An Isle of Wight businessman, Norman Arnold, has written to the Chairman of the County Press Group, asking him to pause the sale of the paper for two months to mainland regional news mammoth, Newsquest.
His logic is that he wants to have time to gather a group of Island business people to raise the money for a competing bid to the Newsquest bid. Since the bid was first announced two weeks ago, the size of the deal have not been publicly mentioned.
Mr Arnold told OnTheWight,
“The current Board of Directors are clearly minded to accept [the Newsquest bid] without any attempt at testing the market or achieving best value for their numerous shareholders.”
No proposals received
On contacting the editor of the County Press, OnTheWight was told that the CP group Chairman, Robin Freeman’s reaction was, “We have received no specific proposals from Mr Arnold and are unable to comment further”. We were also told that Newsquest apparently felt the same.
On prompting further, OnTheWight received confirmation that Mr Freeman had not responded to the local businessman’s approach.
Changing media landscape
In the press release he issued, that was picked up by the news industry publication the Press Gazette, Mr Arnold said,
“I fear that affinity with the Island will inevitably be lost if the CP is sold to Newsquest, a huge company that is known in the industry for being a profits-driven organisation that dispenses with traditional specialist roles such as specialist sub-editing. It is inconceivable that jobs currently carried out here by trained County Press staff – Islanders – will be lost and my fear is that quality will suffer as a result.”
“Everyone knows the media landscape is changing and more and more people are getting their news from non-print sources. The CP is no exception and it must adapt to survive. But I firmly believe that evolution can continue in a local context. The CP does not need to be run from the mainland by a media giant in order to survive and thrive.”
Image: frank_behrens under CC BY 2.0
