Local Newspapers

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Vaizey]

I join my hon. Friend in recognising the achievement of her local newspaper in receiving that award and in moving from a daily to a weekly. That echoes the point made by the right hon. Member for Exeter—that, although painful to say it, it is better that a newspaper survive and prosper, albeit in a different format, than close entirely.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

All three of my local papers, the Blackpool Gazette, Lytham St Anne’s Express and the Lancashire Evening Post are Johnston Press papers. I urge the Minister to seek a meeting with senior management at Johnston Press to see in what practical ways we can help.

[Mr Vaizey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which reminds me that I was remiss in not addressing the point put to me by the hon. Member for Wigan. I have called the managing director of Johnston Press and hope to have a meeting with him, simply to engage with him and hear his strategy. As a matter of principle, it is not the job of Government to tell a commercial business how it should be run or what its requirements are.

Ashley Highfield, the new managing director of Johnston Press—I knew him at the BBC when he was putting together the iPlayer, and he was then at Microsoft—has been hired because of an explicit recognition that we are moving into a digital age. Members will say that not everyone has an iPad yet, and it is still important to maintain the traditional format of a local newspaper, on which so many of our constituents still depend to get their local news.