First local news consortia invited to submit tenders

"The huge increase in viewers and readers seeking information about the terrible floods in Cumbria over the last week is a clear demonstration of that. Its importance to local democracy, coupled with the acute challenge being faced by commercial news companies, means there is a need for Government support.""The huge increase in viewers and readers seeking information about the terrible floods in Cumbria over the last week is a clear demonstration of that. Its importance to local democracy, coupled with the acute challenge being faced by commercial news companies, means there is a need for Government support."

The words of the culture secretary Ben Bradshaw who has announced today that Border and Tyne Tees are to be the first region to conduct the pilot experiment for local news.

The panel will then select bidders wanting to form independently funded news consortiums to provide regional ITV1 news bulletins and other content for the area to go forward to the second stage after Christmas with the submission of final tenders by the end of February 2010.

Council news is keeping local papers alive

Interesting that a local councillor has claimed that council news is actually keeping local papers afloat

Liberal Democrat Gerald Vernon-Jackson told a Select Committee hearing into the future of regional media that Portsmouth Council's paper Flagship helped fund the city's local newspaper.
He said: "We in local authorities are in many ways keeping these newspapers afloat. We keep pumping money into these papers, hundreds of thousands of pounds a year."

via Independent

Tories propose a local news service

An interesting development from the Tories and its not David Cameron's attempts to get down with the kids on Radio 5 yesterday.

It's proposing the creation of 80 independent cross-platform, ad-funded news companies staffed by professional journalists and community volunteers to fill in the gaps left by the shrinkage of local newspapers and the switch-off of ITV’s local news in 2012.

reports Paid Content

The report has been written by by former Johnston Press chairman Roger Parry,

It would be commercially funded through a mixture of: “Display and (a reduced volume of) classified advertising, sponsorship, product placement, retailing, copy sales, by selling news services to regional and national providers and by providing local media services.”

but as the site rightly says

it is a big question mark whether the market can sustain local news in any format without at least some public subsidy.

Some much for convergence in Manchester

So we all thought that the cuts at the Manchester Evening news last month were in part at least to protect its new media interests and Channel M.

No so as we discovered late yesterday,management at the group have discussed making 41 redundancies out of 74 staff.

Press Gazette reports that

Channel M chief executive Mark Dodson read out a statement to staff this afternoon which revealed that due to the economic downturn the station could not exist in its current form and jobs would have to be cut across the board.

It's live broadcast will now be restricted to just three hours a day.

Perhaps we should look to re employ a town crier?

Newsqust launches new hyperlocal sites

Nerwquest has announced plans to widen its hyperlocal community news sections across a range of its titles in the West Midlands.(ht-Jon Slattery)

The first local modules are 24 linked through the Kidderminster Shuttle and will be followed by six other titles in the Stourbridge News, Halesowen News, Dudley News, Bromsgrove Advertiser, Redditch Advertiser, and Droitwich Advertiser, in the coming months.

You can view the site here

Another vision of regional coverage

A rather worrying interviewe given to journalism.co.uk by former Northcliffe digital multimedia specialist Nick Hewitt who is pessimistic about the regional and local newspaper industry

Two quotes struck me.Firstly his vision of local publishing

It wouldn't surprise me if within the next three years at least 50 per cent of local titles are just printed in one large area, with an insert put into them that tries to make them as local as possible,"

and secondly on advertising

Newspaper advertising has never been particularly effective Gone are the days where we say we don't know what's happening with it and people will spend the money on it."

But he says

the effectiveness of online advertising is equally worrying: "We know now, because we can measure it digitally, and quite frankly, it's very very poor.

Channel M-local channel or a mini version of Granada

There has been quite a debate going on over at the controversial Chris Paul's Labour of Love.
It started with Chris's comments on David Cameron's appearance on Channel M earlier today but has turned into a debate about whether the local channel fulfills its role as a truly local community based station.

According to Chris

Why did GMG stick £15 M into this Granada-lite effort? It could hardly be more different from real, relevant, refreshing community TV? Just a tired, pale imitation of grown up ITV. And thus doomed to fail its brief. And indeed fail its commercial desires. As part of GMG convergence and concentration business plan.

and later asking

What's it for? What is it achieving? Is it worth the investment? Does it fulfil the purpose of Community TV?
And is the concentration of media ownership with GMG a good thing at any level? Even for GMG itself soul-wise and journalism-wise?

Dave Ottewell,the Manchester evening news correspondent disagrees

I personally think Channel M did a superb job staging a live debate. I think that for a local TV station - with a fraction of the budget of certain rivals - to get the leader of the opposition to answer viewers'/readers' questions for an hour is a real coup.
This is exactly the sort of thing that anyone who believes in local media, political accountability, etc. etc., should support.

Personally I tend to side with Chris who believes that a truly independent local channel would provide more of an independent voice for Manchester.Practically though it is difficult to see how the economics of funding would work.
I suppose that we are lucky to have a local channel at all.

Rose tinted spectacles

I'm glad that Andrew Grant Adamson is back on the blogging scene.

He doesn't post too often but he provides valuable insights into the media.

Today is no exception and he reminds us that looking back through rose tinted spectacles is not always the best thing to do as he looks back 50 years to the 1958 edition of his local newspaper

What struck me as the old microfilm image came up on the records office screen was that the Aglian is now providing more local news than it was. First there was the size: eight pages broadsheet then and 48 tabloid now (Mondays).
That is a tripling of the area of newsprint to be filled. Granted pictures and much much bigger headlines fill much of that extra space. Yet the paper clearly provides a larger volume of local news now than it did in 1958.

So there for all the critics of the current local scene.

Yet more doom and gloom for local news

Hold the Front page reports the comments of Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall who said

the provision of local news was becoming "increasingly uneconomic."

In a speech to Cardiff Business Club McFall she continued

regional newspapers will need to be "re-engineered completely" with lower costs and fewer staff – and that some titles will "inevitably" need to merge and close

Although the national press she feels is stronger

Although the national press is under huge pressure in terms of advertising revenues and readers, and although I think there will be some casualties in the not-too-distant future, I believe that the UK's quality national press, as a multimedia industry, is in relatively good shape and a long way from being on its knees."

No suprises from Ofcom

So the news from Ofcom is not unexpected.It seems that ITV would have gone ahead anyway being forced into the corner due to lack of funds.
Nevertheless the cut in local news output will mean job cuts,the NUJ reckon on a figure of 500 and some areas of the country being deprived of a certain amount of local news.

The regulator has agreed to ITV's request to cut news programming form the current 17to 9 regions as well as cuts in non news programmimg and production of programmes from outside the London region.
Perhaps more importantly the regulator thinks that both ITV and Channel 5 could well be free of all its public service obligations by 2014.

For Channel 4 the news is grim with estimates that it will have a funding deficit of around £100m a year by 2012 rejecting the idea of the so called "top slicing2 of BBC licence fee money.

You can read the full review HERE

Why radio should concentrate on local

(Hat Tip Roy Greenslade)

Times are perhaps never better and never worse for audio lovers. On one hand you have GCap laying off up to 100 staff. On the other hand there are more local radio licences being granted [1], while internet listenership has gone up. writes Gary Andrews

He makes the point that radio being an early convert to intercativity with the audience had the headstart over publishing when intercation became the buzzword in media.

But it is squandering the lead

To save on costs, commercial radio companies are increasingly networking shows, destroying one of the aspects that make commercial radio, especially local commercial radio, unique. It’s not the same interacting with a show that’s being produced, often pre-recorded, for a generic nationwide listenership as it is with a live DJ.

In this climate of local and hyperlocal a local service is

It’s the strongest selling point for a local station. Reduce the number of local hours and it becomes just another radio station, with the same competition.

BBC accused of being too London based

A report out today will claim that the BBC is failing in its commitment to licence payers by focusing too much on London based news according to this morning's Telegraph

According to the paper

The strongly-worded study, commissioned by the BBC's governing body, will accuse the corporation's national news and current affairs programmes of ignoring events in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It will say that viewers outside of London are getting a second-class service because news bulletins such as the Six and Ten O' Clock News do not provide sufficient coverage of events outside of the South-East

ITV network planning for cutbacks in local news

This morning's Guardian media cliams that ITV is starting to make cut backs in its local news services despite not having clearance from Ofcom.

The paper has learned that

Mike Jermey, the director of ITV regions and network news operations, has recently been visiting staff to lay out a timeframe for making cuts.
During the meetings at regional ITV centres, Jermey told the affected news staff that they will have to reapply for their jobs in September and should know by December who will be made redundant. Ofcom will have to give approval for the changes to go ahead.

The cuts first announced by executive chairman Michael Grade will see 18 sub regional news agencies being formed across the network.The origonal plan,to save £40m and cut the regions from 17 to nine was withdrawn after protests.The new sub regions will have an opt out of the 6.00 bulletin with 6 minutes of local news

Graduate challenges the local press

Here is a story to challenge the traditional media outlets.(via Hold the front page)

A graduate student from Staffordshire has set up his own local news website.It's called radical Press,co.uk and according to its website is

designed to provide an alternative source of news to the people of Staffordshire, which is currently dominated by the one newspaper, the Sentinel.
It is hoped that the website will provide news which protects the people, and questions authority, as well as providing a forum for debate about important topical issues in the county as well as the UK as a whole.

I wish you the best and good luck

Lancashire Telegraph launches free local text updates

Via the Wire

The Lancashire Telegraph has launched a series of text alerts giving local news and sport to subscribers

Another effort by a local paper to win customers thru hyperlocal news.You can select the area that you want covering and pay for just one text message when you activate.

According to How-do

The team at the paper said there are numerous services from newspapers currently available in the UK but all are commercially-driven. Only in the States has the team identified papers which offer free to receive texts for readers.

.

Its editor,Kevin Young was reported by the same outlet that

Our new text service means we can get the latest stories out to readers at the press of a button and this latest step forward follows the exciting improvements we've made to our website in recent months."

Getting there but someway to go for local papers

Over at Journalism Uk, Paul Bradshaw writes that"'Local online news is changing, but not fast enough'

Paul asks

as internet start-ups invade their markets with lower costs and a native understanding of new media, are local newspapers moving fast enough?

He cites that for the local papers,video has been the most significant change,clumsy and ameatur at first,with investment and training it has impproved greatly.Podcats are falling out of favour and are being replaced by online audio interviews

But Paul's biggest critisism

For most journalists the internet still represents an extension of the library and news wires - a place to browse for information on a story or track down sources - and then leave. That's Web 1.0 thinking.
Local journalism is supposed to be all about community, but local journalists' relationships with communities online are for the most part non-existent, or one-way. How many local journalists have blog patches that they regularly track and engage with?

and reminds us of some basic online factors

Online you get back what you give out. By contributing to the blogosphere, to Flickr and YouTube and Facebook, journalists will generate contacts, leads, contributors and readers. That's Web 2.0 thinking and it's begging to be explored

.

A case of unfair competition

Press Gazette are reporting that the BBC's plans for 60 ultra local web sites has not gone down very well with the local newspaper industry.


It quotes fron Ian Davies,development director of Archant who says

What a strange approach to public service media. Look at what the community-leading local press is doing in reinventing itself to provide local content and ‘connectivity’ beyond print; then take a huge publicly funded stick and swing hard to cause as much damage as possible to this vital organ of local comment and democracy.
“This is not competition. This is BBC, full-bodied, unfair, damaging to existing emerging services, competition. It seems that attempted demolition is the sincerest form of flattery.”

I agree with him to a certain extent.We have identified that the local and hyperlocal news resource may be one way of developing future media resource.Local papers already seeing their markets collapse are best placed in terms of rtesource to persue this route.The BBC can do it without the cpaital risk of a private company.

Death Knell for regional news

One of the consequences of Michael Grade's review of ITV will be the cutting back and merging of regional news output on ITV.

This will surely be the final death knell of the ITV regional network,having already lost most of its regional identity over the past few years.

ITV revealed its 5 year plan to the stock market yesterday morning which included plans to shed up to a third of its annual regional programming budget.As this only really amounts to news programmes,it is pretty obvious where the cuts are going to come from.

Regional news services are to be cut from 17 to 9 saving around £40m.

Michael Grade claims that (via Press Gazette)

The current structure of regional news is based on an analogue rather than a digital map."We have developed proposals to symplify the sub-regional provision and allow the news services of the smallest regions and sub regions to be combined while ensuring that all regional viewers will continue to receive a service of sustained quality and with critical mass

Only time will tell whether this is the right move but the announcement brought a flurry of critisism from broadcast unions which claim the move will lead to hundreds of job cuts.

On the plus side the Company are looking to increase its in house production from 54% to 75% and has confirmed that ITV is being ditched for good.