Let’s start all over again
WE’RE NOT allowed to refer to them as local newspapers any more, because they’re multi-media production offices, but people are scrambling about for solutions to their plight in the recession. Everyone understands the problem, everyone wants rid of the present owners that have done so much damage, but how do you get rid of them, or set yourself up in competition?
Who should own local media — small firms, big firms, non-profit trusts or co-operatives? Where does the money come from? The state, sponsors, subscribers, or who?
The NUJ left held a public meeting on the questions in February — one of the speakers was former BBC polcorr Nick Jones, whose article on pages 18-19 is a version of what he said — and the national union is calling together a grand Local Media Commission, packed with industry brains, to mull it all over. Everyone should have the chance to pitch in with ideas.
It might be all about our future, but I’m looking to the past. Why can’t we revive, with new technology, the way newspapers started in the first place? They grew up in towns and cities where local printers got together with business people and community notables to meet a demand for news, to influence local and even national affairs and even, the best of them, to campaign around social problems.
There’s a parallel in other local institutions that grew up around the same time — the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the football clubs.
Every town has a football club and the community puts itself out to make it as good as can be.
They are owned by businessmen who aren’t in it for money, but for prestige. Local shops and businesses advertise in their Saturday programmes, not so much to generate sales as to support the club.
If it’s important for a town to have a good football club, which the whole community will support, so it should have a newspaper. Football clubs — I’m not talking about the top few in the Premier League — haven’t been taken over by big national chains, starved of investment and milked dry for profit.
And they don’t expect the teams to play with reduced numbers. Imagine a club owned by Trinity Mirror, with Sly Bailey demanding: “Why do they need eleven players? Get rid of the defenders. Cut them down to seven.”
True enough, there’s little money to be made in football; but why should there be from newspapers? I do not believe there are no entrepreneurs who would be prepared to fund local media, just for the crack and the social standing.
Friends have retorted: “But the sort of people who own football clubs are the sort of people local papers should be investigating”. A fair point. And are TM or Newsquest papers investigating them now? What’s to lose?
I don’t think we need be so picky about the business structure of new local media. Nothing would be worse than what we’ve had and surely, as NUJ professionals, we are capable of standing up for our right to work independently. We have been doing it for 100 years.
Meanwhile, try these for size
THE AMERICAN humorist Bill Shein, a columnist on a paper called the Berkshire Eagle, has put up a string of bright ideas to safeguard the future of newspapers. Here are a few I like (edited for British consumption):
Cliffhanger Stories — Want to keep readers coming back for more? Collude with other news outlets to hold back part of the story. Just as TV’s famous “Who Shot JR?” gimmick once hooked the nation, so, too, would saving the key facts for the next day. “BREAKING NEWS: An MP has been charged, but we won’t name him until tomorrow!” Readers could call an 0870 number for hints, paying a revenue-enhancing £2 per minute listening to 15 minutes of ads before the tantalising truth.
Reinvented Paperboys — Why not turn newspaper carriers into full-service concierges? Instead of tossing your paper into the bushes and cycling away fast, the paperboy would deliver your paper to you in bed, with complimentary orange juice and croissant. As an added bonus for long-time subscribers, Page Three Girls (or Guys!) could do double-duty as your carrier/concierge. “Goooood morning!”
Even More Consolidation — With this bold and counterintuitive strategy, the consolidation of newspapers and media properties would be accelerated until there’s just one giant corporo-media-government entity. Then, where else could people turn for news and information?
OTHERS have more down-to-earth suggestions. There is outrage in Bury, Lancs, where the Newsquest group has shifted journalists on the Bury Times, a big weekly, to Bolton, leaving just one lone reporter in the town centre office for a population of 185,000. There’s a lively Facebook group campaigning to Keep the Bury Times in Bury, which has put in a bid to buy the paper from Gannett Corporation of the USA.