Red Faces at the Evening Post & The Decline of the Local Press

south west | media and culture | news report Thursday September 11, 2008 10:04 by MediaWatch - SouthWestWatch

SouthWestWatch - Like a News Hawk Hovering Over SW Life

SouthWestWatch - a mainline of gossip that pierces the heart of local news. This is from out MediaWatch desk, and there is trouble in the local press brewing.

There are many red faces at the Evening post building. In an article on Saturday entitled 'Ways to Frugal Living' the Post highlighted Bristol Freecycle;

Use Bristol Freecycle. Browse its web listings for free things offered or put in a request for something you need. Someone out there will be glad of your unwanted items, too. Go to: http://www.freecycle.org/group/US/Connecticut/Bristol

Can you spot the miskate? Yup, the Evening Post put the weblink for Bristol, Connecticut, USA and not the original Bristol, UK. While this is just a minor issue it does offer some insight in to the struggling local press industry - MediaWatch is pondering if the mistake is down to rushed journalists and inadequate copy-editing cover? The local press depend on ad revenues to survive and these are been eviscerated by outfits like Craiglist, Gumtree and Google. Each, in their own way, offers something local papers such as the Post can't - Craiglist is free, only charging for job ads, but in return the community of users police the content. Google offers targeted ads linked to searches, far less scatter-gun than a newspaper ad - and you only pay per click. Here are some figures that show the loss;

Since 1989, circulation is down 51% to 12,549 for the Birmingham Post; 49% to 70,028 for the Leicester Mercury; 43% to 50,256 for the Northern Echo; 62% to 32,874 for the Argus in Sussex; 38% to 38,844 for the Echo in Southend; 38% to 36,516 for the Herald in Plymouth; 49% to 20,976 for the Oldham Evening Chronicle; 46% to 19,956 for the Halifax Evening Courier. North, south, east, west, large, small, morning and evening, the story for Britain's local papers is one of unremitting gloom.

As one writer commented;

Cuts are clearly a big part of the story. But we need also to consider what Bob Franklin of Cardiff University's media school has called the McDonaldisation of journalism, delivering "predictable and standardised newspapers". As Franklin points out, "the local press is now virtually a tabloid press". ...Open any local paper now, whether you are in Bath or Barnsley, and you get the same diet of health, family, travel and consumer issues, plus human interest stories, all presented in the same way. Court cases and council meetings, once staple material for the local press, are largely ignored. Few papers convey any sense of covering local community life. The editorial agenda is often remarkably similar to that of the national redtops. For example, my local paper in Essex writes obsessively about the comedian Michael Barrymore who, though he lives locally in the house where a man mysteriously drowned in 2001, is hardly a local figure....The local papers' loss of locality is part of the same phenomenon that has created "clone towns" where high streets are dominated by chain stores and look the same from Cornwall to Cumbria. Locally owned papers have disappeared just like locally owned shops and restaurants: five publishing groups control about 80% of circulation.

You can read the full source here; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/25/pressandpub...shing - it is worth reading. However as the local media have declined alternative outlets (such as this one!) have taken up some of the slack of providing local news, but what model of local media may emerge as ad revenues continue to get squeezed is anyone's guess.

other recent SWwatch news items (we are thinking of getting a blog...)

More Trouble for Bristol Airport
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/688836

'Scuse Me Gov'nor, Could we 'ave our £22 million quid back?
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688786