‘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.”

Suffice to say that last week was ‘one for the album’; but for the likes of ‘Mr Darcy’, AJ, Yvonne, Jas and everyone else on the ITU Dept at the N&N the Old Dear wouldn’t be propping herself up in bed this morning, reading her copy of The Times.

Anyway, in amidst all such dramas, Addiply took another small step in an interesting direction when we launched out of 22 of TrinityMirror’s hyper-local sites in the North-East.

I can now let Patrick explain…

http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-a-local-ad-network-for-local-people-addiply-raises-its-hand/

Or, indeed, Laura…�

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/536095.php

On a street level, it means that our Sarah can now advertise her PR wares to the good people of Ponteland for a fiver a week…

http://ponteland.journallive.co.uk/

… and save herself a small fortune in time and money in optimising her site/campaign to end up in exactly the same spot.

While on an elegant network level, we can now offer potential regional advertisers the opportunity to place their brand in 22 market towns across Northumberland… and, more importantly in this Age of Pixelisation and Transparency, they can now do that knowing exactly what they’re buying into; what am I getting here, Rick, for my every last ad dollar?

Well, here you go…

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

There are several points that, for me, are important.

One, is that we don’t forget our roots; we’re not Mr G. All we’re doing is trying to get people into a position where they can run their sites on a ‘not-for-loss’ basis. To try and see if we can get a first foot on the first rung of the ladder.

Addiply isn’t the answer. Because there isn’t one answer. An answer that will fit every blossoming digital community and platform out there. Hopefully, however, we can become part of someone’s answer. Be they Nikki in Digbeth or TrinityMirror in Northumberland.

Secondly, I think it is important that we give credit where credit is due and gratefully acknowledge the fact that TM have taken a leaf out of David Cohn’s book and looked to collaboration as being their queen; the most powerful piece on this new, digital chessboard of ours.

That in seeking one, possible answer to their own hyper-local experiments they have been prepared to engage with what’s happening on the streets of Lichfield and having witnessed what Addiply is starting to do with www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk so the likes of David (Higgerson) and Helen (Dalby) have had the courage of their curiosity to see if this could also work for them on the streets of Alnwick, Ashington, Amber, etc…�

Hence the last post; that collaboration will be the key to our survival; that if nothing works, then together let’s see if this might…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=324

But on the day that the great and the good of OfCom are twittering on about where next for the provision of local news in this country – ‘@foodiesarah: Ofcom sees opp for thriving community media sector underpinned by grassroots journalism #westminster…’

Then they need to start putting their money where their mouth is; turning all that fresh-mined medical data from the regional health observatories into the type of perfectly-targetted messaging that can make a real difference to those trying to sustain local news platforms – be it on the streets of Ashington in the case of Helen and TrinityMirror or Lichfield in the case of Ross, Phil and Co…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=309

That’s the opportunity that the powers-that-be in Westminster and Whitehall need to grasp; they need to starting unlocking the state purse to subsidise new media start-ups through cost-effective and audience-efficient advertising campaigns…

… and in an election year, it is a message that also needs to be hammered home to the various political parties; where am I going to find my voters these days if its not via the pages of the local newspaper. A thought process that, to his credit, Michael Fabricant MP has already twigged on the streets of Lichfield.

‘Ah, there you are… ‘

So, if I was Sly Bailey, the next time I had tea at Claridges with anyone of Mr Purvis’ ilk – or I bumped into our ‘Digital Inclusion Champion’ Martha Lane Fox – that would be my message…

Give me advertising, give me a fiver a week and give me a chance to ride out this ‘Perfect Storm’.

In part, there’s a lot going on. Tis the start of a new football season for www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.addiply.com continues to take us all on some interesting, if time-consuming paths.

But in other ways, I’m increasingly beginning to think that there’s not a lot going on.

Anywhere.

Other than some deep and discomforting navel-gazing amongst some pillars of the global journalistic community… http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/5408 … all of which might explain why Mr Rusbridger was quite so keen to emphasize the point that, in his humble opinion, our Lords and Masters in Whitehall had not even begun, ‘not even begun…’ to address the profound issues that plague media both big and small in this country.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=313

Otherwise you look around this world of ours and it tends to be a despiriting mix of accusation and envy, of despair and desperation; laced with the occasional drop of smugness from those that think they have the answer.

Which, in fairness, the FT probably has.

It’s called a niche.

And an expenses account.

Which is why someone with an expenses account might consider paying an annual £2,500 subscription for pay-walled news from China. A ‘niche within a niche…’ indeed.

Particularly if you worked for say, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the UK tax-payer was, therefore, picking up the tab for what’s hot to trot in downtown Beijing.

To think that thataway lies salvation for the Daily Mirror, The Observer or, indeed, The Guardian is – I think – wrong.

There isn’t any great pay wall lesson for us all – other than if you’re working a well-heeled, business niche you’ve got a chance.

So, what? Guardian puts its Education supplement behind a pay-wall; that going to get FT type take-up off a teachers’ Xs?

Which is why the scepticism that underpins Gordon’s piece on BrandRepublic is well-placed…

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/gordons_republic/archive/2009/08/04/ft-editor-on-failure-and-charging-for-the-future-of-content.aspx

… that if the web has taught us anything over the last decade it is that one answer won’t fit all; that there is no one answer; that nothing works, but everything might…

The real poison, of course, is reserved for the BBC whose efforts at extending a hand of friendship out to its big media ‘pals’ in the shape of the video feed deals with The Guardian et al was met with outright disdain in certain quarters… that it left others to market and distribute ‘brand’ BBC; that hard-pressed big media houses were doing no more than driving traffic back into the mouth of a publically-funded monster.

Right now, Sly and Co have a point.

Cos for me – and I’ve been down this road in part with the content network that www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity begins to offer – the BBC have yet to wholly grasp the fact that for any ‘link economy’ to work, it has to be a two-way street.

Or if they do ‘get’ the deal, there is little evidence of anyone putting it into practical or pilot effect.

That what they need to shy away from is the ‘written’ side of their business; leave the words to the people that can and stick to what they do best – video, what-was-once ‘TV’, and audio, what-was-once ‘radio’.

That just as their TV schedules are now opened up to independent video production houses, so too must their website be…

‘Contract out’ niche areas – I don’t know, League One football… – to the people that can; that rather than employing 00s of people in the MailBox on a Sunday to transcribe BBC Radio audio clips into the written word, farm that out… ‘out-source’ it to provincial newspapers… treat them as ‘independent production houses’ and drive revenue and traffic out into the hands of people whose very survival is now under dire threat.

Simply dishing out your iPlayer in the hope that this will persuade the politicians to lay off all the top-slice talk because look, you’re sharing your content… that ain’t enough.

That’s a one way street.

‘But it must adhere to the standards the BBC expects…’ will be the refrain; that no-one actually writes copy as PC and proper as they do…

I think most provincial newspaper houses – or home in the case of www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity – is more than capapble of leaping through any such ’standard’ hoop.

It’s more a case of the spirit being willing; of recognising that a link has two ends to it; I give you this and in return, you give me that… and by collaborating individually together, we’re both the better off.

How long we have to wait for that particular penny to drop in the current climate of poison and fear is, alas, anyone’s guess.

The spirit of co-operation is sadly lacking as the chill waters of the North Atlantic start to lap around our knees.

�

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=235

The comment that follows is well worth a read; the analogy is wonderful as it is pointed from NC…

‘I see the newspaper industry as moving towards the end of middle-age, growing increasingly aware of its own mortality.

‘Like someone nearing retirement, it might well expect to have a couple of decades left before it’s ready to start pushing up the daisies.

‘However the reality is many groups haven’t led the healthiest of lifestyles…’

But what likewise chimes with this suggestion that events might be moving rather faster than their lordships imagine was the response of Sly Bailey to Lord Carter’s opening attempt to get to grips with this ‘Digital Britain’ world of ours…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/4388362/Trinity-Mirror-chief-Sly-Bailey-slams-Digital-Britain-report.html

It’s not the content of the Trinity Queen’s remarks that surprise; it’s the urgency of the tone. It’s borderline shrill. ‘Will someone actually do something, for f*ck’s sake…’

“We are bitterly disappointed that the report makes only passing reference to newspapers – the word is used just four times – and the crushing lack of understanding of the urgency required for changes to merger regulations in the local and regional media sector.”

It is my use of the bold, but therein lies the tone. That then continues.

“How long will the process take following the full report in May? One or two years?” she asked. “Frankly time is running out. Regional newspaper publishers are facing the most challenging times in their history, mergers and combinations of newspaper groups offer the only chance of survival for some titles.

“Merger regulations need to change to enable the regional newspaper industry to survive in the digital age, rather than conspiring to strangling it out of existence.”

For me – and clearly from a vast distance – those are not the words of a chief exec with time on her side; that a one or two-year timetable is not what she wants to hear right now; the regulatory movement she needs to see re local ownership and provincial mergers needs to be measured in months, not years.

What is equally telling is the more measured tone from upstairs; from the Newspaper Society whose own position is equally uncomfortable.

Because there the argument appears to be based on silo reinforcement, not on network development; that the barriers to anyone else entering the field – be it the BBC or the local councils – need to be raised not erased…

That their near-fuedal rights to plunder their traditional local monopolies be safeguarded for another generation – all of which flies wholly in the face of Web logic.

“Among the range of measures the Newpaper Society has asked the Government to act on are relaxation of media ownership regulations, restrictions on public sector publishing, encouragement of public sector advertising in regional and local media and curbs on the BBC’s local activities…” said Lynne Anderson…

‘Relaxation of media ownership regulations… - bigger silos, not better networks.

‘Restrictions on public sector publishing… - protectionism for our existing silos.

‘Encouragement of public sector advertising in regional and local media... – subsidise our existing silos.

‘Curbs on the BBC’s local activities… – protectionism for our existing silos.

And all, of course, to be somehow enshrined within a Shirkey-esque vision of a network-enhanced Digital Britain?

Little wonder that Lord Carter’s report only mentioned the word ‘newspaper’ four times. Try as he might, perhaps he simply couldn’t get it to fit…

… 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.

And nor did today’s interim statement by Trinity Mirror offer much by way of good news, either.

Meanwhile, even DMGT were forced to reach for the red-marker pen and slash 300 jobs from their various London titles and operations.

If anyone wanted to see what a forest fire looked like, this is probably it. And 2009 doesn’t promise to be any better. In fact, it promises to be ‘challenging’ according to the Trinity Mirror suits.

Johnston Press also rolled out their No1 suit today, Tim Bowdler – the out-going chief executive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/12/johnston-press-tim-bowdler

In calling for a relaxation in the rules governing consolidation, Bowdler called on the Government, the OFT, OfCom and Co to recognise the new media landscape… just as Sly Bailey did in Bristol where she, too, championed the cause of plurality and diversity in the local and regional market-place.

“It’s important that not only politicians understand why that should be so but also regulators recognise that until now the market definition they have tended to use has been extraordinarily narrow,” said Bowdler.

“It has excluded any recognition of other media in our marketplace. It’s not realistic and it’s not a reflection of the competitive environment as it stands today.”

And yet anyone who dares to recognise the fact that the BBC might, perhaps, think that putting one, extra video journalist into South Yorkshire towards the end of 2009 might be a reasonable move – particularly as Johnston Press abandon their district offices in Barnsley and Rotherham, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/03/johnstonpress.nationalunionofjournalists – is hurled from the nearest mountain top.

It’s ‘unfair’ competition; they have no right to be there. We’re there…

But you’re not. You’re leaving.

And, besides, how can you trumpet the need for plurality and diversity on the one hand and yet man the barricades against the BBC on the other?

And, for me, this is where someone needs to start banging heads together in a bid to find a new line… cos it doesn’t work. Bowdler on the BBC…

“It’s utterly inappropriate for public money to be used to do something where there’s no evidence of market failure and where commercial enterprises are investing heavily to build these services,” he said.

Forget where my licence fee goes, what wholly undermines the argument is this insistence that ‘there’s no evidence of market failure…’

Er… excuse me?

Who, exactly, is that contention designed to re-assure? The City? As of 9am this morning, Johnston Press shares were trading at 17p – that’s a 92% fall in the last 52 weeks.

They’ve made their judgement. They’re out of there. Because, maybe, they’ve seen evidence of ‘market failure’ and run…

If it’s for the staff’s benefit…

Likewise, admit there’s a real shift going on; that your woes are not solely down to an unprecedented downturn in the economy – however traumatic that downturn is fast proving. There’s something else going on here.

That there are – and have been – fundamental structural challenges to your business that you have yet to wholly address. From the very moment that some geeky bloke in a San Fransisco suburb thought: ‘You know what, I’m going to launch an on-line classified ads service… and what’s more, I’m going to make it free… a list… Craig’s List…’ you were in trouble.

“The predominant influence is undoubtedly cyclical. When you look at property advertising halving, that has nothing to do with a structural impact, it’s absolutely the consequence of difficulties in the property market,” Bowdler added.

RightMove, PrimeLocation, Craig’s List…. it’s as if they have never happened.

For the provincial newspaper industry this is their biggest challenge; to actually, publically, concede that there’s something cold and wet lapping at their ankles… to stop with the King Canutes and call for a towel.

A touch of humility in the face of unprecedented adversity is a lesson we all need to learn.

Myself included.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/bbc-pressandpublishing

Without repeating ourselves over and over again, McCall’s ‘get off our lawn…’ speech was interesting.

Because she’s quite right; in this multi-media age you can’t have a local website without video.

Thereafter, however, I’d take issue with her…

“You can’t have a local website without video; it has taken local publishers a long time to get the investment to do video and to actually do video on a return-on-investment basis,” McCall added.

“We are having to go to quite a lot of pain to justify the capital expenditure required to put video on websites, because at the moment websites don’t have return on investment commercially, so you have to take risks.

“The BBC would be able to do local video much more quickly with much more deeper pockets and they would be able to leapfrog the regional press in terms of what they can do and that is going to be unbelievably damaging for local media that might not be able to survive that kind of onslaught…

The point is no-one asked the Manchester Evening News to re-invent itself as a digital broadcaster; yes, it’s website needs video content; we all do…

But why does it have to be the MEN that has to deliver that content? Why can’t its audience? Why can’t backpackdave08 offer up his digital efforts? Why not pal up with MSN or Bebo and run their latest ’show’ through MEN?

Why not, actually, sit down with the BBC and swap your content? Do the BBC do Manchester United or Manchester City football coverage as well as the MEN? No.

Right, so you swap your football content for their local video offerings. Or bits of; clearly you keep the ‘exclusives’ to yourself, but by and large you fill in the BBC’s content ‘gaps’ with some of your own…

It’s called the ‘link economy’ – and as financial necessity proves to be the mother of all re-inventions, take it to heart – do what you do best, link to the rest…

In the current climate – cyclically and structurally – can you afford to kid yourself that you, too, can be a digital TV broadcaster of the BBC’s ilk; I know technology has levelled the playing field beyond measure, but have you the time, the staff or, indeed, the basic will to try and compete with 70-odd years of broadcasting experience?

Or might you not be better served by saying, you know what, let’s work on the basis that a combination of the BBC, backpackdave08 and MSN/Bebo/YouTube can do this TV thing… what resources we have left, we’ll concentrate on doing what we do best…

… on doing what we’ve actually been doing best for the last 200 years and sourcing original written content from Manchester and beyond…

… that’s what we – still – do best, thereafter let’s link to the rest.

And let the rest link back to what we do best… write.

Get off your high horse; get a grip of who you are and what, realistically, you can actually deliver with any certainty and style in these current, apocalyptic times and pull your wagons tight in around those that are still of any value.

Your writers.

And then swallow your pride – and link.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/07/bbc.television

The original Press release, you strongly suspect, would have been a master-class in, well, promoting the corporation line. Put it that way. And leaving the rest of us to try (in vain, in all probability…) to read between the lines as to what any of it means.

So, like I say, better off not even going there. Other than to mark the passing of the seemingly luckless Pat Loughrey, the director of the BBC’s Nations & Regions, who will be ‘…leaving the corporation at the end of next summer once the changes have been brought in.’

Don’t know the lad from Adam.

But as the structural challenge of the web, the cyclical onslaught of the credit crunch and the fact that I can now watch the Beeb for free on my unplugged lap-top continue to wreak havoc with people’s journalistic careers, you wonder why those caught in this raging firestorm can’t be granted one final dignity.

That they be allowed to go quietly into the night.

‘Thompson paid tribute to Loughrey, saying that under his leadership the nations and regions had become the creative powerhouses.

“From Doctor Who to Still Game, God on Trial to the brilliant coverage of last year’s floods, much of the best the BBC produces now comes from across the UK,” he said.

“Pat Loughrey has played a critical part in laying the foundations for these editorial successes and creating a compelling vision of the future.”‘

… that is, right up to the moment we binned him.

One, final irony. This is worth a read. It is a speech that Loughrey delivered to the Society of Editors conference in October, 2005. I guess there is every chance that Sly Bailey was sat in the audience somewhere…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/loughrey_editors.shtml

Read it now, three years on… and those same battle lines appear even more entrenched. Certainly the major protagonists appear ever more desperate in the defence of their shrinking kingdoms than they were when Loughrey stepped into the lions den that afternoon.

And yet in the heat of that earlier battle, Loughrey’s voice appears one of sense and sensibility; of moderation and accommodation; of recognising that the way forward for all of us is via partnerships – my words for your TV. Our TV for your words. And due credits all round.

It’s the link economy, stupid. Do what you do best, then link to the rest.

So if that was, indeed, the path that Loughrey was intent on following, it seems something of a shame that he’s being bundled off the regional stage just as the real fun and games kick off…

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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The House of Lords’ report on ‘The Ownership Of The News’, Vol 1, is clearly a worthy document and for those of you with a couple of hours to spare, here’s the full monty in PDF form…

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldcomuni/122/122i.pdf

Given the number of influential people that Lord Fowler and friends managed to drag before it, the conclusions that they ultimately reached are, to my mind, likely to stay entrenched within the mind-set of their lordships at least until the turn of the decade. If not beyond.

It doesn’t smack of ‘You know what, let’s look at it again…’ – which given the pace and the urgency of these current times, might not sit easily with one or two of Lord Fowler’s witnesses this weekend.

So, in their eyes, if not that of the legislature, the enhanced role of OfCom is likely to be a given; as is their on-going opposition to easing the current restrictions on mergers; in fact, if they – and now OfCom – sense that any merger will only need to the diminishment of quality journalism, then they are likely to be in even less of a mood to say: ‘Oh, go on then…’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/27/digitalmedia.pressandpublishing ; or equally, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=41541&c=1 for two, similar takes on the same theme.

Consolidation in the provincial newspaper industry has just got a whole lot harder, not easier. And that’s not good news at all – as Peter Kirwan was swift to point out on his MediaMoney blog…

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2008/06/27/why-lord-fowlers-journalism-quality-test-wont-work/

What is worth looking at if anyone gets a mo, is the attention that the provincial newspaper industry is given in the above report… a page. Pages 20-21, to be precise.

It is a read that I commend to everyone. But for those who can’t be doing with the PDF form, here’s Point 58… in all its under-stated glory.

“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…”

Ouch.

Come Point 59 and their lordships were reaching their own conclusions; come Point 60 and they even rolled out a star witness for the ‘prosecution’, Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger.

[Point 59] “The regional and local press appears to be facing an even greater challenge than the national press when it comes to attracting advertising revenue…

[Point 60] “… I do not think that the printed local paid-for newspaper has a very optimistic future (Alan Rushbridger).”

That’s the last time he’s the guest speaker at the Newspaper Society’s Christmas bash…

In conclusion, their lordships wrote: “… most commentators believe that local press face a tough and challenging future.”

Clearly this matters for all manner of reasons – for higher points of democratic accountability, if nothing else.

But here it matters for the future of local newspaper provision in the town of Stamford.

Because go back to the evidence that TrinityMirror presented to the committee and within it lies a big finger of blame for the closure of the venerable Stamford Herald & Post this spring with the loss of 23 jobs, including six of Lord Fowler’s beloved journalists – that it was all down to the Competition Commission; look what happens when they refuse to let Trinity divest itself of its weekly title to a competitor.

In this case, to neighbours Johnston Press owners, of course, of the Stamford Mercury.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/20/web20.trinitymirror … and more particularly, this…

“[Sly] Bailey also criticised competition law, saying it should be relaxed in regional markets.

“She added that Trinity Mirror had wanted to sell the eight free newspapers in Derby and Peterborough, that were closed three weeks ago, to Johnston Press in 2001 but had been overruled by the Competition Commission.

“Paul Vickers, group legal secretary and group legal director of Trinity Mirror, told the committee that had the Competition Commission allowed the sale to go ahead “we think they would still be there”.”

Would they? Because while Johnston Press might be have been chomping at the bit in 2001 to snap up the Stamford Herald & Post and consolidate its local advertising and editorial monopoly in the town, come 2008 would our favourite stopping point on the Great North Road still be boasting two, local weekly titles, the Herald & Post and the Mercury?

Or would Johnston have long ago created one paper to serve one community – the Stamford Herald, Post & Mercury?

Equally, that was then, this is now…. In 2008 would you find Johnston still biting TrinityMirror’s hand off for the Herald&Post? Or have they got rather more on their plate right now than to be buying more loss-making papers? Particularly if, in every likelihood, their first action would be to close the paper themselves, consume it within the Mercury title with the loss of a dozen-plus jobs?

No, they let TrinityMirror carry the can on that one; let them do the explaining as to why nigh-on 300 years of newspaper history had come to an end in the town of Stamford with one slash of a TrinityMirror red pen.

It was an argument that clearly cut no ice with their lordships either; a more enhanced role for OfCom; a greater scrutiny on the impact on journalists jobs and no change in the current restrictions on provincial newspaper ownership… everything that Sly and friends didn’t want to read is in that House of Lords report.