MAN ON A MISSION JIM MULLEN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF REACH PLC, ON THE CHALLENGES FACING JOURNALISM AND NEWS DISTRIBUTION.

Drawing a distinction between the established news outlets which run on the basis of responsible  output “vetted and interrogated by seasoned journalists to ensure it is accurate”, and  new approaches that are web – based or crowd – sourced and predominantly aimed at youth,  Mullen points out that while the former is expensive, the latter have yet to establish a successful business model. It is a  model based on advertising, he insists , which makes responsible journalism accessible to a wider readership.

But Mullen reserves his main attack for  Facebook , TikTok and other social media platforms which are now able to hover up  advertising opportunities by exploiting the reader’s search history, at the same time delivering untrustworthy news. This combination of advanced technology and a compromised quality of reporting threatens, he insists, our essential ability to make informed judgements on important matters at a local ,national and international level. Indeed, Mullen attributes the dangerous emergence of teams of people working to influence attitudes and feelings in other countries to  the apparent immunity of social media to the conventions of responsible journalism. It’s why, he says,  recent elections and referendums have been influenced by such operators. Are there grounds for thinking a negotiated agreement between the social media platforms and the conventional news outlets licensing access to quality journalistic content would make a difference ? Perhaps, but as he points out, “so far they  [ The social media platforms] have refused to negotiate openly”. Here Mullen concludes “journalism is in danger of being taken for granted” and that only regulation will even up the playing field.

Nor does the venerable BBC escape attention. The Corporation’s ability to create a digital news website on the back of its protected licence fee comes at the expense of commercial news outlets which have no such guaranteed source of income.

While Mullen is less exercised by the business models of his conventional competitors, he does question the social value of monthly subscriptions to news via paywalls, seeing this solution as inevitably raising barriers to news access for those with less disposable income. Indeed, he says  that news brands are “increasingly working together to confront the concentrated power of tech platforms’ algorithms”.

Sounding out other senior journalists who are members of the Stationers company , I find a great deal of sympathy for Jim’s outlook. Yes, there may be some differences of opinion on , for instance, paywalls which are a lifeline for some news titles, but on the bigger issues – the destructive disruption of social media and the unfair advantage of the BBC, for example-  respected journalists have many views in common when it comes to the current direction of news distribution.

The views expressed here are those of Paul Wilson and not necessarily those of the Stationers’ Company,

Jim Mullen is CEO of Reach PLC incorporating 120 national and regional titles. He was previously Chief Operating Officer of William Hill online, Director of Digital Strategy and Product at News International and CEO of Ladbrokes. He is currently Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of the Racing Media Group.

Paul Wilson is Master of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. After careers in the Army ( 1975-1985) and  the Foreign Office ( 1986-1994)  he was a senior executive of De La Rue PLC , the security printing company ( 1994-2015).

The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers is the City of London Livery Company for the communications and content industries. Acting as a forum for the media and publishing industries as well as the traditional trades of printing and paper production, the company supports the future of digital and print journalism through its charitable Foundation providing bursaries and other educational grants for young people seeking  careers in those sectors.