Disappearing act: what the decline of local beat journalists means for our democracy

This is a version of a speech that I gave to the News Impact Summit in Manchester on Nov 2. It was accompanied by a fantastic cartoon strip by Andrew Garthwaite.

Hello, I’ve decided not to hit you this early this morning with any graphics or presentations. What I want to try to achieve in this short talk is some call to action.

Let me first tell you a little bit about myself. I have been working in the newspaper industry for nigh on two decades.

I started out on the bottom rung as an editorial assistant for The Irish Post, a paper for the Irish community in Britain. I have an Irish background so I found myself doing everything from interviewing local Irish dance troupes, covering Gaelic football games and then interviewing the likes of the then Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

It was certainly varied – and a fantastic grounding in journalism. The way the paper was set up meant I did hyper-local stuff one minute, then I was in parliament the next. It also involved making lots of cups of tea for grizzled, cynical but very fine journalists.

I then went on to Fleet Street as a reporter and news editor. I then crossed over to The Wall Street Journal as digital editor – and I have now been at Newsweek Media Group for 18 months. So I’ve run the whole gamut from local news journalism to covering big global events and going from being a newspaper reporter to immersing myself in all things digital. 

I fully understand the crucial role local journalism plays not just in a community, but in the fabric of our society.

I am sure the members in this room feel the same too. The problem is that I believe we need to convince people out there, both the general public, benefactors and distribution platforms of our worth.

I am not saying people think local journalism doesn’t do a good job. It’s just in a world which resembles the Tower of Babel, with outlets clamouring for our attention, and differing funding models, how do we get the audience to come to OUR site or newspaper?

I don’t pretend I have the answers – a silver bullet or circulation surge – but I want to get the juices flowing this morning and get us thinking about what we can do.

In the next talk we are going to hear some examples of some fine community-based projects from across the UK.

I want to get you thinking about local journalism as a funding model per se and how we can PR ourselves better. 

Local newspapers have historically played a hugely important role in holding local elected representatives to account, unmasking dodgy councillors, nefarious property developers and more. 

It is these local stories that often make it into the national press. 

But as local news organisations cut back on the beat reporter, who will hold the crooks to account? And if these people are not being unmasked, what way is there to stop them from going on to committing even larger-scale fraud? 

What about accountancy of the police, NHS and fire services? If local journalists aren’t doing this job, who will?

I recently read a story in the Press Gazette from a journalist who worked on local newspapers 30 years ago. This person, Grant Feller, said he was sure fire safety concerns of Grenfell Tower residents would have found a voice before a decline in London’s local press.

“If we hadn’t found that story ourselves we would have been bollocked by the editor. Any local newspaper journalist worth his or her salt would have been all over that story.

“We would have known about that local group’s concerns because we were very much in the local community. We would have pored over the council meeting agendas and asked questions of the councillors and the officers.

“But today there is no-one there. Those people can do what they like because there’s no journalists looking at what they are doing. That’s why local journalism is so important.”

Journalists are said to work hand-in-glove with PRs these days, but there is a PR job to be done on our own industry.

How can we better explain to the general public - without sounding too grand - the essential role we play in the fabric of our democracy? More importantly, without the cash to fund this, are beneficent third parties, platforms and/or government funding really the answer?

Before this talk I spoke to Tom Felle from the Department of Journalism at City University. He went through the figures.

Between 2007 and 2017 the median decline in circulation for local newspapers in the UK and Ireland was 50%. Around 20% of the titles that were printing in 2007 have closed.

Titles that were once daily are now printing three times a week, with titles that once printed a number of weekly editions now cut back to one.

Newsrooms have been pared back to the bone with just a skeleton staff producing content. Advertising revenue is down by as much as 66%, and is dropping consistently.

So what I am going to say next is up for debate – and we may have people here vociferously disagreeing with this. This is Tom's considered view as an academic. But I think it will concentrate our minds for the rest of the day.

“The transition to online has not gone well. Some titles have made a ratings success of digital but the scale required to make digital pay doesn’t work for most local newsrooms – neither an advertising based CPM model nor a paywall offer a sustainable solution for local journalism. In many cases local newsrooms also lack the skillset to properly produce online socially driven content, and don’t have the resources to invest.

Put plainly the business model for local journalism is well and truly bust and rather than surviving, local newspapers are winding down toward inevitable extinction, many will go within five to 10 years.

Yes, of course, newsprint is dead. What must not be allowed to happen is for journalism to die alongside. It is imperative for democracy that we find a way to support and fund quality local journalism, produced for local communities, and circulated digitally.

Commentators have pointed to hyper-locals, social media and so-called ‘citizen’ journalism as the answer, and while social media certainly has taken the place of the local newspaper in keeping local communities informed, and in a few notable cases the accountability role has been taken up by hyper-locals and ‘citizen’ journalists, in most cases this important local democratic function is being lost. Most hyper-locals don’t have the resources to carry out accountability journalism, and ‘citizen’ journalists often have agendas. Once local newspapers close, this democratic accountability function – the ‘fourth estate’ role – will be lost forever.

Some will survive as commercial entities, but for those that cannot, some level of intervention is required. In the UK, the BBC is funding 150 local democracy reporter roles across the country. The European Parliament is considering hearings into local journalism – both of these initiatives are welcome.

But the large multinational technology companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google also need to do far more to help journalism survive. They have made large profits from content produced by journalists around the world, yet they contribute little back to help support that journalism. Talk of an ‘internet tax’ has been lampooned – it is too crude a concept. But these multinationals can and should pay more – far more than they currently do. In France, for example, Google set up a €60m fund to pay for journalism following the threat of being taxed. The Google DNI fund supports journalism innovation projects – but we have yet to see other tech companies follow suit. It’s time they did, before it’s too late to save local journalism.

So that are Tom's thoughts laid out in uncompromising terms. Is ‘inevitable extinction’ a given? We can have a heated debate later. What I can say is that when I started out at The Irish Post, I didn’t think about pay models or audience. I just concentrated on the story – but we can’t hearken back to those old times. We have to accept change has come and we have to embrace that and work out the best way forward.

Just before I finish I will leave you with the words from Emily Bell, formerly of the Guardian and now director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Social media has made a practice – and a fortune – out of erasing traditional boundaries between different types of material. Where once we had propaganda, press releases, journalism and advertising, we now have “content”. Where once we had direct marketing, display advertising and promotions, now we have “monetisation”. Where we once had media owners, ad agencies and clients, now we have “partners”. Who could possibly object to partners monetising their content? It sounds so mutually beneficial and efficient.

The outlook is stark but the reason why we are all here in this room is that we have a gathering of talented people who can grasp the nettle and figure out a way forward. Thank you to Adam Thomas, the director of the European Journalism Centre, for bringing this group of people together – and to Google News Lab for their support.

This isn’t just a one-off event. The EJC is speaking with and listening to smart people across the industry and building a valuable network. Collaboration doesn’t always come easy to news orgs that sometimes view other outlets as rivals but with the future of our industries and communities at stake, surely the old adage runs true: we are more than the sum of our parts.

Later we will find out about innovation and how some, if not all, of these pressing issues can be fixed. From US companies like Hearken who are changing the way we listen to what audiences are looking for, to Aine Kerr and Mark Little who are offering a new paradigm to beat the problem of ‘information overload’ and deliver personalised news to paying users; to how local journalism here in this city offered a ray of light in the wake of the Manchester Terror attack.

Thank you for listening. I hope we can discuss these topics today.