The government said of the IFNC that:

‘…They will be able to deliver a broader local and regional news offering through multi-platform delivery. A contestable selection process will extend the base of content providers and increase the scope of innovation, quality and journalistic diversity.’

As a member of the selection panel comprising people from the full breadth of the media industry, I was delighted (and a bit surprised) to see traditional newspaper publishers, TV and radio companies making a big effort to understand hyperlocal publishing, the motivations of the people who do it and the contribution to the news process.
The winners are large media groups that demonstrate a good understanding of the potential for bottom up, grass roots hyperlocal news in the future news environment.  Each of the awards will emerge differently but we should see a far greater inclusion of hyperlocal sites in the local news ecology and thus an enhanced local (as opposed to just regional) news service and greater plurality all around. The IFNC process should give hyperlocal publishers a seat at the table, in many cases for the first time.  The public should see better telly, better papers (better radio in some cases) and better local internet.

The challenge for the IFNC bidders is to use the space the IFNC subsidy and cross media freedom gives them to understand, manage and harness the radical cross platform changes happening to local news – some outlined brilliantly by Alan Rusbridger in his Cudlipp lecture.  Whatever government the nation has after the impending general election this learning of how change works in practice will be vital to the future health of our media.

These are my personal views reflecting on the process today – for the definitive statement please see the government’s statement on the DCMS website.

Of all the pieces written the best was this by Stephen Moss – he starts to get under the skin of what can be done locally and doesn’t have rose tinted view of local papers.  Moss suggests that if in his case study, Long Eaton people who can write and create a website can link up with people who hunt out content then:

‘I’m convinced the town would have a journalistic vehicle far more powerful than the old stripped-down, clapped-out Long Eaton Advertiser. Local advertisers and well-wishers would flock to it; maybe the government could start an Arts Council-type fund to facilitate local news-gathering. And then Long Eaton could say it was in at the rebirth not just of local journalism, but of a revitalised civic life.’

There have been many media transitions before, this is just another one. The transitions from print to radio in the 1930s, from radio to TV in the 1950s-70s and from static to rolling news in the 1990s.  In no case did the preceding media disappear, it just adapted and learned to live alongside the new medium that eventually stole much of the limelight.  People thrived who adapted their skills from one medium to the next.  The world did not end, it just changed.  Along the way the odd publication fell – the Picture Post had little place in a TV age.  That is where we are now, publications whose model is from a previous media age are suffering – and the new media are exposing the weirdness of older business practices, such as the curious complicity of the Lobby.

Public sector intervention in the market must leave editorial neutral – it is hard to see how paying money to newspapers can be done neutrally, whether through advertising or grant.  Polly Toynbee’s piece on this was worrying. The big, unspoken threat to local pluralism and democratic voice now is local papers becoming even more dependent upon revenue from local authorities – they are already dangerously dependent upon council advertising for say street works etc.  It is likely that even this local revenue stream will soon shift to the internet, as the official notices in the wonderfully semantic  London Gazette have.  Councils striving the meet the new National Indicators for empowerment and popular perception of their services, measured by survey will be tempted to splurge on paid for editorial, many are running their own papers already.  This is bad for democracy.  Ian Jack’s piece here captures nicely the democratic tensions that are emerging:

‘Local newspapers often reproduce the press releases of local authorities unchecked and unchallenged as the cheapest way to acknowledge new information; written by former local journalists, its style fits perfectly with the paper’s. Journalism is quietly migrating with journalists to the public sector, enabling (according to the NUJ) newspaper owners to make even bigger cuts. Slattery quotes an NUJ official, Miles Barter, wondering why “the poor council taxpayers of Burnley and Accrington” should subsidise the shareholders of newspaper chains such as Johnston Press and Newsquest.‘

Deep dive investigative reporting will change to a new distributed model reflecting wider internet practice.  A journalist or a team cross subsidised by the clothing ads in the celebrity section will fade out further.   Long burn investigative stories will be done via collaborative online networks maybe in different countries. The Sunlight Foundation work on collaborative investigations is an early indicator – pile the data up and then everyone can have a go at investigating.  Why can’t analysis of 1.5million MPs expense forms be outsourced to India? The hair splittingly detailed work of bloggers during the US election points the way.  As the pockets of new media outlets deepen they may subsidise some investigative work, in much the way that brash new TV channels rarely do public service at launch but come around to it later.

Broadcast television companies and people are not well suited to the grass roots web and hyperlocal stuff. The recent angst by the print media has obscured continuing distress about ‘local’ TV news.  Video is a helpful adjunct to local news and campaigning but mixed media web environment allows you to see that for the majority of stuff video is too time consuming – text and photos rule.   But watching the telly people on the local news front is a bit like disco dad on the dancefloor.  In the UK the ‘balance’ criteria on TV news aren’t well suited to hyperlocal reporting.  BBCAction network and then their very odd, rejected local video proposals all suffered from  top down control, rather than bottom up empowerment.  ITV has never recovered its online momentum after buying Friendsreunited at precisely the wrong time.  For telly, it seems very hard to unlearn a lifetime of increasing ‘production values’ and bureaucratic overhead of broadcast news, with intrinsic high costs.

One of the reasons i am working with 4IP is that they can see the weaknesses of the traditional telly model.  The web is about Dogme video at most – the evolution of dance has v low production values but several hundred million views.  If you see someone approaching video for a website with an HD camera and a lighting rig, they are probably the wrong person.

And i did all this without mentioning Clay Shirky.  More to follow on advertising.

‘The next generation of local (news) won’t be about news organizations but about their communities. News is just one of the community’s needs. It also needs elegant organization. News companies and networks can help provide that. The bigger goal is to provide platforms that enable communities to do what they want to do, share what they want to share, know what they need to know together. News will become a product of the community as much as it is a service to it.’

‘The heart of the work of local news organizations will be beats. Dogging a beat with reporting is the unique value a news organization can contribute to the press-sphere. Those beats will surely include local government but likely should not include areas that are not local, like science or movies. Beat reporters will not just be producing stories. They will open the process of news in blogs. They will work collaboratively with experts, bloggers, and people in the community (see: Jay Rosen’s beatblogging).’

We are doing a lot of this in Kings Cross, although we are volunteer driven and have no background in trad. media production, so it always seems odd to see someone writing about this as if it were revelatory.

These Facebook groups can work powerfully with hyper or ultra local sites to cross over content and messages. I set up I Love Kings Cross as an experimental sideline to my Kings Cross community site.  The 160 odd people in the Facebook group are about 75% different to the 140-odd people who sign up to my Feedburner emails from the community site.

You can see examples everywhere – even in a town as proud of its old world traditions as Barnsley in Yorkshire has several thousand people in local groups

Some good local campaigns run in Facebook too, despite its many limitations.  In Birmingham’s Sandwell a local mum has set up a Facebook campaign to stop people dogging in a local beauty spot:

‘Reports of Dogging, Drug Dealing and Networking Homosexuals abusing the area for their antisocial behaviour. If I can get enough people to join this group I will use it to the local Councillor to help clean the place up and drive these animals away so that children and families can start reusing the area for it’s proper purpose’

In Scarborough in Yorkshire a local woman has set up a Facebook campaign about the proliferation of new traffic lights in the town centre.

‘… after dark .. .when everyone is asleep … the traffic lights in Scarborough have been getting together and mating .. resulting in EVEN MORE traffic lights. Surely this is the reason for the growing traffic light community, and surely the Council can’t be blamed for tearing up every roundabout and replacing it with yet more traffic slowing lights! I’m sure that if all the traffic lights in town are counted, and then divided by the towns population, we’ll have three each !!!!’

This group, now 1,900 strong crossed over into a local newspaper and an 800 signature petition to the council.  Google doesn’t turn up much hyperlocal community activity online outside Facebook in Scarborough. There are also a range of affinity groups for Scarborough – the biggest with 16,000 members.

Facebook simply reduces the sunstantial communication and time barriers to forming local groups.  Of course, Facebook is so yesterday for many of the digerati as they tweet away to each other and build new hyperlocal platforms.  But they could do well to follow Terry Leahy’s old axiom and follow the customer.  In real communities on the ground, people without the skills to build a better online pesence continue to vote with their feet for Facebook to find their ultra or hyperlocal voice.

Jo Geary in Birmingham writes about the thorny subject of whether you need to be a journalist to write publicly about stuff that is happening in your patch:

‘The world does not need journalists to communicate the vast majority of information that is defined as news.’

‘Most of the news that comes out of media organisations on a daily basis is information that others either WANT people to know or HAVE to admit to. It is just re-written or re-presented in a format that fits that platform.’

“So, instead of journos, the world needs the generators of this information to communicate it better and to allow for redress to what they say.”

Jeff Jarvies in New York writes about an exercise he ran at a conference to scale a news organisation purely for the web, without the hangover of industrial era production systems:

‘So I proposed a problem to solve: What if a city, say Philadelphia, loses its paper tomorrow. What would you build in its place to serve the community? The group went to town. Rather than trying to hack at the old, they build something new.’

‘They calculated the likely revenue Philadelphia could support online and then figured out what they could afford in staffing. Instead of the 200-300-person newsroom that has existed in print, they decided they could afford 35 and they broke that down to include a new job description: “community managers who do outreach, mediation, social media evangelism.” They settled on three of those plus 20 content creators, two programmers, three designers, five producers (I think they were a bit heavy on those two), and — get this — only three editors. ‘

These are the realities for people who publish volunteer community sites, but it’s nice to see some wider recognition.

‘We’re giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs.

If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information, we’d like to see it! You have the opportunity to win funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech, and community-oriented people who want to improve the world.

There are three rules to follow to apply to the 2008-09 Knight News Challenge:

Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base.

Serve the public interest.

Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

Get support for your application before you submit: The brand-new News Challenge Garage is a coaching and mentoring site for prospective applicants to talk with mentors and peers, check out previous winners’ applications and improve your application before you submit.

Applications for the 2008-09 cycle will be taken starting September 2, 2008 and close on November 1, 2008.’

 

“We could face complete market failure in some areas of regional papers and some areas of commercial radio,”

This is bad but predictable news for local democracy in the UK – we need plural local news so that we know what our elected representatives are getting up to and to rally neighbourhoods in local campaigns.  The best way to combat this is to empower communities and neighbourhoods to publish themselves online in their own voice.  The sort of thing we see in Birmingham, Parwich and Kings Cross.

‘Chief among these are the scrapping of local news bulletins between 11am and 3pm, to be replaced with a national news bulletin, and the outsourcing of its travel news.

‘Granted, this will save money. It’s also so short-sighted it’s beyond belief. By consolidating assorted operations, Global is slowly, bit-by-bit, taking away every last remnant of what makes local radio stations unique.

This is a real world example of the generic trend i wrote about here – commercial ‘local’ media can’t afford to remain local.  This is a threat to local voice and democratic expression.  Free or cheap modern digital media such wordpress driven by community organiser volunteers who anyway have a burning need to communicate seem the only hope for true local media.

‘It also suggests that creating video blogs and online diaries should be part of the school curriculum, used by schools in the same way that they organise museum trips or extra art classes.’

This notion is at the heart of this discussion around ultra or hyperlocal voice – give people some very simple online publishing skills and communities can find the most effective voice they have ever had.  The Demos report ‘Video Republic’ by Celia Hannon and Charlie TImms is mainly about YouTube and other video publishing platforms.

“It’s now as normal for teenagers to write a blog as it is to write a diary – that’s a massive shift,” said Celia Hannon, a researcher with Demos and the lead author of the report.
“Youngsters are working out their relationship to the outside world and forging an identity.”
The report makes recommendations to help adults cope with the changing online environment, and calls particularly on schools to help youngsters understand the long-term implications of living their lives in a semi-public way.

“Schools, universities and businesses should prepare young people for an era where CVs may well be obsolete, enabling them to manage their online reputation,” says the report. “This generation of young people are guineapigs … we need an educational response that extends beyond the focus of safety, towards broader questions of privacy and intellectual property.”

‘As young people experiment with taking on powerful roles as reporters, distributors, commentators and artists, they are increasingly plotting their ‘route around’ existing political and cultural institutions. This poses a profound challenge to decision-makers, but it also creates opportunities. For European democracies starved of legitimacy, it could open up new channels for democratic expression and participation.’