The following is the last part of a series of responses to the government inquiry into the future of local and regional media. We will be submitting the whole – along with blog comments – to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. This post, by Alex Lockwood, looks at:

“How to fund quality local journalism”

The bottom has fallen out of the traditional publishing business model–and with it goes the hefty dividends expected by shareholders (e.g. £48.4m in 2008 for the Trinity Mirror Group). The future of local quality journalism can only remain with the current crop of regional newspaper publishers if they radically change their expectations, and innovate.

That might not happen. If it doesn’t, they will die off, and the future of quality local journalism will take a huge – but not definitive – blow. Then the future lies with new initiatives and the local communities themselves – passionate and entrepreneurial people, only some of whom will be journalists. What about local council initiatives to publish newspapers and local information? That’s not the way to go – covered in Part 3.

But how to fund it? Here are eight suggestions for the future of local journalism funding:

1. Save the big regional publishers through a public subsidy? The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, has already ruled that out: no state subsidies for beleaguered local newspapers. In some ways, that is good. Let’s not shore up businesses that have met requirements of shareholders over those of the local community, and which have – with a few notable exceptions – failed to innovate.

2. But… as Andy Price argued on this blog yesterday, “The regional press is the only institution with enough professional journalists to really cover civic Britain successfully.” So where public money is available, e.g. through the Digital Britain programme, efficiencies in government funding are necessary. As the authors of After the Crunch, published last week, write, “The DCMS, BERR, DCSF, Treasury, DIUS between them, spend a lot of money in the name of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’, but much of their effort is frustrated by the lack of a coherent approach.” If quality local journalism is a public service, then what portion of the public service budget could go to newspapers? And only on the basis that they reform their structures (as suggested by @Geoffrey Gevalt).

3. That could be knitted together with a second point made in After the Crunch: that “the small-scale nature of creative industry enterprises connects more easily, and more productively with smaller-scale government.” The government could streamline legislation and funding frameworks for supporting media organisations at local levels without the baggage of outdated business models. They can work with Business Link and entrepreneurship schemes to offer many more bursaries and small business grants to new ventures that establish in their business plans a commitment to produce quality local journalism covering local democracy issues. These will most probably be started by two groups of people: those local journalists who have been made redundant, and who are deeply passionate about local democracy and community; and new entrepreneurs who can see the potential in investing in a portfolio of local media products using new, free technologies and mash ups.

4. Where regional publishers can prove they are adapting to the new media environment, individual papers or sub-regional groups (similar to what Peter Preston called for in the Observer last Sunday) could be cut out of the dying corpse of their parent company, and given subsidies to see them through the migration to a new business model.

5. Reduce costs through ditching daily print routines. Newspapers become professional news magazines published once a week but constantly updated online by continuing to grow community engagement and news as a conversation, and by investing in non-traditional ways to access information, e.g. these maps empowering social change (h/t @JoshHalliday).

6. Media organisations, both new and traditional, turn to community-owned, community-sourced local journalism.  Two-hundred years ago it was pampheteering. In 1932, it was nine interested individuals fed up with newspaper oligarchs who raised £40,000 and set up their own local paper, the Bristol Evening Post. Crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding have always been a part of the future of media. As argued for by former Northern Echo editor Peter Sands this morning on the Radio 4 Today programme.

7. Take a leaf out of new magazine membership models, as developed by numerous brands but articulated here via Alyce Alston: sell bundles of information.

8. Fund training programmes for current (recently redundant?) journalists in new technologies and entrepreneurship. This gives the next generation of media entrepreneurs preparedness for the need to adapt to rapid media change – and that means more money into projects such as Infuze at the University of Central Lancashire (h/t Laura Oliver)

What the typical local media organisation might look like?
So how about this? The future of quality local journalism is published immediately online and weekly in print, probably in magazine format.

• A small group of editors, journalists and community managers work with a network of contributors to develop feeds in a number of formats, e.g. news stories linked to local maps, for geographical and issue-based hyper-localities: all of this online, using APIs to mash together maps, local government records, planning information etc.
• A printed version provides a format for the weekend read and brings in advertising—similar to the ways the best Teesside hyper-local content gets published in weekly papers.
• The media organisation supports investigative reporting through entertainment, sport and feature copy that attracts advertising and sponsorship.
• The magazine is distributed freely around the local region.
• This local brand was set up with a government grant, including ongoing training in technology and entrepreneurship.
• The magazine is owned by the community through a crowd-funded structure (ten thousand people each pay £20 as a yearly debenture – not a subscription) and that community then have a vote on the governance and issues covered by the magazine… Want journalists to prioritise investigations into local planning decisions? Then pay for it.

Think of it as a combination of The Age of Stupid meets Spot.Us.

What other ideas are there?

The following is the fifth of a series of responses to the government inquiry into the future of local and regional media. Andy Price looks at the opportunities for ultra-local media services. Blog comments will be submitted to the inquiry as well. If you wish to add a blog post to the submission please add a link to one of the OJB posts – a linkback will be added at the end.

Opportunities for “ultra-local” media services

Over the last few years one of the few, if not the only positive development in the regional press has been the dramatic growth of “ultra-local” or hyper local news. Often this is in the form of online participatory journalism, mixing traditional professionally produced news with a wide range of user generated content.

This has two major benefits. It grows significant traffic to newspaper websites, offering vital opportunities for revenue generation and develops the civic and democratic role of the media by allowing new avenues for discussion and debate, enhancing the local public sphere and maintaining a plurality of perspectives. It also widens and flattens the ‘market’ of news production, creating a new environment that integrates citizens as news producers in an entirely original and empowering way.

Looking at the existing geographical franchises of most regional publishers it is often the case that the local newspaper website is the only local digital platform that offers both participation and discussion of issues of civic interest. As well as the independent coverage of issues of relevance and significance to the citizen.

By and large regional newspapers have successfully extended their brands onto the web and created viable arenas of news, comment and discussion. While in no way perfect, they do represent a relative success in relation to other possible local participants such as other traditional media producers or major local institutions. While social websites such as Facebook and Myspace offer significant community development around areas of ‘interest’ and ‘self’ this is rarely configured in geographical terms at the scale of activity seen in local newspaper websites.

This is even more pronounced when it is considered in terms of the neighbourhood, post-code or ‘ultra-local’ area. Many regional newspapers are now creating new, vibrant and popular micro-editions that cover previously impossible to represent communities, communities that were simply too small to serve in an analogue print economy. While much has been made of the ‘global’ in terms of the impact of digital technology and the internet on people, it is quite clear that by looking down the other end of the technological telescope it is possible to see the empowerment and growth of ‘local’ identity in an entirely new and significant way.

For most people in their daily lives, ‘life is local’ and the importance of news and information at a highly granular level should not be underestimated. The re-engagement of people with their communities may to some degree be based on the notion of the vibrant imagined ‘local’ identity. One that is far smaller than the region, the city, the town or the borough.

The growth of the ‘locavore’ movement around sustainable living suggested that the needs for local information and knowledge may in fact be increasing as people try to live more low carbon lifestyles. An important part of such sustainability may be based on well informed, well connected local communities who can make efficient decisions based on their digital access to a wide variety of local knowledge and opinion.

It would be naïve to say that this immediately compensates for the overall decline of important civic news coverage by professional local journalists that is presently occurring. But it does suggest a possible way forward that could represent a new ‘turn’ in local media production and consumption. One that recognises the structural need for both independent high quality journalism and citizen engagement in a win-win situation. As such a development of this sort could be seen in the public interest and a growth in public service that should be both protected and nurtured.

The regional press is the only institution with enough professional journalists to really cover civic Britain successfully. They are also the only group who has successfully developed digital platforms that have any real meaning in most people’s geographical consciousness. The possible demise of any regional newspapers will create a massive hole in the democratic fabric of the country. A hole that would presently be impossible to fill by other media organizations and which would represent a dangerous loss of plurality. Citizen engagement in news production, discussion and debate is a wholly good phenomenon which should be encouraged and supported.

The question is how to model local arrangements that satisfy public service and business aim, whilst successfully stimulating and embedding engagement by local communities in news production? As such, there are two issues that should be considered;

1. Support for the regional press in this role.

Can local newspapers be recognised for providing a public service and if so, how can this be reconciled with their revenue generating status and the position of the BBC as the existing major public service provider? Can a partnership of differing missions be developed?

2. Empowerment and encouragement of participatory journalism.

Can the same partners work together to develop the skills of citizen journalists at such a scale as to become a sustainable model of participatory journalism that genuinely builds on the potential of digital media and technology to enhance local democracy and citizenship.

The Digital Britain report is presently being critisised for its emphasis on technology over content. Government support for the development of a national response to the challenges to local participatory news production could be one way to answer this criticism. If the regional press, the BBC, educators and the public could be brought together as partners to look at this challenge the idea of a Digital Britain of active participants rather than simply consumers may be possible.

The following is the first in a series of responses to the government inquiry into the future of local and regional media. We will be submitting the whole – along with blog comments – to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. This post, by Alex Lockwood, looks at the first:

“The impact of newspaper closures on independent local journalism and access to local information”

The final views of the committee will depend on how much the inquiry sees local newspapers responsible for local journalism – a little, a lot, or completely.

Writing in the Observer on Sunday, Henry Porter pretty much called them the same thing. For many who work there, the death of newspapers is disastrous for access to local information, not least due to the historical positions those papers have held.

The closures of the Glasgow East News and Ayrshire Extra, the Black Country Mail Extra, Wolverhampton AdNews, Daventry Post and Ashby Herald, the Lincoln Chronicle, the Northallerton, Thirsk and Bedale Times, and dozens of others that have either closed or felt the swingeing impact of mergers and office cuts, are devastating for their communities. These papers have been the homes for ‘hard’ journalism – reporting of the essential court and council stories that really matter to local lives.

Los Angeles Times reporter, Joe Matthews, quoted widely on this, has made clear the dire implications for democracy of the loss of quality journalism. Matthews wrote: “Much of the carnage of the ongoing media industry can’t be measured or seen: corruption undiscovered, events not witnessed, tips about problems that never reach anyone’s ears because those ears have left the newsroom.”

Those trained ears may have left the newsroom – but are they the only ears open to the whispers of local corruption?

Active participants, not passive recipients

The problem for existing traditional newspapers is that it is not part of their business model to innovate ways for local people to engage directly with the democratic process. The newspaper model is one of a journalist doing the work – being the eyes and ears of the local community. But the online model is one of seeking out direct democratic action. Of having direct access to information, rather than waiting for someone else to report on it. To report on it yourself (not simply to have an opinion, but to fact-find, and fact-check).

Other (and often better) ways to access information within local communities, including news and issues of local democracy, already exist. It was not a local newspaper that developed www.theyworkforyou.com, which, with its team of volunteers and email alerts, is perhaps the best way to keep track on what your local MP is saying and doing.

And every day innovators are opening up access to information – just last week, MySociety launched ScenicOrNot, which took a crowd-sourced image project and put it to local democratic use.

One impact of the closure of local newspapers could be to open up the space (and revenue opportunities) for media organisations based, from the outset, on community engagement and crowd-sourced gathering / production / distribution. Where the local community are active participants in, rather than passive receivers of, the local information that matters to them.

Does that explodes the idea that a patch has no ears if it has no ‘newspaper’ journalist? People are on that patch. Innovative, passionate and entrepreneurial, and nosy. The people for whom that information matters – a geographical community who wants to hold local powers to account over planning decisions, education provision, bins and holes in roads.

Some of them will be journalists. The future of local journalism is so pressing that it’s persuaded Roy Greenslade to go back to basics and cover his neighbourhood – Kemp Town in Brighton – for the local paper, as a community reporter.

Most of his fellow community reporters won’t be trained journalists. But all of a sudden they are all in the same category: the people who want access to the information and who are willing to work for it. In this, and many other cases, such as the award-winning Teesside postcode hyper-local sites, the community reporters are producing local – quality – journalism.

Journalism need saving, not newspapers

What is important here is not the newspaper’s historical position. It is not the paper’s brand that make this local journalism worthy of the stamp ‘quality’. It is the standards of journalism itself, which can exist independent of the structures of a local paper: the fact-checking, the transparency, the reporting for the public good. And that can be done by Roy at No.53 on his own blog, or by a crowd-sourced MySociety project. (So what about the money…? There’s a post coming on that, this Friday.)

What is important is that it offers a structure to innovate and create community. Although, very little of what the community contributors produce actually gets printed on paper itself.

This new-newspaper activity must be supported. One of the worst impacts of the closure of local newspapers would be the end to this support of hyper-local communities, the empowering of engaged citizens with tools, in local democratic action. It would be a blow to the work done in encouraging journalists to see news as a conversation with readers, rather than as a one-way flow.

Where this work is developing, local newspapers should be given as much support as possible to survive. That’s because journalism is crucial to local communities. It needs saving. Whether in the form of large organised publishing groups is up for debate.

Local newspapers hold a privileged position. As the guardians of democracy and access to local information, but also as established competition to potential new initiatives, new ways of approaching democracy in local communities. If their demise is to be seen as a disaster, it will be because they found ways to make sense of journalism as a participatory process, engaging with and opening up access to information, and not a static product.

What are your thoughts on the future of local journalism?