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David Baines: The local press – victimised again

Does the local press see itself as a ‘victim’ in the face of the threat of press regulation?

In this our latest extract from the book What Do We Mean By Local?, Newcastle journalism lecturer David Baines, left, argues that the ‘narrative of victimisation’ serves to obscure the many ways in which the industry secures public funds and subsidies.


Five leaders of the provincial newspaper industry testified before the House of Commons select committee on Culture Media and Sport on 21 May 2013 as it inquired into the future of press regulation. They said theirs was an industry battered by circumstance, in the process of regeneration, and a new regulatory system would be an unwarranted burden. The committee was taking evidence following the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report into the phone-hacking scandal and related issues. These industry leaders told the committee that the regional press was innocent of all such misbehaviour, yet it was at risk of being punished alongside its national counterparts: it was a victim.

The witnesses were David Newell, Director, and Adrian Jeakings, President, of the Newspaper Society, which represents publishers of local and regional newspapers; David Montgomery, chairman of the recently emergent Local World which, in November 2012, took over the Iliffe News and Media and the Northcliffe (DMGT) titles; DC Thomson Ltd’s managing director Christopher Thomson; and Ashley Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press. When committee chair John Whittingdale invited them to outline the current state of the industry and the future they saw for it, Jeakings said:

We are an industry in transition. We are investing to change our business models. We are investing in people to raise the professional standards of what we do and we can see a future, a bright future, for our industry … One of the key things that we don’t need at this point, however, is to have a burdensome regulatory system imposed on us and the associated costs. Leveson exonerated us from the bad malpractice that led to his report in the first place. Indeed, he said that we played a key role in society, that we shouldn’t have any additional burden and suggested that government should do what it could to help us. And some of the things that could be done to help us would include stopping council newspapers; curtailing some of the BBC’s local activities; the sharing of content; allowing a more sensible, realistic if you will, media merger regime for local newspapers, and many other things. We are the most trusted medium in the UK and yet we don’t get what we consider to be our fair share of government advertising. So we would very much like government to work with us and use our media.

This opening account established themes to which the witnesses would return a number of times, and it reinforced key narratives which the industry has developed. The newspapers are part of communities whose interests they represent. The companies are emerging from a critical period of transition, investing in people and raising professional standards to better serve those communities. Leveson not only exonerated regional papers of malpractice, but urged Government support them. Yet the industry is badly treated: the threat of a ‘burdensome regulatory system’ with associated costs is only the latest in a series of afflictions that the government could lift by stopping councils publishing ‘newspapers’; further curtailing the BBC’s local activities; allowing local newspaper groups to merge more easily. Jeakings complains: ‘We are the most trusted medium in the UK and yet we don’t get what we consider to be our fair share of government advertising.’

This theme of an industry deserving help was further emphasised when, after strong criticism from the witnesses of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for a new regulatory system, Committee member Tracey Crouch MP asked: ‘Are there any parts of the Leveson recommendations that you welcome?’ After a pause, Jeakings responded: ‘Well, we welcome the recommendation that the Government should help us as an industry. Absolutely’

This narrative of victimisation is here being deployed against the introduction of a regulatory regime which has not been authored by the press itself, but by political process. At the time of writing, the committee has not reported, but this victimisation narrative has in the past influenced media policy and had a significant effect on the local media environment and on the benefits society can draw from that environment. The narrative informed successful Newspaper Society campaigns against BBC plans in 2006 to supplement regional TV news coverage by recruiting 300 journalists to 66 new online video news services for town and city-sized audiences and, in 2008, against local government communicating with electors and tax-payers by publishing their own ‘newspapers’. The high profile campaigns persuaded policymakers that publicly-funded competition with commercial newspapers was unfair and jeopardised local papers’ abilities to deliver democratic oversight and the plurality and diversity of local media. Oppositional arguments – that local video news from the BBC and local government publications provided civic benefits and fulfilled obligations those organisations held to serve the public – gained little, if any, print media exposure.

Battling the BBC

BBC management piloted online video news in 2005 and 2006 and commissioned an independent evaluation from Professor Roger Laughton of ‘how the pilot developed the BBC’s commitment to building public value’. He looked specifically at the extent to which the BBC’s local broadband model ‘might encourage or discourage the growth of other local services on all platforms’ and examined the impact on the market for independent terrestrial TV, commercial radio and local newspapers. Laughton concluded that the project served those public goods the BBC was bound to uphold, and tended to enhance, rather than curtail, media plurality:

The position it intends to occupy in local markets is unlikely to inhibit or eliminate opposition. On the contrary, its ‘market impact will stimulate economic activity such as the employment and training opportunities it can provide and the stimulus to independent production outside London.’

He said the BBC would take four years from autumn 2007 to roll out the proposed services, giving ample time for local newspapers and others to put their own broadband video news in place. Specific public goods offered included expanding media literacy; developing relationships with community and civic organisations and enhancing plurality of voice. But, following the Newspaper Society campaign, the BBC Trust aborted the project on the grounds that:

… although licence fee payers want better regional and local services from the BBC, this proposal is unlikely to achieve what they want. We also recognise the negative impact that the local video proposition could have on commercial media services which are valued by the public and are already under pressure.

Local communities were thus denied the benefits Laughton identified from a service they owned and paid for.

Battling Local Government

In July 2008, the Newspaper Society turned its attention to newspapers and magazines produced by councils to communicate with taxpayers and citizens and found cross-party national political support. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition took power in 2010 and Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced a Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity (taking effect in 2011) restricting content and limiting to quarterly the frequency of council-funded newspapers, which he called ‘town hall Pravdas’. Referencing the newspaper once published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the trope characterised such publications as political propaganda and commercial newspapers as independent voices delivering democratic scrutiny. Yet the Audit Commission had investigated local council ‘newspapers’ and in January 2010 concluded there were ‘adequate safeguards against misuse of public money for political ends’. It continued:

Communication is important to inform the public of the services councils provide and the functions they perform. It is also important to explain to voters and council taxpayers the reasons for particular policies and priorities. The Audit Commission encourages the provision of information to improve the accountability to taxpayers for spending … The money being spent by councils is not unreasonable.

Steve Bundred (of the Audit Commission) found few publications appeared frequently enough to attract most advertisers. But they were delivered free to every household, reached communities on which local newspapers had a tenuous hold, informed them of services for which they paid and explained policies and priorities. Jules Pipe, mayor of Hackney in London and Chair of London Councils told the House of Commons in December 2010:

My local newspaper, which is no longer based in the borough – it is two local authorities away in distance out in Essex – now sells only 8,000 copies a week … and that compares with the 100,000 copies that we publish.

He said council publications did not pretend to be independent newspapers and the annual cost of paying the local paper to carry ‘statutory notices’ – such as planning applications which councils must by law publish every two weeks – was £543,000, against £448,000 for 25 editions of the authority’s paper.

We will have to find several hundred thousand pounds’ worth of additional savings from other services so we can pay the local newspaper to carry those rather than publish them in our own newspaper.

Pickles disregarded the committee’s conclusion that there was little evidence that such publications were a threat to local papers. The publishers, however, gained further advantage. Media analyst Roy Greenslade reported that councils were signing long-term contracts with local newspaper publishers to print the papers to which they had objected. Trinity Mirror’s Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle, with a once-paid weekly circulation of 1,500, became a free delivered to 72,000 homes on the strength of one contract.

Community Charge

Local newspapers provide a communicative space of civic, social and cultural engagement and facilitate economic activity, but, for advertising-funded local media, communities also become commodities to be sold on to advertisers: ‘it is the sale of audiences that is the crucial media operation.’ Corporate conceptions of and relationships with a ‘community’ can be informed not primarily by public good, but the manner by which that community-commodity can be monetised. Matthew Engel refers to a former manager from Gannett, the US owner of UK publisher Newsquest, recalling a training session:

A corporate executive asked us: ‘If you are a Gannett publisher, what is your first priority?’ Serve the public, said one of the attendees. Sounds noble, but no, said the executive … Make money, said another. You’re on the right track, but not quite there, said the executive. Then he told us the right answer: ‘Your first priority is to make more money.’

Whereas the BBC proposed a reinvestment in communities of their licence fees, and councils sought economically to tell taxpayers how their money was spent, high profit margins of local newspapers transfer resources from those communities to shareholders. Savings through redundancies impose additional burdens of unemployment and shrink work and training opportunities. As converged companies enhance economies of scale, skilled work moves outside circulation areas. Reporters are less likely to be local, than graduates recruited centrally to an occupation people pay to enter by funding their own training and undertaking unpaid work.

An Independent Scrutineer

The Newspaper Society says that, because its sector is not dependent on the public purse, it is in a position to hold to account local political actors. Yet the evidence that it does so consistently is mixed. In June 2011, satirical and investigative magazine Private Eye reported that the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle (see above) had edited out a question raised by a columnist, Hammersmith MP Andrew Slaughter, over the newspaper’s impartiality towards the council.

Ian Hargreaves and James Thomas found that: ‘People feel less adequately informed about their locality than either the world at large, or the UK in general.’ Newspaper Society communications director Lynne Anderson acknowledged this in evidence to parliament, but attributed it to the Local Government Act 2000 and secretive town hall decision-making. However, in 2004 Franklin linked the lack of municipal coverage in local papers to their ‘growing preoccupation with the bottom line’, continuous cost-cutting and staff reductions. He pointed to a dependence on press releases, citing a big-city evening paper news editor speaking in 1998 (before the 2000 Act): ‘It’s easier to use a press release, more convenient if the relevant information is summarised than if you have to go out and find it’ and a council press officer: ‘It is a case of no press release, no coverage’.

Thus lack of resources; less transparent council decision-making and reliance on substantial content subsidies challenge claims to deliver independent, democratic oversight.

Subsidy and Support

Claims to political independence are predicated in part on economic independence. Newspaper Society director David Newell said in August 2008:

The regional press has … maintained its independence from statutory content controls, state subsidy and public funding, in order to safeguard the independence of its journalism.

However, Peter Humphreys, in his survey of the media in Western Europe, points to the substantial subsidy the printed press enjoys of zero-rating for VAT on sales. At the time of writing, a time of austerity and cuts, this represents a 20 per cent relief. Rasmus Nielsen and Geert Linnebank reported that this subsidy was worth £594m to the UK press as a whole in 2008, when VAT was 17.5 per cent, and the Newspaper Society says that zero-rating for VAT is worth £97m a year to its members. Humphreys reports no further form of subsidy for UK newspapers. But processes of public support for the press are not transparent and discussion and debate is often foreclosed as the industry maintains, and policy-makers accept, its narrative of victimisation. Anderson et al say that:

… subsidy, in the sense of support granted to work seen to be in the public good, comes in many flavours. It can be direct or indirect, and it can come from public or private sources. Citizen donations are as much a subsidy as government grants.

This chapter has numbered among the ‘many flavours’ of subsidy the local press receives zero rating for VAT (£97m); statutory notices (£35m); (public) funds spent on printing contracts for ‘Town Hall Pravdas’ and contents subsidies which it receives as local authority press releases. This public-sector content subsidy also comes from government departments, police forces, fire brigades, NHS trusts, universities, colleges and, until recently, development agencies – whose publicly-funded communications departments provide free research services to the local press.

A further content subsidy comes from the wider public: from those who wish to become journalists and undertake extensive unpaid placements and from readers and public sector organisations providing text, images, videos and their intellectual property for free as ‘user-generated content’. A former Johnston Press chairman said journalists’ jobs will be replaced ‘by enthusiastic amateurs for next to nothing,’  Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield told the Culture Media and Sport Committee that about a third of the content of his papers and websites came free from community members ‘and that is a trend that will only increase. While David Montgomery told the committee dramatic video was supplied regularly to one of his South Devon newspapers by the (publicly-funded) Coast Guard and they aimed to harvest more content from the emergency services.

Public-sector press releases and videos; free research and information services; unpaid work experience by students paying to become journalists and extensive user-generated content all constitute a substantial staffing subsidy while local newspaper companies cut jobs. Montgomery told the committee:

In three or four years from now, I think much of our human interface will have disappeared, in line with other digitised businesses. We will have to harvest content and publish it without a human interface, which will change the role of journalists.

Whittingdale: When you say human interface, do you mean journalists?

Montgomery: …. We can’t sustain a model which is, you know, from the Middle Ages virtually, where a single reporter covers a single story, comes back to the office, writes it up. All of that is highly wasteful.  So journalists will, I believe, transform into managers of content, a lot more content in their daily routine, and publishers of content.

Montgomery envisages a business model in which virtually all content is donated for free, as a subsidy, much of it from the public and publicly-funded bodies, and the primary role of ‘journalists’ is to harvest that subsidy. As well as the community being a commodity to sell to advertisers, it has also become for the local press an unpaid replacement for its paid workforce. Freedman  found that attempts to explore alternative strategies to maintain a sustainable, pluralistic media were frustrated by the exclusion from policy-making circles of media trade unions, campaign bodies and civil society groups and the lack of transparency of such policy-making processes which arises out of a ‘continuing and intimate relationship between key corporate interests and government policymakers, a relationship whose bonds are rarely exposed to the public’.

This chapter has been an attempt to bring some transparency to those processes, to explore some of the complexities obscured by the industry’s narrative of victimisation, and offer some context to Lord Leveson’s suggestion that:  “The government should look urgently as what action it might be able take to help safeguard the ongoing viability of this much valued and important part of the British press.”

Note on the author

David Baines is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Newcastle University where he researches in media ethics, hyper-local journalism and the political economy of the local press. This chapter draws on research into subsidies for the local press in Britain which is to be reported at greater length in the forthcoming volume Murschetz, Paul, (ed.) (2013) State Aid for Newspapers – Theories and Cases, Berlin, Springer (2nd edition, in press, October 2013).

  • WHAT DO WE MEAN BY LOCAL? THE RISE, FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF LOCAL JOURNALISM. EDITED BY JOHN MAIR,RICHARD LANCE KEEBLE WITH NEIL FOWLER.  PUBLISHED BY ABRAMIS BURY ST EDMUNDS SEPTEMBER IST 2013 ISBN 978-1-84549-593-0 PRICE £19.95 WITH A SPECIAL OFFER TO YOUR READERS OF £15.00 from [email protected]