A window of opportunity to improve local news services?The crisis in local news provision has prompted a national debate about the best way to secure quality local news services. The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has been drawn into this debate, publishing a report on September 22nd that delineated the main options. The branch is now calling together journalists from all our newsrooms to see whether some of the options under discussion could help us improve the service we provide to the local community. The Ofcom report into local and regional media in the UK has begun to delineate the battlelines that will determine the nature of our local news services in the foreseeable future. The 152-page report (www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/lrmuk.pdf), makes some welcome statements about the importance of local media to consumers, to the democratic and civic life of local communities and as a feeder into national news services, and it appeared to acknowledge that many of the new ITV regions are unable to provide the local service viewers want.
It also recognises the pressure local broadcast and print media face in the Internet age. However, its assessment of the ability of local newsrooms to provide a proper service in their current overstretched state, and of the impact of the thousands of editorial jobs and scores of titles lost over the last couple of years, bears little relation to the experience of journalists on the ground.
The battleground
Thanks to some serious work done by the NUJ and others, the Ofcom report recognises the considerable body of opinion that believes the current, purely commercial, business models may no longer be able to sustain diverse quality local news services for everybody. These voices argue that there is an urgent need to facilitate the establishment of viable news organisations that have as their main aim the provision of quality news rather than purely the best return on investment.
The report set out the alternative views as three camps:
- a ‘Free the Corporations’ camp, arguing for the removal of barriers to a single corporation owning TV, radio and print services in any given locality
- A ‘Don’t Free the Corporations’ camp, arguing that deregulation would perpetuate failed models that have seen investment in local media sacrificed in the interests of very high shareholder returns
- A ‘Survival of the Fittest’ camp.
While claiming no allegiance to any of these camps, Ofcom’s actions so far have favoured the corporations. In July of this year, it recommended liberalising local cross-media ownership rules so that cross-ownership of major local newspaper+local radio station+local TV news (Channel 3) would still be restricted, but ownership of two of the three would be allowed.
This has opened the way, for instance, for Northcliffe, one of the big four provincial press corporations, to head up a bid last week for a “news consortium” to “rescue” ITV’s regional news production for the South West of England. Given Northcliffe’s record of 1000 jobs axed in its provincial press operations earlier this year, the NUJ is clearly right to question whether such a development would benefit to Northcliffe’s shareholders more than to the quality of local news.
Alternative business models
No Ofcom recommendations have been forthcoming in support of finding ways to sustain local news organisations that seek to provide a service to the community and not purely to make financial gain. This, says Ofcom, is a matter for Government and not for Ofcom. It does, however, devote almost five pages of its report to looking at suggestions about possible alternative models. Most of these have been drawn from a very well-researched paper, Navigating the Crisis in Local and Regional News, written by Andrew Currah, a lecturer at Oxford University, published by the Reuters Institute, and accessible via a link on the Ofcom report webpage.
Among the options considered are:
- Direct subsidies, as in the Swedish model
- Targeted tax breaks, perhaps to support training or even particular editorial posts; “e.g. tax relief could be applied to the cost of a social affairs, community or even municipal correspondent”
- Adopting trust or charitable status, as in the Scott Trust, which publishes the Guardian. This would tie the organisation to aims that are not purely defined by profit, but could include, for instance providing fair, accurate and impartial news.
- Forming a Community Interest Company, which would allow greater freedom than a charity to campaign on local issues, while still tying the company to a defined civic purpose. CIC status was introduced by the Government in 2005. Current examples in the media include Big Voice Media in South Yorkshire, which was formed to promote film, animation, photography and print skills among young people. Though no news organisation has yet applied for CIC status, the Ofcom report asserts that it could be appropriate, particularly “where it can be demonstrated that commercial models are failing to deliver, either because of newspaper closures or significant cut-backs.”
- A commitment from government and local councils to use local print media to carry statutory notices, job advertisements, public awareness campaigns and so on. Many councils now produce their own free sheets to carry this information – some even attempting to pose as competition to local newspapers by carrying ‘news’ items not directly related to council business.
Are there opportunities here for our local media?
For some time now, this NUJ branch has been documenting the cuts in our local news provision. We’ve lost Central News South and the Meridian region, which stretches all the way to Dover, cannot provide a proper local news service. The Oxford Mail and Times newsroom and the district reporters for the weeklies have been pared down to the bare bones. Johnston Press has decimated the editorial strength of its Central Counties newspapers, including the Banbury Guardian, as part of a massive redundancy programme earlier this year. Heart FM, formerly Fox FM and home to the once impressive half-hour Fox report, has a newsroom of two, while Jack and 107.9FM share two journalists between them.
Only the BBC has shown a commitment to investing in local news, but it too is now under threat from three directions. The Labour Party wants to top-slice the licence fee and siphon off a large chunk of money to pay commercial providers to produce local news, the Tories want to encourage local provision by cutting the BBC down to size give commercial providers less to compete with, while removing restrictions on cross-media ownership, while the BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons is responding to these threats by proposing a pre-emptive downsizing of the BBC, which has already culled thousands of jobs in recent rounds of self-inflicted cuts.
A gathering of news gatherers
Could the debate opening up about the future of local news services offer an opportunity for improving the quality of news in this area, to the benefit of both the community and the job satisfaction of the journalists?
Who better to ask than the journalists themselves. The branch is therefore inviting journalists from all our eight local news services together with some of our excellent independent video journalists who supply stories to local and national broadcasters, to an informal evening gathering at the Mitre on Oxford High Stree (date to be confirmed) to meet one another (never been done before), to talk about how things are at a various workplaces, how we would like things to be.
The local media landscape is changing fast. We need to ensure that those of us who want it to change for the better are in a position to exert some influence.
People value their local news
Extract from the Ofcom report
- Nine out of ten UK adults regularly consume some form of local news, information or other content through television, radio, newspapers or the internet. Each of these platforms plays a complementary role in providing relevant news and information and enables people to keep in touch with their local community.
- Regional TV news is watched at least once a day by four fifths of adults; about half listen to local radio or read a free paper at least weekly; two fifths read a paid for paper at least weekly while around one in five use commercial news websites.
- Consumers and citizens value the role local and regional content plays in their lives; local and regional news in particular helps to inform people about what is going on in their local community, while news and other types of local content contribute towards reflecting UK cultural identity and representing diversity and alternative viewpoints.
- Local and regional newspapers play a particularly important role in informing, representing, campaigning and interrogating and thus underpinning awareness and participation in the democratic process. Newspaper journalism is also a crucial part of the local and regional media ecology because it supports journalism on other platforms.
- Regional television news is one of the areas of public service content most valued by audiences. Around half of adults say it is their main source of local news, and three quarters believe that it is important to have regional news available on channels other than the BBC.
THE ‘THREE CAMPS’
Ofcom presents the debate about how to save local news as divided into three camps:
- The ‘Free the Corporations’ camp is represented by major newspaper organisations which believe that the way to solve the current problems is to liberalise competition and ownership rules.
- The ‘Don’t Free the Corporations’ camp is represented by the NUJ, some media commentators and at least 90 MPs. This group argues that deregulation will simply encourage news organisations to continue along existing tracks – namely, cutting editorial resources, centralising editorial and production and shedding jobs. Some in this group have argued for public subsidies.
- The ‘Survival of the Fittest’ camp is represented mainly by commentators who support new media innovation.
AW 2009-10-01
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