Manchester news agency Cavendish Press closes after nearly 50 years

Manchester news agency Cavendish Press is closing after almost 50 years of supplying the national papers, with owner Jon Harris blaming poor freelance rates, “bean counters” at national publishers and a broader malaise in UK news.

Harris joined Cavendish in 1993 as a junior reporter and took it over in a 2005 management buyout after the death of founder Brian Whittle, a Fleet Street journalist who launched the agency in Manchester in 1979 and named it after his street in Worsley.

Its reporters covered major stories including the Moors Murders and the case of Harold Shipman, the GP and serial killer, plus lighter stories about footballers and soap stars across the North. At its peak it was also a regular supplier of northern court reporting to the national titles.

Harris told Press Gazette that publishers had made the traditional “boots on the ground” agency model “unsustainable”.

“Press agencies like Cavendish were once called the ‘unsung heroes’ and the ‘lifeblood’ of the daily news list by national newspaper editors and the like,” he said.

“But these days, reporting traditional news has become a loss leader thanks to a gradual financial strangulation imposed on us by bean counters at those same publishers who are seemingly hell-bent… [on getting] free content, regardless of the quality.”

Police handouts

Harris said the agency’s traditional approach, with reporters out and about across the city and region, was “facing extinction” due to “the greed of publishers”, who used police press releases rather than “paying for accredited and independent journalistic content.”

“Only recently, at a case our reporter covered, a judge criticised police over its investigation into a convicted fraudster, yet publishers instead used the free handout from the police press office which omitted the criticism,” said Harris.

“These handouts are no doubt well-intentioned and issued in the name of transparency, but I fear their continued use, coupled with the demise of the court reporter, will ironically make police and other government departments less accountable, not more.”

Freelance rates

Harris, who has also stepped down after 13 years chairing the National Association of Press Agencies, said freelance rates had not risen since he started at the agency more than 30 years ago, and in some cases had fallen.

“Those rates have been challenged by some agencies in the past, but ultimately those pleas for more were rejected by publishers – sometimes even with a veiled threat not to use or commission their content,” he said.

He said online titles offered some hope in the 2000s, but early fees were low because the platforms were new, and a promised review of rates once national news sites became commercially viable never came.

“Now, where news pages were once filled with quirky tabloid tales about bed-hopping bishops, corrupt council officials, dirty doctors, and undercover policemen falling over drunk on the job, we see stories instead about Susanna Reid’s outfits on Good Morning Britain and the price of Greggs sausage rolls,” he said.