Local News

This morning, the BBC Trust rejected plans for a local BBC video news service.
Concurrently, Ofcom published the results of its Market Impact Assessment and concluded that the plans would have had a significant negative impact on commercial news providers.
The BBC proposal would have seen it producing more localised news which would be delivered on demand either via fixed or mobile internet. The BBC’s aim was to provide another layer of depth to its current local and regional services which often stretch significantly. For example, if you sit in North Norfolk, the local news will also cover goings on in Watford.
Most commercial news providers were utterly opposed to the plans for understandable reasons. Local newspapers have suffered enormously as they’ve seen their advertising revenues fall. Traditionally much of their cash came from classified ads, and lucrative property and jobs ads. Yet all of these have – to one extent or another – moved over to the internet. As a result, they have less money to invest in news gathering and we’re seeing redundancies, and closures. The one thing they have going for them is their ultra-local news. And they didn’t want to see the BBC getting their hands on that.
Meanwhile, local commercial radio operators were similarly opposed to the BBC’s plans. As well as their on-air local news provision, the more forward thinking operators have been investing in online local news provision as the newspaper groups have. They want their sites to become the local news portals for a given region. If successful, they’re in a strong place to develop new online revenues (seemingly the only area of the UK media landscape that is showing growth).
They make good points, and I think the BBC Trust and Ofcom are probably right. But I think we also need to think forward a little. As newspapers suffer, so their newsrooms are shrinking. Fewer reporters mean that news is harder to come by. As Nick Davies pointed out in his excellent book Flat Earth News, with a retrenchment in journalists, comes a retrenchment in journalism. No longer does either a local newspaper or local news agency have a regular person sitting in the local courts or council chambers all the time.
And we’re seeing some local radio news operations being cut back – either by creating news “hubs” for a group of local services, or by even removing the one advantage local radio stations have over other broadcasters, and removing local news at certain times of the day altogether.
Can we really get all our local news online? I’m not sure we can.
If there aren’t any decent primary news gatherers – i.e. local news reporters on the ground – then everybody will be republishing the same Press Association copy. And that’s not enough. Like elsewhere in an open society, competition is important for news providers too.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but as budgets are squeezed, plurality of news providers remains important. If we all rely on one source – something that we’re getting closer and closer to – then we become less open. Without the concern that your competitor is going to scoop you, a reporter isn’t as incentivised to work harder and dig deeper. Who’s going to look hard into more difficult stories?
Perhaps beyond that danger is nobody at all covering the news. Local newspapers will have closed down. Local radio will cover things at a very superficial level perhaps having one or two people in the newsroom (including the newsreader). And local television won’t really exist and the likes of ITV offers the same “local” news for everyone between Carlisle and Newcastle.
As ever, these are my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.


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