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A certain amount of wind has gone out of the sails of the project to set up the first ever Welsh language daily newspaper Y BYD (The World). The intention had been to have the first copies off the press on Monday, March 3, 2008. March 1 is Saint David's Day, the day of the patron saint of Wales.
The project, initiated by the Welsh author and academic, Mr Ned Thomas, well known to people in Brittany, began in 2002 with a study of the feasibility of such a venture. Mr Thomas was the founder and first editor of the literary and current affairs magazine, PLANET, published every other month. The first edition of PLANET appeared in August 1970. Since 2003 Mr Ned Thomas has taken a leading role in planning and researching - and raising £350,000 from a number of individual investors – towards setting up Y BYD.
It was inevitable that the proposed date of March 3, 2008 would be delayed when Mr Rhodri Glyn Thomas, the Minister for Heritage and Culture in the Welsh Assembly Government in the Labour / Plaid Cymru coalition last autumn called for a report on the future of Welsh language newspapers and magazines.
Dr Tony Bianchi, a literary critic, award-winning novelist in the Welsh language and former Arts Council of Wales officer with responsibility for literature, was commissioned to write the report.
The report, which was recently published, looks at the existing publications, in particular the weekly journals Y CYMRO and GOLWG, but also looks in great detail at the chances of success for Y BYD. Mr Rhodri Glyn Thomas, who belongs to Plaid Cymru, is going to have to make some difficult decisions – and very soon – if the project is not to be damaged. Mr Ned Thomas says that if the launching of Y BYD is postponed into 2009 it would result in a loss of interest which would be fatal for the project.
When I suggested to the editor of Y BYD, Mr Aled Price, one of only three appointments made so far that The National Eisteddfod, August 4, 1008, would be a suitable date to begin publication, he agreed, but he did not sound optimistic. “We now await the minister's decision,” he said.
Dr Bianchi's report does not make for comfortable reading for the Minister or indeed on magazine or journal publishing in Wales in general. From Mr Rhodri Glyn Thomas's point of view he will have to decide whether to channel between £1 and £1.4 million of Assembly Government money every year into grant aid and advertising money for Y BYD.
Both Y CYMRO and GOLWG sell a little less than 3000 copies a week at the moment. Y CYMRO is now owned by the large Tindale Group, an English company owning community radio stations and many weekly papers – including a number of English-language weekly papers in Wales. Y CYMRO is now produced by just two journalists, has an advertising staff of two, a designer and a person responsible for promotion. It relies on a number of regular columnists and its news content has declined over recent years.
GOLWG, published by an independent company called Golwg Cyf (Golwg Limited) is a magazine style publication. It has six journalists and nine other staff – advertising staff, design, promotion and administration. It receives £75,000 a year from the Welsh Books Council, while Y CYMRO receives £19,000 from the same source.
But there are hopeful indications. In 2004, research showed that there are in Wales 80,000 homes where at least one person speaks Welsh and who would be interested in reading a daily paper in the Welsh language.
Coverage of what is happening in Wales is not good. 85 per cent of the morning papers bought in Wales are published in London and they devote next to no space to Welsh news and issues.
Speaking from personal experience, when I covered the National Eisteddfod for Y CYMRO in the 1960s all the London daily papers were there. In the 1990s when I again attended the Eisteddfod as a journalist there was not one of the London daily paper present.
This drop in quality and quantity is evident in the Wales-based daily press. The WESTERN MAIL and the DAILY POST – both now owned by the London-based Trinity Mirror Group – have gone down market, with an emphasis on the trivial and personalities from the world of pop music, TV, film and other forms of entertainment. There is almost a total disregard for investigative journalism.
Sales of both have dropped 40% since 1997. Sales of the WESTERN MAIL have dropped from 64,602 in 1995 to 55,273 in 2000 to 42,981 in 2005, a reduction of 33.5% in 10 years. Y BYD would be competing against these two papers and I feel there is a great desire for a good quality Welsh newspaper at the moment – in Welsh or English in fact. There is a real gap in the market.
This trend for going down-market has been reflected in the coverage of news by BBC Wales and the BBC Wales service for the Welsh channel S4C. [It is a trend in other aspects of the television services in Britain as a whole – and in S4C.] As Mr Aled Price told me, “A situation where nearly all the Welsh national news comes from two providers – Trinity Mirror and the BBC cannot be a particularly healthy one.” Research figures suggest that the circulation sales required for Y BYD in the initial years are possible – 5,000 every day in the first year, 10,000 by the fourth year. In fact if one in three of those who have expressed an interest in subscribing to the paper do so, the sales would be an instant 15,000. Although only about 800 have subscribed so far – but that may be understandable as we have no date so far for the paper to begin publishing.
The UK government, under the Lesser-used and Regional Languages Charter, has responsibilities towards the Welsh language. In 2004, the Council of Europe Committee which looks at how the Charter is being administered 2004 drew attention to the paucity of printed news in Welsh. In fact, the Welsh-speaking community is one of the largest linguistic/ethnic groups in Europe that does not possess a daily newspaper in its language.
Many much smaller linguistic groups in Europe than the Welsh speaking community are able to sustain a daily newspaper. Dr Bianchi, in his report, states that daily papers in lesser-used-languages in countries demographically similar to Wales achieve very respectable sales. He notes that until the 1970s only a small minority of Euskadi (Basque) speakers could read the language, yet by today about 22,000 buy Berrià every day.
Berrià is an inspiration in that so many people have invested in the venture – we do not have an experience of individual investment on such a scale in Wales!
Lá Nua in Ireland, established in 1984, which moved from being a weekly paper to being a daily paper in 2003, is produced in Belfast and is sold in the North and in the Republic. In 2007 it received a grant of £400,000 from the cross-border Foras na Gaelige which was formed under the Anglo-Irish Agreement. From Y BYD's point of view this sets an important precedent; Lá Nua, is the first ever British newspaper to receive support from the public purse.
Support from public funds would be necessary for the survival of Y BYD. Indeed Bojan Brezigar, President of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages said in 2004 that of the 40 daily newspapers published in minority languages in Europe less than five would survive without financial support.
There are some good omens – but we are sailing into uncharted waters. Y BYD intends to appoint a staff of 29, 16 of them being journalists. It will still be a difficult task to find 16 journalists with the necessary skills to work in Welsh in the print industry.
Both GOLWG and Y CYMRO admit to having difficulty in recruiting suitable staff. Indeed the background of the editor of Y BYD is BBC radio/TV, and his deputy produced a free monthly paper for a London borough council. Neither has experience of working on a daily paper or for a Welsh language print publication. They may well turn out to be excellent producers of a paper, but we can only wonder at the standards of the other 14 journalists yet to be appointed.
One of the interesting points about the Welsh situation is that we have moved from a weekly press to radio and then television. For a lesser used language, Welsh, I believe, has a lot of radio and TV. We have skipped the historically natural progression of a Welsh language daily newspaper. At a time when newspaper sales throughout Britain are dwindling, will we be able to sustain a Welsh language daily paper?
And if we have one, will it be, after all, produced by the company set up by Mr Ned Thomas? Now that there is going to be public money available, Y CYMRO (January 18, 2008), has suggested that there may be others waiting to see how much money will be available. Y CYMRO suggests there are companies waiting to see what Mr Rhodri Glyn Thomas has to say. It would be a shame if some newspaper group based outside Wales were to set up a Welsh language paper.
BBC Cymru set up what it called the first Welsh language daily, BBC CYMRU'R BYD, a news and features internet site in 2000. Its news service is based on the BBC Radio Cymru news and it has feature articles – such as book reviews, article from abroad &c - which are not based on broadcast material. Its Welsh news content is said to be very popular.
The BBC claims that the number of individuals who used the site in November 2007 was 28,000; 43% of the users were between 15 and 34 years of age; 80% of all users were estimated to be under 45 years of age; and 24% lived outside Wales. GOLWG is also planning to set up a similar Welsh language web site. Y BYD also promises to provide a web site and that its news content will be stronger than that of BBC CYMRU'R BYD.
There is also much energy in the papurau bro phenomenon, the Welsh language community, usually monthly, newspapers produced by teams of voluntary writers, sellers and collectors of advertising. Whether the energy that goes into this movement can be harnessed to the activities of Y BYD needs to be looked at. There are about 70 of these papers in existence, selling a total of about 60,000 copies every month.
Whatever happens, the future looks very interesting, if uncertain.
Gwyn Griffiths
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