Blurred Keys

UPDATE #2 (17/05/2009): Reports in Sunday newspapers today suggest IN&M have managed to secure a standstill pact with bondholders, the company is due to announce this in the morning.

(Via Greenslade) The print edition of the Telegraph reported today that “City traders are betting heavily that Independent News & Media (INM) will be forced into administration as early as Monday as 11th-hour talks between shareholders and bondholders collapsed.”

Meanwhile, also in a print article this morning, The Irish Times reports the Independent group is “on the cusp of a ’standstill’ pact with its bondholders, which would give the company breathing space until late June to reorganise its debt,” however these “efforts are ongoing to convince the remaining holders to approve the standstill deal.”

UPDATE #1: The Daily Telegraph article (’Traders bet on Independent owner to fail as bond looms’ City, page 35) reports “The bondholders are refusing to accept the offer” and quotes one bondholder as saying: “This is the equivalent of 15p when we are owed 100p. The situation has gone on for long enough. The shareholders need to inject more cash and equities and get on with the asset sales over the next year or so.” The Telegraph says INM declined to comment.

The editor of an Irish Sunday newspaper said she was “still as idealistic” as the day she started journalism even thought her business editor was sacked recently in questionable circumstances. 

In the January edition of the Dubliner magazine Noirin Hegarty, editor of the Sunday Tribune,
said “I love what we do at the Sunday Tribune. I’m still as idealistic
as the day I started in journalism and I believe in its role as the
fourth estate”.

Asked how she can remain idealistic after the questionable sacking of
her former business editor, Hegarty said “Thank you for your interest
in the Sunday Tribune. This is an internal company matter bound
by a confidentiality agreement. It is more complicated than it appears
and I won’t be commenting further”.

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The Independent on Sunday, Independent News & Media’s London-based Sunday title, is still seeing a drop in sales even after a recent re-design.

While bulk and foreign sale were up, the paper overall is continuing to slide. The Sindy’s re-launched as a single section paper appears to have failed to stall the decline.

Propped up

As with the Sunday Tribune here, the Independent stable in the UK is being propped up by IN&M. The Irish Times points out the London publications have been "consistently loss-making" since IN&M bought them, loosing €9 million last year alone.

Pressure to sell

Irish businessman and Indo shareholder, Denis O’Brien, recently put pressure on the company to  cut the London titles lose (sub reqd) while also bring up the topic of standards of corporate
governance.

The Irish Times has reported just a week ago (sub reqd) that Merrion Stockbrokers have downgraded IN&M from ‘buy’ to ‘hold’. Also in the Times news briefs are nearly daily reports of share buy backs, IN&M is continuing to buy back its own shares in an apparent attempt to stall O’Brien’s advances on the group.

MORE: Independent titles suffer as The Times prospers

The NUJ has given the green light to a deal that will see improved standards for reporters at the Drogheda Independent, but freelance photographers say it is likely to lead to less work for professional photographers.

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"The people must have something good to read on a Sunday" - The Clash’s ‘the Leader’

Adam Maguire thinks the Sunday Tribune is in trouble
after loosing Paul Howard and his Ross O’Carroll Kelly column, he also says
the IN&M’s original reasons for propping up the newspaper are now
invalid.

We disagree, even if the Indo own a share in around half of the
Sunday newspaper market, the paper is still serving the Indo group as a
blocker, even if a smaller one.

As well as owning 29.9 percent of the Sunday Tribune, and apparently controlling it due to out standing loans, the Independent News & Media group own Sunday papers the Sunday Independent, and the Sunday World, and a 50 percent share of the Irish Daily Star Sunday.

And while Ross O’Carroll Kelly is infamous, we’re not quite sure how
much of a loss in sale - if any real amount at all - will occur as a
result of the ending the column.

Unlike another Sunday paper - namely the Sunday Independent (the Sindo) - the Tribune is still a newspaper, not a viewspaper - we’ve just made that word up and that’s what we’re calling it from now on.

We also think that the Tribune is filling what otherwise would be a gap in the market - people who think they are above tabloids and the Sindo but put off by the ‘b’ world in the Sunday Business Post, and  maybe put off by the lack of Irish news in the Irish edition of the (London) Times.

ADDED: Adam on the other hand thinks that the Tribune is not taking advantage of a current gap of for a quality, news-led  paper. 

Quite weaker, but furthermore nevertheless, because of the gap it is filling and the habit of many of reading more then one newspaper on a Sunday,  it is somewhat likely that there is a substantial crossover of people who read the Tribune and a none Indo newspaper.

Drogheda photographers are “furious” at an agreement put forward between the NUJ and the IN&M owned Drogheda Independent, according to EPUK.org.

The NUJ’s Irish Executive Council are due to decide today to accept or reject the deal.

According to the Editorial Photographers site, the agreement will see that all staff journalists at the paper must be union members and will also include pay rises, in return the newspaper gets the clause that photography will be a part of a reporter’s job.

Freelance NUJ photographers are worried that the result will be that they will get less or no work from the Drogheda Independent, which currently pays less then the NUJ’s recommended minimum rates.

“Everybody supports the Drogheda Independent Chapel in their negotiations but the agreement, as it is written, will undermine journalists and should not be endorsed by a Union that purports to represent freelancers” EPUK.org quotes Alan Murphy, Dublin-based freelance photographer and NUJ member.

Murphy goes on to question if the union wants to continue to represent freelance photographers.

“The agreement contains provisions allowing selected, trained reporters to use digital photographic equipment. Implementation of this clause will be monitored by a joint union/management Working Party,” said Seamus Dooley NUJ Irish Secretary.

The union says that not carrying out the agreement see the new work practices going thought without benefits gained in negotiations.

EPUK points out that what is striking here is not the action by the newspaper but the endorsement by the NUJ. The new NUJ Code of Conduct removes previous mention of reporters not doing photographers’ jobs.

The newspaper says that it will not simply be handing out digital cameras to all staff, and refers to improvements to in cameras on mobile phones.

Although, to the best of Blurred Keys’ reasonably tech and photographic knowledge, the newspaper’s claim that cameras on phones are “comparable” professional equipment a few years ago is a vast overstatement at best. And the vast majority of camera phones are of poor quality.

Photographers are said to have found out about the current deal, not from the Dublin branch of the NUJ, but from irishphotographers.ie. (Vie Greenslade)

The Sunday Independent’s Liam Collins suggests that Vincent Browne, besides his recent radio movements, may also move in print.

Collins takes what looks like half a wild guess and says that Browne’s columns may end up at the Irish Daily Mail.

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade says "I don’t think so", but isn’t that what most people would have said to the suggestion of Frank Connolly moving to the Mail?

Connolly was previously at Ireland on Sunday before it was re-branded as the Irish Mail on Sunday, but he — like Browne — doesn’t share the views of the typical image of the Mail.

But all three have common ground — getting a good story, they are apprently out to get the Irish Government or just Fianna Fáil, and they are all mortal enemies of the Independent News & Media.

It’s apprently the world against the Indo Sindo and FF.

Also on Sunday, Collins has pot shots at what he classes as "Dismal science merchants" (ie anybody that "talks down" the economy), naming George Lee (RTE), Richard Curran (Sunday Business Post), and David McWilliams (SBPost, Indo).

Then again, these day it looks like everybody hates the Independent group, or at least everybody hates the Sunday Independent, even the Irish Independent’s Ian O’Doherty…

There are some people out there who think that the Sunday Independent is an arrogant, solipsistic rag with delusions of journalistic adequacy. But they are wrong.  As last Sunday’s issue proved, it is actually the finest satirical publication available today and is better than The Onion, Private Eye and Mongrel all rolled into one.

How else could one explain Eoghan Harris reviewing himself on the Late Late and, bravely, fearlessly, courageously, giving himself a good review?

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Independent News & Media relaunched the Belfast-based Community Telegraph on May 31, but it looks like no outsourcing is needed here.

Roy Greenslade has details of how four diffrent geographical editions of the Telegraph have just one journalist; they do it all from reporting, taking photographs, sub pages, and publish the paper online too.

"The benefit of this is that we have huge ‘ownership’ of the
paper, flexibility and no breakdown in communication with subs,
photographers, etc. On the downside, we have constraints on the time
spent writing stories, because of all the other responsibilities" said a reported who emailed Greenslade.

"From a purely financial point of view, it must be an immensely lucrative option to management, as we are paid the same wage as a regular reporter, yet do the jobs of four people in a traditional newspaper".