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Published: 31st March, 2011

A WEEK before Christmas 1980, as journalists at North London News in Crouch End were preparing to go to their staff Christmas dinner at a local Indian restaurant, two of their union representatives were called down to the headquarters of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Gray’s Inn Road.

They were told that one of the North ­London News titles, the Camden Journal, was to close with immediate effect and eight staff sacked. It was a bolt from the blue. 

North London News, owned by a Midlands company, Courier Press Holdings, also published the Hornsey Journal and the Islington Gazette. 

The following morning 18 NUJ members at all three papers met and the mood was one of outright resistance. There was a unanimous vote to stand by the sacked eight journalists and save the paper. So a strike by journalists on all three papers was declared.

Meetings were held with local MPs, Frank Dobson and Jock Stallard, and with leaders of tenants organisations, all political parties on the council and local trade unions, all of which deplored the closure. 

The strikers’ organisation, the NUJ Group Chapel, resolved to publish a weekly newspaper called “Save the Camden Journal”.

The Camden community provided its support thanks to the unique tradition of organisation among tenants. 

But after 18 months, the union had to accept a settlement. The jobs were lost. But the management agreed to sell the title of the paper for a nominal £1. 

Two members of the chapel, Eric Gordon, the editor, and Angela Cobbinah, a reporter, took up the challenge. The paper was relaunched as the Camden New Journal.

From its fragile beginnings, the New Journal has grown. Other members of the old chapel, including myself, have worked intermittently for the New Journal. 

All members of the original chapel take a pride in the fact that the ethos of journalism rooted in the community has been perpetuated and developed in the New Journal so that its 1,500th edition finds it stronger than ever, providing many more jobs than the eight originally cut.

So the New Journal was saved as a locally based, locally run independent voice for the people of Camden.
HOWARD HANNAH

As we look back on some of the most important issues among our first 1,500, editor Eric Gordon reflects on the New Journal’s launch and the current state of the local newspaper industry

NEARLY 30 years after the Camden New Journal was launched, it still bucks the trend. All around us, weekly newspapers – whether give-aways or bought over the counter – are in trouble in today’s rocky economy.

When we set out, scores of independent weeklies – owned by families or small companies – were already being swallowed up by large groups. 

It wasn’t long before five or six monopolies owned more than 90 per cent of Britain’s 2,000 weeklies

Today, intense contraction of ownership is seen as the only medicine that will keep papers alive. 

It has meant the death of hundreds of titles as giant groups – some part of the global  economy – retreated behind a policy of consolidation of departments followed by massive cuts in staffing.

This is what has happened in Camden.

At our launch we were the borough’s third newspaper. Although revolutionary at the time as a free weekly, our competitors seemed to make room for us.

But times were changing. While the two other papers – the Ham & High and the then St Pancras Chronicle, both still, essentially family owned – seemed stable with largish weekly circulations of 22,000 and 10,000 – their inner weaknesses became more and more exposed.

The writing was on the wall within a few years. While we grew, they declined – the Ham & High’s circulation fell as did that of the Chronicle, which was bought up first by one group and then by Archant, who also own the Ham & High.

Applying the laws of survival in a market economy, large groups –  including those who dominate the weekly newspaper industry in the capital – unsurprisingly cut their staff and heavily pruned overheads by centralising their editorial operations. 

Some offices in London were closed down and reporters asked to work from home.

The common denominator for these and most other papers is that they are owned by large private companies whose net profit margins have to be kept high to satisfy shareholders.

We are different. Although we need to make a profit, like any other enterprise in a market economy, we are a company limited by guarantee, we have no shareholders, and can therefore thrive on a small profit margin, as long as it is substantial enough to cover all costs.

Our viability is also helped by an egalitarian salary structure. In other newspapers, pay differential can be as  high as 10 or 15 to one. In the Camden New Journal it is three to one. 

Greed isn’t our guiding star. Uniquely, this creates, we believe, an atmosphere of co-operation among the staff – yes, I think it can be said that generally we do feel we are all in it together. We are developing into something similar to the John Lewis “mutual” kind of company.

There is another weekly newspaper like us, the West Highland Free Press, in Skye – not a lot of us, admittedly, but we prove that newspapers, given the right kind of ownership, can survive and flourish.

Moreover, our approach and style of company builds a unique bond with the community.

That is why we are different and why we believe small is beautiful – and why we are bucking the trend.

Lift-off! Strongman PE teacher helps celebrate our 1,500 edition

HE was a man mountain who won a medal at the Commonwealth Games, he became a regular on TV’s The World’s Strongest Man – and he was a Camden PE teacher to boot.

Well known around the borough, Andy Drzewiecki held up his newborn ­daughter to pose for a ­picture to celebrate the first ever edition of the Camden New Journal.

One thousand, four ­hundred and ninety-nine issues later, he now lives in Spain and this week wished the paper well as we hit the milestone of 1,500 editions.

Mr Drzewiecki, who taught PE at Brookfield School in Highgate Newtown in the 1980s, was the cover star of our first issue, published on March 25, 1982. He said: “I remember the photo shoot as if it was ­yesterday. I was very happy to feature on the front page of the first edition.”

Now aged 64, he recalls his daughter Danusia was aged six weeks old and weighed in at 10lbs – a featherweight compared to her father, who at the time weighed 17 stone and was known at the primary school where he taught for eating three plates of school dinners each lunchtime as he was in serious training for both the shot putt and weight­lifting.

Mr Drzewiecki later moved to weight­lifting.

After a spell of living in Stoke and Manchester, the now retired teacher has moved to Spain – but he keeps up with the news from home via our website. 

He added: “Best wishes to the staff of the paper and good luck with the anniversary edition.”

Mr Drzewiecki was not the only Olympian to feature on that historic first New Journal. Paraplegic Olympic fencer Maggie McClennan married Tom Killin the week we first ran off the printers – and we featured a romantic shot of the happy couple cutting their wedding cake at the Camden Road Baptist Church.
DAN CARRIER