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Deal finalised on plan for BBC to fund 150 local reporters

BBC newsA deal has been finalised on plans for the BBC to fund 150 new local newspaper reporters specifically to cover councils and other local public bodies.

The government is publishing its long-awaited White Paper on the future of the corporation later today.

It will include a commitment by the BBC to fund 150 journalists to be employed by regional media groups to boost coverage of local councils and devolved bodies.

Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield has been among those involved in brokering the deal which cost the corporation around £8m a year.

The multimedia journalists, to be recruited from next year, will produce video, audio and written content to be used on BBC news bulletins and websites as well as on their own outlets.

They will remain under the editorial control of the local news groups employing them, but their content must meet the BBC’s editorial standards of quality and impartiality.

As part of the agreement, the BBC and local media groups will also create a shared data journalism unit, producing infographics, statistics, charts and other material to enhance coverage of local stories.

And local publishers will be able to access BBC local video and audio news through a new video “news bank”.

Said Ashley: “We believe this will strengthen and enhance local journalism, and the crucial role it has in holding local authorities to account, while maintaining the healthy competition between different news sources which is so important in a democracy.

“More coverage and content from councils will be more widely distributed ensuring greater accountability and transparency in an ever more devolved Britain.”

Newsquest chief executive Henry Faure Walker, who has also been involved in the discussions, added: “Today’s White Paper outlines a sensible framework for further investment in local journalism and gives local news publishers the benefit of a much more collaborative relationship with the BBC, rather than the ‘tanks on lawn’ rhetoric of the past.

“Importantly, it recognises the unparalleled expertise and leading role that local newspapers have in providing the best local content and journalism for their communities up and down the country.”

BBC director of news James Harding  said: “These plans are not just a milestone in the relationship between the BBC and the local press.

“These are big steps to strengthen local news.  We will add 150 journalists reporting for their papers and BBC audiences alike.  BBC video will reach more people through local newspaper websites.”

And Society of Editors executive director Bob Satchwell added: “The details will have to be carefully worked out but this agreement will help to build on the huge contribution of local and regional newspapers to local democracy.

“As the Regional Press Awards will show next week local journalists already serve their local communities with brilliant journalism but the industry needs and deserves this extra support in a challenging and ever changing market place.”

Under the plans, the number of “public service reporters” could increase to 200 by 2019 with additional funding from the BBC along with a possible contribution from any profits the regional titles make by running adverts alongside BBC video content.

There will also be an independent audit of the usage of local press content by the BBC on its media platforms and whether the BBC should do more to attribute stories to outside sources.

The National Union of Journalists has hit out at the deal and questioned whether local press groups would simply “exploit” the subsidy to fund staff cuts.

General secretary Michelle Stanistreet said:  “The NUJ opposes the use of licence-fee payers’ money to prop up local newspaper groups which have used profits to pay shareholders and executives fat bonuses instead of investing in journalism and enough journalists to cover courts and councils meetings.

National organiser Laura Davison added:  “The NUJ believes there is a democratic deficit in local news – the press is not covering the decisions of courts, councils and public bodies in a way which properly informs readers about their democratic institutions. But should it be the licence-fee payer who plugs this gap?

“Local newspaper groups have a proven track record of cutting staff, merging titles, closing local offices and overstretching the few workers left on the ground just to maintain their profits. What checks are there that these groups will not exploit this licence-fee subsidy in the same way?

“The deal has been done behind closed doors with no consultation and no transparency; none of the practical details are clear and it would be totally bizarre to have people ostensibly working to the same aims and standards, but employed locally, by different groups, and on different, no doubt low, pay and conditions.

“There may be a case for the BBC providing content that can be shared with the local press, but this deal is not the best way to do it.”

25 comments

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  • May 12, 2016 at 9:00 am
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    Great stuff, I eagerly await an investment in quality and experience, rather than 23-year-old interns being subsidised by their parents to live on five day BBC contracts.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 9:27 am
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    D’you know, I actually think this is a sound and sensible deal. Good for local democracy, maybe even good for the quality of journalism as well – as long as their employers make the right use of their material, And as long as Jeff Jones’s pessimism proves to be unfounded!

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  • May 12, 2016 at 9:28 am
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    I’m sorry. I love this industry and have great memories of my time working with some great people but I feel really strongly that this is unacceptable. The Beeb should not be funding groups who seem hell bent to cut and slash their way through staff and then put pressure on the Beeb to fund new journalists. This is just wrong. I don’t have the answer to how you pay for staff in an industry that is faced with so many challenges but getting the Beeb to pay so you can continue to cut and cut and cut is just bare-faced cheek!

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  • May 12, 2016 at 9:36 am
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    Perhaps they could be asked to fund editors too, and stem the haemorrhaging from Trinity Mirror’s cuts?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 10:05 am
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    Why are licence fee payers having to pay for the mistakes of millionaires like John Fry, Tim Bowdler and Ashley Highfield, whose actions have directly led to local news reporters being made redundant?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 10:08 am
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    I’m with GladImOutofIt – and with Curious.

    If it reconnects local paper readers with local government and the courts, both pillars of democracy and a sense of place and community, it has to be a positive move.

    But that taxpayers (licence fee payers) are to subsidise the wanton destruction of this industry by the guys at the top..!

    And 150 journalists to cover the county, unitary, city, district and county councils; police and fire authorities; magistrates, sheriff, Crown and county courts in England, Wales and Scotland? I wonder how ‘local’ or detailed all this content will be.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 10:11 am
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    A desperately bad idea. Will the number of existing staff on the papers be ring-fenced to prevent the employers from axing one or two, or not replacing them, while picking up the cash to fund the “free” reporter?
    150 across the whole country – how will their time be divided between all the different papers on their patch…and the huge numbers of courts/councils the editors will want covered?
    Will these people be paid at generous BBC pay rates or the painfully low salaries most papers now offer?
    I could go on…!

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  • May 12, 2016 at 10:20 am
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    I hope this “deal” doesn’t go as pear-shaped for Ash as his time at JP.
    Every daily paper reporter I’ve known has told me that the BBC has lifted their organisation’s news reports for free. Will this tradition now stop?
    Most other BBC regional news is about football. Will this be replaced with council videos? I can’t see many of them going viral.
    BBC impartial? With the way it sucks up to America I always thought the Beeb was overseen by the U.S. State Department.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 10:28 am
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    Welcome to the world of Government-funded newspapers and all that entails.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 11:01 am
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    Every patch will have its own laura kuenssberg, they’ll be everywhere like Agent Smith in the last Matrix film, and Corbyn will have to fend them off like Neo in a basketball court using only his bicycle helmet and a rolled up copy of the Morning Star.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 11:31 am
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    So what Ashley is saying here, in effect, is that he doesn’t want to pay for journalists to fill his newspapers, so someone else should. The absolute cheek of this is staggering and that it was agreed is, quite frankly, beyond belief.
    As an industry, where are we headed?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 11:44 am
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    £8m? 150 journalists? Are they seriously saying each one of these state-funded reporters will cost £53,000?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 12:03 pm
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    UGC: your question is, of course, rhetorical and well you know the answer. If there is to be life in local news in the coming years it will have to be outside the cumbersome corporations now lumbering to their doom – I believe hyperlocal is the buzz term. Such outfits won’t take on legions of staff, and many who prefer the security of conventional “employment” won’t take to it as it’ll be an entrepreneurial, self-starting type of working requiring multi-skilled practitioners. Moreover, it may not work at all in some areas… but it will in plenty of others. Just think – local news media owned and operated locally. Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 12:07 pm
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    Terrible long term and basically a big backhander.

    BBC are over staffed in three areas I am aware of, and their local coverage is terrible. Why not get these people to do their job?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 1:16 pm
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    I would imagine licence fee payers will be less than euphoric when they realise £8m of their hard-earned cash is now going to fund the UK regional newspaper publishing business.

    Why should they pay for staff to work in a private industry that’s been the author of its own misfortunes and still makes multi-million pound annual profits handed out in dividends to shareholders?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 1:22 pm
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    I assume this is open to the many independent local and hyper local publishers out there. Otherwise it’s just a £8m per annum transfer from the licence payer to the shareholders of two UK PLCs and a vast US corporate.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 2:03 pm
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    I have bad vibes about all this. Anything that has the dead hand of JP and other mad-hatchet news groups on it has got to be suspect.
    They continue to show that they have little interest in quality journalism or respect for their employees.
    Now they want to eviscerate the Beeb’s own news-gathering operation — no doubt with the same zeal they have displayed so far.
    Doomed….we are all doomed!

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  • May 12, 2016 at 2:15 pm
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    Not sure that I’m happy that my licence fee should be used in this way. I understand the reasoning but I’ve always thought that my fee was used to fund the BBC and not Archant, Local World etc

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  • May 12, 2016 at 2:23 pm
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    “The multimedia journalists…will produce video, audio and written content…their content must meet the BBC’s editorial standards of quality…”

    The new journos will have quite a skill set, then. They could prosper working at TV stations, employed directly at the Beeb or as freelancers.

    Why on earth would they want to join JP?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 3:54 pm
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    These multimedia journalists are superhuman! Writing court and council reports good enough to be published in a paper while simultaneously producing video and audio good enough for the 6pm news. Does such a person exist?

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  • May 12, 2016 at 4:41 pm
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    You could not make it up. Johnston Press cut staffing to the bone on most of their titles and then wonder why coverage of councils, courts etc is not happening. And to add insult to injury Ashley Highfield brokers a deal, with his old bosses, to use eight million quid of television licence fee payers’ cash to pay for staff he and other newspaper groups don’t want to fund. Who saw who coming there ? All this ‘tanks on the lawn’ is a load of b…..ks. When local titles had some staff…more than one reporter..they usually knocked spots off the Beeb, who nine times out of ten would come to the local paper get their stories, not the other way round. It really demonstrates just how little Mr London WIA really knows about the way the newspapers, of which he is in charge, actually operate. The equation is simple mate, one reporter in the office, white space to fill in the paper, stories to put up on the website, video to shoot, Facebook to update, stories to follow up, a court sitting 10 miles down the road…you do the math

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  • May 12, 2016 at 4:46 pm
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    Forget hacks. What will the public make of licence payers having to fork out to subsidise local newspaper reporters? Should be fun to watch. Not sure which is worse at moment, standard of local papers or regional BBC.

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  • May 12, 2016 at 4:54 pm
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    If this is such a good idea, why are JP shares down nearly 3p?

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  • May 13, 2016 at 8:13 am
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    Local radio is worse than awful. In our area I hear nothing but DJS time filling with pointless dross. I still remember the man who ‘phoned up our BBC local radio and when the presenter said
    ‘What are you doing today?’ the caller said ‘I am washing my greenhouse windows’.
    Would these extra journalists mean there will be longer news bulletins on local radio?
    Long live Radio 4 and the World Service

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