The traditional model of journalists working on one story at a time is “wasteful” and needs to change, the boss of new media group Local World has told MPs.
David Montgomery, chairman of the newly-merged publishing group, made the comments during a session of the Culture, Media and Sports committee yesterday.
He said that the local press “cannot sustain a model from the middle ages, where a single journalist goes out on a single story, comes back and writes it up.”
He described the model as “highly wasteful” and said news groups would have to start seeking “different sorts of skills” from their reporters.
“Journalists collecting stories one by one is hugely unproductive. They will have to have new skills, greater responsibility for self publishing on different platforms,” he told the committee.
Speaking to HTFP today, Local World chief executive Steve Auckland said journalists working in the community would remain the industry’s unique selling point – but admitted that some aspects of the job would have to change.
Said Steve: “We will still have our journalists going out into the community. As Ashley Highfield has said, it’s one of our unique selling points and it will continue to be.
“Where the job will change is that we do want a lot more user-generated content on our sites and in print as well and that will become a bigger feature of what we do going forward.
“We will still have individual journalists out on jobs because if we feel it’s newsworthy we will still have journalists doing that, but we will supplement that with a lot of user-generated content and information.”
Asked whether the current model was ‘wasteful’, Steve replied: “If you had every single journalist going out on one story a day, that would be highly wasteful, but that doesn’t happen.”
Johnston Press chief executive Ashley also gave evidence to yesterday’s committee hearing.
He told MPs: “I don’t see a world without local journalists on the ground in the community. It’s our USP. There will always be journalists, that is our role. But they need to change and government can help.”
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Since when have journalists dealt with one story at once? Or even “gone out” on them with little pressure? Montgomery is either living in the 70s or the relatively cosy world of the nationals.
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And just what are these “different sorts of skills” Montgomery talks about? Doesn’t say does he.
I sense some very sinister overtones here – a coded message of “let’s lay off lots of expensive skilled journalists and use illiterate crap from untrained people who we don’t have to pay”.
Chilling!
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I agree. Why should a journalist bother honing a single, accurate, entertaining story at a time when he or she can spew out five or more slapdash, unsubbed items instead ? Welcome to Slapdash World. You know it makes sense.
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I see the Local World Proletarian Guard are busy on Twitter this morning ‘clarifying’ Mr Montgomery’s comments. Ironically, one of them couldn’t spell the word clarifies….something a sub-editor might have picked up on. Oh, wait a minute….we don’t need such ‘human interaction’ in Banana World, do we….?
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Montgomery and Auckland would know they were talking rubbish if only they spent a single hour in one of their newsrooms instead of sat in an office in London.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a decade when a regional journalist has spent all day, every day, working on just one story.
Let’s be honest, their comments only point to two things – Montgomery is completely out of touch and Auckland is lining up to make yet more journalists redundant.
You have to question why they spent so much money on setting up Local World to then announce they’ll be relying on user-generated content in print and online?
If this is their big game plan then it won’t be long before the company is worth just a fraction of what they paid for it.
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What planet is he on…!
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Totally, hilariously and dangerously clueless. That’s their ‘USP’ I’d say…
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Hmmm, yes. And I suppose if these people were running the NHS surgeons wouldn’t operate on one patient at a time.
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Just to echo comments above – absolutely ridiculous.
On the rare occasion a journalist is working on one story, it would be a 2/3/4 page package.
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Mr Montgomery; most local journalists are producing 2 to 4 leads a day plus 5 or 6 other bits along with the occasional picture and video, not to mention uploading stories to the internet and all the other ‘digital’ admin. They usually merge UGC from social networks, paper’s website into the story. Problem is a lot of the UGC is wrong so occasionally a reporter needs to go out there and check the situation with their own eyes.
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Great.
‘User Generated content’ is slang for ‘stories’ about chuch fates, table top sales, barn dances and mums and tots groups. Its NOT what people want to read. People want to read gritty news stories, dug up in depth by quality reporters, not what hours Mrs Smiths flower stall is open. The general public can already place their own adverts online unchecked, which has led to a massive decline in the standard & volume of classified advertising. In our paper most days there are handfull’s of adverts without even phone numbers – proof that UGC is a joke.
When the novelty wears off from the local busy-bodies, what will the paper be full of then?
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To be fair to Steve Auckland, he does contradict Montgomery later in the story. He knows Monty is talking nonsense just as well as we do.
As to the user-generated content – OK, often illiterate, frequently libellous, rarely very newsworthy, but one hopes there will be Montgomery’s “senior staff” (who they?) to filter the worst of it. What worried me most about Monty’s comment was his use of the word “harvest” in his original comments. That sounds to me very like “theft” of other people’s material.
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The Big Idea that was supposed to be underpinning LocalWorld’s self-proclaimed radicalism has turned out to be nothing more than a mirage.
Ramming their newspapers and websites with an ocean of “user-generated” content?
Does LocalWorld really believe the punters have an unquenchable thirst for this stuff, to the point were they’ll seek it out on the internet or hand over cash to read it in a local newspaper?
Good luck with that.
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LOL
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Barking mad
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Biller, it’s church fete and please put apostrophes where they are supposed to be and leave them out where they are not required! I hope you are not a journalist…
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Confucius
I’m not. Be ready to see plenty of that once the general public are able to publish what they want….. Like I said, look at the content in the classified free adverts and see what trash currently gets printed in our papers each day unchecked.
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Worrying thing is that the new LW websites look an utter mess too. If both the content and the design are crap, what chance anyone actually seeking out their product?
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Long Gone – do you not mean Praetorian Guard?
Biller – there is, of course, nothing wrong with nice fillery stuff (if it’s done right, it can lighten up the paper), but you have hit the nail on the head. The Reader wants hard-hitting stories…apart from all the times when they don’t. Confusing business, being a hack.
As it stands, I doubt Monty’n’Auckers will care what us humble hacks think. I’ve head rumours that a well-known LW paper which contains a county in its name is set to move out of the said county. Which says a lot.
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As someone who recently left the employment of Local World, I don’t find these comments surprising. They are extremely ironic, however. Mr Montgomery talks about journalists acting in a ‘highly wasteful’ way. Perhaps he would like to justify his creation of an entire department (his so-called ‘transformation team’) with the sole purpose of counting the number of cross-refs to the web printed in the paper each day.
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The only way to ensure you get the whole story is to meet the subject face-to-face. It removes doubt, builds trust and could bring other elements or story angles into the equation, be it news, features or business. It also establishes a new contact for the future.
Trust is huge when it comes to a controversial issue, one that will get the readers talking, and… reading (!!) and the trust of the editor making a call on the story has to be with the reporter who, hopefully, has met the subject.
We could always ignore such strong stories and just churn press releases out though, just short enough to get a pointless weblink in that provides our dear reader with another reason why not to part with their cash every day / week.
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User generated content is all fine and dandy, but most people are now used to using twitter and facebook to post updates and youtube to upload video or wordpress to blog as they are easy to use, popular and you can pick and choose who you share to.
What are Local World/Local Newspapers going to offer that is different to entice people away from using these well funded and well resourced websites ? What as a user would be my incentive to provide free content (presumably) to those websites?
My worry is that by concentrating their policy on a massive growth in UGC that the main USP of these sites, well written and researched local content written by qualified people will suffer as they become ‘content harvesters’
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Part-time hack – have you SEEN the Transformation Team or read their utterances? Case rested.
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‘He said that the local press “cannot sustain a model from the middle ages, where a single journalist goes out on a single story, comes back and writes it up.”
History not his strong point then? Middle ages generally regarded as running from late 5th to 15th Centuries. Scribes, vellum parchment and all written in Latin perhaps and ye olde scribe on oneth story a day, forsooth?
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I am a reporter for Local World and have recently researched and written a week-long news feature series.
Half of them were written in the evening at home.
This is an observation, not a complaint.
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I think the plot is being lost by everyone. I have so many issues with what’s being said so I’ll try to pick out the main ones.
1 Monty’s ideas, such as they are, will mean the end of community reporting. (The end is in sight, but this will be the end) I bought one of the big LW titles today and there was nothing remotely relevant to me.
2 ‘Readers want ‘gritty, hard hitting stories’. This is just a cliche. Who says they do? We’ve been giving them this for years and seen nothing but circulation declines. I go back to ‘relevant’. Give readers stories which affect their lives.
3 We are already seeing the effects of the cuts in the stories printed every day … an endless diet of tedious court tales (don’t get me started on what a joke court reporting is), council minutes and the endless boredom of worthy hospital/serious illness/charity stories.
What this boils down to is that it doesn’t matter if it’s 1 reporter or 100, if the material is relevant it will be read and if it’s not, it won’t.
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