Out With A Bang

Earlier this year Lord Fowler and his House of Lords colleagues published a report on the future ownership of the news – a worthy and, no doubt, genuine bid by central Government to try and get a grip on where the UK media industry was heading.

Given the state of this Media Nation of ours six months later, it is worth a re-visit if only to remind ourselves of what the Newspaper Society had to tell their lordships; Point 58, if anyone wishes to go and dust off a copy…

“The evidence we received from the Newspaper Society, which represents the regional and local industry, was very upbeat. They claimed the readership of those papers had increased in recent years: their figures showed that the number of people reading a local paper had increased by nearly a million in the last ten years (p 102). But such figures can be deceptive…”

At which point Fowler and Co then deferred to the evidence presented by The Guardian’s Alan Rushbridger who foresaw a ‘challenging’ future for the paid-for provincial newspaper industry.

In fairness, as we’ve muttered before the Newspaper Society were probably damned if they did and damned if they didn’t… damnation in one sticky form or another lay around every corner and nothing that has happened since would suggest otherwise. Just ask 80 Bolton printers…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=101

But that ‘upbeat’ view of the world in the spring and early summer of 2008 is going to prove a tricky one for the Newspaper Society if they feel a need to return to Whitehall or Downing Street next year with their caps in hand.

Or if they don’t, then dozens of marginal MPs might; a lunch with the local editor later and, of course, I’ll bring your plight up in the House… so sorry to hear about that. Shocking… That’s already in the wind…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=114

One look north of the border will also prove the point – that central governments are soon going to have to get their hands dirty when it comes to the future provision of news as the Scottish Parliament debates the future of its own indigenous newspaper industry – having presumeably sat idly by, if not applauded, the foresight of their Local Government colleagues in ripping out all their jobs adverts and placing it under one, web roof…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=184

Because if 2009 lives up to Emily Bell’s expectations, then at some stage the Newspaper Society and Government will have to engage in a debate…

And if it’s the sort that starts with ‘Go on, give us a hand…’ then Fowler and Co will be sorely tempted to say: ‘Oi, hang on a minute… you were all very upbeat nine months ago…’

No doubt, the line about ‘unprecedented cyclical conditions’ will be trotted out; who of us could have foreseen such a crisis in the world markets?

Perhaps, but the point of MyJobsScotland is that there are two halves to this ‘perfect storm’ of Sam Zell’s description; and the second half is actually the more formidable – it is the structural challenge of the Web; one foreseen by C Shirky some 10 to 12 years ago…

To claim that you couldn’t see that coming won’t wash; someone was asleep on their watch.

Many, many moons ago I did history at university; Social & Economic History, to be more precise. In and around the Industrial Revolution.

The coming of the railways was a fascinating time in the sense of the huge social and economic changes it wrought on this country. And beyond. Suddenly people – and goods – could get to places quicker than they ever thought possible.

They could get to Brighton and back in a day. Incredible.

Just as my lad can get to his space on MySpace. In an instant. Incredible. And all from the palm of his hand.

At some stage, you suspect, the canal owners would have marched en masse up Downing Street to ‘have a word…’ with the Gladestones and Disrealis of the day. Did they not realise what this new-fangled distribution network was doing to their industry? What’s wrong with moving goods at four miles an hour?

Everything when they can be moved at 75mph.

By the same token, what’s wrong with moving news at the pace of a 14-year-old on a bike? Or at the time it takes to get the Liverpool Echo round the M60 and down the M62 every morning once TrinityMirror centralise their North-West printing operations in Oldham?

Everything, when it can be delivered in an instant…

Way back when we talked about the Industrial Revolution before; how the Web was bringing the curtain down on the Press barons; the last great survivors of, effectively, a Victorian Age.

And that as media splinters into a million and one bloggy-type pieces from citizen publishers the world over, so we’re all going back to a cottage industry… weaving our words off our lap-tops and kitchen tables…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=30

Nevertheless, as they proved in fair style in their run-in with the BBC, the Newspaper Society can still mount a formidable PR campaign when needs must.

Which is why HM Government might be well-advised to think up some answers now before the Baileys and the McCalls come a-knocking again.

For example, for me the UK tax-payer, I can see no point in supporting anything that comes attached to a print press, a diesel-powered delivery van and a 14-year-old on a bike. Hello..? Why..?

But here’s the big one… Nor can I see any merit in funding something that is not a network in the true Shirky-sense.

TrinityMirror can rightly be proud of their local offerings out of TS10. Great.

http://ts10.gazettelive.co.uk/local_news/

Trouble is, you try selling that to central Government and I’d want to know how you plan to make that work in NR14, NW4, BS15, etc, etc… why should I fund something to the benefit of one community in TS10 and not in NR14? What are the tax-payers of Norfolk getting out of that?

If it can’t be made to work on a truly, networkable platform then I’m not sure I’d want to know.

Anything that smacks of a local monopoly; that benefits one community and not the networked many isn’t where this world is going; or rather where this world has gone. You are not going to dis-invent the wheel that is Craig’s List, is e-Bay, etc.

For the two parties sat on either side of that fence, 2009 promises to be a year of monumental challenge. And the need for such debates to begin in earnest grows ever more pressing by the day.

Particularly for those of us with any ambition of being a tiny green shoot in all this; we need to know who’s there for us… just as much as TrinityMirror and Co need to know if anyone is actually going to be there for them.

One thing is, however, all but certain. Without some help from above – be it from our masters in this world or the next – none of us will make it.