Jonathan Heawood, Executive Director of the Public Interest News Foundation, describes the scale of the local journalism crisis – and highlights an exciting new way forward
Imagine if the UK’s national press closed down tomorrow. The Express, Guardian, i, Mail, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph and Times – all gone! The lights would go out on democracy.
This may sound like an outlandish scenario, but something similar is happening in towns and cities up and down the United Kingdom. Local newspapers are closing or consolidating, and local journalists are losing their jobs. Even if the democratic lights are still on, the bulbs are weak, and the connections are dangerously loose.
This crisis in local journalism has been discussed by the Media APPG, the House of Commons DCMS Select Committee and the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee. It animated the Cairncross Review and lies behind related initiatives in Scotland and Wales. But are we any closer to finding an answer?
Two years ago, I took part in a webinar hosted by the Media APPG on ‘Funding and Regulating Public Interest Journalism in a world of fake news’. The webinar was sponsored by NewsNow, the UK’s independent news discovery platform, and afterwards, I got talking to Jana Bartlett, Struan Bartlett and Adam Newby of NewsNow, together with the media consultant Sameer Padania.
We felt that we’d been looking in the wrong direction for answers to the local journalism crisis. Rather than expecting national policymakers or funders to solve this problem in isolation, we should be talking to local communities about what they want from local news – and what they can do to support it.
So, together, we came up with the idea for a series of ‘Local News Plans’. Modelled on neighbourhood plans or Transition Town plans, these plans will set out each community’s vision for local news, and the commitments that local people and institutions are prepared to make in support of that vision.
We are now running pilot Local News Plan workshops in six locations across the UK. We’ve been to Folkestone, Glasgow, Manchester and Bristol, and soon we’ll be heading to Newry and Bangor. In each place, we’re consulting with a cross-section of the community: journalists, publishers, councils, businesses, charities, faith groups, funders and others. We have selected places in all four nations of the UK, and on a spectrum from urban to rural and from more to less affluent, so that we can see whether these variations affect what people want from local news.
What can we conclude at this stage? I want to highlight five preliminary findings. These early thoughts might change as the project develops. But we are excited about what we’re learning, and we want to start talking about what happens next.
1. Local communities know high-quality local news when they see it.
Everywhere we have gone, local people have told us about their favourite local journalists and publications. In Folkestone, we heard about Rhys Griffiths at the Folkestone & Hythe Express. In Glasgow, it was Rhiannon Davies and the magazine she founded, Greater Govanhill. In Manchester, it was the Mill.
In the eyes of their communities, these journalists and outlets care about the places they serve. They put in the hours on the ground. They are visible. They communicate well. In some ways, these are the basic virtues of journalism, and the problem is that these are the exception, not the rule. But credit where credit’s due: there are great journalists out there, and we salute them.
2. Local communities believe that local news should be truly local.
The flipside of communities’ appreciation for high-quality local news is their frustration with news that is brought in from outside the area, with – in the words of one Manchester participant – a local ‘veneer’.
People are tired of clickbait, sensationalism and a diet of celebrity and crime stories that attract online audiences – and advertising clicks – but give a distorted impression of the places they are supposed to cover.
Many stakeholders understand that news publishers are pushing out this kind of content because it performs well on social media, but they still don’t like it. They want to see news that is ‘truly local’, from journalists who know the area from the inside.
This echoes other research we have conducted at the Public Interest News Foundation, when we found that people are much more likely to trust local news that’s locally produced than local news made by a company from outside the area.
3. Local communities want to be involved in the creation of local news.
In every location, people are telling us that communities should be active participants in telling their own stories, and not just passive sources or consumers of local news. People recognise that professional journalists play a crucial role in fact-checking, verifying and curating information – but they want to be involved as well.
This reflects a wider social change, where people are looking for institutions that are responsive to their needs and concerns, and which truly reflect the diversity of contemporary British society. There is an amazing opportunity here for the news industry to develop new products and approaches that meet this demand. However, the industry – with some honourable exceptions – has been slow to react, in part because of a lack of investment or funding opportunities.
4. Local communities are looking for a rich diet of public interest journalism.
Journalists have always prided themselves on holding the powerful to account, and this role is still valued by local communities across the UK. However, communities are also telling us that they need local news that gives them a feeling of connection and civic pride.
Public interest journalism means different things at different times and in different communities and places. Sometimes it’s watchdog reporting on the council or the courts, and sometimes it’s new business openings. Sometimes it’s investigative journalism that uncovers wrongdoing, and sometimes it’s features journalism that uncovers a community’s diversity and history. Sometimes, public interest journalism looks out for solutions to the problems affecting the community, and sometimes it simply reflects the community back to itself.
Local people are telling us that they want all of these kinds of journalism – and more.
5. There is potential local funding for local news – but it won’t come easy.
For all our economic challenges, the UK is still one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There are considerable resources among charitable foundations, businesses and high net worth individuals across the country.
When we have brought local donors into our workshops, they have become enthused about the future of local news. But, for most of them, this is the first time that anyone has spoken to them about the topic. The local journalism crisis may be a major issue for the news industry and some policymakers – but it is simply not on the agenda of many of the people who could help solve the crisis.
This is in stark contrast to the United States, where local donors are investing heavily in local news to mitigate the threat to democracy that comes when communities lose access to a reliable and shared source of information.
Taken together, these preliminary findings suggest the scale of the challenges we face – but they also provide a glimmer of hope.
If we can support the innovators who are building new models of local news, and encourage local donors to pitch in, then maybe – just maybe – we can see our way to a long-term solution to the local journalism crisis.
However, the wrong interventions – or no interventions at all – could leave people ever more dissatisfied with their local news provision, ever less trusting of local institutions, and ever more at risk of polarisation.
We want to start talking about these findings with policymakers, so that, together, we can turn the local journalism crisis into an opportunity. But we need to move fast, before the lights go out on our democracy.
To find out more about the Local News Plans project, or to register your interest in a Local News Plan for your area, visit www.localnewsplan.uk. Development Plans for the six pilot locations will be published in the New Year.
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