Out With A Bang

The temptation on the back of Tim Bowdler’s teasing little remarks about possible merger deals afoot in the regional Press industry – hence the talk of easing the rules of media ownership; hence Pete Kirwan’s take in MediaMoney… http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2009/01/05/bowdler-hints-at-mega-deals-and-relaxation-of-regional-ownership-rules/

… is to ponder where that all might lead.

For the life of me I don’t see JP biting the hand off anyone that might offer them the chance to own Hallam FM and give them the chance to cross-promote and, above all, cross-sell advertising-wise, the Sheffield Star from said radio platform…

Rather, I suspect it might be a first move in trying to come up with a far less fractured carve up of the provincial towns and cities of this country; something that would allow Fort Dunlop, for example, to sit in the midst of a more geographically coherent and elegant Midlands fiefdom; one that enabled Trinity to say, bolt Lichfield into their thinking if they came to some ‘agreement’ with Northcliffe/DMGT over the way South Wales is run…

So everyone sits there in a darkened room; cards in one hand, fat Havanas in the other.

‘OK, Sly, your bid…

‘Lord R, I’ll swap you our Echo, for your Mercury…

‘Mmm…

‘John, your go…

‘OK, I’ll swap the Sunderland Echo with you Sly, for the Perth Shopper…’

‘The Perth Shopper… Oooh, go on then… You drive such a hard bargain, Mr Fry…’

And so it would continue. Archant sitting nervously in the corner; wondering if anyone would ever make a bid for the Ilford Recorder.

Which, in a way, is what needs to happen.

But the danger is that still becomes a half-way house; yes, you can rip out all the back-office functions and staff from the Sunderland Echo as it gets morphed in between the Chron to the north and the Gazette to the south, but it is still not a network in the true Shirky-sense of the vision.

And as Pete points out, it would still be a devil of a job to integrate your advertising and editorial platforms across any such super North-East news hub; it would cost both time and money – neither of which are in abundance right now.

But if I were Sly and Co, that’s the way that I would be thinking. I really wouldn’t want to be a TV station for just Newcastle and Middlesbrough; I’d want to be a written news platform for Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough and then let ITVLocal.com/Tyne-Tees link into my content at the cost of their TV…

But we weren’t going to talk about that; we’ve done that; there’s nowt too new there.

This is what interested me more… why today’s teenagers aren’t even more depressed given the unending diet of economic downturns, ecological disasters and religious wars with which we feed them…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/06/comment-young-people-israel

“The miracle is that only one in 10 think life means nothing. Eight out of 10 would not be unreasonable. Today’s youth need a medal for sticking it out.

“I was wandering through Leicester Square last week and it suddenly seemed to me that the world is even more full of crap than ever before: more noise, more sex, more drugs, more greed, more rubbishy produce, more chips, more drekky fast food, more homeless people, more starving pensioners, more stabbings, loads of wars, bigger gap between rich and poor, hardly any secure job prospects.

“And there were all the youth wading through it, still batting on with life and finding reasons to be cheerful – a whole 90% of them. They are a tribute to the human spirit…”

In part, it is a tribute to their spirit. But I strongly suspect that it is also a tribute to the power of the web.

Which is something I think our generation still doesn’t get. That all those angst-ridden hours parents spend wondering what on earth their teenage daughter is doing ‘MSNing all night…’ misses the point.

The web is more than anything a place of warmth and welcome; it’s where everyone under the age of 30 now makes sense of the world; finds solace, company and comfort.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=77

Nursing Mums now find common cause and advice on MumsNet; bereaved families find comfort on FacesOfTheFallen; teenage kids mourn their class-mate on Goon2Soon.

And they’re just the ‘public’ areas of communal interaction and sharing; drill down beyond that and FaceBook, Bebo, MySpace, etc, etc offer ever more ways of tying your little community together; of huddling ever closer together and feeling that warmth and the intimacy of the web.

For further proof, this makes for interesting reading…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/01/the-new-media-audience.html

That the next generation are, above all…

‘They are the collaboration and relationship generation…

And for any of us charged with finding the way ‘in’ to the kids; to twig what might just work as a news platform that’s fit for those that will inherit the 21st Century, that’s what we’ve got to bear in mind; how do we collaborate with them, how do we join their conversations.

Because they’ve gone. Long gone.