I had an interesting meeting recently with an MP who wanted to get a handle on the state of the media right now and how good journalism could be supported. Rather than just hear my voice I thought it would be worth starting something wider that involves more voices, and point him to this.

To kick things off, here are some of the things I thought the government could do to create an environment that supports good journalism:

• Release of public data (I’ve made this case before – it’s about helping create efficiencies for anyone reporting on public bodies). He seemed to feel that this argument has already been won.
• Tax relief on donations to support investigative journalism: a number of philanthropists, foundations, public bodies and charities are starting to fund investigative journalism to fill the ‘market failure’ of commercial news production. In addition, an increasing amount of investigative journalism is being done by campaigning organisations rather than news organisations, and there is also the opportunity for new types of businesses – social enterprises and community interest companies – to fund journalism.
• Encouraging innovation and enterprise: as regional publishers reduce their reporting staff and shut down their less profitable publications, gaps are appearing in local news coverage. Local people are launching news sites and blogs to fill those gaps – but not quickly enough, or with the resources, to match what was left behind. Funds to support these startups are much-needed and might also encourage journalists who have been made redundant to put their experience into an independent operation. There is no evidence to suggest that subsidising existing publishers will subsidise journalism; indeed, I would suggest it will stifle local innovation and economic growth.
• Reskilling of redundant journalists: related to the last point, I would like to see funds made available to help put redundant journalists (more Chris Browns and Rick Waghorns) in a position to launch news startups. They have a wealth of experience, ability, knowledge and contacts that shouldn’t be left to waste - give them online and enterprise skills.
• An effective local news consortia: The Digital Britain-mooted local news consortia is a vague idea in need of some meat, but clearly it could go some way to meeting the above 2 by supporting local independent media and providing training. Allowing the usual suspects to dominate any new operation will see business as usual, and innovative independent operators – including those who work on a non-commercial basis – will quickly become disillusioned. The idea of putting some or all of the commissioning process in the hands of the public, for instance, could be very interesting.
• Address libel laws: one of the biggest obstacles to investigative reporting is the potential legal costs. Most newspapers now make a hard commercial decision on stories: if the story is worth enough money to make it worth fighting, it gets published; otherwise, it doesn’t. Public interest or importance is not the major factor other than in how it affects likely sales. Likewise, startup operations are likely to shy away from edgier reporting if they feel they can’t afford to fight for it in the courts. Stopping councils from suing for libel was an important step; keeping libel laws out of science should be the next one – and it shouldn’t stop there.

So those are the ideas that occurred to me. What would you suggest this MP, and government, do to help journalism?

Following the tone set so succinctly by Glyn Moody, I thought I would add my own thoughts on what Sir Tim should say to the government when he bends their ear on transparency.

Firstly, I would second everything that Glyn says.

But I’m going to be cynical and strategic, and urge Sir Tim to emphasise the importance of open data on a couple of areas that are close to the government’s hearts.

1. Stimulating growth in the economy.

You could compare a genuinely significant release of public data to an economic stimulus.

Like cutting VAT, only cheaper.

At minimal cost you could have a new raw material that startups and established media organisations alike could create new value out of. Some of those would create commercial implications far exceeding any revenue generated within government (as research recently suggested in relation to the comparably valuable Ordnance Survey data).

Repeat after me: jobs and money, jobs and money.

2. Efficiencies and passing on costs in the public sector

Samuel Butler’s Erewhon puts it particularly well:

You will sooner gain your end by “appealing to men’s pockets, in which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property”

Public sector spending is going to drop whichever party is in power. Let’s play to that.

By opening up public data the government will effectively be able to pass on some development costs to willing volunteers who mash up the data in their own ways. The difference is that people will do this to their own agendas and for their own benefit.

But more importantly, the results of this experimentation – if supported and encouraged – should produce work that makes it more efficient to interact with public data and therefore public bodies. If I can use a slider to find out which schools are within 3 miles, that saves 20 minutes of someone answering a phonecall in the local education department. If I can have a Facebook app which tells other users how much money alcohol abuse is costing my local hospital, it might save the NHS a bob or two. You get the picture. 

Oh yes, and it’s important for democracy, civic engagement and digital literacy

The limited data that’s available in the UK is an embarrassment. Imagine what MySociety could do with what’s available in the US.

Likewise, for all the talk of transparency, the recent announcement that Cabinet Papers and information relating to the Royal Family would be exempt from the Freedom of Information act is a backward step. Heather Brooke’s concerns proved right.

The cynic in me sees the appointment of Berners-Lee as an action intended to generate the illusion of movement – “We’re working on it”. But the Freedom of Information act is possibly the most positive contribution the Labour government has made to this country’s political health since it came to power, and not to follow through on promises made would be an enormous political mistake.

So I will add one request to my advice above: I would stress that any discussion of transparency acknowledges the importance of requiring any organisation using public funds to make their data public too. So much public work is outsourced to the private sector that it is particularly difficult to see whether public money is spent responsibly.

More at Podnosh, BBC, Emma Mulqueeny, Simon Dickson and Amused Cynicism.

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.