I was interviewed last week for a series of articles on the future of local media. The final question asked was, “Am I confident about the future of local media?” The answer quite simply was no.
News provision in Wales and further afield has been in crisis for several years; my direct experience of working with Newsquest, one of the UK’s largest local news providers, on The National Wales, and more recently my research as part of my degree and now my Master’s with the University of Lancashire Innovation and Leadership in Journalism program has given me a lens that allows me to speak on the matter with some authority.
News as a business
News has always had social, political and economic value. Its commercialisation developed in stages: first people paid for useful information, then publishers sold newspapers to large audiences, and eventually advertising became central to financing journalism.
The crucial commercial development was a business with two customers: readers paid for the newspaper, and advertisers paid to reach its readers, but the internet disrupted the newspaper business by separating activities that had previously supported one another. People could find jobs, homes, cars and entertainment through specialist websites. Advertisers could reach potential customers through search engines and social platforms. News publishers lost revenue, and digital advertising hasn’t replaced it. The 2019 Cairncross Review identified this as a particularly severe problem for local journalism.
The Value of News
We need to stop thinking about the value of news simply in monetary terms. The business models of legacy public interest news providers are, to put it bluntly, fucked.
The monumental error of giving news away for free online, hoping advertising would cover their costs and generate profits, was a self-inflicted death penalty. Add to that the perception that BBC online news is free; it’s accessible to anyone, licence fee payer or not, and the situation has compounded.
There are notable exceptions: The New York Times and The Financial Times have successfully managed to attract sufficient audiences who value their reporting and are willing to pay for the content.
An informed society is just as important as a healthy one.
Public-interest news and information should be treated as national infrastructure because it enables people to understand decisions, access services, protect their wellbeing and hold institutions to account. Its benefits extend across society, including to people who never pay for news.
Invest in news, not pay for it.
We need to change the way people think about how public interest news is funded: the current transactional nature, where people pay a subscription to a newsletter, for example, benefits who exactly? The author, most definitely; society? Yes, depending on its nature, it can provide scrutiny of government that benefits wider society. But the output generally reaches a small part of society; research suggests it is already engaged with politics and public interest matters.
An investment enables public interest news and information to be made available to all, in relevant formats distributed across multiple platforms. It would allow for the facilitation of local and national discussions, giving voice to sections of society who currently feel excluded and ignored.
