Newspapers on Film — visiting the North West Film Archive

I first became interested in films about newspapers after discovering Wakefield Express by the Free Cinema director Lindsay Anderson, a portrait of the town’s newspaper commissioned to mark the paper’s centenary in 1952, which places the Express at the heart of the Yorkshire community it serves. Lasting just over thirty minutes, it’s a snapshot of Wakefield life, and the city’s expansion, which the Express was there to record at every moment — as the narrator notes, ‘the Express has grown with Wakefield’. It was rescreened in the town last year during protests against the Wakefield Express leaving its town centre offices and moving to the outskirts of town.

Similarly, films in the North West Film Archive document Manchester’s history as the ‘second city of newspapers’, where both northern editions of the daily national papers were produced, as well as Greater Manchester's own regional daily paper the Manchester Evening News.

News Story is a twenty minute behind the scenes portrait of the Manchester Guardian made in 1960, four years before it moved to London (and a year after it dropped the ‘Manchester' part of its name), which traces the history of the paper from its foundation in 1821 following the Peterloo Massacre to its status as an international paper.

The NWFA also holds two documentaries about the Manchester Evening News (like the Wakefield Express, the Evening News, too, has now moved out of town — from Deansgate in the city centre to Chadderton, Oldham earlier this year): Here is the News, made to mark the paper’s centenary year in 1968 and The Voice of a Region, from 1970-2, which celebrate the Evening News’ role as ‘an important voice for a famous city’ and ‘a strong heart for the community it serves’.

Lingering on the city’s achievements and admiring its new modernist architecture, they’re modern and optimistic, talking admiringly of Manchester’s abundance of supermarkets and self-service stores, panning past glamorous shop fronts, showing celebrities such as George Best and exalting the young people of the city. In Here is the News, bright yellow Ford vans glide around the city's roads to a soundtrack of jaunty jazz, distributing newspapers like rolled up rays of sunshine.

Shown being read in a suburban home by members of the nuclear family, the Manchester Evening News is ‘the family newspaper that is indeed a member of the family’. It’s a ‘pleasure at the end of the working day’ that's ‘read by all types of people — men and women, young and old, rich and poor’, and is ‘full of the sorts of things that everyone is interested in’, from the stock market, football, dogs and horses to fashion pages, recipes and hints for housewives and nightclubs, cinemas and jobs for young people.

The films rush around the different departments that work towards the ‘daily miracle’ that is the production of a newspaper; from crime reporters at the scene of the crime to clattering typewriters with hands dancing over the keys, splashing chemicals in the darkroom, pipe-smoking men in waistcoats, girls chattering on telesales headsets, the sawing of metal plates and the rolling of printing presses that could turn out up to 38,000 papers an hour.

The Voice of a Region visits the Evening News’ then new premises, purpose-built by the architects Leach Rhodes Walker next to John Rylands Library on Deansgate (where Spinningfields is now), praising the ‘striking modern building’ surrounded by courtyards and squares where the public can relax, ‘soothed by the sight of flowers’. It concludes ‘as the city continues to grow, so will the newspaper’.

Unfortunately, though, within decades the old ways of newspaper production were becoming obsolete. In complete contrast to the confidence of the Evening News films, The Way It Was comprises of grainy, jerky footage shot in Thomson House (now the Printworks entertainment complex) on Withy Grove, base of the Mirror and Telegraph, which was once home to the largest composing room in Europe.

Filmed shortly before the printworks was taken over by the press baron Robert Maxwell in 1985, maudlin classical music accompanies images of the massive machinery which has come to rest, zooming in on contemporary headlines and hovering over the word ‘redundancies’. Another brief film, New Newspaper Premises, shows old staff who made been made redundant being shown the new computerised facilities which replaced them.

If you're interested in seeing archive footage relating to any aspect of local history, you can search the North West Film Archive's website and make an appointment to go in for a viewing. Also look out for public screenings of highlights from the collection.

The sad story of the local newspaper

Where do you to go find your news? The internet? Television? Or do you just live in an enclosed bubble of day to day life? Hearteningly, despite the growth of broadband, mobile phone internet access and web journalism, it still seems that the local rag is often the first place where many of us find out about the issues that effect us, with 40 million adults in the UK reading a daily or weekly newspaper.

Newspapers still perform a vital function, scrutinising the local council, holding the police and NHS to account and making sure that justice is seen to be done through coverage of court cases. The local paper can act as a unifying force, from publishing sport results, births, marriages and deaths and classified ads to running campaigns - for, example, the MEN’s current campaign to return money to the Christie Hospital lost in an Icelandic bank.

Over five decades ago, one local paper, the Wakefield Express commissioned director Lindsay Anderson to make a film to celebrate its centenary, resulting in the wonderful documentary Wakefield Express: The Portrait of a Newspaper.

Lasting just over thirty minutes, it offers a snapshot of Wakefield life, and the city’s expansion, which it was there to record at every moment - as the narrator notes proudly, ‘the Express has grown with Wakefield’.

Opening with the lines ‘The backbone of a local weekly news paper is the kind of news you get just by speaking to people - you can never really tell when you may uncover a story... in a little town, the newspaper man has to know pretty well everyone’, the film places the Wakefield Express squarely in the centre of the community. We’re told ‘the reporter’s pencil is always there, recording the varied display of the region’s way of life’.

The film also shows the steps that go into the finished product, through rows of typewriters and subeditors to the traditional rotary printing method.

Wakefield Express was rescreened in Wakefield in April as part of a protest against plans to move the Wakefield offices - based in the centre of town - to a location on the outskirts of the city, thus removing the newspaper from its rightful place at the centre of Wakefield life.

The film’s depictions of hot lead and galleys, linotype and mangles seem anachronistic now, but even more worryingly, the notion of the weekly newspaper itself could soon become obsolete.

The National Newspaper Society reported that last year 60 out of 1,300 regional newspapers closed, and those that remain are scaling back staff.

It’s happening all over the country, including Manchester, which, as birthplace of the Manchester Guardian, was once referred to as the 'Fleet Street of the North'.

In March, the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust, of which the Manchester Evening News group is a part, announced that 150 staff across the Greater Manchester newspapers, including 78 journalists, were to lose their jobs. This would be accompanied by the closure of all regional offices, with their remaining staff relocated to Deansgate, where the regional weeklies will be written and designed by a pool of journalists.

The Manchester Evening News is the UK’s biggest regional newspaper, operating 22 titles across Greater Manchester, stretching from Cheshire (Wilmslow and Stockport) and Derbyshire (Glossop) to Accrington and Rossendale in Lancashire.

The MEN chapel and Manchester branch of the National Union of Journalists took out a full page advert in the Guardian to protest the cuts, and managed to reduce the redundancies, although 28 journalists from the MEN will still lose their jobs and there were 36 voluntary redundancies at the weeklies.

They point out that, for many years, the MEN has proved profitable, unlike its loss-making mother paper. GMG Regional CEO Mark Dobson said the cuts were necessary, as the Guardian’s revenue from regional media fell by 85 per cent between 2007 and 2008, even though the NUJ claim the MEN Group is still expected to make a profit of £2million this year.

Local MPs and councillors are also worried about the loss of a vital part of the democratic process. Mark Hunter, Cheadle MP, passed an Early Day Motion against the cuts, signed by over 40 MPs. There are calls for the government to intervene, and culture secretary Andy Burnham has promised a review of what can be done to help.

In a Parliamentary debate on the future of regional news, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Barbara Follett said newspapers are “at the heart of the democratic process” and “the soul of local communities”.

In the same debate, Ann Coffey, Labour MP for Stockport, said the success of local newspapers lies in being “written by journalists who are constantly out and about and who know the local area and its people well.” She added: “Local newspapers also provide a forum for individuals and organisations to speak to each other.”

This is echoed by the National Union of Journalists. Jenny Lennox, of the Manchester branch, said: "We believe that you can't do good quality local journalism unless it's physically based in the area in which it serves. With the staff cuts, it will also be harder for journalists covering somewhere like Accrington or Macclesfield to get out of the Manchester office and travel to those areas."

Part of the problem, ironically, is that newspapers are increasingly coming under threat from publications produced by local government, which are in direct competition with local newspapers.

In addition, the public often expects to receive its news for free, whether through citizen blogs or in freesheets. Traditionally, newspapers have been funded by advertising, yet this has been hit doubly hard by the recession and a shift towards online advertising.

There’s also been a fundamental shift in the way news is delivered, with reporters nowadays often expected to function as photographers, filmmakers and bloggers as well as print journalists.

We might not always agree with a local newspaper, but we’ll miss them when we’re gone. Maybe it’s about time to start buying your local paper from time to time.

www.menchapel.org.uk
www.nujmanchester.org.uk

Manchester on Film, the Cornerhouse, Thursday May 14

I’ve long wanted to go inside the North West Film Archive on Chorlton Street, intrigued by what celluloid time capsules of Manchester life lie within. Last night I got a taster, at a special screening of films from the archive at the Cornerhouse.

I’ve also long been meaning to write an article about the decline of the local press in relation to a film about one newspaper, the Wakefield Express, that was recently rescreened during protests against moving the Wakefield Express from its city centre site to an out of town location.

I’ve wanted to be a reporter for as long as I can remember, and finished my news writing training at the end of January, only to enter an industry in decline, every week bringing news of more and more redundancies on weekly and daily newspapers.

It was during my adventures in the film section of Central Library on an early day of unemployment that I discovered what is probably my new favourite film - Wakefield Express: Portrait of a Newspaper, directed by Lindsay Anderson in 1952.

Imagine my delight when last night I discovered that Manchester has its own version, produced by the Guardian in 1960. News Story is a short documentary film that explains the function of the paper - ‘to inform and entertain through news, comment and opinion’ - as well as how it was made (these were the days of Linotype and hot lead).

Lasting only twenty minutes, the film goes behind the scenes at the offices of the Manchester Evening News and Guardian, four years before the Guardian moved to London. It’s a portrait of the Manchester Guardian, tracing the history of the paper, from its formation in 1821, following the Peterloo Massacre, through its famous editor CP Scott to its status an international paper sending news, via Manchester, to cities all over Europe, from Vienna to Milan.

The film visits each section of the newspaper in turn, including the editor and subeditors. We meet the writers on the international news desk, where we hear about floods in India, and local reporters interviewing strikers, as well as being introduced to the sports desk, cartoon section and features writers.

Reporters call in stories from telephone boxes and copy is sent around the country by wire machine before the paper makes its journey across the United Kingdom by train.

All the films shown were fascinating, including a behind the scenes look at Manchester City in the days long before football was the big business it has become today.

My other favourite, though, was Late Hope Street, from 1968, a grainy black and white film - ‘deliberately arty’ according to the man who introduced it - showing the regeneration of Hulme and Moss Side, and the slum clearance of whole areas of terraced housing. The man warned us that it would be accompanied by pathos inducing music, and sad strings led us to sympathise with the narrator, a lady who was refusing to leave her home amongst boarded up shells and bulldozers. She spoke of the pride the people around her had in their houses, and clearly couldn’t understand why the council was trying to get rid of her home. Against shots of people carrying front doors on their backs over heaps of rubble where streets once stood and children removing salvageable furniture through front windows, she told us ‘all we wanted was a bathroom and an indoor toilet’. She spoke of communities split up and flung across the city, often miles from each other.

Our Friends the Police was more lighthearted, showing an almost unrecognisable Manchester of flat caps and cobblestones, horses and carts and double decker trams, adverts for Bovril everywhere.

We were shown some propaganda films too, from a fundraising film for Manchester Society for the Blind, humorous for its outdated attitudes, to Summer on the Farm, a wartime drive to get people working out in the fields that emphasised the interdependence between city and country. A City Speaks, from 1946, was the most exhilarating, a council produced film that set the rollercoasters of Belle Vue, speeding over the city, a wrestling bout and a football match against the Halle Orchestra playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

One of the few colour films showed a 1970s Piccadilly Gardens as a riot of flowers in the sunshine - very different to how it is today! Smithfield Market, similarly, showed the activity of the now boarded up, deserted market on Swan Street in the days when it was a thriving place in which to buy flowers, meat and vegetables.

There was lots of architecture on display, including an unrecognisable Market Street, and landmark events like King George opening Central Library and laying the foundation stone of the Town Hall extension, but as ever it was the shots of ordinary people and day to day life that I liked best.

http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/