An editorial chief has demanded further outside investment in the regional press after his company was denied government funding for a scheme aimed at making court reporting sustainable.
Newsquest editorial director Toby Granville has called for a new programme similar to the BBC local democracy reporting scheme, which would help to put more journalists in courtrooms across the country.
Toby’s plea comes after Newsquest was denied a grant from the government’s new Future News Fund, which he says would have been used to “build a sustainable business model” for court reporting.
According to Toby, pictured, the £2m worth of grants given out to organisations from the fund could have funded “at least” another 75 journalists across the country instead.
Speaking yesterday at the launch of new guidance by HM Courts & Tribunals Service aimed at helping court staff deal with journalists, Toby said: “Without investment for court reporters and none on the horizon either – what’s the answer?
“Firstly, investment instead could come from a significant expansion of a programme similar to the local democracy scheme through the partnership publishers have with the BBC to include other types of public service reporting and community reporting.
“This industry-wide content provision could include local health, local education, local transport – all content of real public value and importance to local communities.
“This would allow publishers to divert their dwindling resources on investing in the content that’s going to drive page views and revenue – from dedicated trained and qualified professional reporters covering the big court stories.”
Toby suggested funding for the project could come from sources including Google, Facebook and the BBC.
He also called for a new National Council of Training of Journalists qualification to be set up for reporters employed under such a project.
Added Toby: “And how about these reporters being put through their training in an exciting new crime unit at Bournemouth University we could launch using their world class facilities.
“A new online superhub for all UK court reporters regardless of media organization could also be used to champion the best practices and become a one-stop shop for all resource and qualified guidance.
“This could be used to upskill thousands of professional journalists across the UK and get more of them back into the court rooms. And all of that is what you call innovation.”
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
“We’ve wasted all our money when we were raking it in and paying ourselves huge board bonuses without accepting digital was a real threat and laughing off the small independent publishers opening up in our backyards but now our businesses are failing please, can we have some tax payers money?”
What a joke,no other industry or group of businesses would expect outside funding to offset losses they’ve largely been responsible for themselves. If there’s any spare money rattling around give it to the localised community publishers , they have the audiences and they’d appreciate it and spend it wisely
Report this comment
The nerve of some people. Have they no shame? Or is that they have no idea how to deal with the changing media landscape? If so, why are they in senior management jobs in the first place?
Rattling a begging bowl….Has it really come to this?
Report this comment
Yes Northender it has
There’s this arrogance by the traditional regional publishers that they’re so special they just need to demand funding and thousands of pounds will be pushed their way.
They are first and foremost ‘businesses’ and not very well run business in some cases. They no longer corner the market in providing the level of local news real people want to read about, that’s moved quickly across to new local community publishers often ex local press staff and commercial people who have recognised what the big groups are no longer doing and doing it themselves.While they’re busy building up the free to view online numbers which still isn’t paying for itself and chasing likes and clicks the small local operations are out and about in their own communities reporting the news.
Whatever reason, excuse or sob story these people are trotting out to be given hand outs should be ignored, yes courts need covering but if you’re in the news business cut your cloth and reformat your business accordingly so you can provide it, either that or step aside and let others do it for you
The arrogance and expectancy that outside forces will prop their businesses up beggars belief or really does
Report this comment
cheeky beggar. Using tax papers money to subsidise newspapers and webs, and pretty poor quality ones at that.
Report this comment
News organisations are not charities, they are businesses. They pay dividends to shareholders. They should not be propped up by taxpayers, that would skew competition – be that hyperlocals or agencies. The fact that Big News has chosen to abandon the court reporting is their decision, they clearly did not believe it was wanted by the public or important enough to cover.
Report this comment
If Toby thinks £2m can pay for 75 journalists, by my maths that equals £26,666 per reporter which I believe most Newsquest reporters are currently paid nowhere near. So will Toby commit to paying all his reporters this sum? In many places, Newsquest pays only marginally more than the official minimum of £22,000 (and £24,000 in London) for its LDR reporters over two years into the scheme, yet receives £35,000 for each of these roles in funding from the BBC. The big publishers are still working on a 20%+ profit margin so isn’t it important that public money does not go into the pockets of shareholders without stringent checks and accountability if the public is to pay for court reporters who typically generate big digital numbers? It should be pointed out that Newsquest newsrooms are already dominated by reporters who are not funding wholly or in part by the company – LDRs, Facebook and apprentices. These are welcome and important additions after 12 years of relentless redundancies, but at some point Newsquest will need to own up to its responsibilities and properly fund journalism it makes money on, itself.
Report this comment
“ Demands”
When you see how publishers waste their “dwindling resources” on far too many unproductive commercial managers, top heavy sports departments and content positions( certainly where I am in the east) it’s not difficult to see where savings could be made and resources better used.
Managers in name alone, managing other managers and producing nothing of value, ad reps given fancy titles along with cars,laptops,mobiles and expenses yet still underperforming month after month,sports reporters lifting story leads from other media and hosting amateur hour podcasts with views and comments far better suited to a limited audience on social media,trainers trained in radio who still trot out tired outdated theory in a completely changed commercial environment and directors racking up costs and expenses which are wholly unnecessary are just the tip of the iceberg and if cut would return substantial cost savings, money which could then be better used in employing professional journalists/court reporters.
Instead of making demands and crying “dwindling resources” take a look at who’s doing what in your organisations and shuffle the pack accordingly, it’s not hard and it’s a basic business management practice ,something journalists finding themselves promoted into senior company positions seem unable to understand.
It’s your business no one else’s, you stand or fall by your relevance and how you manage costs and resources so own it without expecting;the tax paying public, to bale you out!
Report this comment
“ dedicated trained and qualified professional reporters covering the big court stories.”
Remember those?
They were the first to go when years of bad management resulted in immediate knee jerk cost savings to be made.
Sorry, you made your bed, now lay on it
Report this comment
@Chris Morley
The pay would still be around £22k the rest would be spent on sundries such as employers’ pension contribution etc etc.
But here is another point, Granville wants a super hub of trainee reporters in Bournemouth – how very nice… that’s in NQ’s back yard. all those trainees busy providing free copy for the Bournemouth and Dorset Echo.
It’s time that Facebook, Google and the BBC put money into the hyperlocals. These are the future of local news and they need the help to grow. They are not greedy, different news online models can be tried, and the money they make wilk within their local communities, not to shareholders and distant senior managers.
It’s time Big News was broken up.
Report this comment
*will*
Report this comment
Percy
I feel we are already seeing the early rounds in the gradual break up of the main competitors in the regional media knockout contest.
So far this year we have heard about Archant taking on Reach and JPI in their own backyards by opening competitor websites and weeklies as well as NQ and JPI going toe to toe against one another.Add this infighting and border crashing to the growing list of well produced and popular hyper local publications already taking the local reader and advertising markets and a much changed local media landscape could well be emerging.
The days of the once dominant dinosaur groups look to be coming to an end.
Report this comment
The morality of Mr Granville’s appeal aside, I’d be very wary of taking the bucket back to the well of licence payers’ money when the LDR scheme has been very far from a success.The LDR scheme was, fundamentally, a public relations exercise by the BBC to make itself look slightly less monopolistic, which did nothing for either its public image or its popularity with the right-wingers who have since become the government, and served only to prop up ailing regional newspaper groups which deserve to fail. No one comes out of this with their professional dignity unscathed. We could well see the licence fee scrapped within the lifetime of this Parliament, and if that happens I wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss for the chances of Big News hanging on to the LDRs if it actually found itself having to pay them out of its own pocket, and that goes for any court reporting scheme too.
Report this comment
It’s a long time since I read so much common sense on the HTPF pages. All excellent, well thought-out. constructive comment.
Report this comment
Exactly what @Annon said
When the main regional groups chose to sacrifice well connected experienced journalists and professional photographers for copy and paste social media copy and pastes accompanied by iPhone grabs to save a few salaries and reduce FTEs you can’t be surprised when the end product is affected and sales and company revenues finances and profits take a downward turn.
If that’s been your chosen policy for the last decade or so then fine, just don’t expect the public to bale you out now things are going pear shaped and the poor decisions from the past are coming back to bite you in the nether regions now.
Your problem, no one else’s,down to you to sort
Report this comment