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July 11, 2006
More bizarre behaviour from the Press Gazette
The Press Gazette (PG) recently signed a deal with the Press Association to sponsor regional newspaper adverts in the magazine.
I quote from the PG's original piece:
Regional newspaper publishers will from this week be able to place vacancies across one or two pages dedicated to the sector, at no cost.The regional press has had a tough year commercially - with widespread job cuts - and the initiative hopes to extend the reach of regional advertising beyond a handful of online-only alternatives.
I don't get it. Regional press publishers are axeing jobs but are still apparently making obscene profits so obviously they deserve to get free recruitment advertising. And obviously we should be falling over ourselves to go and work for these wonderful employers who cannot even afford or be bothered to pay a few quid to recruit staff. Not exactly an exciting prospect is it?
Also, what sort of message is the PG sending out by encouraging the practice of 'free advertising' for publishers? Revenue from recruitment advertising helps pay the wages of many of its readers who work on trade publications, for example.
The true purpose of this scheme may be to claw back some of the damage inflicted on PG's recruitment ad revenue by 'online-only' alternative holdthefrontpage.co.uk, the regional press recruitment vehicle for Newsquest, Northcliffe, Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror. Given the dominance the 'big four' have in this sector, the PG is essentially scrabbling for crumbs under the table.
As for the Press Association, wouldn't it rather be selling content to help fill the pages of under-staffed newspapers instead of encouraging 'free' recruitment?
Last week's PG boasts of having more jobs online than any other resource. At today's count, that's 52 jobs, 30 of which are from a single recruitment agency (do all those jobs really exist, or are they just collecting CVs?). The Media Guardian would probably have something to say about that, and journalism.co.uk has twice as many (105, it claims). All a bit desperate really.
Under Piers Morgan's control, the PG has been acting increasingly strangely (eg "Citizen Journalism" awards for, err, mobile camera snapshots and video - doh). But I guess the same could be said of his tenure at the Daily Mirror...
Posted by leshacks at July 11, 2006 12:15 AM | TrackBackBizarre or Clever?
PG have not had Regional Vacancies for some time now (well, since Holdthefrontpage.co.uk basically cornered that market), perhaps rather than this being 'Bizarre behaviour', it is a very clever way of re-introducing an important reader platform without undermining its own revenue market by getting it sponsored.
As for Mr Morgan..last I hear he has been too busy in LA with Mr Cowell to be too heavily involved!
Journalism.co.uk would seem to have ads mostly from a couple of recruitment agencies too, and they are all on for a whole month, boosting that tantalisingly high ad figure.
HTFP has a quick turnaround (many jobs are only listed for one week) but seems only to fuel musical chairs in editorial roles between the big four regional publishers. Good for juniors on the way up, I suppose.
As for the PG - they run more ad space on the jobs pages of the print version for themselves than they do for paying customers.
Just an observation!
Posted by: David Parnell at July 12, 2006 10:38 AMAny chance that David Parnell works for Media Guardian? Seems unhappy with every other medium!
Posted by: Scarecrow at July 12, 2006 12:49 PMI can't vouch for David Parnell - who do you work for?
His claim that most of the ads on journalism.co.uk come from one or two recruitment agencies does not stand up though. A large chunk (about half?) do come from a single advertiser - Bloomberg - which is not a recruitment agency so I suppose that might cause confusion among the ill-informed.
Nor is his claim about HTFP fully accurate either - they regularly re-run the same adverts, sometimes for months on end. Perhaps because no one in their right mind would work for the pitiful salaries on offer (rarely mentioned in their adverts) and the appalling working conditions the "big four" are infamous for.
Posted by: Les Hacks at July 12, 2006 01:09 PMInteresting comment about whether some of the agency jobs really exist. Three times I've enquired of the same agency about listed jobs, asking where they were located as I didn't want to go to the inconvenience of having an interview with the agency if the location didn't suit.
Three times I've been completely ignored.
Posted by: Mark at July 13, 2006 11:25 AMYes, I have had very bad experiences with media recruitment agencies in the past, as a jobseeker. Their priority is their clients of course, and the hefty commission they earn for successfully placing a candidate.
Most seem to forget that the candidates may well become employers themselves one day and they won't forget the shoddy treatment they received from the agencies.
Posted by: Les Hacks at July 13, 2006 02:08 PM