A senior regional editor has backed calls for the BBC to scale down its online activities in order to help local newspapers.
Home secretary Theresa May has called on the corporation to “think carefully” about whether its online presence is harming the industry, and veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby has since also questioned whether it has grown too big.
Now Northern Echo boss Peter Barron, one of the longest-serving daily editors has echoed the calls for a debate on the size of the BBC, claiming it currently represents “unfair competition” for local newspapers.
In a blog post, he said former local newspaper owner Mr Dimbleby was right to question whether the Beeb should scale down its online activity.
Wrote Peter: “It is my sincere belief that local newspapers, which have been entrenched in communities for generations, are fundamental to democracy. It is vital that as many as possible survive the severe economic challenges that they are facing.
“So the growth of a free local news service on BBC websites, subsidised by the compulsory licence fee, is unfair competition. Room needs to be left in the marketplace for trusted local papers, operating as businesses, and employing local people.
“The truth is that the BBC doesn’t cover local news in the depth that local newspapers do. The corporation doesn’t have the resources at the grass roots, but it’s right to establish some parameters on how far the tentacles of the BBC monster should be allowed to stretch.
“There are definite opportunities for the BBC and local papers to work together and David Dimbleby’s stimulation of the debate is to be welcomed.”
Ms May told this month’s Society of Editors conference: “Local newspapers are having a particularly hard time. That has partly been the result of the BBC’s dominant position on the internet, and its ability to subsidise the provision of internet news using the licence fee.
“I believe that the BBC has to think carefully about its presence locally and the impact that has on local democracy.”
Interviewed on 5Live last week, Mr Dimbleby said there was “some truth” in her comments.
He said the corporation needed “to answer questions about whether the BBC has got too big. Whether it is too powerful for its own good. Whether it’s crushing newspapers, local newspapers particularly.”
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Once again someone with their head firmly buried in the ground. I’ve worked in the industry for years and have never felt much threat from the BBC – they frequently do little more than reheat stories the local press has already covered, sometimes several weeks later.
The regional press is under much graver threat from social media sites and pages, which frustratingly are often bought into hook, line and sinker by the general public, despite the posts coming from random strangers who often spout little more than biased political guff that is often ill-informed and sometimes down-right lies. Those sites are a far bigger threat but, of course, ‘let’s bash the Beeb because it’s fashionable’. I despair, I really do.
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Sense a trend from Society of Editors members issuing drip feed attack on BBC. Try protecting your own news gathering resources instead.
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Has anyone seen the BBC local news sites recently? Hardly competition! They are under staffed and stuffed with old stories or press releases. They are only becoming a ‘threat’ because the local paper offering is becoming so poor. Quit whittling about the Beeb and concentrate on your own products and they might seem less of a threat.
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Funny how the Tories, the Daily Mail and the Society of Editors never raised any concerns about the newspaper groups getting too big and harming local newspapers, yet the BBC cops it from them now.
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The BBC merged the separate Tyne and Wear news pages into one Tyne & Wear page some time ago but it makes no difference – they don’t break stories, just trot out what everyone else and PA have already. Sub up North has hit the nail on the head – the BBC are only becoming a viable competitor because the quality of their competition is rapidly heading down to their level.
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It is not BBC websites that is crushing local newspapers, rather the reduced quality of many of the products. Sent in content is no match for quality journalism. (That is covered in a letters page). We are losing investigative reporters, promotions staff, ad designers, photographers etc. These are people able to generate profit for the products. Why keep all salespeople trying to sell into a poorer product? I think fewer salespeople would find it easier to sell more advertising into a title that retained quality (and retained readership), rather than many being on a hiding to nothing, yet reps are never considered for redundancy. Just my (no doubt annoying to some – sorry) opinion.
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Daily Mail would like to see the BBC turned fully commercial and then it could put in an offer to its MPs in Parliament to get its hands on the juicy bits.
You’d end up with a British version of Fox News.
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I laughed at Peter’s description of the tentacled BBC monster. Really? A monster??
Even if the BBC were to be in some way barred from carrying ‘local’ content online, it’s ridiculously naive to believe that this content wouldn’t be freely available elsewhere.
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Glad to see so many commenters taking the sensible view. Yes, the local/regional press could work in tandem with BBC. And BBC should credit papers when they follow up stories. But it isn’t a real problem for editors
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I’ve looked at the BBC local news in the past to find 1 story from a week ago… not sure that’s competition for anyone.
The world is changing and we all need to roll with the relevant punches and work out where best our energy lies… hear says a salesman, turned online marketing chap who writes in his own way & some folk listen… one person’s random stranger is another’s best pal who might not be ill informed or talking tosh… that is for the reader to decide.
I logged on to my email Sunday evening preparing for a Rotary event we host called Youth Speaks… as I checked my email I noticed one come in from Olly Murs inviting me to his Christmas Party that was due to start in 5 minutes and would be streamed for an hour or so via LiveStream FOC. How kind…
I clicked through, got told off for chewing all the bandwidth as the boss needed to do some “proper work” and X Factor was just about to start… so I enjoyed 10-15 minutes then closed my laptop, left the party early, leaving 2000+ others enjoying the show.
Could be that each journalist becomes an island and syndicates their news for free or for a fee depending on the source of viewer digestion.
Read, listen, watch on your blog for free or might be 50p a story via a mobile app…
Generate a following like One Direction & you could launch a Christmas perfume off the back off your Twitter followers… damn, they have already 😉
Thank you.
Jon
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The BBC is yet another irrelevant excuse for the decline in newspaper audiences, and I note that most of the comments reflect this view. A fact: In Scotland over two million people read a newspaper every day.
Only 75,000 watch the flagship Newsnicht Scotland. TV news audiences are falling faster than newspaper’s. The only difference is that, given the fact that a 30 minutes news programme contains less content than two pages of The Daily Telegraph, newspaper media reporters are free to report, indeed exaggerate, our industry’s position, you will never hear anyone on the broadcast media saying a bad word about their industry’s plight. (Can someone sub this sentence?)
Our industry’s problem is our introspection, from the top down. We should be working out how to work with, or around, the BBC not criticize them.
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Jim (and others on here): you’re missing the point of what Peter is saying. The threat from the BBC is not its current offering, which we all know is crap, but what it may well become. The BBC Trust in its latest review identified a requirement to improve the BBC’s local news coverage. That’s the threat – not what it is today. Peter and the rest if the main publishers are rightly concerned about the threat posed by the BBC Trust’s insistence that its local coverage should improve.
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