A controversial newspaper designed to be largely made up of user-generated content has published its first new-look edition.
Publisher Johnston Press has relaunched Lincolnshire weekly Bourne Local as The Local, with the aim of generating up to three quarters of its content from users.
Friday’s relaunch issue saw around 66pc of the content made up of UGC, after local schools, groups and individuals were invited to become key contributors.
The project, dubbed “the Bourne Experiment” generated lively debate on HTFP when first revealed last month and, if successful, could be rolled out as a new model for other small, weekly newspapers in the group.
The Local in Bourne has been relaunched as the "people's paper"
Mark Edwards, JP editorial director for the Midlands and group editor of the title, came up with the idea with his editorial team.
He said he is delighted with the new ‘people’s paper’ and the warm reception the concept has received.
“Our community has always contributed to The Local but we wanted to open up the door even further and allow more readers to provide features and content on the topics they are interested in,” he said.
“Our journalists have worked closely with our hand-picked group of contributors to ensure standards are maintained and we are thrilled with this first edition – it has a truly fantastic community feel to it, which is exactly what a local paper should be.
“The Bourne Abbey Primary School page, for example, is engaging and covers school life to a depth that we simply could not manage using our conventional newsroom approach.
“The project will evolve over the coming weeks as more people are trained on our content system but we couldn’t be happier with our official ‘launch’ edition and want to thank the people of Bourne for their tremendous support.”
One of the pages made up of content from local contributors
Richard Parkinson, MD for Johnston Press Midlands, added: “This has never been an exercise in cost-cutting – this was in idea that stemmed from our local news teams who identified an opportunity to simply give our readers more of what was already proving so popular.
“This has been really embraced by our customers – including our local businesses – and we’re looking forward to getting feedback as the project evolves and develops.
“We are still covering important news events and local issues, as you’ll see from today’s lead story, and our teams are as active and committed in the local community as ever.”
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We’ve been doing this for months, haven’t we?
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‘This has never been an exercise cost-cutting…’ Oh dear, there’s another rib gone.
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A schools page. Now why didn’t anyone else think of that?
Oh, wait – they did. All of them. Decades ago.
And how is the splash (Councillor runs off at the gob about pet peeve) any different from the sort of dross we all splash on in any other slow, slow, slow news week?
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“This has never been an excerise in cost-cutting.” Not yet it’s not. But this time next year, when this terrible idea has ruined other small weekly titles and JP is desperate to save more cash, it’ll undoubtedly result in a newsroom bloodbath. You can just imagine the conversation… “Yeah, we’ve got school kids filling most of the pages with stories about internet safety so let’s get rid of the reporters. Who needs them?”
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Are they serious?
Of course it’s about cost-cutting, it’s about nothing else. Why would JP Midlands do such a stupid act as to get rid of photographers and front-of-house staff?
Clearly this ‘editorial team’… live on a different planet. One that tries to sell back the readership’s input, and then have the cheek to charge them for it!
These comments are a total insult to the poor staff who are getting the boot. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.
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I’m all for reader generated content, but within community pages, not as a replacement for well written, relevant news items, entertaining features and favourite columnists. Certainly promote the community pages and also perhaps encourage smaller advertisers to advertise within that section. But such pages should be within what many readers still want – their regular, familiar morning/evening paper, written, in the main, by journalists. And, to really enhance the community feel, how about producing the entire thing locally!
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I ceased buying the Bourne Local long ago for this very reason, too much user generated content and not enough REAL news about what is going on in our area. Let’s stop believing that we live in a world where everyone wants to know what the neighbour’s and clubs and societies that we do not belong to are doing down to who makes the coffee at the local women’s institute. This will mean less work for the thousands of journalists coming out of universities and the death of local newspapers. Having worked in the regional newspaper industry for many years I have seen many changes take place, mostly detrimental. When will regional and local publishers realise that news sells newspapers and it takes a good trained journalist to sift out the REAL news!
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It’s a new low.
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Hmmmmm……..basically its just a parish news-letter…..it will be interesting to see the first six months sales figures…..
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Do these contributors get paid? Sending in a few district pars isn’t much of an inconvenience but feature writing takes time and it’s hardly fair to have unpaid contributors slaving and worrying over writing, just for the gratification of seeing their name in print. And as for non-journalists writing news stories, the less said about that the better.
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This will work for a month or so and then members of the public will see the light. They will lose their interest writing their odd story story and sending in some low res photo, no doubt took on his phone…
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That strap on the front lead has to be the most squeezed text I’ve ever seen. I’m trying to work out if it’s deliberate (conveying the sense of cars colliding?) or not. Either way, it’s damn hard to read.
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Much like every other JP paper. Much like every other paper. All the boardroom and shareholders care about is sales figures, and advertising. The rest is what wraps chips.
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Just look at all that stuff fighting for attention on the front page. Strikes me as another ‘fur coat, no knickers’ job.
I’d also like to point out that this is being launched in what, by today’s standards, is an increasingly prosperous area where, it could be argued, ‘new’ sales will be relatively easy to pick up.
However, it’s likely that very few of those sales will be long-term, as this is clearly aimed at an audience with a pretty limited attention span.
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The pagination will drop massively when people realise not getting paid for meeting deadlines is rubbish. They’ll probably get sued. Oh, and it’ll be rubbish.
I think that covers all the bases. Apart from the fact I really feel for whatever poor sod will be subbing the copy.
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This is a sad site to see, I can’t wait to see how court cases and things like council meetings will be covered by those who have had no training. It is a pity those higher up the food chain don’t actually see the effort that goes in every day to make sure these papers get out! Johnston Press really is doing its best to ruin the local newspaper industry.
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If it was a free paper, then I wouldn’t be bothered too much. How many people will spend 55p on user generated junk?
I give it a couple of months and it will disappear quietly.
I would be interesting to know the number of staff man hours that go into it compared with a staff generated paper costing the same.
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No one would use an optician’s, bus company, dental surgery or any other service which allowed 66 per cent of its business to be carried out by unqualified members of the public, yet this nonsense is deemed acceptable in the newspaper game. Journalism on the cheap, except it’s not journalism at all, it’s citizenism. The industry may be dying but what a shameful way to see out your remaining few years. Mercy killing anyone?
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I’ve read the first issue of the new The Local. In terms of content, I really couldn’t see much of a difference compared to many other weekly paids serving markets of a similar size. I certainly didn’t think it was lacking content or ‘hard’ news. As others have already noted, let’s see what the local residents have to say.
I do have a gripe about presentation though – the paper looks a right mess, from start to end. It has an odd running order and, as I flicked the pages, seemed to jump from topic to topic without any sense of structure or logic. I’d hope that that’s an issue that can be quickly addressed.
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