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

It’s there in streets of Stockport, Didsbury, Wilmslow and Hale that two tribes are going to war – the NUJ summoning up the spirit of the Scott Trust to flail into The Guardian Media Group.

It is an increasingly bitter and divided battle as the NUJ goes on the offensive with a series of adverts designed, one presumes, to force GMG into a fundamental rethink of their plans to all-but halve the editorial floor of the Manchester Evening News.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/31/nuj-advert-guardian

For the ‘bosses’, the spirit of CP Scott is a tricky one to combat; it’s either this or no newspapers at all was the line from the boardroom as the one-time cash-cow of GMG’s newspaper operations dies on its legs.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43450&c=1

It is, of course, a block we’ve wandered round before…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=262

But as the NUJ turns up the heat and Ms McCall points to the forest fire that threatens to engulf us all, this most public – and painful – of confrontations continues to take centre stage.

For as the NUJ rightly point out, if anyone is ever to shoulder the responsibility of keeping the flame of local journalism a-flickering then it ought to be the heirs of CP Scott. After all, the great man never was one to put profit first – comment has long been free…

‘Despite the acknowledgment that The Manchester Guardian under Scott deserved to be considered as a great newspaper, it did not always make profits…’

On all this, the NUJ is clearly on the high ground; it has a morality tale to work with.

But the problem, as ever, comes in the detail.

The ‘How?’

‘Advert asks readers to urge their local MPs to sign early day motions to ‘help keep local newspapers alive’ runs the sub-head.

A noble aim. Buy ‘How?’

For Sly and Co part of that answer clearly lies in throwing their lot in with Johnston; fr GMG it might come in the shape of morphing into some sort of South-East mass that is Northchant – or Archcliffe. Throwing the Reading Bi-Weekly Chron into some sort of M4 massif that features the Ham&High somewhere near to one end with what’s left of the Bristol Evening Post at the other.

And if they can borrow a bit of Newsquest and get the Swindon Evening Adver into the mix as well, then so much the better…

Will it provide any better coverage of Stockport Town Council meetings? I suspect not. Will the Hatters get the kind of coverage that Edgeley Park has been accustomed to? Suspect not.

So if bigger silo-building is just a short-term, patch-it-up-and-pray scenario, what other tricks have the NUJ up their sleeve for HM Govt to work on?

Cos Andy Burnham has already given the big ‘Thumbs down!’ to any notion of a direct state subsidy – not that they’ve got the cash to splash anyway. That’s already been trousered by Fred The Shred and his little venture into Philadelphia Media Holdings.

The other point that, for me, the NUJ needs to bear in mind is the use of the word ’serious’ in that advert.

Because if the implication is that you are only a ’serious’ journalist if you continue to stain wood and see it delivered on the back of a bicycle every night then they need a radical re-think.

Is Linda at www.darwenreporter.com not ’serious’? What about James at TowcesterNews, http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/Northamptonshire/Towcester/NN12?

If the NUJ is really, really serious about trying to get the spirit of CP Scott to live on in the streets and suburbs of Manchester then it is, maybe, to the Lindas and the James’ of this world that they should turn.

Because maybe, just maybe, neither Ms McCall or HM Govt have actually got an answer to their increasingly strident and heart-felt pleas.

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http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42911&c=1

‘And he said that the solution to the current crisis may be the use of public funds to help set up new journalist-led news organisations.

‘”It may be that we are looking at funding mini-media or a foundation that will give money to groups of journalists if they can pass the quality threshold,” Davies said…

Suits me.

As ever, however, the question is when…?

[Update... or rather, another thing: if they 'can pass the quality threshold...' You mean come with some kind of recognised 'kitemark' attached? See below...]

And a thank you, too. It’s cheering, occasionally, to be a little blip on someone else’s radar.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/533301.php

Because as my NUJ card-carrying Mrs waits to discover what filling out a time-sheet for a week means for our family’s fortunes this spring, it’s good to see the NUJ sensing that there is a common cause to be had here; that maybe the answer to some of the challenges we, as journalists, face in 2009 might have to come from within our own ranks…

… that the reinvention might have to be as much about the way that we, ourselves, go about our business as anything that a Trinity or a Johnston or an Archant might do to ‘help’ us have a career come 2010.

It would also be a help if I knew that an Archant pension would still be there come 2027… but, hey-ho…

In the meantime, we green shoots need to find as many new pals as we can; for there is absolutely no guarantee that we will not get trodden under-foot in the none-too-distant future.

The theory was always there… journalism as a networked, cottage industry; freed from both the Press barons and the presses that we could never, ever afford.

We now control the means of our own production; for sickle and scythe, read lap-top and mobile.

After that, brothers and sisters, the world can still be ours. Still not wholly sure how, yet…

But, in fag-packet theory – particularly if I can now cascade central and regional Government advertising down my network – I can do www.myfootballwriter.com/sheffieldunited www.myfootballwriter.com/barnsley www.myfootballwriter.com/sheffieldwednesday; build a Championship-wide network; syndicate our content up into the Telegraph sports desk; sideways into www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire in return for some of their TV…. get Mr Lotto to run his ads through everyone’s Addiply…

… and all the while giving Messrs James Shields, Paul Thompson and Simon Meaks the prospect of a potentially decent lifestyle as and when the Star ever sets on Sheffield and threatens to take three more decent football writers with it.

And what you do with MyFootballWriter.com, you just repeat with MyLocalWriter.com. Just bolt a postcode on the back.

But it’s not going to happen off my kitchen table; we’re never going to do this on our own; if we start to find common cause and purpose with both the Government and the Union, then – perhaps – we’ve got a chance.

But, at least, the debate is moving… as it needed to, IMHO.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=148

But at some stage it has to acknowledge that there are forces at work here that are wholly beyond the control of ITV, of Sly Bailey, of OfCom, of NewsQuest, of JohnstonPress, of John Fry and each and every other ‘Press Baron’ stroke ‘Establishment’ figure and institution that is currently passing across its sights…

OfCom may not be perfect; it may have next to no ‘teeth’ but it has at least all but recognised that the dam has burst… that the audience (and with them the advertisers…) has flooded off elsewhere.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=42106

So while I fully appreciate that the Union has to man the barricades; has to make a fight of it… there are certain realities that, to my mind, remain under-addressed.

‘Ofcom’s proposals for the future of public broadcasting “set in train the destruction of local and regional news on ITV”, according to the National Union of Journalists…

What set in train the destruction of local and regional news was Sir Tim Berners-Lee playing with his PC deep beneath some Swiss hill-side…

After that we were all doomed to meet our maker. Yes, there are all manner of structual and cyclical challenges that the traditional media industry failed to address, met too late, etc, etc….

But I have yet to have find anyone out there with a definitive answer as to either where or when ‘old media’ missed the boat – or, more importantly, what it could have ever have done to save itself.

There is another ‘culprit’ in this; one that barely gets a mention. But should. And that’s what once was ‘the audience’.

Because the fact of the matter is that while we all squabble and point fingers of blame at eachother, they’ve all f*cked off without us. They’ve formed their own means of entertainment; their own channels of news absorption – that has absolutely nothing to do with watching Claire Weller at 6.30pm every Tuesday night.

Or, indeed, waiting for a paper boy to show at 5.30pm.

Witness backpackdave08.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=143

For a whole generation out there, backpackdave08 is the new Kevin Piper; the new Stuart White.

And that has nothing to do with OfCom, with Michael Grade, with Sly Bailey, with whoever…

The Intenet set our former audience free.

For all of us whose careers and families were tied to ‘old media’ it ’set in train’ a forest fire of unimagineable ferocity; one that, even now, has yet to reach its peak.

The trick for the NUJ is to start to spot and nurture those first green shoots of new growth; to batter down the doors of the people like NESTA who – despite being charged with ‘making innovation flourish’ – find something like MyLocalWriter ‘beyond their area of expertise and experience…’

That’s the gauntlet that lies at their feet. Where next?

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/25/itv.ofcom

Even if the numbers are slightly eye-watering, there was a very real sense that this was in the wind. Like everyone else, ITV can’t make the numbers add up. Their world – our world – is all but disintegrating. The game’s up; the show’s over. At least as far as Anglia (East) and Anglia (West) are concerned.

For the people of Norwich, here comes the news from your region. ‘A man from Milton Keynes was today bailed to appear before Buckingham magistrates…. etc, etc…’

Local news? My a*se, would be the view from the Royle Family sofa.

And then this…

http://egrommet.net/2008/09/09/credit-where-it-is-due/

Good piece; though I would argue that ‘backpackdave08′ is a citizen publisher, not a citizen journalist.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=41

We can all publish, we can all write… does that make us all journalists? Mmm. But anyway, credit the bloke… here he is: http://www.youtube.com/user/backpackdave08

But the really interesting line out of Glyn’s blog post is the number… 500,000.

‘Yesterday I had a whinge about the BBC not giving credit to backpackdave08 for his video of Noel Gallagher being clattered on stage, which this morning had been seen by over 500,000 viewers…’

Over 500,000 viewers. Clearly that number has been helped by the world and his wife embedding links into his clip – with or without due credit – but the point is, does the Anglia (East) breakfast time bulletin actually pull in 500,000 viewers with such ease?

And for a whole new – and departed – audience out there, which better fits with their concept of news? News from Milton Keynes magistrates or some lad with a mobile catching Noel getting twatted at the V-Festival?

And for that same audience, which suits their means of access to news better? Watching a 7.30am breakfast bulletin on TV – or watching a YouTube clip on their moby?

And if I’m an advertiser aiming to get in touch with that elusive yoouuufff market, where am I going to concentrate my efforts? Particularly when money is tight? ITV Anglia or backpackdave08 and his kind?

All of which brings us right back to a document written by Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern fame – http://www.openmedianetwork.org.uk/anewapproach/default.htm

For me it still deserves a wider airing. In it there are some real gems; some real insight as to the way that backpackdave08 is part of the future of TV; accept that, and, for me, it helps to explain why OfCom might be treading the path it is; why if the traditional means of newspaper distribution is broken beyond repair, that of traditional TV is not too far behind either.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

And, in particular…

“The coming of global broadband linkage and the web has changed that landscape forever.

“In the process, as has been discussed above, an explosion of participation in media is beginning.

“This world has flipped from a state of affairs where scarcity of content was the norm to the landscape we see now – with many more content creators, aggregators and owners out there.

“In addition, the availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience… “

Brilliant. Brilliant – that one line: “The availability of low cost digital production and post-production technologies is driving an unprecedented surge in creation, modification and remixing of content by the people formerly known as the audience… “

‘Low cost digital production…’ That’s a mobile phone.

‘Post-production technologies…’ That’s YouTube.

‘By the people formerly known as the audience…’ That’s backpackdave08.

And that’s the world that OfCom is trying to make sense of; likewise, that’s the world that the NUJ has got to understand if it’s ever to stop fighting yesterday’s wars.

We’ve lost; the audience has won. Move on.

He might have once-upon-a-time ‘run out of track…’ but, boy, does he know where the world is going. He remains firmly on the right track.

So, if I was being lazy, I would do nothing more than commend each and everyone of you to read the following three posts from Mr Mark Potts… and then insert the UK landscape into the imploding world he’s observing across the Pond.

How his thoughts tally with what we’re trying to practically achieve via MyFootballWriter and, ideally, sometime in the dim and distant future MyLocalWriter, I’ll leave for a minute…

First, as I say, take the following in and ponder… Long and hard, if you get the chance.

On the future of newspapers…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/09/for-sale-newspaper-runs-good-driven-daily-and-sunday-for-decades-leans-slightly-to-the-left-fully-loaded-includes-press.html

and this one…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/09/–30—on-wall-street.html

On ‘local’ and the future of hyper-local sites as a potential saviour of local news provision…

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/09/hyper-about-local.html

And, finally, on the power of the ‘link’; the whole Jarvis mantra… ‘Do what you do best, link to the rest…’

http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/09/thinking-of-linking.html

… which is, of course, a subject very dear to our hearts here as me and Neil continue to tinker away beneath the bonnet of MFW and gear ourselves up for the long, hard winter ahead…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=132

Three posts within a week… Bang, bang, bang… Nail after nail smashed firmly on the head.

Having chatted to one or two people before about whether or not you can draw straight comparisons between the UK and US newspaper markets, their feeling was that you can’t… the two are very different beasts.

I’ve been less than convinced; besides in the case of NewsQuest the two are one in the same effectively given the ownership of the Brighton Evening News, etc…

But, for me at least, the same laws of the banking jungle ought to apply just as much here as it does on Wall Street…

Still at least today’s events on the stock market have given all at Trinity and Johnston a vague hope as their much-troubled shares enjoy a 30% and 20% ‘bounce’ on the back of various rescue plans.

Or rather, they weren’t left behind as everyone else surged back in a positive direction. That would, indeed, have been a hammer blow if those two had missed the bounce.

But there is one difference between newspapers either side of the Atlantic, that Mark and I have pondered via e-mail. That – by and large – the US versions don’t come with large pension funds attached. That particular mill-stone has long been dropped from around their neck… along with adequate health care provision, etc, etc…

There is no Mirror-style pension fund to concern any potential buyer. Not that they need any more than the sight of a print press to make them think twice, but they don’t have that particularly liability staring them in the face.

In the UK, it is something that will smack most potential white knights right between the eyes as another of our top bloggers, Pete Kirwan of MediaMoney, has long muttered about… and was rightly reminding everyone of again yesterday…

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2008/09/18/what-lies-ahead-for-the-media/

And, in particular, these two points…

• More pressure on media companies with big pension liabilities (Trinity Mirror, ITV). A few months ago, there were murmurings that Trinity’s pension trustees were overweight in equities (shares). Hopefully, that has changed.

• As predicted below: more pressure on debt-laden media companies (Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press, Informa and private equity owners, too). Rights issues are unthinkable any time soon. Job cuts will intensify. Tim Bowdler and Sly Bailey have their work cut out. Likewise, the NUJ.

We’ll leave the NUJ to man the barricades at Fort Dunlop for another time, but for today Potts is the man. On local, link and the future of newspapers; three subjects upon which we’ve long been fretting away…

My Mrs, however, is. And as a part-time sub-editor at Archant (Norfolk), given events at Archant (Suffolk) she – along with 100s of others across the UK and the US – is firmly on the endangered species list.

As, of course, are 65 souls across Trinity Mirror’s Midlands stables…

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2008/08/trinity_mirror_leads_the_way_t.html

Where the axe will exactly fall remains to be seen; but having been through a one-in-three redundancy process on the sports and subs desks at Archant two years ago, I would suspect that is where the brunt of the ‘action’ will be.

But as the NUJ prepares to unfurl its battle flag once more, there has to come a point when it needs to recognise it might be fighting a lost cause. The provincial newspaper industry is broken beyond repair.

Period; end of.

And given that my Mrs is likely to be at the sharp end of a similar bout of blood-letting at Archant Towers in the none-too distant future, I don’t say any of the above lightly.

There are 100s of decent, hard-working journalists out there whose lives are about to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate short-termism. My Mrs and our own domestic finances included.

And, of course, fight for their rights for a decent pay-off; to be treated with dignity and respect.

But, at some stage soon, there has to be a recognition that the Web poses such a fundamental challenge to the way that local newspapers go about their business that – maybe – TrinityMirror, Archant, Johnston, NewsQuest and Co could have never paid out a penny by way of a shareholder dividend over the last ten years and they would still be staring over the edge of an abyss.

Why? Geography.

The web doesn’t do geography as represented – and religiously plundered – by the old circulation fiefdoms enjoyed by local newspapers.

You can throw as many millions as you want into Archant’s digital operations; you can train your staff for hours on end into how to be this Web-savvy, all-Pod-casting, all Vid-casting, multi-media hub hero, but when the fact of the matter remains that you can’t deliver either local advertising or local news content out of Bury St Edmunds or Diss because that’s someone else’s ‘patch’, you’re f*cked.

I ‘the former audience’ can, however, find a second-hand bike in Bury off e-Bay; I can find a flat to rent off Craig’s List, a car to buy off AutoTrader, a house to sell off RightMove, etc, etc… as I can in Market Harborough, Kettering, Stamford and every other town and village across Middle England.

And how’s a nationwide NUJ ‘Day Of Action’ ever going to change that?

It’s not.

The Web demands scale.

It smashes local monpolies into a million and one little pieces; pieces that the NUJ are never, ever going to be able to piece back together again.

And, nor, you suspect will Sly Bailey and Co. The retreat into Fort Dunlop is actually doing little more than tightening the geographical noose around Trinity’s neck.

Even if every last remaining Birmingham title goes deadline-free, they are never going to be geography-lite; that’s why Trinity ought to be commended for taking those first tentative steps down the ‘Banter’ path; they are, at least, trying to lose the geography.

No. For me, Mr Dear and Co have to move on, where next? Who next?

Go and batter down the doors of OfCom, NESTA, the regional devlopment agencies, etc, etc… in a bid to improve the funding allocations for the next generation of web networks; journalism is going back to a cottage industry – right, demand grants for that new-born cottage industry…

The days of the mill owners and the provincial Press barons are over; their demise could – some claim – be little more than months away.

You are not going to change the way that corporate beast works in the little time that’s left to them.

If you still don’t want to abandon your members to their fate, fair enough. But start to think about abandoning the owners’ fate to their’s.

Move on. Talk to people like James Rudd and his fledgling efforts with www.aboutmyarea.co.uk – what’s his needs? How can the NUJ help him to thrive and, above all, survive?

I’ve been here two years; employ two working, full-time journalists out of www.myfootballwriter.com/ipswichtown and www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and I’ve not heard a peep from the NUJ…

How’s it going, Rick? What sort of challenges have you faced? How have you found funding? What sort of working conditions do Mark and Nick face? Go and speak to them…

How can we help? You’re trying to give our members a future, how can we help…

That’s the conversation you should be having. And you’re not.

For me, you’re still intent on fighting – and losing – yesterday’s wars. Cos you won’t beat the Web when it comes to geography. As won’t Trinity, Archant, etc…

So move on. Start fighting some battles that you can win – with Government, with OfCom, with NESTA; engage on behalf of the next generation of network platforms; people who are fighting tooth and nail with the banks, with VCs, etc, etc to give your members a chance.

Of course, journalism matters. That’s why me, James, Nick, Mark, Tim (Hood), Kyle, etc, etc are all out here… trying to do our bit.

Now it’s about time you did yours. For us.

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