The Channel Chieftain V has been carrying the national newspapers, which are printed in Jersey, alongside other items to newsagents and retailers in Guernsey for the past decade.
Its operating company, Iris Freight, said it carried about 25,000 newspapers to Guernsey each week, about half the amount it used to carry when it started.
The company has this year asked the Guernsey States and the Jersey government for what the States described as ‘significant’ financial support to allow it to continue to operate. It has a contract with KPS, the Jersey-based printer of national newspapers, to transport them to Guernsey. It said that the future of printed newspapers was essential to its business model, although it does transport other freight, and sometimes people, between the islands too.
The company called itself ‘a little lifeline between each island’, having over the past 10 years carried more than a million bread rolls, 520 tonnes of shellfish, 187 tonnes of mail, 3,000 passengers and more than 100 pets and medicines to hospitals in both islands.
The States yesterday confirmed that it had turned down the funding bid, saying that public support was not appropriate or sustainable.
‘While we recognise and value the service Iris Freight has provided over many years, the challenges it faces are structural and industry‑wide,’ said Economic Development Committee president Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller.
‘Government intervention in the newspaper distribution market would not address those underlying issues and would likely require significant, ongoing and growing public subsidy and would not be a one-off request. In addition, the committee concluded that government financial support intended to subsidise newspaper distribution would risk undermining impartiality of the local media and would therefore not be appropriate. For those reasons, the committee agreed that it was not able to provide financial support.’
The Guernsey Press continues to be printed six days a week in Guernsey, and the contract to print the national newspapers in Jersey is still in place.
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