R.I.P. This site now dead of embarrassment

This blogging business is harder than I thought. Since it’s not been updated for ages through a combination of being too busy working, and too lazy when not working, it is now at peace.

I will return to blogging in when I’ve got the time to do it, and something worth saying, and will do it under my own name.

We wish both of our readers all the best for the future.

Northcliffe to launch ten “hyperlocal” sites in Bristol area

Northcliffe, one of the UK’s main regional press conglomerates has announced it is to launch a network of “hyperlocal” news websites.

The company, part of the Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) empire, and which owns the Evening Post, Western Daily Press and Venue locally, says that the new sites aim to combine citizen journalism, blogging and facebook-style networking.

So that explains what that job ad (see below) was all about then.

The first 30 sites are due to go live next month. They will mainly be concentrated in South West England, with ten of them being in the Bristol area.

The project is the brainchild of Associated Northcliffe Digital, the new media arm of DMGT, which operates Northcliffe’s thisis newspaper websites as well as the Daily Mail website, jobsite.co.uk, findaproperty.com, the sites for the Evening Standard, Metro and many more.

According to a report on Journalism.co.uk the project will be run initially as a six-month trial and will enable users to network, blog and write their local news.

Seamus McCauley, strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital, told an audience at City University: “There is a real fear in the journalism industry about the future of local newsgathering. This at the moment is our hope for the answer.

“In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity.”

“To make this work it’s crucial to have people on the ground who can find, generate and curate the content.”

The temptation for cynical journalists is to think that this is big business aiming to get lots of interesting content for free, by enlisting wannabe journalists in every community and keeping them sweet with the prospect of seeing their picture-byline on the web and the invitation to the occasional awayday and awards dinner.

It’s also the case that when the Post experimented with neighbourhood news pages written by amateurs back in the 1990s it was stiflingly dull.

However, let’s keep an open mind until the thing actually launches? It can’t be any more embarrassing than the Post’s Crackerjack listings site.

Seamus McCauley, meanwhile, has a blog here which suggests he’s not the usual Northcliffe corporate dimwit.

Any takers?

Got this yesterday. Any takers?

Greetings all, I work for the BBC in Bristol and have followed this debate with some interest.

I wondered if you Felix, or Chris or the Bristolblogger would like to drop me a line – dickon.hooper@bbc.co.uk?

I’m putting together a piece about blogging and its effect on politics for TV, and thought you might be interested in taking part?

Best to all. Dickon

Is money necessary?

We talked for a while there about a group of neighbourhood news websites all feeding into a city-wide news site.

The problem with this is that it’s going to take time to get it going, and unless it’s a voluntary effort with all the hazards, meetings, personality clashes etc. that go with running a voluntary group, it’s going to need some sort of funding/start-up capital, a business plan and all the rest.

Nothing wrong with any of that, but is there a way that:

- something could be started much sooner
- and which doesn’t require much money?

Over the years I’ve seen a loads of local web-based enterprises that aimed to make a profit come and go. They fail for one or more of several reasons – they don’t really know what they’re doing, don’t invest in the right people and kit. A lot used to flop because nobody thought about how to provide the content. Others fail because:

- Their management is corporate, driven by revenue targets, rather than a passionate desire to serve and interact with users. Most users, no matter how apolitical, can see through this.

- Their management is bureaucratic and/or run by people who don’t really understand how others use the net. They are slow to change and adapt. A local news website run by two dedicated individuals who love what they’re doing and treat users as friends will beat one run by ten ITV, BBC, Northcliffe, etc. employees in the long run.

All other things being equal, a nimble independent organisation always trumps a lumbering corporate hierarchy, particularly one which treats  users merely as a source of revenue or free content.

Maybe if you want to create something sustainable on the web, and win the trust of users, you should start by forgetting about money. They money might come later, but to begin with, you accept that you’re doing it for love.

So how would it be if something was started right away to “aggregate” the local news that is already out there from all sources.
- Local blogs
- Local mainstream media, but only where they’ve actually done some work.
- No recycled press releases, but what you CAN do is link straight to the press releases from BCC, police, etc. Obviously you can also stick a big health warning on the link.

If this was me (and it won’t be unless the recession gets worse and I find myself even more idle than currently) I’d update it daily with four or five headline stories re-written briefly, each linking to its blog, newspaper or press release source.

In due course you could of course start researching and writing your own stories from our own correspondent.

You’d write the whole thing in classic newspaper style and keep everything politically neutral to maximise readership and trust.

What you would then do, perhaps with the help of various other like-minded locals, is build up various ancillary resources which would be available to the public. For instance:

- A directory of prominent local people – councillors, council officers, charity bosses, business leaders, media and arts people and other public figures (especially those who shy away from the limelight) – giving biographical information, contact details etc. Maybe using wiki tech and with Wikipedia-style rules.
- A theyworkforyou.com-type record on local councillors’ attendance, voting records, performance.
- Detailed audits of major (and eventually minor) local firms, from their industrial relations through to environmental records and more. There is a hell of a lot out in the private sector that we never hear about. Who even knew that Raytheon had offices in Bristol until protestors climbed onto their roofs?

A lot of this information is already out there, but what you’d be doing it putting into an accessible and (hopefully) trusted form.

Talk of the devil …

Someone’s looking to hire two “Community Editors” to “help us manage a new network of local sites we’re launching in the Bristol area in June. Each community editor will manage about a dozen websites and hundreds of local contributors.”

Ad here if you want to apply:

http://jobs.thisisbristol.co.uk/cgi-bin/vacdetails.pl?selection=931859800&src=search

Hmmm. Public/voluntary sector? Another effort from Northcliffe (constipated middle-aged advertising salesmen (and women) dreaming of readable content from public, and no need to pay journalists)? Or some enterprising newcomer?

OK, here’s one plan:

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying I’d want to be involved in anything like this as I hope to be too busy. As before, this is just something for discussion.)

Say you’re an unemployed journalist, or a would-be journalist, or a recently retired journalist. Here’s one option:

You start a newsletter for your neighbourhood, an area between the size of one and two council wards, say.

It’s probably A5 mono, printed as cheaply as possible and you bring it out quarterly or even monthly. It contains:

- Neighbourhood news; the planning applications, the campaign for a pedestrian crossing on the high street, the hypodermic needles in the park, the triumphs of the local school, all that bread-and-butter hyper-local stuff.

- The what’s on pages – the am dram in the parish hall, the pub quizzes, the lectures, etc.

- A couple of people profiles, local characters, or some favoured advertisers.

- Maybe a local history/nostalgia section. Also something on local nature/wildlife.

The whole thing to be handed out free, and financed by adverts from the local pubs, take-aways, shops, plumbers, decorators etc.

This won’t make you rich, but then it’s not a full-time job, unless you want it to be. You’ll probably have to stick a grand or two in before it starts to come good. But it’d keep you involved in your community. Also (the clever bit for pensioners), if you deliver it personally to every home, you get plenty of nice healthy exercise.

So far, so unoriginal, but it’s a viable option, especially if you live in a neighbourhood with a fairly settled population.

But now, how about we cut out the printer and the healthy exercise? You start a neighbourhood news website with:

- Similar content to above. Except you update it at least twice a week.

- And the all-important discussion board. Tell everyone to keep it polite.

- You also get visitors to subscribe to your mailing list, which sends out the Brislington Bugle before it appears on the site. My guess is that with a little showmanship and commitment, you could easily get a quarter of all the households in your area subscribing within 18 months.

- This also means you have two things to offer your advertisers; the website, and a line or two in the mail-out about, say, special offers or sales they’ve got on.

And now … Imagine that there are several of these neighbourhood sites right across the city. Imagine they’re being made by a collection of professional journalists and experienced bloggers. These people won’t just come across neighbourhood news. They’ll also be covering news that affects wider areas or the whole city.

And then how would it be if a dozen or so of these people – responsible adults with a huge amount of knowledge about the city and its workings and a commitment to accuracy – were also feeding material into a bigger, city-wide news website?

Historical interlude

The early 1930s saw a big circulation war between two national press barons, Viscount Camrose (Daily Telegraph) and Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail). Both owned papers in Bristol, but they did a deal whereby Rothermere pulled out of Newcastle, leaving that city free for Camrose, and Camrose pulled out of Bristol, leaving the field free for Rothermere.

According to local legend, Bristolians were outraged that two aristocrats (and historically, Bristol has never liked aristocrats; our local big-shots are merchants and businessmen, not toffs) should determine what they should and shouldn’t read. They got together, raised the money – the first directors of the firm all had Bristol addresses – and so the Evening Post came into being.

It genuinely was The Paper All Bristol Asked For And Helped To Create, and its readers and staff took a fierce pride in that.

In 1999 the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) bought Bristol United Press, which had long since absorbed the Western Daily Press as well, for £121.5m. The newspaper founded to chase Rothermere out of town was bought by his descendants anyway.

One non-executive member of the BUP board resigned. According to the Financial Times, Giles Clarke resigned for personal reasons, but according to local rumour (and the London Evening Standard), it was because this proud local firm had lost its independence.

This wouldn’t be surprising. Clarke can trace his Bristolian roots back several generations. His father Charles founded leading local law firm Osborne Clarke.

Giles Clarke is someone you’ll know about if you’re a cricket fan as he’s chair of the ECB and a major Somerset fan. I’ve never met him; he guards his privacy closely, but by all accounts he’s quite a character. Born 1953, graduated Oriel College Oxford with an MA in Persian, claims to have funded his studies by gambling. Made his money in Majestic Wine, then Pet City and a host of other ventures.

He is also Junior Warden of the Society of Merchant Venturers, which brings us to the real hub of the issue here. You see, much of the cash and boardroom personnel for the Evening Post back in the 1930s came from the Venturers.Until 1999 the Evening Post was embedded in the local establishment in a way which often made it appear ridiculously parochial, complacent and out-of-touch. There were times when it seemed to have a news agenda handed down from the Old Boy Network, such as its absurd 1990s campaign to keep the Lord Mayor’s coach and horses. Back in the day, the Post was rooted in Bristol and served Bristol, but first and foremost it served the local establishment. Now it tries to serve shareholders.

It’s become a knee-jerk reaction among many people locally to condemn the Post for being “owned by the Daily Mail” and to yearn for the days when the paper was independent and locally-owned. But don’t let nostalgia or politics get in the way of remembering what a dull, silly paper it could sometimes be.

Then again, if you were choosing between the two evils, give me the Merchant Venturers over a bunch of hedge funds, some raving right-wing Home Counties pensioners and an aristocrat any day. At least you know who the Venturers are, and can track their business interests.

With all their cash, I wonder if they’ve considered setting up a new local media organisation?

What? What?! What!??? Stop looking at me like that. It was only a joke. Serious debate resumes next week. Happy Easter.

The trouble with paper

There’s an awful lot being said at the moment about the death of newspapers in general and the death of regional and local newspapers in particular.

For anyone working in local journalism, none of this is new. The circulation figures of local papers have been falling for three decades.

A generation ago, the Bristol Evening Post would sell maybe 120,000 copies on a good day – that was the equivalent of one for every single household in the city! Now it’s a good day if the Post hits 50,000 sales.

But that’s not why the Post and the Western Daily Press sacked almost a third of their journalists and admin staff recently.

For many years, the local papers were protected from the decline in sales by the big fat cushion of advertising.

The big regional newspaper groups – Northcliffe, Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press – have all deliberately followed strategies in recent years of building local monopolies. That way, no other firm was getting any local advertising spend, and they could charge whatever rates they thought they could get away with.

Local journalists are being sacked now – Northcliffe recently got rid of almost 1,000 across the whole country – because the advertising which allowed them to safely ignore declining sales for years, is drifting away. This is a process which recession has only accelerated.

The papers made their biggest money from three things – house ads, job ads and car ads. That advertising is now going off to the web, and it’s never coming back. Consider: you want to buy or rent a house. Do you:

a) Pay 37p for the local rag and struggle through pages and pages of adverts looking for the sort of places that might be of interest, or,

b) Go online for free, go to various specialist property websites, tap in the locations you want, the price you can afford and any other special requirements and wait a few seconds for the results?

Among journalists it’s usual to blame boardroom short-termism and greed for the catastrophe which now faces the industry. And it is true that the management tend to be over-promoted sales people rather than journalists, because they were the ones making all the money until recently.

It was huge amounts of money, too; the regional groups tried to run profit margins of between 20% and 30%. That is, about a quarter of all the money they handled was profit. The widely-loathed supermarkets, by comparison, operate on margins of well under 5%.

However, it is also true that the hacks took their eyes off the ball.

Back in the heyday of evening paper sales, the world was like this:

A working man would finish his day-shift at the factory. He would get on his bicycle to ride home. He would stop at the newsagents and buy a packet of cigarettes and the local evening paper, which he would then read at home while his missus cooked his tea.

The world is a completely different place now. Now there are no factories. The working man will drive home, he won’t stop at the newsagents because he can’t park there, and he doesn’t smoke anyway. And when he gets home it’s like as not his turn to make the tea because the partner (to whom he’s not necessarily married) works full-time as well.

And yet, the local papers still read like they do 30 years ago. The only difference is colour printing.

The tragedy is that most papers persist in thinking of their readers as being overwhelmingly white, working class and over the age of 50. And that tends to become self-fulfilling.

This doesn’t mean that local newspapers are completely doomed, but it does mean that they have to change as radically as our lifestyles have in the last 30-40 years. For example, it might mean focusing on a middle class readership (as they’re more likely to read papers in the first place and they’re desirable for niche advertisers), or it could mean using modern marketing techniques to focus your paper very precisely on the 10%-20% of local people who are active in civic life through volunteering, campaigning, politics and/or community work.

As a card-carrying, paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists I’m supposed to say that cuts in journalism and the death of local papers is bad for local democracy.

Well it is, but things have been pretty bad for a long time. Back in the bad old days, local hacks usually enjoyed a cosy relationship with councillors and council officials. It’s much more stand-offish now but the difference is that the potential corruption of the old boy network has been replaced by the potential corruption of press officers and lavishly-funded PR departments.

Just as the Evening Post and Western Daily sackings were being announced, Avon & Somerset Police were advertising for media relations officers. At salaries of between £27 and £29k. Nice work. Especially if you’re used to the sort of crap money that local papers pay. All of those posts could well be filled by some very happy ex-Post journalists.

Soon every ex-hack in town will be working in corporate or public sector PR, all of them competing to feed stories to an ever-dwindling number of journalists. This is bad because busy hacks are often put under pressure to cut and paste press releases into their copy. There was even one case recently where the Post ran yet another uncritical story about local creationist theme park Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm and forgot to remove the PR contact details at the bottom of the story.

Actually, the Post is absolutely not the worst offender here. The worst is BBC Bristol, where they have a huge newsroom and lots of resources, but every day serve up press releases from Bristol City Council, Avon and Somerset Police and Bristol University (in that order) as “news”. Bristol is very, very poorly served indeed by the BBC.

From the apostles of the new digital age we hear that bloggers will fill the gap, and they’ll actually hold power to account better than the old media. This may be true, but it hasn’t really happened yet.

In Bristol, a number of bloggers including James Barlow, Chris Hutt, the Bristol Blogger and a few others are doing a splendid job of probing into what exactly happens down the Council House.

But that’s just the Council House. Bristol City Council has a pretty good website which makes a lot of information freely available to those with the patience and persistence to grind through it. This is good for democracy, but while the Council is central to a great deal of what happens locally, it’s nowhere near the whole story.

So for example the South West Regional Development Agency’s workings and budgets remain as opaque as ever. It takes a lot more work to pin down the misdeeds of this vast, free-spending quango.

Or what about Bristol University, for example, an old, fabulously wealthy institution which owns some of the best real estate in the city, which employs 5,000 staff and has a turnover of £260m. Most of this is public money. This is not to suggest that anyone there is guilty of anything – aside from the occasional amusing act of idiocy by some drunken Hooray – but it would be bloody hard to find out if they were.

And that’s before we even begin to wonder about big business.

At the moment, it feels as though we’re in the worst of both worlds. Our local paper is being destroyed by historical forces, while a confident alternative is not yet in place.

Let’s ruminate on what this alternative should look like in the coming weeks.