Thursday, December 14, 2006

Crawley News for sale?

Trinity Mirror today announced that it would be selling off a number of its titles (story here). They are keeping hold of their major national papers (the Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People) as well as the regionals in Scotland, Wales and northern England.

However, they will divest of the Racing Post along with all sports titles, and local/regional papers in the Midlands, London and the South East.

The Crawley News is part of 'Trinity Mirror Southern', and so I assume that it is up for grabs. Whether a buyer would take on the whole stable (the Birmingham Post, Croydon Advertiser and Surrey Mirror are also going), or it would be broken up piecemeal isn't clear. Of course, the main alternative chain of regional newspapers owns the Crawley Observer, and so if they bought out the News, they could create a monopoly. Alternatively, a new owner may take the News in a radically different direction.

We wait and see.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I missed that. I saw that they were looking at optins but didn't know the decision would come so soon.

How do you go about selling a paper which is usually just given away? :-)

Richard W. Symonds said...

If Johnston Press (Crawley Observer) took over Trinity Mirror (Crawley News), it would be disastrous for democracy and free thought - and for any letter-writer who didn't follow the Johnston line !

Johnston Press has a Murdoch-man/News Corporation in place as non-executive director...very worrying.

And the advisers for Trinity Mirror ? Rothschilds.

No more said

Danivon said...

I'm not sure that there's much to choose between the two local papers, although the fact that there are two does encourage them to try and outdo each other, and sometimes that's to our benefit.

Richard W. Symonds said...

If there is a monopoly, only one paper is likely to remain - then Crawley will become like Haywards Heath (JP Mid Sussex Times), Worthing (JP Worthing Herald), Horsham (JP West Sussex County Times), Chichester (JP West Sussex Gazette).

That prospect is not a pretty thought - to me.

Admin said...

If I can steal a line from Richard... "Think of the children!"

If the News went our Charlie would lose his only income for delivering them.