is part of it. And that’s because somebody once did that for me.

 

At Tindle, the management seem to look at everything in very close detail – they are very close to their communities.

I think we have a very good business model. Maybe this is overplayed a little bit, because it’s true of other businesses too, but we’re really bothered about what we’re doing – we want this to work, we want it to be sustained. We want the legacy of what has been created still to be here.

We might have to think a little bit differently to make sure that happens, and we’re doing that – but  we’re not doing that in a rushed way. We’re taking our time. 

First and foremost, the foundation has to be strong. And it’s stronger now than it has been for a number of years.