Let us look first at the way the Internet is changing the content of our newspapers.

Northcliffe’s editorial policy is underpinned by the belief that Life is Local, that most people live their lives – and spend their money – within just a few miles of their homes.

Traditionally, our local newspapers have had pretty much a monopoly on local information. After all, who else would put anything like the number of journalists that we put into a town or city – many of the biggest evening titles have well in excess of 100 journalists seeking out and processing local information.

So, while local TV and radio might have dabbled in local news and information, they have never put more than a handful of journalists into any city, leaving our newspapers as the closest thing to a comprehensive news service for our readers.

But the Internet is changing that. Let’s take a quick look at a story covered by local papers all over the country – pollution.

The chemicals pumped into our skies by local factories is a story that we cover on a fairly frequent basis. And we do a pretty good job of it. Breaking news stories tell our readers when there is a sudden leak and of any danger and we follow this up with occasional detailed backgrounders explaining the law and giving examples of the sort of chemicals released by local factories.

But Friends of the Earth have published a website with a section called FactoryWatch that invites you to submit your postcode. You then get a map of your area. Each red dot represents a factory which puts pollutants into the air.

Click on a factory, and you get a list of all the chemicals that that factory is legally allowed to put into the air that you breathe.

Click on one of the chemicals and you get full details of what that chemical might be doing to you.

The site takes a global view of pollution but then brings it right down to your neighbourhood, giving far more detail than we ever manage.

The simple fact is that if you want to know about local factory pollution, Friends of the Earth do a far better job than any of us.

I know that Friends of the Earth have an axe to grind – but many of our readers will be sympathetic to their cause and those who aren’t will simply read the information with that in mind.

The fundamental difference between the work published by Friends of the Earth and the articles printed in local newspapers is the depth of information produced by the level of expertise.

Add to that the fact that the medium used by the campaigners, the Internet, is far better for displaying this sort of information than the medium used by us, the newspaper, and I don’t think it is too difficult to see a time when our readers would turn to this sort of web site for this sort of information.

And Friends of the Earth are not alone.In less than two hours last week, I found more than 1,000 web sites produced by central and local government and their agencies. These were packed with the sort of statistics that form a traditional source for so many of our stories. You could find anything about anywhere. From crime statistics, in far more detail than we ever give, to benefit rights, from price comparisons to passport details, and from detailed Ofsted reports on every school to performance tables for every part of every hospital.

There was even a Government site that tracks down long-lost relatives or friends. Did you know that? Did you know that you can write to the Government and they will use national insurance details and other centrally held information to track down a friend for you? Once they have found the person, they will write and let them know that you are looking for them.

The site looked a lot more efficient than the hit-and-miss way in which we set about trying to put old friends in touch.

And it’s not only public services who are getting in on the act.

Look at the site produced by Derby County Football Club. We know for a fact that sport is a major driver for some of our readers. This site offers a far better service to committed fans than the paper ever can. It’s packed with searchable stats, ticket information and fantastic offers for its readers.

In fact, I believe that the Internet will push us into a new era in which the quality of our newspapers will grow immeasurably and they will play an even more vital role in local life.

Why? Because we have no choice. If we don’t improve the quality of the content of our products, our readers will drift away to sites that offer a better service.So how do I see us developing?

The problem for the Internet is information overload. The simple fact is that the vast majority of our readers will never be bothered to wade through 2,000 Internet sites to find out whether or not crime in their street is on the way up.

They already trust us to find the information and edit it into a form that they can understand. Much of the raw information is incomprehensible unless it is an area in which you have expertise. As now, our job will be to find, edit and explain.

But we will have to do it so much better than we do now. Why?

Because every time they find something in our products which really interests them, readers will be able to go back to the original source and that will highlight any deficiency in our editing process.

I also believe that we will need a much better quality of writing. The Internet may be able to compete with us on raw information, but nobody enjoys reading a screen. Enjoyment is part of the make-up of a newspaper – people like reading newspapers and that is a strength that we are going to have to build on.

So, the Internet is going to force us to produce articles that are far better researched and far better written.

That, of course, means that we are going to need far more resources.At this point, the editors amongst you are rubbing your hands in glee and the managing directors are wringing their hands in despair.

But I’ve got good news for you both. You are going to get the extra resource – and it isn’t going to cost you a fortune! That extra resource is the Internet. In othe
r words, the Internet is going to force us to improve our products and it is going to help us to do it.

Let me show you a couple of ways in which we are already using the Internet to improve our quality and make us more efficient.

One concerns the sort of background feature most of us run on a regular basis. It looks at the service offered by the NHS to elderly people in our community. It is packed with relevant statistics and examples.

How long would it take a reporter to produce this backgrounder? Half a day? A full day to do it properly? Perhaps even longer?

Actually, it took less then two hours. What’s more, it was done by a sub in the slack time in the middle of the afternoon. We simply found a web site dealing with health service issues and this article was on there, written by one of the country’s leading experts in health care for the elderly.

The article was not only produced a lot more quickly than it might normally have been, but it is also more thoroughly researched and authoritative than it might have been.

The Internet has allowed us to put together a better-quality article in a fraction of the time it might normally have taken us.

The other way in which we are using the Internet to improve our newspaper is through www.toowrite.com.

This is an Internet site we launched about two months ago.It is a simple idea. It offers a £1,000 prize for the best non-fiction article submitted to the site between now and June. It is a form of vanity publishing.

We promise to publish all articles on the web site – and if your story is well enough written, it will be published in one of the country’s top regional newspapers!

Our criteria for success are simple. Will the site produce 10 articles of a standard worth publishing in our newspaper? If so, it will have paid for itself.

In the first eight weeks, we have received in excess of 100 entries.Obviously, some of the articles are of a very poor standard. But, because the competition urges people to write about their own experience, many of them are written with passion and many of them are very well written.

So far, we have found five articles which we thought added to our newsaper.One is the very moving recollection of a 15-year-old boy of what it was like the day after his brother had died. It is exceptionally well written and it is difficult to see what the intervention of a reporter could have added. In another, a local man remembers the day his father went off to work and never came back

Again, our involvement was minimal. We produced a full-page feature at almost no cost and with very little time from any of our staff.

The same was true of this story of the harrowing ordeal of a father whose daughter fell off a rope swing injuring her back just before Christmas.

But it is not only Derby which is benefiting from TooWrite.com. One feature was run in the Lincolnshire Echo. Further articles were due to appear this week in Shropshire and Swansea.

As you can see, the Internet is already affecting my newsroom in terms of the articles we produce and the way we produce them.

I have no doubt that the Internet has already improved the quality of some of our news – but it has also freed up valuable resource. Which is just as well, because if you go back to my comments about Friends of the Earth and the Derby County site, you can see that as well as benefits, the Internet is bringing us problems.

The simple fact is that the Internet is a better medium for certain sorts of information and it is allowing other organisations to challenge our traditional strength on local news and information.

Take football. Much of the football fan’s discussion revolves around instant information – what’s the score? – historic context – do you remember when we beat Man Utd 5-0? – and stats – did you know it’s 450 minutes since Derby let a goal in when Delap was on the pitch.

The simple fact is that newspapers are not very good at this sort of information.You only have to register with any one of the many fans’ newsgroups to see how much quicker they are at it than we are.

So what should we do?Hand the coverage of this to those who do it best on the Internet – such as the sites run by the clubs themselves? But what happens when somebody comes along and does the same to education in your area, or health, and takes the advertising that goes with it?

Of course we can’t let our readers become somebody else’s readers or customers.We have to build sites which cover our key communities in such a way that anybody who decides to move away from newspapers for this sort of information, moves to our sites.

And that’s where the savings the Internet brings us on our newspapers will have to be spent- building our Internet presence.

www.therams.co.uk is the site have built to keep Derby County fans as our readers.We aim to ensure that it is better than the club’s official site – we put more news up, we change it more often and our historical and statistical sections are far better than theirs.

It is not about putting the newspaper online – it’s about putting in-depth information on-line, information which complements the writing in the newspaper.

We have similar sites covering other key communities – education, business, other sports, and local government and we are building more sites to cover health and crime.

The Internet is here and it is already have a major effect on the way we work.

It is changing the quality of the content we produce for our newspapers It is changing the way we find that content. And it is forcing us to find different, better and complementary ways of serving our readers.

The Internet highlights the deficiencies in our current products. But it also presents us with a fantastic opportunity to capitalise on our core skills – finding, editing and explaining information within a local context.

The Internet will not kill local newspapers – it will simply give us the reason – and the ability – to become much better.

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