There was a mixed reaction (as you might expect from a room full of newspaper editors) to Trinity Mirror Regionals’ editorial director Neil Benson’s suggestion yesterday that newspaper groups could make money from running ‘arm’s length PR agencies’.

Journalism.co.uk spoke to Benson at the Society of Editors conference to find out more about the scheme in Northumberland (in which he refers to Brian Aitken, editor of the Journal) and the potential for newspaper groups to work with local authorities:

Below he explains why newspapers running PR agencies in-house could work:

• #soe09: What are the revenue opportunities for newspapers – and what are the ‘donkeys’?
• #soe09: Following the Society of Editors conference 2009
• Scottish newspapers claw back advertising from council jobs site
• #soe10: Live coverage of the Society of Editors conference
• Sarah Hartley: Help investigate local authority news coverage

Concluding the session on future revenue for newspapers at today’s Society of Editors conference (including a suggestion of in-house PR agencies at newspapers), panel chair and media commentator Raymond Snoddy asked the speakers to name one future opportunity and one ‘donkey’ that should be given up.

Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror Regionals
Keep: Video
“Video is a massive growth area that appeals to a spread of ages.”

Kill: Paid-for model for general news content

Morgan Holt, director of HUGE
Keep: Audience analysis and the link economy.
“Keep chasing your audience. Get very close to them and let them know you’re close to them; and make sure that everything you create is linkable to.”

Kill: Video
“It’s too expensive.”

Francois Pierre Nel, UCLAN
Keep: Valuable existing services
“We need to consider what value we provide to all our customers.”

Kill: DIY mentality
“We need to let go of the idea that we have to do it all ourselves and we need to look at new partnerships.”

• Rob Grimshaw on the paywall backlash
• London Lite could close following consultation
• Martin Moore: #futureofnews is ‘not so bleak, but not so rosy either’
• Can journalism survive in the digital era?
• Channel 4 News video: Lionel Barber on news’ paid-for future

New York University Journalism School professor Jay Rosen told the Journalism Leaders Forum @ UCLAN, that based on what he had heard at the forum UK regional newspapers seemed two years behind the US for developing editorial products that relied on large-scale user-interaction.

Responding to comments made by Trinity Mirror Regionals editorial director Neil Benson, that the next year would be about experimenting with new editorial projects that relied on great audience interaction and overcoming journalists resistance to allowing the audience to interact, Rosen told the forum that those barriers to audience interaction began breaking down in the US two years ago and that newsrooms there were now addressing how best to cross ‘the digital sea’.

Listen here to Neil first explain his position (in response to a question from Chair Mike Ward about whether or not it was yet possible to see ‘scalable and durable’ models for editorial/user interaction products) then Jay comment on the developments in the UK (Note: both were phoning into the forum so the sound quality isn’t perfect).

• Jay Rosen @ Journalism Leaders Forum: NewAssignment.net next project – beat reporting with a social network
• PatrolMag: ‘Dear Jay Rosen, you give me hope’
• PressThink: The twisted psychology of bloggers v journalists
• Behind the scenes at BBC’s Question Time
• PressThink: Defining citizen journalism