But I’m not going to go there. Too close to home. When your Mrs is one of those staring down the barrel of a redundancy gun – let alone dozens of other decent individuals whom you happily worked alongside for 13 years – it’s all too raw.

So, no.

Instead, I’ve found myself picking over the bones of Roy’s piece on the emergence of the LMA onto the playing field… http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/mar/04/local-newspapers-newspapers … that and Sly Bailey’s sudden appearance on our TV screens.

Clearly the timing of the two events are wholly unrelated.

Clearly.

Ms Bailey’s thrust is interesting if only it starts to lay out the stage upon which the provincial newspaper industry – aided, abbetted and billed by strategy consultants OC&C – will plead its case to Lord Carter. Over tea at Claridge’s. What, no smoke-filled back rooms..?

“This is about who turns up to the local courts each morning, who is it who are holding the councils to account, where is that planning application being properly debated? Local newspapers…

Irrespective of how often any local evening city paper now sends a reporter to cover Magistrates Court proceedings – let alone sift through the court lists – there is much to quibble about here.

Because underlying Ms Bailey’s claim is a train of thought that continues to bedevil the provincial newspaper industry; one that continues to drive them towards a watery grave.

That they are the only show in town. That they are the only people out there generating news – and, more importantly, digital advertising space.

Because we’re all blind, stupid and dumb… we don’t see what http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ are doing; how that whole MySociety thinking might now be filtering its way out of Hansard and into te great metropolitan city council halls of this country… that the newly-empowered people are filling the council chamber Press benches just as the LMA’s ‘reps’ are leaving them…

Planning applications?

Please. But you’re right, Sly. We’re all blind, stupid and dumb.

We have no qualm whatsoever with paying for the privilege twice of finding out who’s planning what in NR14 – once as a South Norfolk District Council tax-payer obliged to keep the Beccles & Bungay Journal in classified print advertising and then again when we have to cough 60p to find the wretched thing…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=240

Cos you don’t put said planning applications online, do you? And the last thing we need to do as local newspaper is to spark a debate online about local planning applications…

But that is clearly a £15 million revenue stream that the LMA are demanding stays firmly put; the other old hoary chestnut is about relaxing the merger rules – allowing Trinity, for example, to bolt JP’s Sunderland Echo onto the the Newcastle Chron and Middlesbrough Gazette and take the axe to the Echo’s back office.

And create a North-East super multi-media ‘hub’. That others might suggest is more of a silo…

But the really interesting line is the one that concerns future revenue streams – and, in particular, content syndication.

It’s there – in the original FT story… http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0b5e918-085b-11de-8a33-0000779fd2ac.html

‘The seven executives, whose companies control 72 per cent of the UK market, also sought government help in reaching agreements with the BBC and ITV for local papers to provide paid content for the broadcasters’ online news services…’

So, having seen off the BBC’s attempts to put a local video journalist out and about in, say, South Yorkshire, the LMA now want the BBC to pay a syndication fee to the Sheffield Star for their local video content to be bolted into BBC/SouthYorkshire’s local news coverage.

It’s a point rightly picked up on by ShuttleBoy among the comments to Roy’s piece… and he’s spot on; because my growing collaboration with ITVLocal/Anglia via Rob and ‘backchat’ is just grinding to a halt; just at the moment we were swapping content to mutual benefit…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=232

And what’s more, courtesy of Shane at the Telegraph, not only has www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity been swapping content locally, it’s been driving content up into a national portal – in this case the Daily Telegraph sports desk… who desperately need to out-source their Championship football news coverage.

But being blind, stupid and dumb I don’t know anything at all about this; after all the local regional newspapers are the only people who can provide such services…

But back to ShuttleBoy as he spots exactly where the debate is now going…

‘ITV has just announced the end of its local online service so that just leaves the BBC.

‘Surely the very newspapers who fought so successfully against the idea of licence fee money being spent on local news website video would not now wish to suckle at the very tit they tried to cut off – would they?

‘Bloody hypocrites…

Clearly, I don’t run a ‘media practice division’ at OC&C. So I clearly don’t need to tell Paul Zwillenberg how any of this works in practice. Or rather doesn’t work in practice.

Cos you can’t do it out of silos. Not when some of your silos are built around weekly papers. Or morning papers.

Take, and I’m sure Phil will be pointing this out, the case of the Milton Keynes Citizen. Which covers the MK Dons – now looking good for a place in the Championship next season. I know MK well; Andy Cullen – marketing guru extraordinaire at Norwich City – is now applying his own brand of community engagement there…

So, I’m the local BBC and now I’m being told to do a deal with the LMA – or in th Citizen’s case, is it JP? – and that as they are the only written football news providers out Stadium:MK [Hands up who fancies a go at www.myfootballwriter.com/mkdons...] that’s where you’ll get your local content from.

Off the Milton Keynes Citizen. On a Thursday afternoon.

Because if you start feeding real time digital content into the local BBC websites then you’re just chewing your own arm off… And you can apply that logic to each and every post-match managerial Press conference on a Saturday.

Because, in provincial newspaper land, Sunday is the day of rest. Which is why post-match managerial quotes are always to be found already on the BBC’s sites having been re-routed and re-worked via the MailBox people.

Unless you come at this with joined-up, networked, Shirkey-esque thinking, the chances of joining a networked BBC web model to the fractured, silo-based model that is the provincial newspaper industry re next to nil.

How, practically, to you attach a 24/7 rolling BBC service to a ‘You’ll have to wait till Thursday afternoon…’ model that is synicated, digital football content from the MK Citizen and the MK Dons?

But, heh, I’m no head of media practice at OC&C.

I’m just blind, stupid and dumb. And the fact that the business model for www.myfootballwriter.com and www.myrugbyleaguewriter.com revolves around local and national advertising and local and national content syndication is something that I’ve never even thought of.

But I’m sure our Phil has…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=17