and a need to act quickly.
It’s how people learn about the “goings on” at their local council, births and deaths, who’d been in court that week, local sports, and news from their communities.
I’d flick through the copy at my wife’s grandmother’s home each week to learn what was happening in Pontycymer and read the small ads. Facebook groups and the marketplace have replaced both, allowing people to share news and information and list items for free 24 hours a day from the palm of their hand.
Are people aware of what’s going on at their local council via Facebook and other social media platforms? Maybe, but it’s likely they’re learning from the author’s political perspective.
Fast-forward fifteen years to 2019, and the Gazette’s circulation collapsed to 2,859, around 12% of the 23,000 sold in 2004. We will shortly learn how many copies were sold each week in 2024. It’s likely to be down from the 870, yes, eight hundred and seventy, sold each week in 2023.
The commercial news industry in Wales is in terminal decline. Twenty-five years ago, the once great Western Mail was selling 55,000 copies a day; by last year, 2024, that number had collapsed to 4,463, a fall of 92%.
It’s only a matter of time before Wales’s local and semi-national newspapers disappear from newsstands and news moves entirely online.
The business model for news was quite simple. In a pre-digital age, newspapers were people’s main access point for news and information. They had successfully fended off competition from TV and Radio with a unique offer of news, opinion, gossip, sport, and crosswords. They sold in their hundreds of thousands and carried millions of pounds worth of adverts each year.
By the late noughties, Facebook, smartphones and the net had developed to a point where advertisers had new ways of reaching audiences, and, in hindsight, rather foolishly, newspapers started making their content available online for free.
It was hoped that digital advertising would fill the void left by dwindling print sales. That hasn’t been the case, and while online advertising has risen year after year, the news industry’s share of the pie has declined annually.
We must remember that many news publishers are businesses that exist to make profits for their shareholders and owners. The business model for online news depends on people being exposed to advertising in as many numbers as possible. This has led to public interest news and journalism that serves the common good by providing accurate, independent, and accessible information that empowers communities, holds power to account, and supports informed civic engagement being deprioritised. Instead, journalists are tasked and often set targets to provide as many page views for their stories as possible.
Quantity now trumps quality, leading to an increase in clickbait and populist and sensationalist stories.
An increase in online misinformation and disinformation coupled with a shift away from public-interest journalism directly impacts our communities and society, creating a space for bad actors and extremists to thrive.
The need for better, more accessible, and relevant public-interest news provision in Wales has never been greater. We need to act, and we need to act now. New business and service models and public funding are required to provide solutions, ensuring citizens and communities in Wales can access trusted news and information and participate in its creation and delivery, not solely as receivers of news.
The Welsh Government, as part of the cooperation agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru, earmarked £100,000 a year to support public interest journalism in Wales. This financial year, 2024/2025, which ends in two months, has had £350,000 allocated, of which only the continuation of the Senedd Reporter, which received funding in 2023/24, has been spent.
A proper structure for funding public interest news in Wales must be implemented. This structure should prioritise services that can be delivered to Welsh citizens and not lobby on behalf of Wales’s incumbent and failing news businesses. I call on all parties elected to the Senedd to prioritise this.
With Senedd elections due in May 2026, a well-informed and listened-to electorate is critical.