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Ex-Culture Secretary: Internet giants should fund local reporter scheme

John WhittingdaleFormer Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has urged internet giants to help fund a partnership between the regional press industry and the BBC.

Mr Whittingdale, left, says the likes of Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter should consider providing cash to help expand the scheme, which will see an initial network of 150 local democracy reporters recruited across the country.

The journalists will be funded by the BBC licence fee, but employed by local press groups which are successful in winning the contracts.

Mr Whittingdale made the suggestion while addressing the Speaker’s Lecture at Speaker’s House in London on the subject of ‘The Future of the Press’.

During his speech, he said: “I would like [the four companies] to consider joining the scheme that has already been established, the local news partnership, and contributing to that fund.

“If they would do so, obviously they would have representation on the management of that fund which would means it was no longer entirely run by the BBC, which I think would be a good thing.

“Like the BBC, it would allow them to be seen not as a destructive force but as companies that are willing to support and work with local media to combat fake news, to sustain professional journalism and to buttress our democracy.”

Applications are now closed after local news organisations were invited to bid for 54 regional contracts set to be handed out as part of the £8m scheme.

4 comments

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  • October 25, 2017 at 1:20 pm
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    Meanwhile, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter look on impassively and mutter: “what’s in for us?’
    And Aunty Beeb smiles to herself as her ‘unique’ funding floods in day after day after day………

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  • October 25, 2017 at 1:28 pm
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    I hoped and thought we’d seen the last of Whittingdale and his blinkered view of the regional press in this country, we all know he is the publishers friend who cannot, or chooses not to ,see that the industry is where it is because the way folk access news has changed from local dailies to instant social media and web news based platforms, not hours old first editions which one were the only options, and as a result, the advertisers have followed that audience,
    greed and complacency on the publishers part when they had monopolies and no competition other than themselves has been a large contributing part of the self destructive implosion too. Why should anyone expect those making a success of their news and commercial operations to sub and prop up those who took their once advantages position for granted?

    Wake up to the realities Whittingdale or step out of an arena you clearly don’t understand

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  • October 26, 2017 at 11:23 am
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    Did the country’s fat cat publishers give the aforementioned global businesses a cut to help them establish their fledgling news services when times were good and local papers had the monopoly?
    Would Burger King help prop up Mc Donald’s if it lost its customer base through self harm and neglect while the top dogs took big bonus payments yet expecting their customers to pay over the odds as they had no competition?
    Exactly
    Get real Mr Whittingdale and delve a little deeper as to the reasons why the uk regional press is in the parlous state it’s in and needing handouts from businesses who’ve made a real success of commercialising their digital offerings

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  • October 29, 2017 at 6:23 am
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    Whittingdale; Clueless and out of sync with reality as per usual.
    Expecting your competitors to prop you up or even care, shows how little he fully understands the bigger picture of the real reasons around the rapid demise of the country’s aged regional press groups.

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