'Carnage' in traditional media – bad news for pluralism, an opportunity for local volunteer publishing

The Guardian’s media guru Emily Bell has predicted five years of carnage in the UK media as the economic downturn bites.  Her lecture at Polis has set the media jelly quivering.  Of particular interest is her forecast that companies that have to return profit to UK shareholders wil sufer the most – only the BBC, The Guardian/Scott Trust and the deep pocketed international Murdoch regime will emerge unscathed.

“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.

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William Perrin

Founder of Talk About Local, Trustee of the Indigo Trust, member of UK Government transparency panels, former Policy Advisor to UK Prime Minister, former Cabinet Office senior civil servant.Open data do-er, Kings Cross London blogger. Loves countryside. Two kids, not enough sleep.

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