Tag Archives: Local media

BBC could share more technology with S4C/Trinity Mirror in Wales, says Trust chairman

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In a speech given to Cardiff’s Business Club last night, BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons added more weight to suggest more regional news partnerships between the BBC and competitors are in the pipeline:

  • More on partnerships: work is ongoing on partnerships in regional media with ITV; and between Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide.
  • Could BBC enter into an IT-sharing agreement with S4C and ITV in Wales to reduce operational costs?
  • Revamp of Broadcasting House in Wales could benefit local media with technology sharing arrangements.
  • “Perhaps even Trinty Mirror could have a role to play too [in partnering the BBC for regional news provision], given their journalistic presence in Wales and their significant online operation.”
  • And, just in case you doubted it: “The BBC local video project is dead. We have told BBC news that it must come up with a different solution.”

Here’s his comments as a Wordle:

Wordle of Michael Lyons' speech to Cardiff Business Club

But, a note of caution from Lyons on partnerships:

“What we’re not interested in are proposals that simply transfer value from the BBC to other players in the market (…) Let’s make sure that we don’t inadvertently turn the BBC into the Lloyds Bank of the media world.”

Yesterday the Beeb’s Executive announced plans to link out to external news providers from its network of BBC Local sites.

Editor&Publisher: Star-Ledger to outsource local news to new service

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The US paper will partner an as yet unestablished news service, being created by former Star-Ledger managing editor Rick Everett, for local news coverage.

The new organisation is expected to hire around 30 reporters, including college students. The collaboration will boost the paper’s coverage after it lost 151 newsroom staff last year.

Full story at this link…

Valleywag: Google ad exec invests in journalism start-up

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Tim Armstrong, Google advertising executive, is using his private investment company, Polar Capital Group, to back Patch – a community news organisation, which also boasts CUNY professor and media blogger Jeff Jarvis on its editorial board.

Full story at this link…

Media Release: Office of Fair Trading seeks input on local media mergers

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The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is seeking initial views on local and regional media mergers as part of a review following the UK government’s Digital Britain report.

Full release at this link…

OMC09: Levies for aggregators?

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Interesting suggestion from National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary and Oxford Media Convention panellist, Jeremy Dear, that content aggregators should be subject to levies.

Dear said the union is opposed to state aid for local media and the relaxation of local media regulation rules, but would consider introducing a levy for those who ‘do not produce content, but live off the back of those who do’.

New media and digital technology is not a threat to journalism – the danger is people who treat news and information as just a commodity, he said. $5 minimum deposit casino canada

Online media is becoming dominated in the same ways as traditional media, he added.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Dear said the idea is discussed in a report set for release next week, which focuses on public service broadcasting.

TheInd.com: ‘Chain reaction’ at the Daily Advertiser in Louisiana

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Over at a US-based local media site, an article from the Independent Weekly. It argues that newspaper owner Gannett has ‘ransacked’ the Daily Advertiser, the daily paper in Lafayette, Louisiana. Here, the the site’s looks at a ‘chain reaction’ impacting on the paper. Full story…

MediaGuardian: Government could relax local media ownership rules

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As part of his Digital Britain report to be released later this month, Lord Carter, minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, is expected to recommend relaxing ownership regulations in local media to aid struggling newspaper publishers.

BBC Trust’s dilemma over local video plans

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Despite rejecting the proposed £68 million investment by the BBC in on-demand local video online because (in part) of the negative impact it would have on local commercial media, the BBC Trust also said the following in its assessment of the plans:

“We also recognise the negative market impact that could result from expansion of BBC online news provision at a local level at a time when commercial providers face structural and cyclical pressures.

“Conversely, that potential strain on local news provision has led in some cases
to a reduction in editorial staff in the local press and commercial radio sector and could be used by some to justify a public intervention in the market.”

And:

“In assessing public value, the PVA also took account of the wider media market and the level and quality of local provision. Regional media markets have different competitive frameworks and characteristics which may well lead to a patchwork in provision and provide some justification for BBC expansion at a local level.

While the Trust said there would be no similar plans for the foreseeable future, this is a call to regional and local media to up their game. This time their market has been protected by Ofcom and the BBC Trust, but if it was to come under threat from independent publishers or other media organisations new to local, would the outcome be the same?

The Trust has urged the BBC to look at its existing services and how it can improve these to reach audience groups and areas it is failing to serve well. Local commercial media must look to do the same it it is to continue to defeat the argument for public intervention in its market.

Cameron calls for restraints on BBC’s commercial operations, supports local media

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At the Annual Newspaper Conference Lunch on Tuesday David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party was quick to criticise the ‘crushing’ power of the BBC.

The comments were made at the annual Newspaper Conference lunch, reported on the Newspaper Society’s website.

Addressing members of the Newspaper Conference, a body administrated by the Newspaper Society, made up of 20 regional press journalists and based in Westminster, Cameron insisted further restraints should be put on the BBC’s commercial operations.

“They [the BBC] have got to bear in mind that when they enter new markets, they are often in danger of crushing with the great big foot of the BBC enterprise, entrepreneurship and risk and capital that other organisations have put into those areas,” he said.

“Things like what they have been doing in education, some of the things they’ve been doing [sic] online, their plans for video on demand, and some of what they’ve been doing in competition with local newspapers, those are the things where they should be restrained,” said the Conservative leader

The BBC’s regulatory body, the BBC Trust also came under fire:

“I’d also like to see them [the BBC] regulated more in the way of other commercial television companies. I know the BBC Trust is an improvement on the old form of government but to me independent regulation has got to be independent.

“I still don’t really understand how you can partly be regulated by the BBC Trust, which is you, and partly by Ofcom. It doesn’t make sense.”

Speaking to the Newspaper Conference members, Cameron praised regional newspapers referring to them as being ‘valuable in terms of the health of a combative democracy’.

SoE08: What next for local media?

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Two questions being repeatedly raised at today’s Society of Editors (SoE) conference:

  • stop talking about the nationals, how can regional media get in on the digital act?
  • what to do about the BBC – or the ‘boa constrictor’ as Mail Online’s editorial director Martin Clarke called the corporation.

Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall told delegates that there is a model for the local press, focusing on hyperlocal.

“There will be models that emerge: investing in SEO, local press have to do that. There’s an opportunity for local press to go very local and build revenue around this. There are models, but it will have to be off a very different cost base,” said McCall.

She went on to describe Channel M – the television offshoot of the Manchester Evening News – as ‘a good model’ for local media that could be replicated in the future.

The business risks associated with online and sustainable digital business models, she added, need to be shared regionally and locally.

Regional media will have to take ‘a real hit’ on their bottom line when it comes to online to if they are to maintain standards of quality journalism, she added.

Malcolm Pheby, editor of the Nottingham Evening Post, took up the regional press’ baton in explaining how the NEP had successfully integrated its newsroom with staff now trained to treat all news stories as rolling news to be broken on the web.

But the pervading theme of the day has been the opposition from regional newspapers to the BBC’s proposed local video plans.

Pete Clifton, head of multimedia for the Beeb, did his best to defend criticisms of the plans, saying that the proposals are subject to assessments by the BBC Trust and suggesting that the BBC could forge stronger relationships with other news providers.

Still it was comments from McCall and Clarke, whose affiliate Northcliffe added its voice to the debate today, that received impromptu applause.

According to both, the BBC’s plans present unfair competition to the local press

Cue videojournalism evangelist and consultant Michael Rosenblum, who promised to teach the audience how to beat the BBC at its own game. Key to this he said is embracing technology, in particular video, wholeheartedly and not incrementally.

In response to a question from a Rotherham newspaper publisher, which currently has no video on its website, Rosenblum said there was a demand for the content and the potential for partnerships with regional broadcasters like ITV local.