Comment Fresh ideas could save news you need to know
HOW can we save local and regional news? Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestion is to ask the BBC to do more to help local and regional news organisations.
In a major speech about the future of the media under a Labour government, he will say funding could be made available “to local, community and investigative news co-ops, with a mandate to use significant time and resources reporting on public institutions, public service providers, local government, outsourced contractors and regulated bodies.”
As Mr Corbyn will point out this would be an extension of an existing scheme in which the BBC funds “local democracy reporters” employed by local and regional newspapers and online services.
There are local democracy reporters at the BirminghamLive online service as well the regional newspapers the Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Post (all of which are part of the same business).
It follows fears that local and regional newspapers are reducing their coverage of local politics.
That’s partly because they’ve got less money. But it’s also because many local papers are focusing increasingly on delivering news online, through a website or app, and that’s changed they way they report things.
For an example of how the industry’s finances are changing, we can look at the 2017 annual report of Reach (previously called TrinityMirror), the company that owns BirminghamLive.
Reach PLC owns national papers and a lot of local papers across the country, so these figures certainly cover a lot more than just the Birmingham business. But they show that revenue from publishing fell by nine per cent in 2017.
That’s not a one-off. Revenue has been falling for years.
But the problem isn’t a lack of readers.
Reach PLC states that 14.9 million people read at least one its papers every month on average in 2017. But the online audience is 33.4 million people each month, and increasing.
Instead, the problem is that old-fashioned newspapers made a lot of money while online services make much less.
One result is that the business employs fewer journalists than it used to.
Here we come to the second issue – the way online news services differ to traditional newspapers.
It’s possible that some senior managers at Reach will take a different view to me about this.
But newspapers have always offered readers a variety of different stories.
For example, the Birmingham Mail, a tabloid community newspaper, might have put a crime story on the front page, and a story about the council on page seven And that was fine. Everyone knew that a shooting, a dramatic court case or a major traffic accident was likely to go on the front, because that’s what (as far as we could tell) people were most interested in.
But editors believed their readers expected news about the council to be in the paper, somewhere.
Online news services don’t work like that. People tend to consume individual stories rather than the entire website or app.
And there’s a temptation simply to publish stories we know will do well – crime, celebrity stuff, news about bars and restaurants – and neglect things that are unlikely to reach a mass audience, however important they are.
Reach, my employer, hasn’t succumbed to that temptation, I’m pleased to say.
There’s also a view (although it’s the subject of debate within the industry) that publishing “important” stories adds value to a brand even if they don’t get huge readership numbers.
And the good news, now that we can see exactly how many people click on each story, is that readers are more interested in politics and local government than some people in the industry realised.
People want to know about Brexit, or clean air zones, or why their benefits have suddenly been cut.
Readers are more interested in politics and local government than some people in the industry realised
Nonetheless, the shift to online news does make local political coverage vulnerable.
So perhaps, if we want to ensure it continues, Mr Corbyn’s idea is worth considering.
There’s one catch though, at least for established brands.
While the “local democracy reporters” currently funded by the BBC are working with existing local news organisations – which as a rule are commercial businesses – Mr Corbyn is talking about “local, community and investigative news co-ops”.
I’m sure there will be more detail to come, but co-ops sound like new organisations, presumably run on a not-for-profit basis.
Giving bodies like that an effective subsidy from the BBC might actually make life harder for existing local news businesses.
On balance, then, would it be good for local democracy?
I don’t know and I’m an interested party anyway, so I’ll leave that with you.