“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 seven 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 the OJB 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streamline legislation and funding frameworks for supporting media organisations at local levels without the baggage of outdated business models.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 two Sundays ago) 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 through using local information (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 has 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 so the next generation of media organisations are prepared for the constant need to adapt to the rapid pace of media change - so, put more money into projects such as Infuze

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?

I’m not one of the official cavorters, but it got me thinking anyway about local (digital) media and environmental journalism. For me, the crossover of local/digital journalism and environmental sustainability could be a fantastic growth opportunity for regional media, as well as local citizen journalism groups and networks, with the result being increased environmental awareness and activity.

Global problem vs. small actions
One of the biggest disjuncts in climate change has been between the size of the problem (global, system-changing) and the dominant ’small actions’ communications set (let’s change the lightbulbs; ‘do your bit’). The size and threat of climate change is communicated too effectively, and many people have felt overwhelmed or that the problem must be exaggerated. They feel their actions are too small to matter. And the national press, government and NGOs still communicate ‘huge’ and ’small’ at the same time, and so haven’t addressed this blockage on action. (Added: Read this letter to the Guardian):

Having noticed the gap between the scale of the problem and that of the environmentally ‘acceptable’ solutions, [people] assume that the problem is exaggerated.
Hugh Pemberton
Bath (Sunday 29th June)

In their ‘Warm Words 2′ report for the IPPR, Signit and Ereaut draw attention to the successes of local initiatives to bridge this gap between the size of the problem and the ’small actions’ response. They draw attention to a number of examples where digital is the hub around which local initiatives are leading to effective action on reducing carbon emissions. For example:

• Manchesterismyplanet.com (’saving the world, starting with Manchester’)
• Love Lewisham (Council run initiative)
• Planet St Helens (local community groups online)

Signit and Ereaut argue that what has emerged through these initiatives is a powerful repertoire of ‘communal address’ that differs from the campaigning or top-down national communications of government, NGOs and the national press. (The government was this week told to change its climate ads to be more communal, friendly, positive). What is emerging at the local level and disseminated via digital platofms is an energetic local discourse that:

• Deals in the real, the tangible, the directly imaginable
• Speaks the language of collective action, in contrast to the disempowered individualism of ‘small actions’ at the national level
• Addresses the individual as a member of a community, as opposed to a citizen of the planet
• Speaks peer-to-peer rather than from the standpoint of authority
• Pragmatic, descriptive and inviting (we are doing this – come and join in!)

The directly imaginable, communal address, community, peer-to-peer, and importantly, the ability to join in with activities… The digital/local combination is a powerful way of providing people with agency and positive local messages, so they can see how they can make a difference in tackling climate change in their local areas. For Signit and Ereaut, this locally-sited communal address offers:

…a potentially useful positioning for organisations promoting climate-friendly behaviour. As opposed to the voice of authority telling the individual what to do, the interested agency might usefully address the ‘communal individual’ as an equal, a partner in the collaborative process of combating climate change.

Local journalism is best placed to speak with this communal address, and digital journalism is inherently peer-to-peer and communal to where the individual is placed. This is why, for me, local (digital) journalism is potentially better than national journalism in tacking climate change, and should make the most of its advantage to grow community relationships and benefit the environment.

A caveat: local media need to do more
But none of these projects above (e.g. Love Lewisham) are run by traditional news media organisations. They are local community or council run initiatives.

So why hasn’t local media been so quick to capitalize on the power of this communal address around the environment? One possible reason for this was evident in a story from a couple of weeks ago. The editor of a regional paper celebrated World Environment Day by turning his newspaper green. Northern Echo (Eco for the day) Editor Peter Barron told HoldthefrontPage:

“Going green isn’t something I’d do every day, but as a one-off initiative to make people sit up and take notice, I think it’s been very worthwhile and the reaction has been very positive.”

Going green ‘every day’ is not an issue for digital local media. Are the editors and their teams missing the opportunities that digital media can give them of connecting strongly with their communities?

Of course this is not the only reason for a lack of ‘every day’ green in the regional press. The other is that local newspapers are, according to John Richardson in his book Analysing Newspapers, “responsive rather than proactive” in their campaigns. So most press-based campaigns are for health (cancer appeals) and social ills (violence, graffiti, drugs etc) responding to the present readership’s concerns.

But the chance for digital to grow new, younger audiences who are concerned with climate change in the paper’s local area has to be a key growth opportunity. And climate change is becoming a larger health issue, as well as a price/energy issue, which may by one way of expanding the campaign remit of local press.

Do the editors see the use of digital in this way? Some are, I hope. A few weeks ago I gave some advice to a student who was applying for a new environment editor position at the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. The growth is great news. But, sadly, some local newspapers are also proving shortsighted: the Brighton Argus has just closed down its ‘eco-mag’ Rocks, and the future of their award-winning Environment Editor Sarah Lewis is in the balance. In Brighton? If these are the decisions made by local media in one of the greenest cities in the UK, then they may be missing out on the biggest opportunity for growth to come along for decades.

And if not, then citizen journalists and local activists will be the ones to use digital to communicate and mobilize and build their communities, offline and online, to actually get out there and do something.

Read contributions to the debate from Paul Bradshaw, Dave Lee, Jack Lail, Adrian Monck, Wendy Withers, John Hassell, and Charlie Beckett. (Originally published at AlexLockwood.net