Tag Archives: Local newspapers

Media Release: Birmingham Post launches sister title Birmingham Post Lite

As reported by The Business Desk West Midlands earlier this week, Trinity Mirror is launching a new freesheet as a sister paper to the paid-for Birmingham Post, which changed from a daily to weekly publication last year.

Birmingham Post Lite will be delivered to around 18,000 homes in the south Birmingham areas of Harborne and Moseley and will contain a selection of the Birmingham Post’s editorial content and material from its Post Property magazine, says a release.

The new newspaper will not carry the paid-for Post’s specialised business
and financial news. Instead it will combine south Birmingham news with the features and leisure content from the Post’s award-winning team.

The BusinessDesk (TBD) had the date pegged as April 22, but suggests the launch is a direct response to plans for a new rival title, the Birmingham Press, from newspaper entrepreneur Chris Bullivant.

“The title (…) is intended to go head-to-head with the Press in the battle to secure advertising from the city’s mid-market estate agents,” says TBD’s report.

Your guide to the CMS Report on the Future for Local and Regional Media

The UK parliament’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport Committee published the results of its year-long inquiry into the state and future of local and regional UK media today, calling for greater investigation of and stronger rules for council-run newspapers.

“We endorse the sentiment that it is local journalism, rather than local newspapers, that needs saving,” says the report.

“The two are far from mutually exclusive, but newspapers need to be innovative in the way they train their journalists to work in a multiplatform world.”

The full report is embedded below, courtesy of Scribd, and you can read previous Journalism.co.uk reports on the committee’s evidence sessions at this link. But for your perusing pleasure, here’s our breakdown of some of the key sections and quotes:

  • p4 – “the broadcast pool”: “We take note of the Press Association’s concerns about the exclusivity of the ‘broadcast pool’ (video content of news events that are only allowed to be covered by a single camera, and is then shared between the BBC, ITN and Sky) and conclude that it is no longer appropriate to distinguish between broadcast and non-broadcast media when newspapers are increasingly using video on their websites.”
  • p9 – breakdown of local media operators and owners;
  • p11 – the role of local and regional newspapers in “the news pyramid”;
  • p16 – “We welcome the BBC’s proposals to increase the number of external links on its websites. We recommend that every local BBC website should link to the local newspaper websites for that area.”
  • p17 – Committee’s views on state subsidies for local and regional media.
  • p17-21 – recommendations for changes to cross-media ownership rules and regulations;
  • p24-5 – recommendations regarding local authority newspapers and council publications;
  • p28 – “For a long time local newspapers have made relatively little change to their business models. Now, along with the other traditional media platforms of television and radio, they face a vast array of digital and internet services, providing relatively easy market entry, all vying for advertising revenue and readerships. While some economic factors are cyclical, other changes of a structural nature are likely to be permanent. As is clear from the evidence we have heard from local newspapers themselves, local newspapers must innovate and re-evaluate the traditional model of local print media in order to survive in the new digital era.”
  • p33 – “the PSB obligations and other regulatory burdens on ITV need to be reduced, if not removed”;
  • p38 – recommendations regarding the Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) plans – though these are a little out of date given that the winning bids for the pilots have now been announced;
  • p51Local radio and localness and the importance of community radio.
  • p60-4 – On Google’s impact on local newspapers.

Civic Edition: Text message marketing for local newspapers

This blog post from Civic Edition, a site looking at new and innovative business models for community news, considers whether local businesses offering discounts via local newspapers could be improved as a revenue stream for both the papers and the merchants.

Via the paper’s website users could opt in to receive information about offers from local businesses by text message – but most importantly, says Civic Edition, these offers could be sent out in real time and instantly updated by the merchants to reflect their business needs.

Using an imaginary pizzeria, Julie’s Pizza, as an example, the post explains:

The new system allows her to adapt in real time to business circumstances, and give her customers information that they can actually use. This ultimately creates far more value for the merchant, making it something that she will actually want to pay for. As more merchants catch onto this far more efficient marketing model, it will provide a way for the newspaper (turned newshub) to monetize its pre-existing community base.

Full post at this link….

If your paper is already doing this, do drop us a line.

allmediascotland: Scottish government drops plans to remove public notices from newspapers

The Scottish government has scrapped its plans for legislation, which would have allowed local authorities to place public notices solely on the internet. The proposals had been heavily criticised by representatives of the local press, who feared the legislation would cut off a much-needed revenue stream.

But the fight from local authorities isn’t over – a spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities says the portal for public notices will still go ahead and evidence to support the future introduction of such legislation will be gathered.

Full story at this link…

HTFP: Kent County Council to scrap controversial TV channel

Kent TV, the TV channel run by Kent County Council and the subject of a long-running battle with local newspaper the Kent Messenger, will be axed, the local authority confirmed yesterday.

The cost to the taxpayer of the channel, which was launched in September 2007 as a pilot project, is estimated by Holdthefrontpage.co.uk as in the region of £1.8 million.

The pilot period was due to come to an end next month and council leader Paul Carter said further spending on the channel could not be justified in the current economic climate.

Full story at this link…

Guardian Letters: GMG, Coventry Telegraph and Cumberland news respond to Monbiot on local press

Les Reid, political correspondent for the Coventry Evening Telegraph; Mark Dodson, CEO of Guardian Media Group’s regional media division; and Neil Hodgkinson, Cumberland News and News & Star editor, have responded passionately to George Monbiot’s criticism of the UK’s local press earlier this week.

In his Comment is Free piece entitled ‘I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving‘, Monbiot said:

“For many years the local press has been one of Britain’s most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is.”

“They [local newspapers] continually uncover stories that need to be told. They campaign for and champion the underdog with a tenacity that would shame many in the national press. Their community relevance is what keeps local titles alive,” writes Dodson in response.

“In Greater Manchester our journalists stand up in court at least three times a week attempting to have reporting restrictions lifted so that stories can be told in full. I know that other regional press publishers share our commitment to real local reporting.”

Full letters at this link…

Telegraph.co.uk: MSN discussing hyperlocal partnerships with local papers

Microsoft has been very chatty this week – see its long-awaited announcement of a search partnership with Yahoo.

On top of this and following the launch of the data-rich MSN Local, MSN executive producer Peter Bale told the Telegraph that the site was hoping to take feeds from local newspapers and map the content.

“Hyperlocal news online has never been more important and we think this is a really interesting growth area,” he said.

Payment for the feeds is a possibility or a linking/traffic driving arrangement could be made, he added.

Full post at this link…

Ad spend will bounce back, says Fry; multiple models needed, counters McCall

Amidst what was otherwise a fairly gloomy House of Commons select committee session on the future of local media in the UK [see Claire Enders’ prediction that half of the UK’s regional newspapers will close in five years and her comments on bloggers], Johnston Press chief executive John Fry remained staunchly optimistic about the cyclical/structural elements of the decline in local media.

While all members of the panel agreed that this was the worst crisis faced by local media in the industry’s history, Fry said the decline in advertising revenues for his group was more cyclical than structural.

“That implies that there will be a bounce in advertising when that changes. From here onwards we’re likely to bottom out. When the economy recovers we’ll see a recovery in advertising,” he said.

Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall was quick to temper Fry’s optimism:

“I don’t believe the prospects for recovery, particularly in classified advertising are particularly strong. I don’t expect to see a great deal of those three big markets – I don’t think bounce is the right word – I think it will come back slowly, it will come back in a different form or shape,” she said.

“The structural change is too profound and the economic recession has just hammered it. Deregulation is one step towards helping. It’s not a panacea. It raises all sorts of important issues about jobs.

“One thing we’re going to have to face about this industry is that it’s going to be a smaller industry with less people in it. Consolidation will help because then the clustering of assets in the right place, will makes more sense, you’ll get more scale.”

All three panellists (Fry, McCall and Trinity Mirror’s Sly Bailey) taking part in the evidence session (which had earlier taken comments from Claire Enders and DC Thomson’s Christopher Thomson) supported consolidation and the relaxation of newspaper merger rules to help local newspapers.

Yet it was McCall again with the most sensible comments – a range of issues and possible solutions need to be considered: discussions about aggregators; consolidation; support for web development; the use of part-paid, part-free access; state-funding; and the problem of council newspapers.

The industry needs to move away from the display advertising model to – not just one business model – but lots of business models, she added.

If any of them can sustain quality local journalism, none should be ruled out, she said, echoing comments from the Society of Editor’s executive director Bob Satchwell to Journalism.co.uk last week.

CounterValue: Why Burnham and the Beeb won’t save the local press

Andy Burnham’s proposals for partnerships between the local press and the BBC won’t save regional newspapers, argues Justin Williams.

“How would allowing Google News to classify this stuff as duplicate content help? And how exactly would reproducing a few semi-local videos from the Beeb boost the uniques at borcestshirebilge.co.uk?” he asks.

Full post at this link…

Jon Slattery: UK regional press crisis: interviews with an ex-editor, reporter and manager

Following his piece on the regional press on MediaGuardian.co.uk, Jon Slattery has published a series of full interviews with industry representatives from the UK’s regional press.

Speaking about the impact of job losses on journalists, an ex-editor says:

“There’s simply nothing out there. Six weeks ago they were an editor, a man of significant substance in their community; today they’re signing on.”

Full post at this link…