And if the thoughts that follow initially appeared somewhat at odds and unconnected, apologies; I think there’s a link there somewhere.

Just.

Given the still-fledgling state of www.addiply.com, we opted not to book the Presidential Suite at The Randolph this year; instead it was a B&B in Summertown.

Was fine; a bus ride in. And for those who know their north Oxford, it was bang opposite BBC Oxford on Banbury Road. Could see the ‘B’ and the ‘B’, if not the ‘C’, from our bay window breakfast table.

We could also watch the BBC’s breakfast news; the ‘local’ opt-out featured stories from Lymington, Portsmouth and Southampton (x2).

Perhaps Oxford is one of those funny, UK cities that finds itself neither one thing nor the other… too west for BBC London, too east for BBC West, too north for BBC South.

Anyway, it was food for thought as we headed off to hear the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden speak on the future of ‘local’ news provision on the day that Jeremy Hunt would repeat his implaccable opposition to OfCom’s vision of new independently financed news consortia… and, instead, to lay out his vision for a Britain populated by Birmingham-style city TV stations.

Birmingham, Alabama that is.

The very fact that he was last up on the day – to me, at least – spoke volumes.

It was his message that delegates would walk away with and on the IFNCs, his words would have sent a shudder down the spine of any poor soul in Wales, Scotland or the Tyne-Tees-Borders region feverishly trying to put the finishing touches to their final round proposals together.

“I know that many organisations in this room are involved in bidding for the pilot schemes that this Bill would make permanent,” said Hunt, with Trinity’s Sly Bailey earlier going out of her way to urge regulators and incoming Governments alike to give them a chance. Not to strangle the baby at birth.

The fact that all involved had a whiff of Auntie’s top sliced notes in their nostrils was not lost on Mr Hunt. But the Shadow Minister was not for turning.

“I don’t blame you: faced with the terrifying situation many of you are in, it is understandable you want to follow the money wherever it is, public or private.

“This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector…

What then followed was a kind of networked, individual city-based vision for local news… if memory serves, ‘Sheffield TV’ was the example he reached for.

“We will seek to lower the costs for new entrants to local TV even further by creating space for a new national network to provide prime time viewing for local TV affiliates.

“It will also mean – critically – that as in America advertising on local TV franchises can be sold nationally as well as locally.

Subsequent commentators have, quite correctly, pointed out the perils and pitfalls of those tasked to manage a LeedsTV and a BradfordTV as The Guardian reported the story subsequently…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/21/hunt-itv-news-replacement-pilots

…but the implication is clear. Wittingly or not, Hunt is demanding an elegant network of RightMove type-freedoms, not a new collection of extended silos; a network in which advertising can “critically… be sold nationally as well as locally.”

Which, for me, is interesting.

Because – I presume – what he’s looking for is, say, www.mycity.tv to pop out of the woodwork this summer.

www.mycity.tv/leeds

www.mycity.tv/sheffield

www.mycity.tv/oxford

I looked. It’s gone. But that I presume would be the theory.

A way, in short, for GMG’s own, much-maligned Channel M to reap the greater fruits on offer from a networked existence; not the ever-shrinking silo that is the Manchester Evening News trying to do TV.

Because part of that, back-of-fag-packet theory would involve finding an ad network that could serve richer media advertising sourced at both a national and a local level.

That, of course, we can do… the next few weeks of beta testing, permitting.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/01/08/can-we-join-the-dots-in-digital-britain-mine-a-small-pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-local-rainbow-well-maybe-look-above-you/

But, as I say, this is all fag packet and beer mat stuff. Theory. Mere theory

Where, however, in practice that leaves all those good folk currently busting their corporate b*lls to get their final IFNCs proposals into shape is anyone’s guess; Stuart Purvis of OfCom is also likely to find his wings being brutally clipped should Cameron and Co head for No10 in little more than four months time.

Either way, it’s the Hunt vision that the Tories will be looking to make flesh this autumn. And the first one to a networked domain name might even be the winner…

As has been muttered before in these parts, there is much to keep an eye on in and around the valleys of Tyne, Tees and Wear.

The arrival of the impressive-looking http://www.hohound.co.uk/ over the forthcoming days merely re-inforces the impression that there is much good a-foot in them there parts… much that is worthy of comment and inspection.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/11/26/if-anyone-wants-to-know-where-the-future-of-the-uks-new-media-landscape-will-be-forged-and-decided-itll-be-in-the-north-east-of-england-starting-on-monday/

… at which point Johnston Press were about to build a paywall around the Northumberland Gazette and test to see just how many folk thereabouts would be prepared ‘to bow to the masters and pay rent to the lords’, to misquote Billy Bragg, The Diggers and Co…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/11/30/as-i-look-at-the-new-pay-wall-that-johnston-have-erected-around-the-northumberland-gazette-you-do-begin-to-wonder/

That Tyne-Tees/Borders region continues to command my attention as many of said masters and lords line up to vie for the OfCom shilling in the shape of the forthcoming ‘independently financed news consortia’ (IFNCs) for which there is currently something of an X-Factor challenge afoot – with everyone from ex-Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves to Will Perrin of TalkAboutLocal sitting in for Simon, Piers and Sharon.

Today, the judges delivered their verdict and whittled down the runners and riders to just three for that disputed border region…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/13/trinity-mirror-regional-news-pilot

In one corner is TrinityMirror, PA and TV production company Ten Alps; in another UTV – the ITV franchise-holder for Northern Ireland – and finally Melvyn Bragg, ITN, Johnston Press, Newsquest, Metro Radio and ITV Tyne Tees and Borders news staff.

OK, if we now drill that down to a few more, on-the-ground specifics… that, to me, says its the TM-owned Newcastle Journal and Chron plus Middlesborough Evening Gazette in one corner; versus the JP owned Sunderland Echo and NewsQuest’s Northern Echo in the other.

And, of course, the aforementioned Northumberland Gazette. Complete with its new-born pay-wall.

How UTV are planning to put foot-soldiers on the ground from a distant Ulster is another matter… what’s interesting, to me, is where this leaves the Northumberland Gazette pay-wall model.

Because I can’t quite see how they can offer that content for free on our Melvyn’s new-look platform – and yet charge for it on the Gazette site….

Something has to give, doesn’t it?

They can’t give to Melvyn for free with one hand and charge with the other… surely, that wall will have a come a-tumbling down, won’t it?

It is intriguing.

Because what is abundantly clear is that the onus is firmly on all concerned to deliver a sustainable business model that will survive – one strongly suspects – the time when the top-sliced cake runs out and, more imminently, the arrival of an in-coming Tory administration who may be that much more determined to see the nascent IFNCs pay their own way.

Hence Mr Hooper’s final command…

“Let me be clear about what we are looking for,” said Hooper.

“Quality news reporting with a mix of local, regional and national (in the case of Wales and Scotland) audiences firmly in mind; genuine innovation, not just business as usual; strong multiplatform applications working together across the web, local newspapers, local radio and television where appropriate, utilising each different medium’s special characteristics; and finally, a revenue generation model that aspires to longer term sustainability…”

That’s a very interesting use of language.

“A revenue generation model that aspires to longer term sustainability…”

If JP are banking on a paywall sustaining the long-term viability of the Northumberland Gazette, is that an ‘innovative’ solution that will be employed to under-pin the Bragg bid?

Or will the Gazette’s pay-wall be quietly dropped, in the belief that between all the various parties concerned they can discover enough platform-agnostic ad bucks to deliver the kind of long-term sustainability that Mr Hooper is demanding?

We shall all know the answer come March by when – ideally – me, @Addiply, @SunderlandUK and @JoshHalliday will have joined a few dots of our own deep in the heart of that disputed border region.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/01/08/can-we-join-the-dots-in-digital-britain-mine-a-small-pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-local-rainbow-well-maybe-look-above-you/

Fascinating times, me thinks.

We now boast a banner ad. Gone are the five Addiply text boxes that used to adorn the top of this page; never one to practice what he preaches, I’d been a bit tardy on the sales front…

Now, however, we have a nice, new shiny banner sitting in their stead; one that promotes next week’s Journalism.co.uk gig at City; ie a ‘message’ that – in theory – should be perfectly targetted for OutWithABang’s decidedly niche audience.

And it is gratis to John, Laura, Judith and Co. I’m not yet making a penny from the richer media advertising that now adorns OutWithABang.

For now, I just needed a sample banner with which to prove a small point; their pre-supplied artwork was, therefore, gratefully received.

The point being…? Well, that Addiply is now getting a bit Flash; it can now offer publishers big and small alike the chance to run banners, buttons, skys, MPUs, etc… through its DIY, self-serve system.

Still offering the 90% revenue return, the transparency, the accountability, the accuracy, etc, etc…. all that text ad jazz; just now with added richer media alternatives.

We’re not quite there, yet.

The snow has managed to keep head developer and website engineers – Ian and Toby, respectively – apart; a few more final tweaks and twiddles await next week before a select few are offered the chance to break our first beta trial of the new, enhanced Addiply service.

But we’re not that far away. It is, if nothing else, out of the box; open to be observed.

And, for me, this is a significant step forward.

Because – ideally – it now allows us the opportunity to walk some walks that previously we’d only talked… above all, the opportunity for Addiply to deliver perfectly-targetted central and regional Government messaging into highly appropriate and highly applicable communities.

And in so doing, save COI, local councils, NHS Trusts, etc etc £000s and £000s in wasted ad spend as they pay-and-spray their message across the web – praying as they do, that some of it will hit home…

What none of the above will do, however, is to take the time and the trouble to fill in an individual text ad box for an individual community website.

And that’s fine. We always knew that.

What, however, they should be able to do is to drill a pre-built banner ad campaign down into a network of relevant advertising opportunities… particularly now that they have the mined data to match.

Ashington is the example that I reach for most readily…

http://ashington.journallive.co.uk/

Part of TrinityMirror’s YourPlace proposition out of the Journal, it is a former colliery town. And as such will have a set of health issues unique to such communities… as, presumeably, can now be readily-mined out of the local regional health observatory…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/07/01/how-do-we-join-the-dots-in-a-digital-britain-how-do-we-find-a-little-pot-of-hyper-local-revenue-gold-from-that-data-mine-that-is-the-doctors-surgery/

I haven’t gone a digging, but you can be reasonably sure that a higher proportion than average of 60-plus males in the community of Ashington will display health characteristics consistent with the town’s heavy industrial past.

… and you can be equally sure that be it at regional NHS Trust level or, indeed, Central Government/COI level beyond, their will be a banner, sky, button or MPU that ‘fits’ that community’s health profile.

In a way that would be highly inappropriate for the neighbouring town of Ponteland for whom history has been rather more kind.

So marry the two…

The other example that I would turn to would be Josh Halliday’s http://sr2blog.com

I don’t know Sunderland inside out; I’ve been to the Stadium Of Light on a handful of occasions wearing my http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com ‘hat’. I’ve never been out on a night; never walked the streets of SR2.

But, I’m guessing like all inner-city areas it will have its issues.

That both Josh will know about – and that Sunderland City Council will recognise; that in certain wards, refuse is a problem; in others, it might be anti-social behaviour.

Fine.

So let’s say in SR2, it’s anti-social behaviour.

The City Council has a strong policy on anti-social behaviour; it has a ‘Vision for 2025′ to make Sunderland the most ‘liveable city in the UK’.

Therefore, the ‘messages’ contained within this page…

http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/Public/Editable/Themes/Housing/Housing-in-Sunderland/asb-councilrole-homepage.asp

… ought to have a banner ad in it. Here’s the hot-line number to help us crackdown on anti-social behavior, etc…

… and it also ought to be worth £10 a month of any council’s money to deliver that ‘message’ into the precise communities that need it most, in this case the good people on the banks of the Wear that are starting to warm to Josh’s SR2blog.com

£10 a month is never going to drive Josh a full-time living; it might, however, start to make SR2blog.com a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition; one that might – just – be able to sustain itself going forward as communities and councils interact with one another via this much-maligned medium of web advertising.

Is Addiply the answer to everyone’s prayers? No. Can it be one, small part of an answer to one community’s digital needs. Possibly.

Plus, it will always come down to the likes of Josh Halliday and Sunderland City Council agreeing to join the dots between them; Addiply is no more than a connecting tool. It won’t spark any conversation by itself.

What it will do, however, is allow those conversations to be had; for Josh to go to the council with his ever-growing audience of SR2 residents in one hand, a new banner ad spot in the other.

Just as Phil and Ross at http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/ to go to Lichfield District Council, the local NHS Trust, etc, etc… with more revenue-generating advertising avenues for them to explore…

‘Blood transfusion video ad? Course. And it’s in Lichfield, when…?

And that, for me, is a start.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/nsfw-apple-tablet-kindle-and-furbies-oh-my/

As was this; from the ever-illuminating Mark Potts…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2010/01/apples-tabula-rasa.html

Both men are clearly singing off the say hymn-sheet… Or rather, tablet. Of slate, apparently.

Why both posts appealed isn’t too hard to fathom; particularly if we return to this idea that there is a revolution afoot the like of which we haven’t seen since 1649 when the Diggers came to town…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/30/as-2010-looms-perhaps-we-need-to-party-like-its-1649-not-1499-and-to-recognise-that-maybe-the-world-is-indeed-turning-upside-down/

Because if you return to Christopher Hill’s work and re-read his introduction – written, remember, in 1972 – there is a line therein that perfectly chimes with what Mr S Jobs and Co at Apple have long made their goal…

‘The present book,’ writes Hill. ‘… does not attempt to tell again the story of how the Army of the Long Parliament overcame Charles I and his supporters, executed the King and established a short-lived Republic.

‘Although there was considerable popular support for Parliament in the 1640s, the long-term consequences of the Revolution were all to the advantage of the gentry and the merchants, not of the lower fifty per cent of the population on whom I try to focus attention…’

That’s the line… ‘the lower fifty per cent of the population on whom I try to focus attention…’

Because as much as the Diggers, the Levellers, the Ranters and, I guess, the Ravers, set out with this glorious intention of creating ‘a common treasury for all…’ their dreams were crushed by Cromwell’s iron fist; old orders were restored; people paid rent to the masters, bowed to the lords…

As much as they hoped to turn the world upside down, the ceiling stayed the ceiling; the floor remained the floor.

Some 350 years later, however, and you wonder whether the revolution now upon us isn’t, indeed, our world turning upside down.

Certainly Mr Jobs finds few masters or lords with the technical or legislative wherewithal to thwart his plans to create said ‘common treasury for all’…

Evidence?

For many a varied reason, I found myself shambling through the Grafton Shopping Centre in Cambridge the other day. Walking past the door of the Apple Store.

I even poked my nose in. The rest of my body had to wait; the place was rammed.

It was alive; it had a buzz about it that no other shop in that centre offered; people were enraptured; enthralled; energized.

And the people weren’t the masters or the lords, the merchants or the magistrates… those that restored order in 1649.

They were the other half with whom Hill sought to connect.

They were the 50% of the population that metropolitan, big media London rarely – if ever – acknowledges.

They were the Mirror readers that Matt Kelly saw in his speech to the World Association of Newspapers…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/09/the-trick-is-to-understand-local-right-now-some-of-us-get-it-some-of-us-dont-matt-kelly-does-longstreet1980-doesnt/

… the same 50% of the population who, in years gone by, would have been enslaved to whatever story was on the back – or the front – pages of the Cambridge Evening News. Or the Norwich Evening News. Or the Leicester Mercury. The Newcastle Chron…

Ordinary Joes. Decent, hard-working ‘common’ folk. Who ‘get’ what an iPhone can suddenly do for them.

The same as an iPod did. Only with knobs on. Or, rather, apps on.

Looks good; feels great; it’s smart; its savvy. It’s mine.

Suddenly cocktails are made easy. Thanks to our Ian…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/02/26/two-pints-at-the-artichoke-later-and-the-world-suddenly-looks-a-different-place-should-it-be-app-first-browser-later/

In fact, everything is made easy; there is – after all – an app for just about everything these days.

Apart, you suspect, for the Cambridge Evening News. Or the Norwich Evening News. TrinityMirror, in fairness, have an app to call their own…

But the point is simple; these are the people that are turning our world upside down. Them and Steve Jobs.

And, if Messrs Carr and Potts are to be believed, there’s every chance he could do it again come the summer when the tablet comes to town.

Towns like Cambridge, Leicester, Taunton, Alnwick and Amber….

These are the people that once were our audience; suddenly handed the kind of tools that the Diggers and the Levellers could only dream of; perfectly enabled to create this ‘common treasury for all’ and make Mr Jobs the apple of everyone’s eye.

Because that’s the other interesting point. Look around your family and friends this Christmas and see how many of them have fallen in love with their new iPhone.

How many times have you heard this line: ‘That X or Y was a real technophobe… but he or she loves their iPhone… thinks its great…’?

Therein lies the revolution; within the 50% of the people that big media all too often forgot.

‘The sin of property
We do disdain
No one has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Rise up at their command…

‘The World Turned Upside Down’
Billy Bragg
Words by Leon Rosselson.

On January 21 next year I’m heading back to my old stomping ground of Oxford to discuss the future of local news provision in this country.

Me, MyFootballWriter and Addiply will join A Rusbridger (GMG), S Bailey (TrinityMirror), H Boaden (BBC) and S Purvis (OfCom) at the Guardian Media Convention on a morning panel designed to talk ‘local’.

It will be some 25 years since I first made my ‘debut’ in Oxford; in 1985, I was the Modern History scholar at University College, Oxford; in the same year that a certain Nick Denton of Gawker-fame was the PPE scholar.

It’s a light that, by and large, I hide deep within the nearest bushel; it doesn’t impress a 17-year-old footballer much.

But every once in a while, you sift through your memories of those formative years and stumble upon something pertinent to these revolutionary times.

Because, for me, there is a revolution afoot; we just haven’t worked out whether we should be partying like its 1499 – or whether its more like 1649 when The Diggers came to town and, along with The Levellers, they tried to turn the world upside down.

Their fate was chronicled by the historian Christoper Hill in a seminal book duly entitled: ‘The World Turned Upside Down’.

The introduction, written in 1972, makes for fascinating reading in an age when what was once an enslaved audience of newspaper readers, TV viewers and record album listeners now make up their own rules on this new, technological landscape of ours… defying the landlords, defying the (copyright) law… to make a common treasury for all…

Hill writes: ‘Popular revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition and the middle decades of the seventeenth century saw the greatest upheaval that has yet occurred in Britain.

‘… This book deals with what, from one point of view, are subsidiary episodes… the attempts of various groups of the common people to impose their own solutions to the problems of their time, in opposition to the wishes of their betters…’

Order, of course, was restored; there was a Restoration before the century was out. Before then, Cromwell’s iron fist levelled The Levellers.

But as this particular decade ends with traditional media in such a state of unprecedented flux and flummox, you can’t help but wonder whether or not the Web and all its various mobile outriders is actually making the Diggers vision flesh – that the world is, indeed, turning upside down just at the very moment that Lord Rupert arrives to build his wall to once more try and enthrall us all.

Because the more I wander up and down this digital land – tools in one hand, blog in the other – the more I remain convinced that the answer is small, not big.

The answer is individual, not corporate; the solution will be participatory, not imposed.

None of us will do as we are told; we will do as we feel; our goal remains building a common treasury for all; to unite a divided-stroke-silo’d world into new, networked co-operatives.

We will go where our own, individual mood takes us; we will not be coralled into spaces of someone else’s making. And be charged for the privilege.

‘We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men… etc, etc…

We will make – and consume – our own ‘news’; the news that really matters to me.

And Twitter – the rising star of 2009 – has only hastened that process; it is a tool by which we can defy our former masters ever more… make us ever less likely to pay rent to the lords…

It makes an individual’s ‘news’ ever more personal; ever more instant; ever more free, radical and levelling…

And what’s the most basic ‘news’ question that this common man asks of himself and his family every day?

‘So, how was your day at school…?’

That’s the news that really matters to me; day in, day out; year in, year out.

Now, chances are the answer will be a grunt; the barest hint of recognition or response. But it’s a start. From there you can build.

From the bottom up.

You can build a platform in which the Chairman of the School Governors can be brought to broadcast account over the latest OfSted – the same OfSted report that can be individually mined out of HM Government’s banks of data and given an individual life and importance of its own.

Because every free man, woman and child has the right to free data, right?

You can build a platform in which news of a school closure can be tweeted out to the parents that matter; you can build a platform on which a school carol concert can be broadcast to the grandparents that care….

It is a model that puts me centre-stage; puts me at the heart of my news; my media, my world… but it is a world in which I share common goals and purposes. We come in peace…

…To dig and sow
We come to work the land in common
And to make the waste land grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it can be
A common treasury for all

It is an intriguing prospect; that the revolution now afoot might finally see that dream of 1649 become a reality; that the world could, indeed, be turning upside down…

… that I am now the master of my own media fate; a free man, at last.

“I may peradventure to many seem guilty of that crime which was laid against the Apostle,” wrote one Henry Denne in 1645.

“To turn the world upside down, and to set that in the bottom which others made the top of the building and to set upon the roof which others lay for a foundation.”

OK… what have the four following posts got in common?

i) http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44765&c=1

ii) http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44792&c=1

iii) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/scottish-giant-johnston-press-close-to-refinancing-163500m-debt-1776020.html

and

iv) http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/02/23/chapter-11-now-filed-in-the-story-of-fred-the-shred-brian-p-tierney-and-philly-media-kiss-good-bye-to-more-of-our-millions-folks/

And the answer is…?

The Royal Bank of Scotland. Us, in other words.

The poor, down-trodden UK tax-payer who has been left to mop up in the wake of Fred the Shred and the Boys and upon whom the future fortunes of everyone from GMG, to Johnston, to Archant to our old friend in Philly – that chancer-cum-charmer Brian P Tierney – now appear to rest.

Of course, as that media sage Pete Kirwan points out, the fact that RBS are clearly screwing all concerned for every last buck as one man and his newsprint dog re-negotiate their debt facilities…

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44792&c=1

… perhaps means that we have every reason to be grateful to the Masters Of The Universe; that we will be the principal beneficiaries of such ‘cash machines’ as they make one or two newspaper book-keepers weep.

That, actually, we have the banks to thank for ensuring that such hefty obligations – with our money – don’t actually sink without trace.

But for me, there is a slightly more troubling story here; for someone, somewhere, has yet to be brought to account.

As if, of course, they ever will…

And nor am I about to work the numbers; do the math.

That is way beyond my ken.

But someone, somewhere, deep with the bowels of RBS was clearly sanctioning such activity; oiling the stable door as the horse bolted… time and time again.

As one media outfit after another came a-knocking on their door; looking for yet more oil to grease the wheels of purchase and expansion.

In 2008.

Now, clearly who was to know that one half of this ‘Perfect Storm’ lay just around the corner? That the whole, global banking community was about to implode around something called the ’sub-prime market’?

How can anyone blame RBS for that?

OK. We’ll put that to one side; give the ‘Masters Of The Universe’ the benefit of the doubt; that they couldn’t see that one coming. Even if it was largely of their own-making.

After all, none are so blind as those that don’t want to see it.

But being blind to the structural half of this ‘Perfect Storm’?

What evidence did anyone possess in 2008 to suggest that The Scotsman, The Nursing Times, The Eastern Daily Press and the Philly Inquirer was about to crack this Internet revenue nut?

Was everyone that convinced that anyone under the age of 30 really had it in their genes to still be reading a print-based product in 2012, let alone 2008?

Did no-one suggest that come 2012 the vast majority of news and information might be consumed via what was in the jeans of said future customer; that an ‘application’ would be the point of entry for an ever-growing number of media consumers?

Rightly or wrongly, I have considerable sympathy for the newspaper groups caught in the eye of this perfect storm. I think they were fighting forces beyond first their comprehension and then their strength. Nothing works. The fact that everything might is of scant consolation.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the media acquisition clowns at RBS and Co who were rubber-stamping their own bonuses with little or no evidence of ever applying a brake on their clients’ ambitions.

Where is anyone saying: ‘Why?’ Or: ‘You sure?’

Nah, when there’s a big, fat bonus to be had lets grease that stable door and watch the horse bolt…

And still it continues. If RBS/us are still up to their/our necks in the wonderful world of Brian P Tierney, who is representing our best interests in the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals?

For as AP reported, that saga is far from over; we – the creditors – are still trying to wrestle ownership of a daily newspaper in Philadelphia back into the hands of the UK tax-payer…

Creditors are trying to take control of the company that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News and have hired former Publisher Bob Hall as an adviser. This hard-fought Chapter 11 case began in February. The newspaper company proposes to shed most of its $400 million in debt by repurchasing the company through a bankruptcy auction for about 22 cents on the dollar.

The proposal calls for keeping Brian Tierney as publisher. Now the case turns on whether senior lenders can use the $300 million they’re owed to make a competing bid. The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals is considering the issue.

Someone, somewhere has a big case to answer…

It also found me, briefly, sticking little pins into LongShanks1980 for revealing a little trait that is becoming more and more apparent of late; this great divide between the way that the London mediarrati (?) view the world and the way that, say, Mike Rawlins at PitsNPots.co.uk might.

It is a walk that Sarah Hartley walked the other week… and with considerable aplomb to boot. It’s not easy to keep everyone sweet.

But as you read the reaction to Matt Kelly’s piece, evidence of this digital ‘disconnect’ between those who have been hanging around the comment boards of MediaGuardian for the last ten years and the real world is – for me – painfully clear.

That some of those comments don’t ‘get’ what Matt is on about at all.

The Mirror is trying to re-connect with its core readership.

And succeeding. By giving them what they’ve always liked in the print edition of The Daily Mirror – celebrity gossip and footie.

Right, give them that online and – surprise, surprise – the punters come.

And they come via their mobile phones; their FaceBook pages. And word of mouth.

They don’t come thanks to SEO.

This is the line that, for me, stood out…

“Not recommendations from a search engine, but from a friend. That’s how to grow a meaningful audience.

“Counter to our expectation, audience on Mirror.co.uk has also continued to grow, meaning that across our portfolio of websites in the last three months our audience has increased by three million…

And this is the thing for me – a big thing. Making the web work ain’t rocket science.

Give people what they want, where they want it, when they want it. Simple.

And that goes straight back to Mr Shirky. All people ever want is a good read.

It is no more complicated than that. I’ve never paid a penny to an SEO house. We’ve got, what, 25,000-30,000 loyal readers to www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity More than the average nightly sales figures of the Evening News.

And how have we got there? Not by SEO. But by word of mouth. By message-board link and recommendations… by text. On a phone.

‘Seen wht tw*t Waghorn wrttn now?’

‘No. Where…?’

etc, etc.

My core readership has always been traditional, provincial city evening newspaper readers who – gradually, bit by bit – are drifting online. But they do it their way; slowly. With the odd stumble; the odd: ‘Twitter, wtf?’

But they get there. And they’re getting ‘it’.

And they don’t need SEO to do that. And my readership and that of the Mirror’s is probably exactly the same. Middle, provincial England.

Locals.

Cue the great disconnect between London Mediaratti and us ‘locals’; those of us who have always been working the streets of Norwich, Ipswich, Leicester, Liverpool, etc, etc… and not the coffee shops of York Way.

So here comes LongStreet…

‘The problem the Mirror will have is that their content (be it on the Daily Mirror, Mirror Football or 3am) is NOT unique. As a football fan I am not going to be paying for archive TV footage, I am more interested in contemporary stories and there is nothing in 3am that Perez Hilton doesn’t do, and better, already…’

So are you the Mirror’s target audience? Er, no.

Is their content designed for you? Er, no.

How many of the Mirror’s ‘core’ readership that Matt Kelly is driving at have heard of Perez Hilton? Heard of Paris… Perez? Nah, who she? That’s up-your-own-a*se London talking, to be frank.

That’s the disconnect; the fracture; the difference.

No, much of the Mirror content is not unique. What is? But there are whole swathes of traditional Mirror and provincial evening newspaper readers – and, note, traditional provincial evening newspaper advertisers - who are now following their favourite writers and brands online.

And what’s wrong with them sticking to who and what they know? Gradually, they’ll unearth new writers; fresh content; different sites. But for now they’ll go with what they know and trust.

And that’s what the Mirror are doing – going back to the audience that they know and trust will always be there for them.

They’re going back to their roots; keeping it simple. Giving people a good read. When and where they want it.

Simple.

And as the world and his wife race to suddenly to be all ‘hyper-local’, it is a simple lesson in the reality of provincial life that manages to pass some of us by…

There is, after all, a chance that the initial contours of the UK’s new media landscape might be drawn out in the rolling vales beneath Hadrian’s Wall…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=331

Today and Johnston Press boldly went where few weekly publishers have gone before by erecting a new wall around the ‘Premium Content’ contained within the Northumberland Gazette; from now on you will have to pay £5 a quarter to access the ‘inside pages’ of the Gazette.

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/sectionhome.aspx?sectionID=1117

And, sure enough, click on the canoeist and the dramatic rescue at sea story; and ‘Bang!’ its nose against the JP pay-wall…

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Canoe-sparks-fullscale-search-in.5869961.jp

.. without your fiver in the meter, you’re going no further.

A fiver for three months access doesn’t, in fairness, sound too bad. And I guess there are people who would do it. If the online version of the Gazette is that engrained into their lives; I don’t know.

We never got the subscription model to MyFootballWriter to work; ended up with a real hard-core of c70-100. Never really budged much beyond that. There was never enough ‘premium’ – and for that in football terms read ‘exclusive’ – content to go round.

That and the fact that we never quite mastered the anti cut-and-paste technology that you need to make a wall a wall.

But what interests me is what happens to the advertising – and, in particular, the local advertising pertinent to Alnwick, Amble, etc – when you build a wall around it… and offer just a two-paragraph teaser on the front.

Because what is interesting – and this is me just guessing a bit – is that the 30-40 word teasers offers the Google search spiders even less of a clue as what ad to serve up next to that content; that with precious little to latch onto key words-wise, the relevancy of the text ads served up below becomes ever more remote.

As remote as New Zealand, in fact.

Or at least that’s the ad I see in suburban Norwich…

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/sights-activities/activities/water-activities/fresh-water-canoeing-kayaking.cfm?cid=uk0909_search_paid_google&gclid=CKT40pLAs54CFVeY2AodiRmVlA

Two uses of the word ‘canoeist’ rings a distant bell in sunny California and up pops the 100% New Zealand experience…

OK, maybe that’s just a one off; one story that proved a point…

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Rape–short-word-long.5870288.jp

Use the word ‘rape’ and I presume that’s when the Haven Centre, in London, pops to the top of the ads beneath…

http://www.thehavens.co.uk/

How many people in Alnwick or Amble will be making use of a service in Paddington or Clerkenwell must be a moot point; again, I’m seeing these ads in Norfolk; maybe the ‘locals’ get a different view of Google’s world underneath the gates of the Gazette’s pay-walls.

Of course, what goes on ad-wise behind the pay-walls where the fuller story lies none of us will ever know. Because I’ve very little intention of popping a fiver into the JP meter to discover that the Google ads grow in relevancy behind the paywall where there is more for the Google bots and spiders to latch onto.

What I think is safe to assume is that the Shilbottle Coal Company will take an awful lot of persuading to pay for an ad that lies beyond those walls.

The world and his passing wife can see his ad here…

http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/

And, for a fiver, that makes sense. Place my ad where I know people can see it…

There…

http://www.coaldirect.co.uk/

Am I going to place my ad – or, rather, entrust someone else to place my ad in a space where I’m not sure how many people are going to see it…?

No.

In fairness to JP, tis only experiment; one of the thousands we need to conduct right now, Mr Shirky would tell us, given that ‘nothing works, but everything might…’

And pehaps pay-walls, subscriptions, micro-payments etc will, indeed, all have their part to play in under-pinning our future journalistic lives.

But at that local level, so too will locally-sourced advertising.

For me, the fight has to be to win that fiver off the Shilbottle Coal Company on a regular basis; do that and we can then start to edge towards a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition; a first rung on the ladder.

But putting a pay-wall in the way of the Shilbottle Coal Company finding his online punters isn’t the way to go; he needs to be encouraged to find a new, digital home in this new, emerging landscape – just like the rest of us.

And his home won’t be behind a pay-wall. He won’t do it.

That particular penny has taken a little while to drop, but events of the last 36 hours have only strengthened my feeling that over the course of the next 6-9 months, Newcastle, Sunderland and the great English-Scottish borderlands to the north are the place to be… the area to which many an eye will turn come the spring.

Why?

Well, first there is the Northumberland Gazette which is to be one of six JP weekly newspapers to disappear behind a pay-wall come next Monday…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/25/johnston-press-charging-for-content

That will be interesting to watch pan out; not least for TrinityMirror who are there, on the same patch, with their own ‘YourPlace’ proposition…

http://www.journallive.co.uk/northumberland-sites/

Which way the JP wind blows is always of interest in this neck of the woods, if only for the fact that John Fry is my old boss at Archant; deep in the bowels of Prospect House we used to have Norwich City conversations before I fled the world of print press halls, delivery vans and paper boys.

Whether now is the time to rebuild Hadrian’s Wall round the Northumberland Gazette’s content just in time for the arrival of Trinity, TenAlps and PA is a moot point; personally, I’d put my written local wares right out front where the world and his IFNC wife could see them…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/26/itv-regional-news-replacement

But, whatever.

What is, however, interesting is Neil Benson’s comments from the TM side of the fence; that their ‘localness’ & ‘community roots’ were a fundamental part of their proposition; that’s where they felt they had to go… into just the sort of patches that JP were now about to build a fence round.

Interesting.

OK, natch we have more than a passing interest in events Ooop north.

But it is two, tiny events in that neck of the woods that – for me – add to the interest that is likely to flow up the Tyne Valley and on into the ancient market towns of Hexham and Alnwick.

One happened in Sunderland; the launch of Josh Halliday’s www.SR2blog.com That kid is smart; smart enough to find himself squeezing up next to Emily Bell for a podcast…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/audio/2009/nov/26/media-talk-podcast-richard-bacon-student-media-conference

Am I biased; yeh, course… he’s playing with our toy. But at least they’re his words, not mine.

http://sr2blog.com/?p=286

But as universtities and colleges up and down the land start to think about how they might arm their J-School students with the tools of a new trade, www.SR2blog.com is very interesting to watch.

And that final straw in the wind? That last, tiny piece of evidence that something might be a stirring in those great, wild borderlands..?

Well, for me, that accolade goes to the Shilbottle Coal Company.

Cos, of course, we have our own little network joining the dots between the River Tyne to the south and the Scottish Borders to the north…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

And there, in Alnwick, is a little text ad; placed by a little coal merchant who – for the last 200 years – has ferried his wares within a 30-mile radius of Alnwick.

http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/

For a fiver-a-week he can now advertise his wares to those same people. And he can place his ad there in three clicks.

It’s not the greatest ad the world will ever see… http://www.coaldirect.co.uk/ … but his message is out there; on a digital platform; in the heart of his local community.

And if anyone tells me that an Alnwick coal merchant has the time, the energy or the inclination to speak to the man from Google and optimise his ad to land back on http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/ from a little black box away in sunny California, well, I won’t believe you.

He took Google out of the loop; he placed that ad himself. And gave TM £4.50 a week into the bargain.

And that’s interesting.

�

One was a piece that appeared in MediaShift this week; one that returned to the theme of revolution…

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/11/changes-in-media-over-the-past-550-years318.html

For me, there was nothing ‘revolutionary’ in what was being said; in fact, in my little world I would these days venture to suggest that this was accepted ‘orthodoxy’ – that the arrival of the web is currently changing the way world communicates and interacts with itself in a way not seen since 1500.

That we need to party like its 1499, not 1999…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=260

But what made David’s piece pertinent to the current debate was his musings on how the put-upon scribes and monks of the time might have felt as they – as a professional trade body – were made all-but irrelevant by the march of technology.

‘There aren’t good records of their protests,’ writes David,

‘But I can just imagine their reasoning: that people would be overwhelmed by too much information; that they would become isolated reading at home rather than coming to church; that mediocrity would prevail if publishing was put into the hands of ordinary people.

‘Basically, all of the same criticisms we hear of the Internet today. In the end, the scribes lost and the printing press won. With the benefit of historical perspective, we view the result as inevitable. And we are seeing the same dynamic play out today with traditional journalism and the participatory internet… ‘

For me the challenge now facing the National Union of Journalists is the same challenge that faced the NUM 550 years ago as the National Union of Monks found the great unwashed trampling all over their lawn; after all, who needs a trained sub-editor when you only have 140 characters to play with…

A gilded dropped cap; or finessing out an awkward column turn… they are skills of another age. As are those of the paper boy and girl. Delivering news on the back of a bicycle is soooo 1499.

And that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the machinations of the Murdochs or the Baileys. My Little Man is nine-years-old; its not in his genes with a ‘g’ to read a newspaper; what’s in his jeans with a ‘j’ is a mobile phone…

… and there lies our future. Somehow.

Yes, defend your members’ interests. Of course.

But, for me, their best interest is served by learning to embrace the new, not stubbornly clinging to the old….

Read this and the language is that of political opposition; indeed, of the NUM; as if either this Government or the next has any real idea how to tame this web beast…

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44673&c=1

If neither vision sits easily with the NUJ, what exactly does? Where’s the plan?

If we can start to sketch out a future – and it is still only a sketch – it is increasingly likely that our futures will be small – and localised. ‘Localised’ to a postcode or a place; or likewise ‘localised’ to a subject or a passion.

As the web smashes everything into a molecular wasteland of disparate content and disengaged readers, the new DNA of news will be rebuilt via networks that are small, but perfectly-formed.

Communities of place or passion coalescing around part-time sifters of data, etc, etc…

That’s the new landscape. And if the NUJ don’t ‘get’ this soon, by the time the back bench of the Daily Express is looking for a new living, the likes of a Josh Halliday and his www.SR2blog.com will have populated this new world without them.

I look at what Will (Perrin), Nikki and Mike are doing with their 4iP funding out of TalkAboutLocal and why aren’t the NUJ starting to feed their people into those kind of workshops?

Trying to see if they couldn’t start to promote and support the new forms of journalism; what lessons can they learn from www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk ? Is there a model that – together – we can build to the benefit of their members?

Digging in behind the barricades of traditional political rhetoric – inky workers of the world unite against the bosses and the Press barons – ignores the simplest of truths.

That the bosses and the barons are bust; they’ve gone. Or are going.

Our future lies as a cottage industry; one that just needs a little organising. And for that, history can still be our guide…

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