FAIR TRADE
IN NEWS
EVERYONE’S talking about new ‘business models’ to replace the cut-price profiteering of the discredited newspaper groups. JOHN TONER proposes local trusts to run not-for-profit media
NEWSPAPERS died today. Or was it yesterday? The consensus favours the latter view.
The robber barons who own our media have been looting and pillaging for years and have luxuriated in obscene profits. Last August Johnston Press reported its operating profit margin had fallen from 30.9 per cent to a mere 27.9 per cent. In common with other provincial newspaper giants, it is freezing pay and shedding jobs.
They can blame the loss of advertising revenue and the recession, but the problem is more fundamental: the owners’ greed for astronomical profit margins has created an unsustainable business model. The mighty Tesco gets by on a profit margin of 9.4 per cent.
Those of us who care about journalism are seeking alternative models. I would like to make a pitch for Fairtrade News.
If we adapt the principles of the Fairtrade movement, we could rebuild local newspapers on the basis of better pay, decent working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade. We could replace newspapers owned for profit by newspapers owned to service the communities that sustain them.
They would be run by elected trusts comprising readers, businesses and, of course, journalists. They could dispense with the Three Ss — sex, showbiz and sellebrity. The emphasis would be on the traditional subjects of local newspapers: local authorities, courts, campaigns and community events.
There would be a code of conduct governing the editorial content — yes there is one the NUJ made earlier. Instead of hiding behind a PCC-type figleaf, the trust could enforce the code speedily and effectively.
Maybe the government would find the cash to support such initiatives as a form of “fiscal stimulus” that might actually have an effect.
If this works at local and regional level, it could work at national level, too. We accept the case for public service broadcasting — why not public service publishing?
John Toner is the NUJ’s national organiser for freelances