Following on from yesterday’s post on regional journalism, I came across an FT article (thanks to Roy Greenslade) entitled ‘Choice for local newspapers: evolve or die’. This comment piece was written a week ago by Roger Parry, who is stepping down as chair of Johnston Press this month after eight years in charge.
Parry estimated that in the next five years half of the 20,000 staff involved in producing regional news will lose their jobs. He wrote:
Journalists are often busy doing things the audience no longer want. The traditional professional output is no longer valued by readers. Much, but not all, of local news gathering, feature production and photography are better done by enthusiastic amateurs for next to nothing.
Want a critique of local rubbish collection policies? Ask a local resident for 500 words. It matters to them and they are more connected than a journalist sent over in a taxi. Want passionate reporting of local sports? Ask the fans. There will remain a vital role for trained journalists in investigations, analysis and quality control. But it will need fewer of them. They will need new skills of assembling user-generated content including video, digital pictures and audio.
This is depressing reading, particularly on a day when regional news publisher Newsquest is reported to have asked its 6,000 staff to take a week’s unpaid holiday.
So what is the response from the media industry? According to an FT report today, the UK’s top regional groups (Johnston, Trinity Mirror et al) have formed the Local Media Alliance, with Parry as chairman, to lobby the government for a relaxation of media merger rules.
This sugguests the industry’s reponse is to create more mergers, in which fewer and fewer large organisations run the country’s local media.
If this happens regional newspapers will indeed be doomed. Local media’s strength lies in creating a distinct geographical product that appeals to a community, as the Evening Gazette has shown in Teeside (albeit under Trinity Mirror). The decimation of the regional press in recent years has shown that big centralised companies do not effectively run local media. Supposedly progressive thinking, such as the proposed centralisation of Northcliffe subbing operations, demonstrates that local media needs to be locally owned.
More mergers are not the answer.
Filed under: media ownership, the future of media
