Local UK papers facing widespread closure, analysts warns

Posted by Emily Dilling on June 18, 2009 at 3:55 AM

An analyst has brought the imminent closure of local and regional papers in the UK to the attention of MPs, saying that half of the titles could shut by 2014 if revenue continues to decrease at the same pace, the Guardian reported.

The projection offered by Claire Enders, of Enders Analysis, predicted that newspaper revenues would plummet by 52 percent in the course of a 2007 to 2013 time span. At a hearing addressing the future of regional and local media, Enders told MPs that she expected that "half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years."

As is often the case, declining advertising revenue was heavily blamed for the pending extinction of local newspapers. Committee members present at the hearing were told that online search advertising and the government's 2004 decision to pull their recruitment advertising from papers were amongst the reasons for drops in ad-related revenue.

Possibly inspired by Enders' findings, executives from the Guardian Media Group, Trinity Mirror, and Johnston Press have appealed to the Office of Fair Trading to include news aggregators like Google in their definition of the market. The dominant opinion in the industry is that such aggregators generate profits by taking content, and traffic, from online news sites and selling advertising space.