Herne Bay Times

The Herne Bay Times was a free weekly newspaper serving the seaside town of Herne Bay on the north Kent coast. For the final years of its life it appeared as the Herne Bay edition of the Canterbury Times series, a group of free weekly titles that also covered Canterbury, Whitstable and Faversham. The paper closed in September 2017, when its publisher, Trinity Mirror, judged the series no longer commercially sustainable. Its history in its last decade was shaped by the upheavals of the Kent newspaper market: ownership by Northcliffe Media, a failed attempt to sell it to the rival KM Group, a narrow escape from merger in 2011, and the successive takeovers that created Local World and then brought the title back under Trinity Mirror.

The town it served

Herne Bay is a seaside town in the City of Canterbury local government district, about six miles north of Canterbury and four miles east of Whitstable. It began as a small shipping community, receiving goods and passengers from London en route to Canterbury and Dover, and rose to prominence as a resort in the early nineteenth century after London investors built a pleasure pier and promenade. Its seafront is home to a clock tower built in 1837, believed to be the first freestanding purpose-built clock tower in the world, and from the late Victorian period until 1978 the town had the second-longest pier in the United Kingdom, before its centre section was torn down by a storm. The town had a population of 38,563 at the 2011 census. It was for this community of residents, seafront businesses and visitors that the Times provided a free weekly record of local news.

Kent Regional News and Media

In its Northcliffe years the paper belonged to Kent Regional News and Media, known as KRNM, a subsidiary grouping of weekly titles across Kent. KRNM had been part of Trinity Mirror until July 2007, when Northcliffe Media bought 26 regional titles from Trinity Mirror in a deal worth £64.15 million. The purchase covered three of Trinity Mirror's local divisions, including Kent Regional Newspapers, and titles such as the Medway News and the East Kent Gazette. Among the KRNM weeklies, the Herne Bay title appeared in this period in a combined form as the Herne Bay and Whitstable Times, edited alongside the Canterbury Times by John Nurden. The Times titles were the free distribution arm of the KRNM portfolio, sitting alongside paid-for weeklies in neighbouring towns.

The failed sale to the KM Group

In July 2011 Northcliffe Media announced that it intended to sell a group of its Kent titles to the rival KM Group, the publisher of the Kent Messenger series. The newspapers involved included the Dover Express, the East Kent Gazette, the Folkestone Herald, the Herne Bay and Whitstable Times, the Isle of Thanet Gazette, the Medway News and the Thanet Times. KM Group referred the proposed acquisition to the Office of Fair Trading. The Office of Fair Trading then referred the matter on to the Competition Commission because of the possible monopoly the deal might create in Kent. The referral increased the cost and complexity of the takeover, and the deal was abandoned. The collapse of the sale had severe consequences for the KRNM titles, the Herne Bay title among them.

Merger threat and survival

In the weeks after the sale collapsed, Northcliffe announced the closure of the Medway News and the East Kent Gazette, with up to 35 job losses, the East Kent Gazette publishing its last edition on 7 December 2011. Attention then turned to the surviving weeklies. In December 2011 it emerged that five of Northcliffe's remaining weekly titles in Kent could be merged. They were the Canterbury Times, the Faversham Times, the Herne Bay and Whitstable Times, the Thanet Gazette and the Isle of Thanet Times. John Nurden, editor of the Canterbury Times and the Herne Bay and Whitstable Times, commented publicly on the proposals on the day of the announcement. The National Union of Journalists warned that the closures and mergers could further weaken local media in the county. In the event, the Times titles survived the review as separate free editions, and the Herne Bay Times continued to be published through the changes of ownership that followed.

Local World and Trinity Mirror

In November 2012 the Daily Mail and General Trust sold Northcliffe Media to Local World, a new regional publishing group, and the Herne Bay Times passed into Local World's portfolio of local titles. The ownership wheel then turned full circle. In October 2015 Trinity Mirror acquired Local World, so the paper returned to the group that had owned KRNM before the 2007 sale to Northcliffe. Under Trinity Mirror the title settled into its final form as part of the Canterbury Times series, published in Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and Faversham editions, while the publisher built up its county-wide digital brand, Kent Live, alongside the printed weeklies.

The final editions in 2017

On 4 September 2017 Trinity Mirror announced that it would close the Times series in Kent at the end of the month because the titles were no longer commercially sustainable. The closure covered all four free editions: Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and Faversham. The company said that no jobs were at risk as a result of the closures, and that news in the areas affected would continue to be covered by its Kent Live website. The last edition of the series was published in the week commencing 25 September 2017. A Trinity Mirror spokesman explained that the markets served by the papers would continue to be served by Kent Live, which the company said had reached an average of 404,000 people a week in August 2017, an increase of 91 per cent year on year, and had a social media following of more than 60,000.

Not the Herne Bay Gazette

The Herne Bay Times should not be confused with the Herne Bay Gazette, the town's other weekly newspaper. The Gazette was a paid-for title owned by the KM Group, providing news related only to the town, and it continued in publication after the Times closed. The two papers reflected the two sides of the Kent newspaper industry: the Gazette belonged to the family-owned KM Group, rooted in Maidstone and publisher of the Kent Messenger, while the Times belonged to the succession of national regional-press groups — Northcliffe, Local World and Trinity Mirror — that owned the KRNM titles. For a period the town was served by both a paid-for weekly and a free weekly from competing publishers, an arrangement that ended with the closure of the Times in 2017.

Coverage and community role

As a free weekly, the Times was delivered to households rather than sold, and its value to readers lay in its coverage of the everyday business of its towns: Canterbury City Council decisions affecting Herne Bay, planning applications, schools, courts, sport and the seafront events of a resort town. In Herne Bay that meant reporting on a community shaped by its promenade and pier heritage, its resident population and its seasonal visitors. Free newspapers of this kind depended on advertising rather than cover price, which made them vulnerable when local advertising markets weakened — the commercial judgement that ultimately ended the series in 2017.

Legacy

The Herne Bay Times ended not with a local failure but as part of a national publisher's portfolio review, one of a series of free weekly closures announced by Trinity Mirror in the autumn of 2017 alongside titles in other parts of England. Its decade under the KRNM banner traced the recent history of the British regional press in miniature: a sale between national groups, a competition inquiry that blocked consolidation with a local rival, closures and threatened mergers, and finally the transfer of the audience to a digital-only brand. After September 2017, Herne Bay's printed weekly journalism was left to the KM Group's Gazette, while the Times' former patch was covered online by Kent Live.