WITH the future of print journalism in doubt, with increased printing costs and overheads, the Journal spoke to Toby Granville – Newsquest’s editorial director to find out how sustainable it is in the current economic situation.

Toby Granville has an extensive background in journalism and has been the editorial director at Newsquest since 2015 and was instrumental in bringing former police officer and journalist, Mark Williams-Thomas on board to run the True Crime channel on You Tube. 

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He said: “The investment into investigative journalism has gone back for other publishers. I am still very passionate about investigative journalism, and I think there is an enormous need for this type of journalism, but it takes a lot of work.

“We can already see with having Mark Williams-Thomas on board that there is so much interest. On the True Crime channel, we already have 7,000 subscribers and we get the video and live broadcasts which get 50,000 views on those videos. We are also venturing onto other digital platforms.

Toby confirmed that the most read content is crime. 

"People want to know what is happening in court, so we invest in court reporters, but not all publishers do this, so we make sure every one of our titles has a court reporter.  

The Salisbury Journal has been the heartbeat of the community since 1729 and Toby believes it should continue for as long as possible.

He said: “For 300 years, the Salisbury Journal has been doing the job of holding people to account.

"Readers need to understand that if they want to keep content like the Salisbury Journal, if they want to support journalism, and have a team of reporters, they need to buy our newspapers and support us."

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Print costs have increased by 100 per cent. 

Toby said: “We want to make sure that we can sustain the newspapers, and the Journal sells thousands of newspapers a week.  Unfortunately, print costs are so expensive. So, it is difficult to sustain, hence why we are broadening into digital subscriptions for websites.

He added: “People can subscribe to a lot of our newsletters, but the print product is here to stay for as long as we can.”

To find out more about the direction that Newsquest will be taking, tune into the Salisbury Journal On Point Podcast.