Yessi Bello continues the Hyperlocal Voices series with an interview with JesmondLocal‘s Ian Wylie, who decided to dabble in local journalism after taking voluntary redundancy from a national newspaper. Still viewed as a “pro-bono”, ” good thing to do” Jesmond Local has now become an integral part of the Jesmond Community.

1)Who were the people behind the blog, and what where their backgrounds?

After 15 years working for The Guardian as a reporter, features writer and finally section editor, I took voluntary redundancy in 2009, and began thinking about what I would do with the next chapter of my career. I’d been involved mostly in national newspaper and magazine journalism, so local journalism was something I hadn’t dabbled in before.

The concept of “hyperlocal” fascinated me as an area for me to explore and an opportunity for me also to “give something back”. I discovered that Newcastle University lecturer David Baines had a research interest in the subject. We met to discuss and he suggested I offer some of his students the chance to launch a hyperlocal website, which we did almost exactly a year ago.

I view Jesmond Local, at the moment, as a “pro-bono” “good thing to do”. I don’t make any money from it (yet) and have to juggle the time I spend on it with my freelance writing for the Financial Times, Guardian, easyJet, Monocle and Management Today.

2) When did you set up the blog and how did you go about it?

My background is newspapers, so I approached it from the viewpoint of, if I was one of the local newspaper pioneers transported into the future to 2010, what would I do? How would I best serve the interests of a small community like Jesmond (population 10,000). And since my background is news, I felt that news had to be at the core of what we do. That “news” would provide the “stickiness” that kept readers coming back.

I found a relevant WordPress theme called “The Local” and starting by posting straightforward 200-word news stories. As time has gone on we’ve expanded our news story-telling into slideshows, video, podcasts, live blogs etc. We’ve added a local events diary, a discussion forum and, of course, a Facebook fan page and Twitter service.

3) What other blogs, bloggers or websites influenced you?

I had a look at all the usual UK hyperlocal sites that get a lot of press, and also at some in the US and Europe (I liked the idea of the cafe-newsroom approach at Nasa Adresa… before it shut).

But to be honest I haven’t taken too much notice of what other people have done because a) hyperlocals tend to be made in the likeness of their creators and b) the reasons a hyperlocal succeeds or fails depend to a large degree on the nature of the community they serve. No two journalists and no two communities are alike!

4) How did – and do – you see yourself in relation to a traditional news operation?

I don’t see JesmondLocal as running in competition with the local, traditional news outlets. It serves as an accompaniment. If I thought we were giving Jesmond people something they could already get elsewhere then, believe me, I wouldn’t be doing this!

I think we’re the same in the sense that (I hope) we have the same commitment to good, principled news values. But whereas I think traditional news organisations see hyperlocal as a sticking plaster for their commercial woes, I hope hyperlocal sites like JesmondLocal are about creating and strengthening community in places like Jesmond. There’s lots going on already in Jesmond, but the community needs to know about it if those events, clubs and activities are going to flourish and succeed.

A steady flow of information about what’s going on/available in the community might also encourage and inspire other people to get involved and/or create their own community projects. So it’s about sustaining communities.

And I think we’re also different in the way we aim to sustain local journalism. I’m acutely aware that young, aspiring journalists don’t have the same opportunities for on-the-job training that I did 20 years ago. So by taking on 20 or so student volunteers each academic year, JesmondLocal tries to help would-be journalists learn and refine their skills at a local level.

I’m also excited about helping other people in the Jesmond community do the same thing – and pass on to them the important skills of news-gathering, reporting, writing, producing etc.

My next challenges are two-fold: I need to make it financially sustainable, which means getting local businesses to pay for advertising and other services, and explore possible funding options.

And secondly, I want to get the community more involved in generating and creating the content. I feel the balance is a little too “top down” at the moment, rather than coming from the local people for whom the site has been created.

5) What have been the key moments in the blog’s development editorially?

So far the key developments editorially have been our media sponsorship of the local community festival, which introduced us to the people who run all the different community groups in Jesmond; the May local elections, during which we ran our own live-blogged hustings, which introduced us to the political movers and shakers of Jesmond; an ongoing “local heroes” project which is helping us become more confident in our film-making skills; and our breaking of small, but locally significant stories, such as the arrival of a new Waitrose in Jesmond.

From my traditional, newspaper background I’m also beginning to understand how news can be communicated in many different ways. For example, some days our news-reporting is all done in tweets.

6) What sort of traffic do you get and how has that changed over time?

To be honest, I don’t look at our Google Analytics too often, but daily uniques range from 50 to 300. We tend to get the biggest spike when I send out an email newsletter. I’ve discovered (to my cost) that offline advertising is very ineffective.

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By Wilbert Baan

The financial crisis speeds up the newspapershift. Media diverges. Newspapers become television, television becomes a press agency. And everything becomes the web. Probably not a single news websites makes enough revenue to employ the same amount of journalists traditional media like newspapers and television employ. The result is a shift. Not in demand, in distribution. What will happen, and how will this shift change organizations?

Here are some ideas and thoughts that I think make sense. Please help me sharpen this concept, or point me at my fallacies. It would be interesting to have a discussion about this.

Infinite
It all starts with information. Information is and will be infinite accessible everywhere. All smart devices will be connected. This is different to old media where the medium was not infinite and thus choices and timeframes were necessary.

In a connected culture information is directly online accessible, mass media and press functions less as a generator and more as a directional and filter service.

In a connected culture distributed services like Google and Facebook are the new mass media. To reach a mass audience you need to distribute your content through these new mass media. If old media no longer controls the medium it will change our organizations, how newspapers work and what kind of people will be working at newspapers or directional services.

Online you need more websites or less people. Link or syndicate the information that is already out there and focus on the value you can add.

The new rules of information?
I think the expertise journalists have is valuable. The traditional structure of a newspaper is restraining them from using their full online potential. Here is a paradox, because you need the traditional structure to publish a newspaper.

The newspaper is a middle man, this is where you already see a shift. Press agencies have become influential distributers on the live web, and consumers have become influential fire starters. To adapt to the new rules of information (everyone is a publisher), a newspaper should shift up or down the chain. Become a networked company or focus.

To be profitable in a hyperlinked economy you not only need to distribute your information, you should also distribute your costs.

What could the newspaper of the future look like?
Newspapers are in a race. I don’t believe paper is sacred. And I see no real advantages in paper compared to modern media. Even when e-readers become mainstream we probably want books and maybe magazines on these devices, we don’t want newspapers. We want something tailored to the medium. We want news as it happens. News is not a book, it is all about now, about relevancy, about why and what is happening. This consuming pattern is irreversible.

A modern news organization might not have that many people on the payroll. Journalism could become primarily a freelance job. Everything a journalist does can be done virtual. Journalists don’t have to work together in the same building at the same time. News very rarely happens in the building of a news organization, news happens somewhere else or is made by investigating. Being a reporter is a networked job. Your value is in your knowledge and your personal offline and online network. A journalist should feel at home in a networked culture.

If this shift happens journalists will work primarily on a free marketplace, like photographers. They will connect through online organizations (agencies) or virtual marketplaces that connect distribution channels (newspapers, search engines, social networks) and journalists.

These organizations act like press agencies distributing articles or information to all outlets. You can subscribe to specific feeds of information, buy articles, ask for research, or set assignments. If we can have public funded journalism, we can also have research or stories payed by media portals. If you want exclusive news or research the price will be higher. If you’re a very good and trustworthy journalist your value will be higher.

The focus of a news publisher is how they sort information and on what news topics they focus. What news publishers can add to the knowledge and information that is already out there is focus and a filter. This focus and filter is their revenue model, the rest is a mix of syndicated, linked and original information.

Like a group blog. You can’t pay the salary of a hundred bloggers to write content, but you can make money with a group blog. You need to invest your money smart and use it for those things that really set you apart from others. Use money to create unique value that defines your brand.

News is free
I think news (defined as what’s happening right now) will always be free for the consumer. This doesn’t mean news has no value. For end-users it will be free. News will always atract people. By presenting, sorting, linking and packaging the news websites, search engines and networks can make money that funds new journalism and drives new traffic.

Where Attention Flows, Money Follows.

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Just to let you know that the News Interactivity Index now includes newspapers from Norway (thanks Kristine Lowe), France, the Netherlands and the US. You can use it to compare any two newspapers or country averages. The following countries are now covered:

• France
• Hungary
• Macedonia
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Switzerland
• UK
• US

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Six months ago Polish publishing company Polskapresse took an innovative step in response to declining sales. The company, at the time publishing six regional dailies in different parts of Poland, decided to combine them under one brand: “Polska”. Marek Miller makes an early evaluation of this project.

The reason

The Polish regional press market is divided in two. Half belongs to Media Regionalne (part of David Montgomery’s Mecom) which publishes nine regional dailies; the other half belongs to Polskapresse (part of German Verlagsgruppe Passau). The press market was divided in the way that no regional newspaper published by both publishers would compete directly on the same regional market.

At a time of falling newspaper circulation, the Board of Polskapresse came up with an idea. Knowing that something had to be done to stop this falling trend, the publisher decided to compete with other newspapers on the national level.

The idea sounded pretty easy at first – to create a national newspaper, built on the brands and journalists from regional newspapers. The project was to include the titles from both companies: Polskapresse and Media Regionalne. When combined, the sales level of 16 regional newspapers was higher than of any newspaper in Poland (695,000 copies in January 2007 compared to 512,000 copies of “Fakt” and 482,500 copies of “Gazeta Wyborcza” – two largest national papers in Poland).

The plan was innovative but…

Before the project was finalized, rumours began circulating. The goal was to achieve a circulation of 1,000,000 copies. The project was difficult: a new central editorial office was created in Warsaw. All the work of six different editorial offices had to be coordinated and focused on the new product. Theoretically, thanks to the innovative Millenium platform, 750 journalists from different parts of the country could simultaneously work on one newspaper. Many well-known Polish journalists were hired to attract new readers. Finally, two design gurus from the UK participated in the creation of the layout: Matt Brown and Neville Brody.

Before the project was finished, the second publisher, Media Regionalne, backed away from it. And how could a paper become national when it was based only on regional newspapers published in half of the country only?

The solution was found quickly: Polskapresse decided to publish new titles under the brand “Polska” in regions where it had not published before, at the same time building new regional communities of readers.

From then on, the project became even more difficult: the new newspaper would have to compete on the national level with big, well-known newspapers, and in new regions with already existing titles published by Media Regionalne.

After that, the planned circulation of “Polska” was set at the level of something between 700,000 and 800,000 copies.

In the first month after launch “Polska” was bought by almost 400,000 readers.

The last news before the launch of the project was that Polskapresse entered into a deal with “The Times of London” that suggested “editorial cooperation and the use of the British newspaper’s brand”.

Problems, problems, problems

Whatever the outcome would be, it’s a known fact that publishers do not profit from the number of readers who buy their titles but from advertisers. What attracts the advertisers is… the number of readers who will see the advert.

Unfortunately for the project, the Polish Audit Bureau of Circulation (ZKDP) forbid Polskapresse to show the combined data. The problem the bureau noticed was that “Polska The Times” was not a 100% national newspaper but a hybrid of regional newspapers, with their former names still existing in the titles.

What’s more, another regional newspaper, published by a small publisher, entered project “Polska”. In that case, a project followed by two different publishers could not, according to ZKDP, be called a national newspaper. With that decision, Polskapresse was prevented from publishing combined circulation data to compare the circulation level of “Polska The Times” with that of other other national newspapers.

Numbers

The analysis of impact of the new project on Polskapresse titles’ sales level is very hard. In order to grade the scale of success (or loss) of the project, some data is necessary. Below are the levels of sales of every regional newspaper in “Polska The Times”. Those are all January data, as this year’s February wasn’t typical (5 Fridays in February 2008 meant one magazine edition more than in the same period of 2007):

The above chart shows that the drop in the sales of Polskapresse titles was not stopped by the new strategy. What’s more, the impact of the project (titles in new regions) did not strengthen this position too much. The older titles lost more of their readers than the new project attracted.

An interesting example here is the last regional title – “Express Ilustrowany”. This title was not included in the project and it seems it has lost readers more slowly than the other papers from Polskapresse group.

What next?

Those readers who are tightly connected to their regions felt they lost their regional paper and received a national one instead.

The regions in Poland vary, from traditions to the form and topics of articles. But “Polska The Times” is a live newspaper responding to demands of the market. A careful reader could already have noticed more regional news and pictures of regional events on the front page. But this, again, would mean going back to the regional model. Finding out what the reader wants and responding to those demands should be a key strategy now. But will it be possible to attract the lost readers again?

Marek Miller is a media specialist from Poland, freelancer and project manager in Polskapresse.

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