Lots of local newspapers are rubbish - I doubt we will actually miss them.
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themabiblogion
themabiblogion
The inevitability of the closure of yet more local newspapers across
A range of AMs and MPs have expressed their feelings about the closures. These have ranged from the vaguely disappointed (Alun Ffred Jones) to the ill-informed (Hywel Francis) to the plain ranty (Bethan Jenkins).
The fuss about the closure of these two titles is at odds with the inactivity of the Welsh Assembly. They are still failing to get to grips with the problems facing the Welsh media. One report after another has made useless, impractical and often wrong recommendations about how to rescue Welsh press and broadcasting. This inaction has been a factor in the demise of the Welsh print media. However, it has not been the only factor.
The failure of the Welsh government has been mirrored by the inability of the print media outlets to change and refine their output. They too have not responded to the problem. This inability to change and respond to the problems they face looks a lot like falling on one’s sword. If there is still a place for the local newspaper (and I am not sure there is) they need to make changes quickly. The ability to view local, regional, national and international news at the click of a button has made them largely obsolete. The remaining strength of the local newspaper lies in reporting things that don’t make it out of the area. The trouble is that in becoming ever more reliant on press releases and producing a torrent of worthless, badly written drivel, they have lost their market.
Good local reporting will always find an audience whether it’s online or in print, it is this that they no longer do. And it is this that makes them not only obsolete but also largely worthless.
The argument that plurality of media is central to the functioning of a democratic society is a cornerstone of media theory. But should it really be applied to defend some of the newspapers we see going under? The defence of plurality is often churned out despite the fact that the newspapers in question aren’t any good. Too often in our local rags we see press-releases rewritten and fashioned into an imitation of news. There is too little actual journalism and too little writing that challenges those in local government.
However, the mantra of plurality has been repeated so often it is now used to defend the sort of newspapers we would be better off without. One such classic example of this type of journalism is about to bite the dust in my old hometown. The dire Wrexham Chronicle, a poorly subbed, badly designed, ugly little free-sheet, is now to close. Sad as it is for those journalists involved, it is categorically not a tragedy for the plurality of the local media.
The importance of plurality is that it gives readers a range of perspectives on social and political issues. It creates debate and holds those who are in power to account.
True plurality is plurality of opinion, and a variety of opinions is sadly not guaranteed by having a variety of local newspapers. Local newspapers have become so homogenous you can rarely tell them apart. They cover similar sorts of events week in week out and year after year.
If we only value local newspapers for the contribution they make to the plurality of the media, we are surely missing the point aren’t we?
It is what they say that matters – not the fact that they are there.
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Like you, I came up through local newspapers, including the Brecon and Radnor Express, before it was being bought out by Tindle, which seems to have settled on a successful formula.
I'm not convinced that the Welsh Assembly Government can do anything, even if it was seriously inclined to do so (and you can imagine that looking after journalists certainly isn't at the top of a list of concerns for certain ministers). We're into that dodgy area of government-run media. The unease that would be felt by both AMs and journalists is sure to ripple out to readers, who would almost certainly be disinclined to purchase such a product.
Newspapers - and, to a lesser extent, commercial broadcasters - made a strategic error in failing to invest in the kind of R&D that the BBC so evidently carried out. It now seems perfectly positioned to inherit the earth, able to take advantage of new media, no matter which direction it takes us.
Instead, commercial media is left to scrabble around, attempting to play catch up, but with far fewer resources, because many newspapers have been asset stripped to reduce operating costs and boost share prices.
In the good years, this allowed organisations like Western Mail and Echo (now Media Wales) to become the third most profitable company in Wales in 2006, according to its own Top 300 of that year, able to take 35p from every £1 of turnover it made.
Great news for the City, but a total aberration when viewed against the long-term economic performance of newspapers. Big Fleet Street titles have been the ruin of many a successful industrialist, we know. But many proprietors would have hung out the bunting - as little as 10 years ago - had they been able to make 10p profit in £1.
As David Simon recently noted in his testimony to the Senate's Commerce Communications Subcommittee earlier this year, reporting the news costs money. Generally, the more resource heavy it is, the better it gets. It is a hard industry to squeeze into a stock market model, perhaps because there are few like it.
Newspaper executives, who have spent much of this recession inviting anyone to feel sorry for them for their catastrophic failures, mistakenly believe that this spike we saw in profits in this decade is not only still attainable, but that it is the industry norm. In effect, they are expecting to match BBC quality with chronic under-resourcing, and expectations of high profits, during a recession.
Readers deserve better than these people.
Will come back and re write grrrrrrrrr
But when the local papers have gone, what fills the information gap?
Councils, for instance, are already able to get away with all sorts, now that papers can't (not enough staff) send reporters to every meeting.
Who will keep them in check? Warn council taxpayers what services are to be cut?
Who will tell local people their hospital has killed more patients than the one in the next town? That there have been 14 deaths on a stretch of road and nothing's been done about it? That muggings are up in their town?
There may not be enough of that any more in many local newspapers, due to a lack of reporters: 2,000, was it, journalists laid off across the UK in the second half of 2008, and lots more since?
But once the local papers are gone, there won't be any at of it at all.
You talk about the 'plurality of the local media': when the papers and their staff go, what is left?
The BBC and HTV can only cover a handful of news stories a day across the whole Principality. Local (commercial) radio
stations have two minutes of (repeated) news every hour.
Outside of the main media (and local papers just upload stories written by the print journalists they are now laying off), who has the time/resources to produce a quality news website?
As for blogs... even if the general population know they exist , even if they aren't just filled with opinion and produce more than one story a day; how does anyone reading them know who is behind them and if they can trust/believe a word on there?