December 13, 2024
By Harry Mottram: Nobody buys the Cheddar Valley Gazette anymore. Mainly because it doesn’t exist but has been ‘merged’ with the Central Somerset Gazette which covers Glastonbury and Street. A pity as when I first came to Axbridge in the late 1990s it had a large circulation with piles of the newspapers in Scots Newsagents every Thursday at 30p a copy. Then it had comment pieces, letters, sport, situations vacant adverts, a what’s on section, clubs and society reports, livestock prices and above all news about the area.
I came across it when I was house hunting from my home in Bristol. I would drive down to various towns and villages, buy the local newspapers and then back home with Linda we’d look at the estate agent adverts seeking a house for sale. It could have been Nailsea, Frome, Cheddar or even Bath but about the only house we could afford was in Axbridge. At the time I was working at an advertising agency as a copy writer come art director/designer and struggled to pay the bills with a family of four children while Linda had a Saturday job at Dingles department store. The crunch came when we couldn’t get our eldest into a secondary school in Bristol and so looked to a town in Somerset where children went to the local school.
Around that time, I borrowed a book from Bristol Central Library called How To Be A Feature Writer – or a similar title. I read it and thought – this is me. I began to do what the author suggested and wrote articles and sent them off to newspapers and magazines. The subjects ranged from local history to how to make home-made wine from blackberries – and interviews with artists and writers that I tracked down. Somerset Magazine took my articles but when I began writing match reports and notes on events in Axbridge The Cheddar Valley Gazette published them every week. Then one day the editor rang and offered me a job as a sub-editor. I was so green I didn’t know what a sub-editor was but I took the job – editing the news and writing the copy for the property section and later drawing the weekly cartoon, penning a weekly history piece in the sister paper along with news, features and even the odd obituary.
The editor was Phil Welch while the newsroom had a full set of district reporters, three freelance photographers to call on, a tapper (typist), receptionist, sales team, promotion department, delivery driver and I’m sure other members of staff whose jobs I didn’t know about. Based in a warehouse in Wells the printing machines or the presses had only recently been moved out – but it was a set up unchanged in many ways for decades. It was a great place to learn the trade although my shorthand never quite got as fast as my longhand but as an education it couldn’t have been better – and I got to know the wider area as Mid Somerset Newspapers had titles in Wells, Shepton Mallet, Glastonbury along with a free weekly paper and links to titles in Yeovil and Bath. Then one day the editor said he had just received something called an email. We gathered round to look at this message on his computer – which was then printed out like the first draft of a new era. It was and I had just seen the beginning of the demise of the printed press: the internet.
After three years I left and became the editor of various magazines owned by Brunel Press in Bristol and later The Evening Post and finally Venue magazine. After more than 10 years there I was along with many in the editorial department I was made redundant as the bungling management closed titles to save money as advertising revenue slumped. I was freelance again editing the same titles but without the safety of a regular salary.
One day I was jogging around Cheddar Reservoir when I noticed a fire in the distance at a barn off Hellier’s Lane. I went home called the fire brigade and of course the local newspaper – The Cheddar Valley Gazette. They were very pleased to get the scoop and asked me to take a photo of the aftermath – and the upshot was I was offered a temporary job to cover maternity leave for one of the reporters. This time the newsroom had shrunk in size. Fewer members of staff and fewer pages to write as the papers shrank – all due to fewer adverts. The internet was scooping up advertising revenue and every newspaper including the nationals were feeling the pinch.
It was a glorious few months but at the end of the maternity cover I was once again out and freelance again – and for a year published my own magazine – The Strawberry Line Times – before taking a job with a trade publisher in Kingswood writing about the printing industry. A job at the Express and Echo in Exeter followed as a reporter before a stint at the Bridgwater Mercury and later more freelance before I was back at the Cheddar Valley Gazette for the third time. No longer based in Wells it shared an office with the Western Gazette in Yeovil and the Frome newspapers. But I was the chief sub-editor – actually, the only sub – and sub editing three newspapers. It was very stressful as there were no reporters – only online ‘content creators’ for the new websites that the owners now held such store in. The newspapers were the poor relations in the set up and many of the sections had gone as the papers became thinner and the cover price was hiked.
Since then, I’ve mainly worked freelance apart from a stint in Wiltshire on the Standard and Guardian as a reporter – today I edit Bath Voice amongst other work – but I have seen the decline and fall of newspapers everywhere as the same things happened in Bristol, Exeter, Taunton, Bridgwater and Yeovil. The management and owners saw the internet as the enemy and reacted far too slowly – giving away their content free on their new websites which even now are hard to read due to all the pop-up adverts.
There’s an ongoing debate as to how the news should be sold and presented. Magazines like Private Eye show that people will pay money for quality long-form journalism – as they don’t have much on their website. Others like The Mail have gone all out putting resources into their website, but it only now makes a profit. The Times and other newspapers make a lot of cash from ‘promoted content’ or paid for editorial while The Guardian and some of the new media have gone for the subscription model. Specialist magazines still do alright as their readers are devoted to cars, fashion, stamp collecting or whatever. But local news coverage is much reduced these days – you are more likely to read about events on your local FaceBook community group than the few newspapers left. Local Democracy Reporters paid for by the BBC were introduced a few years ago and do a brilliant job – but they can only cover so much. Their numbers need to be increased – or there needs to be state funding for newspapers or websites that hold the police, local, district and county councils and MPs to account – and act as papers of record.
Now I work from home – no newsroom at Bath Voice – and no colleagues to gossip with. They are the biggest loss in many ways as we tended to be like-minded. Cynical of politicians, supportive of community groups and fans of all things local that made the world a better place. And always keen on a good story whether it was tragic, funny or heart-warming. Weirdly as an admin for the Axbridge Community FaceBook site I find my old skills and my resistance to false news, PR hyperbole, ‘the green ink brigade’ (or haters), scammers and unfounded rumours of use from my days at The Cheddar Valley Gazette.
Axbridge Review is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for the interest of himself and fellow residents.
Harry is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc
Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
Website:www.harrymottram.co.uk
You must be logged in to post a comment.