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BBC local TV presents opportunities as well as challenges, says paper

The Shropshire Star has linked up with a new local television service being piloted by the BBC in the area, in a bid to add value to the news coverage it gives readers.

Letters to the editor of the eight-edition evening paper are being used to give inspiration for video reports for BBC Shropshire local TV, with the paper getting a plug at the end of each report.

The BBC local TV pilot is currently being run accross the West Midlands in Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry and Warwickshire, Hereford and Worcester, and Staffordshire as well as Shropshire.

Before its launch the Newspaper Society warned such a service could have a potentially damaging impact on local newspapers.

But Shropshire Star deputy editor Jon Simcock said the BBC service was not being seen as competition, and instead offered a chance for both sides to work together and enjoy mutual benefits.

He told HoldtheFrontPage: “It is good practice to work alongside other media, and the ten minutes of news features that are being broadcast once every 24 hours in no way competes with the coverage of our editionalised paper which contains hundreds of stories each night.

“From a newspaper’s point of view we should see this as an opportunity rather than just a challenge, and respond to both.”

Staff from Shropshire’s BBC Local TV choose letters which they would like to use after they have appeared in the paper, and then get permission from the letter writer to film them.

The slot, packaged as ‘a letter to the editor’ then ends with a reference to the Star.

Jon said other ways that both sides could work together were being explored, and that the paper had always had “fairly close links” with the BBC.

BBC Radio Shropshire breakfast presenter Eric Smith writes a column for the paper, and staff from the Star are regularly called on to provide media analysis and comment.