Lots of very well meaning people are very concerned about the future of local newspapers. These people worry about the health of local democracy when local newspapers are closing and increasing parts of the country have no local news.
But anyone who has been involved in local politics will be familiar with this debate. When I worked for Alan Whitehead MP, he would knock on the doors of residents of Southampton who would remember him not for his stunning election victory in 1997, or even his consecutive defeats of 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992 in the same onstituency. He was remembered as the “man who closed the aviary”. The aviary was of course, much loved and its passing has never been forgotten by some Southampton citizens. But when it was open, it was not sufficiently well loved for enough people to have visited it. The debate about local newspapers has the same ring of an ‘expectation gap’ between how life is and how we would like it to be.
This concern for local newspapers well-founded. They fulfil an important role in society. With so many public spending bodies operating in a community, scrutinising the local area fora, the PCT, police, safer neighbourhoods schemes, childrens’ centres, schools, local businesses and so on is an important and time-consuming activity. A local newspaper should also reflect the richness of a local community – those public interest stories ‘the oldest person to . . . the youngest person to . . . the biggest float at the school fete’. Without these functions life goes on but we are all a little poorer for it. Moreover, local newspapers are often read by people who are more marginalised in the local community than national newspapers, other forms of news or the internet (possibly not unrelated to the job ads) helping involve them in society that little bit more.
But it’s worth remembering why we are where we are. Local newspapers were failing adequately to report public bodies long before they started closing. It was the struggle of trying to get a local reporters to a council meeting, a cabinet committee or a committee inquiry that led local authorities to create their own newspapers. And where local newspapers did cover local politics, the newspaper rarely had the circulation across diverse communities to justify a local authority advertising in that newspaper alone. How many people who are concerned about local newspapers buy theirs every week? Anecdotally it’s not quite the complete commitment you might desire of a protest movement.
The situation at the moment – where local newspapers are being crowded out by expensive council-run freesheets – is anti-competitive and probably unsustainable. But to suggest that if councils only stopped producing their own newspapers there would be a flood back to the traditional paper is misleading. And there’s little evidence that people were better informed of their local politicians ten years ago, before councils tried to do more to make themselves accountable.
The health of local newspapers is also bound up in the health of local democracy. Whilst there are undoubtedly lots and lots of meetings – and many of these take place outside the town hall (making them more resource-intensive to cover) – local public bodies have less control over the cash they spend than ever before. Is it any wonder people don’t buy local newspapers to discover the effectiveness of public services at doing what they’re told by central government?
So if we don’t want local newspapers to become the new aviaries, what are the options?
First, we need to lead by example by buying the newspaper. We could also contribute every now and then by submitting an article, an op-ed, an idea for a story or a picture from our street. We could even attend a local meeting and write it up. Will Perrin and Talk About Local can show the way. Failing to recycle our local council-run freesheet would be irresponsible – though the threat of local authorities missing their landfill targets would introduce a new incentive. But in the absence of local public bodies with genuine power – the need for accountability will not feel so important.
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Tags: democratic reform, newspapers
I think there are other things we can do. Finding state-funding (or any other kind of funding – perhaps of the kind that Jeremy Dear advocates here….)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/television-bbc-public-service-broadcasting
… is an option. This should not be confused with the idea of giving money to the useless near-monopolies that have dominated local media for so long.
But a market that was reasonably well regulated would undoubtedly provide a sustainable commercial environoment in which good, well-staffed responsible local media *could* be sustainable.
The Irish Republic has great local newspapers – ones that are read by a much higher % of the population – they manage to survive on revenues that large publishing monopolies won’t get out of bed for.
This is a public policy failure that goes back a long way. It’s there because governments are reluctant to intervene in the relatively small but hugely important media industries – for political reasons that we should understand (even if we deplore the implied cowardice).
Thanks for your comment Paul. I think state funding for local newspapers is hugely problematic. I’ve no doubt that mechanisms could be found to separate funding levels and decisions from editorial matters but they would be vitally important. And ensuring that it funded the ‘right sort’ of reporting would be tricky. Do we really get the requisite coverage of religious programming from C4 at the moment?
I happen to think that the tax levy is completely unworkable (defining recording device – all PCs?) and lacks legitimacy (why should my PS3 purchase pay for a local newspaper?)
The balance between local and national newspapers is interesting. Does the UK just have too many national newspapers for local ones to survive? And the profit margin point is well made; there are some great local newspapers with lower margins or doing well as not for profits.
A tax levy on recording devices is in practice already in almost every other EU country. It’s perfectly definable on specific devices. AND, the same devices – levy and all – are generally cheaper in other EU countries than they are here. There would be no problem with implementing them apart from the fact that monopolistic media players are allowed a veto on policy areas that effect their markets.
On the morality of your PS3 paying for your newspaper, that’s not necessarily what’s proposed. And why should PVR manufacturers be able to make £billions selling products that are specifically designed to timeshift content (not on the terms that it is provided) without paying a tiny levy (after all, ultimately, it is the content that is selling the boxes in the first place). Ad-avoiding timeshifting is expected to be in place in 80% of UK homes within the next five years – making it a great deal harder to raise ad revenue.
Google, for example, enjoys a monopoly status that allows it to make hundreds of £billions from other people’s content. It seems to be traditional that monopolies are regulated unless they work in the media for some reason.
The scale of the figures here are both huge and tiny – the kind of levies that you would need to ensure that journalism could be funded from a tiny levy on industries that dwarf the entire content-provision industry (industries that are dependent upon the existance of good content to survive by the way) that may or may not be passed on to consumers.
The irony is that it is generally public service broadcasting content that drives the sale of a lot of comms products in the UK – whether it’s iPlayer driving up the demand for bandwidth or ordinary drama that drives up the demand for flat-screen TVs or PVRs.
On your question of ‘who do we give the money to’, ITN have never been a headache on the question of independence. Give it to them – it’s precisely the area where public service content is hitting a funding gap. If they had *more* money than they had five years ago but had greater local newsgathering obligations it would answer your objection.
Talk about local will certainly be something I’ll look at.
The problem I find about local blogging is that is that I find it difficult to broadcast it to people who actually live within my area, with most of my hits coming from London – Not so useful at all. For creating discussion perhaps like we have here but not determining any decisions in a local area.
I find the local resident meetings I’ve attended interesting enough, and cover a lot of issues that other people may find irritating after a time and do a good job, although as I pointed out it often gets dominated with people with a certain outlook. (Those damn oldies).
@Paul Evans: You have clearly given this more thought than I have Paul.
I remain to be convinced that a hypothecated tax of this sort is desirable when there is such an indirect cause and affect. It’s not as simply as PVRs cause local journalism crisis. And I’m not sure I actually paid a penny for either my Sky+ or Virgin+ box.
I think the solution lies not in shoring up struggling broadcasters, such as ITN, but investing in lots of different innovators – like 4IP on a grander scale. The platform doesn’t require the investment, its the original content.
@Thomas Byrne: You might also be interested in Haringay Online which is my favourite local network / news / community site.
Your Sky+ PVR may not have had a price tag, but you absolutely did pay for it in the same way as you pay for a mobile phone handset – I’m sure of that!
On the question of hypothecated tax, we’re talking a tiny levy on massive industry. As I said, you probably won’t pay it in any noticeable sense – after all, countries that have such levies often actually supply the product for less than it is supplied for in the UK.
There’s a ‘tragedy of the commons’ argument here.
The scale of comms universe is >£60bn (TV, broadband, telephony, hardware, subscriptions, licence fees, ads etc). Those huge revenues are driven by a public who are prepared to access content.
All of the companies that make money in this market all think it’s a good idea to *make* content, but they all hope that someone else will do it (and they’re all massively inefficient in comparison to the BBC, C4 and ITV). Making content would be to subsidise all of thier competitors because of the demand for net neutrality.
The funding gap is relatively tiny – a few £100m
Commercial companies are not only inefficient, they’re not trusted either – and this adds to their inefficiency. FOr this reason, PSBs are a really cheap way to drive all of those markets.
I’m working with 4iP on a project as it happens and I agree that there is a need to develop newer better models of delivering – especially for local content. But I do worry that good quality content is the lifeblood of democracy, and we are bending over backwards to prove it can be made for almost nothing when – in fact – it could be properly funded without anyone really noticing.
Apart from commercial media monopolies that is…. <<< big political hole in my argument
@Paul Evans: I think we agree on the ends, if not the means. And the ambition of properly funded news reporting UK-wide is worth fighting for.
I’m happy to split the difference on the proposal of a PVR tax!