Busy week ahead for my community media project

MASSIVE week for my would-be community media hub project.

On Saturday I’m off to Talk About Local’s Unconference in Stoke, where I’m hoping to meet loads of people who’ve set up their own hyperlocal sites and run their own projects.

I’m sure I’m going to learn so much about social media and hyperlocal projects at the unconference and meet a wealth of invaluable contacts.

Since setting up this blog, I’ve found loads of projects pretty similar to my own in terms of their central idea of improving communities’ access to local information and services following the destertion of mainstream press, as well as establishing a community reporters’ scheme. And I thought I was a trail-blazer all on my own – curses!

What I’ve seen and read has me convinced that the growing ‘community media’ sector has a major part to play in unpholding democracy, empowering communities and providing local news in the future.

And next week, I’m meeting with Gary Copitch from Manchester-based People’s Voice Media. Hopefully his advice and experience dealing with setting up projects and locating revenue streams will be invaluable.

Exciting times ahead!

Community media thrives in Manchester

JAMES Thornett’s blog Straight to the Point is well worth a look as he reports from a conferencein Salford into the future of local media.

He covers a number of interesting points about the rise of community media – and the point about there being there 69 media websites covering the Salford and Greater Manchester area was particularly worthy of raising an eyebrow or two as that’s a helluva number, even for someone as sold on the community media sector as I am.

It’s also interesting that that area is served by the MEN – a company which has made a number of cutbacks and has centralised left, right and centre. Certainly the MEN itself doesn’t take an interest in community content – and its associated weeklies are in the process of having their reporters centralised.

An example of news sources reinventing themselves  once mainstream media departs?

Trinity Mirror be warned- nature abhors a vacuum!

TRINITY Mirror has wielded the axe on three of its regional press titles, reports Hold The Front Page today.

The publisher has announced that next week’s editions of the paid-for Whitchurch Herald and free Wrexham Chronicle and Mid-Cheshire Chronicle will be the last.

Amazingly, the paid- for  Whitchurch title has almost a 50 per cent penetration in its circulation area.

As I posted in the comment section: “If a paper with the enviable penetration that Whitchurch has is biting the dust, what chance the rest of us? Talking aside the considerable tragedy of the job losses and the impact on workers’ families, what about the readers of these places that are losing their local paper? Where do they get their news from? Where do local groups get the oxygen of publicity? Who will report court cases? How will councils be held publicly accountable? The only answer of businesses like Trinity, JP and the like to this crisis is that merger laws should be relaxed so even bigger companies can be created to allow even greater ‘efficiencies’ and centralisation and keep the shareholders happy. Great – create even bigger companies and move even further away from the communities which we used to be a part. There’s no concession to quality or even basic journalism, only money money money. Publishers should be prepared to accept only modest profits. These are sad times for a once proud regional press. It’s time for another business model.”

But I am cheered by the response of one poster:sebastianfaults says  ” Fearnot – it will come full circle and some hardy souls will set up a local paper and it will thrive. It will come full circle because there IS a demand and a thirst for local news which these clowns cannot and will not provide because they do not – and never will – understand newspapers. “

Perhaps that’s true, and I hope it happens.

What I’m more inclined to believe is, as I posted last time, nature abhors a vacuuum, and at least some of the deficit I commented on at HTFP will be picked up by local residents setting up their own hyperlocal sites.

Publishers really are playing into the hands of this emerging sector – and undermining their own business models at the same time – and where there’s community spirit there’s always hope a community site or blog or two will spring up.

As for the people who post that the ‘multi-media madness of publishers will come to an end’, I have to say you made me laugh. Climb down from your ivory towers and wake up – the media outlook is changing all around you! People’s reading patterns and the media they consume are changing too.

Perhaps setting up a mainstream newspaper and working in partnership with these new-fangled web-what-do-you-call-its which are being set up by the community – your old readers – is something journos and their paymasters ought to be considering…

A nail in the coffin for paid-for content in regional press?

ONLY 5% of web users would pay for online news, reports The Guardian today. Exclusive research commissioned by from Harris Interactive shows that most readers would run a mile.

If their favourite news site begins charging for access to content, three quarters of people would simply switch to an alternative free news source, people who read a free news site at least once a month told us.

• Just 5% of those readers would choose to pay to continue reading the site.

• 8% would continue reading the site’s free headlines only.

• 12% of respondents are not sure what they would do.

For regional press in particular, this makes interesting but depressing reading.

I’ve long argued that if you put up paywalls, it’ll just push people elsewhere. In regional press terms, readers will just go to alternative free sources – such as hyperlocal projects run by the guys at People’s Voice Media in Manchester or the folks at Talk About Local.

Could the regional press’s thirst for cash inadvertently end up boosting the community journalism sector? Is that sector ready to take the step up?

What’s bad news for some (I notice a piece on Hold the Front Page about JP perhaps losing many of its subs – another dilution of quality for this industry if it’s true) may be gopod news for others.

After all, nature abhors a vacuum…

Council TV – threat or community asset?

WHILE local newspapers are worrying over competition from the proliferation of council-run newspapers, there comes another threatening local authority initiative – internet TV – so writes Roy Greenslade in his Guardian blog today.

Threatening? Well – yes and no.

It all depends what they’re going to do with it, really.

The story, in a nutshell, is that Carmarthenshire County Council – backed by the Welsh Assembly – is planning, as a 12-month pilot project, to launch an internet-based channel called, unsurprisingly, “Carmarthen TV”.

Cue the usual concerns about propaganda and PR. Now don’t get me wrong, I share concerns about council rags. They’re often  a dangerously blinkered and lopsided view of a local authority’s work. ‘Look how good we are!’ they often scream.

But I’d like to think Carmarthen Council could actually take what’s good about their rags (they’re very useful for highlighting local groups and services) and empower some of the users of said groups by giving them access to their new TV service.

Imagine a group of youngsters producing their own video with the support of the council about their much-loved youth centre/project?

It’d get local people featured in a way they probably never have been before – what a great opportunity for both council and project!

Newspaper companies couldn’t complain about that – it’s hardly a duplication of what they do, is it? (although I could argue that they SHOULD be doing a lot more grass roots hyperlocal stuff).

What I also find hard to stomach are the protests from the local paper that it encroaches on their expertise and that the council’s service will dare ‘to offer both an English and Welsh language service, which the paper cannot possibly do’. 

Well I’m sorry folks, your company’s dug yourself into that hole through  a lack of investment and a lack of vision, it’ll have to dig you out! This is the problem with mainstream media – lack of investment and vision by (usually) profit-driven boardrooms with both eyes on shareholders.

If this is what your readers/website visitors want, then there’s no use bleating about someone else coming in and doing it!

Rant rant, mutter mutter, I know, I’m sorry!!

So I’ll thrown down the gauntlet to both sides – to the the mainstream media, you need to reflect your community and your readership a lot better, and that means genuine hyperlocal coverage.

To the council – can you come up with something which isn’t just a  PR triumph and that actually holds genuine community and social value?

As my old grandma often said: You can live in hope, even if you die in vain…

Can’t wait to Talk About Local!

JUST got confirmation through that I’ve secured a place the first Talk About Local Un-conference!

I’m really excited as I’ve never heard of an ‘unconference’ before, so I’m not sure what to expect. But it should be really wicked - and invaluable to my would-be community media project. And you get free food…

For the unititiated, Talk About Local is a project to give people in their communities a powerful online voice.  TAL wants to help people communicate and campaign more effectively and influence events in the places in which they live, work or play.

The unconference features key players in this field, and members of the community who’ve set up their own sites.

I just know I’m going to learn such a lot at this event.  It’s amazing just how much work is going on across the country regarding hyperlocal sites and community media – the majority of which I never knew about until recently.

It’s also great to see OFCOM sponsoring this event and taking an interest in this field.

It’d be nice that if the government considered giving financial support to any media organisations during these difficult times, that it’d be given to this growing and not-for-profit sector, rather than mainstream media companies whose primary aim is to make profits for their shareholders, and damn any democratic/social deficit they create by endless centralisation and cost-cutting.

Anyway, here’s to October 3 – can hardly wait!

Is community-based media the future of regional press?

A REPORT carried out bythe Reuters Institue for the Study of Journalism back in February looking at  ‘What’s Happening to our News’ gave a glimpse into what at least part of the future of regional press could be.

In it, the report said: “As the commercial pressures on the media intesify, the democratic deficit created by an inpoverished news media in decine … could be filled … by an extension and deepening of charitable activity, especially in  the area of investigative or community reporting….

“There is a clear danger of a sharp reduction in spending on original newsgathering, as well as a further increase in the processing of pre-packaged PR material, a weakening of editorial standards and a news agenda shaped more and more by the noise of the crowds…”

I think the report summed up nicely where I stand on the future of the regional press.

In my home city, mainstream media has for years virtually ignored life south of the river, save for what’s sent through by PR companies (very little) and the council press office and what crops up in police calls and court copy.

Long gone are the reporters who would pound their patches and have tea with the local vicar to try fill their news pages.

There’s a whole raft of rich community life which goes upreported  in this struggling area, which includes some of the highest pockets of deprivation in the country. There are community projects in abundance, residents campaigning on all kinds of local issues, an incredible community spirit and tonnes of local residents’ associations and groups.

But the evening paper isn’t interested (so-called parochial stuff doesn’t sell newspapers apparently), the free weekly has lost all its staff and now features lifts from the daily, the BBC coverage isn’t local enough and ITV’s just laughable. And on it goes…

So where are the residents in that area supposed to get their local news from? To find out where their jumble sales are? To find out what’s been said at their local community forum? To find out about the services and groups that are there to support them and empower them? To know what other residents are up to? Which media will now fill the role of the old-fashioned ‘glue that binds the community together’ role?

All this stuff might not sell you thousands of papers, but I’d argue it’s vitally important to local life, both on a social and democratic level.

People deserve and need a platform to have their say on community issues.

Media commentator and lecturer Roy Greenslade said in Press Gazette recently: “Two assumptions need to be made: that journalism is good for society and democracy, and that newspapers are worth preserving.

“Not since the seventies have we had a genuine chance to imagine the possibility of a different business model for newspapers, a business model that doesn’t involve making profits.

“Journalists shoudl think locally, think of small start-ups and on the web, think more about grass roots and getting back to basics.”

I don’t often agree with Greenslade, but he’s spot on. A new era of grant-funded (even self-sustaining) community media needs to rise from the ashes of the existing regional press.

I have a vision of a grant-funded community media sector, featuring hyperlocal websites; trained and supported teams of voluntary community reporters who will be blogging, videoing and podcasting; groups and residents clued up on social media; a printed community newspaper for the web excluded; community printing presses for groups’ annual reports etc etc…

All this may be a utopia that’s never happen. After all, money’s scarce in the community sector right now, and will social enterprises ever really be self-sustainable?

I’ll write further on this issue over the coming months.

In the meantime… anyone else out there share my vision?