The Welsh edition of the Times Educational Supplement is under threat.
The highly respected specialist title is the only remaining Welsh edition of a quality UK paper, and I understand its private equity owners want to effectively shut the Welsh edition down.
The owners are consulting with their three Welsh staff on closing the Cardiff office and making the editor and a journalist redundant. I understand they want to keep one reporter to feed in Welsh copy to the London newsroom and maintain the Welsh masthead to give the impression the paper is still committed to Wales.
Understandably the eduction sector is not happy. I hear that senior WAG officials and Union reps have united to ‘make representations’ to the TES.
The Welsh edition has been a good paper, and an important voice in communicating the increasingly divergent education agenda between Wales and England.
Its demise is another indicator that things are going the wrong way. Just as the pressure for greater constitutional autonomy steps up a gear, another of the vehicles for informing the electorate that things are done differently in Wales falls by the wayside.
achangeofpersonnel 8:22 pm on 6 July, 2009 Permalink
more worrying news for the ever shrinking welsh media but also for welsh education thanks for highlighting it, you would have thought that WAG and the Union would have been more alert to this sort of development with the problems the welsh media is facing.
Angela 5:54 pm on 7 July, 2009 Permalink
It is a shame that we have to have Welsh editions of English media.Why can’t we have our own publications, what’s the key fact that stops Welsh print media being sustainable?
is it just money or are we missing a crucial cog in the wheel?
partly I feel that like everything else , there has to be commitment from the top and some leadership shown from the top too.Who in government has shown either?
Seeding some robust publications that are about news in Wales surely cannot be that expensive.If the publications are quality then advertising would follow.
I don’t think this is so much a numbers game , because the market is not huge , but as far as advertising is concerned it is a viable one for traders in Wales and those who want to sell into Wales.Been there ,done that and proved it.
To me a national media is essential and its time One Wales addressed this seriously.Its not only cultural , its social and economic.