Our pervasive love of the news bite, the news headline, the edgy quote could be the downfall of our local news – up to half of the 1300 local and regional newspaper titles could close in the next five years and yet there’s no concern on what it’ll do to our democracy. The regulated commercial media and the BBC do not and cannot contribute to local debate. The BBC charter is explicit on this point. As themselves, they cannot talk about politics, so they do not – and it’ll be the downfall of our communtaries.
The local media enhance local employment and local commerce. Above all, local media, both here in Durham and elsewhere, are a countervailing force to local and regional corruption and crime. David Cameron (taking his cue from Daniel Hannan) talks about decisions made behind closed doors, how the Houses of Parliament have been bypassed and undermined, and how a radical redistribution of power and localism are the only way we can get rid of the plague on our many many houses indeed. What use is that if our local chambers are as infested?
We have revenues collapsing on the advertising side, which is particularly hurting the local press – in simple terms local advertising is falling at twice the rate of the decline of national advertising. We are seeing national advertising declines in the UK of about 15% – it’s easy to be dismissive of this – some people have left that community space and now live in the great Internet age, but rather than those people who care about where they live and their communities in a way that we do not see so much any more, the newsbite takes over. The flavour of the soup gets awfully thin. It is all pretty much the same soup and then we all drift up to the commonalities, which are what is going on in Iran, what the Prime Minister said and so on at the expense of local, unique news.
The average income earned from a regional or local newspaper reader is about £100 a year, taking account of advertising and circulation. The average income earned on a website visitor is about £2 a year and falling. There isn’t a sustainable future to be had for local media to go online.
The gravest danger of not having local media doing local reporting is who is going to challenge the local council? Who is going to say that gang crime has got too much in this particular area?
Some say bloggers, but only 4% of news ever originates on a blog. Blogs are commentaries on what is going on. They do not originate stories, by and large with very few exceptions, they do not have the resources to do that, I only even as a student manage to find the time to briefly comment on local news stories and do a little digging, but even then it’s to little avail – we need a strong local media to bring a community together -there is no expansion in TV, there is no expansion in radio, there is no expansion in newspapers, there is no expansion in magazines. The overall level of employment in all those industries will fall and will continue to fall for the
foreseeable future unless something is done to alleviate the pressure they’re under.
The local people are our people. They are your people, your journalists are part of your community. Now we need to find a way to get behind them.
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Interesting question. So what is the solution? The free market Tory inside me says that if local newspapers are not making enough money then they do not deserve to survive. Covering the gap through tax-payer funding doesn’t really work as the local paper will then be beholden to politicians who allocate the funds. Most local councils already produce their own free local newspapers but these are bland and don’t hold anyone to account.
I would slightly rephrase the issue. Localism needs local accountability. Central government can force local decision making to be as transparent and open as possible. Taxpayers should know how all tax revenue is spent. This will allow newspapers, bloggers and others to hold local officials to account.
young people to buy the regional press because you do not tend to be interested in the locality until you have a stake in the community.
There are also merger rules in place to stop these local titles coming together to survive, which I find utterly bizarre.
Linked to papers though are other local media sources.The radio sector in this country is the most regulated of all the media sectors. The amount of
regulation is very, very high. You can probably imagine that
de-regulation would assist the radio industry in surviving.
ITV also in particular, do play a part in enriching the range of
information sources for people living in local spaces, but there is a very limited amount that you can do with the number of minutes that they have at theirdisposal. Of course ITV has been asking for regulatory relief on those minutes for as long as I can remember.
I think the new volunteer scheme will help as young people to buy the regional press because you do not tend to be interested in the locality until you have a stake in the community and this will change that.*
Campaign now up on conservatives.com – well done Tom!
From Twitter:
@ByrneTofferings
Looks as if CCHQ totally took on my ideas for local media http://bit.ly/bAo4oD 😉 Sign the petition here! http://bit.ly/cV91wH
Betapolitics: That is of course the point – local newspapers can’t compete with the taxpayer funded freebies. I’m all in favour of properly transparent council communications etc but I don’t see how they can be allowed to present themselves as independent news sources when they are funded by a political council.
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