As reported by the Newspaper Society: James Harding, BBC director of news and current affairs, told a local journalism conference in Salford this week: “The BBC is open and willing to see how we can work together.”
His comments follow a speech by Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield to the NS AGM last month in which he called for the BBC to provide access to its content for attribution and distribution by the local press and to buy in content from the local press for BBC regional services. “Put simply, we can provide more reach (and thus more public value) to BBC content through our websites, our papers, our routes to market, but still within a trusted regulated environment, than they can through their sub-scale [BBC local] sites... They can keep their regional brands – Look North, BBC North West et al – but close their underperforming local websites and work with us, rather than against us, as we become their local media distribution partner and fully utilise our own, highly trafficked, rapidly growing, hyper local sites.”
Harding said he thought the differences between the BBC and local press had been overdone. “Whether we are in local journalism for profit or to fulfil a public service remit, paid for by advertising or cover price, subscription or the licence fee, our starting point is the same – the belief that nothing is more important in news than informing people of what’s going on where they live and where they work. If all politics is local, then so, by definition, is news.”
He also believed “the pessimism around local journalism is overdone. All around us, we see outstanding reporting, brilliant innovation and smart investments reinventing the business of local journalism.”
“The BBC has a very real stake in the success of the local and regional news business,”said Harding. The purpose of the conference was “to understand each other better, to see if and where we can help each other and, if possible, to find common cause.
“And, the fact is, it’s already happening. We are doing real work together. We are tackling the old bugbear of ensuring the BBC credits other news organisations for their stories. In my meetings with the regional press from Kent to Yorkshire to Gloucestershire, people say that there’s been a marked improvement on that front – and, yes, there’s still a way to go.”
A BBC pilot in Leeds was exploring how the BBC online could make more use of local newspapers' stories and digital content. There was collaboration with citizen journalism teams such as the Real Whitby. In Birmingham, the BBC had been trying to make BBC video and audio content available to local newspaper websites “extending both our reach as well as their dwell time and comprehensive coverage of particular stories.” The BBC and Glasgow 2014 would be allowing other news organisations access to the Commonwealth Games footage.
“And we are, in good faith, in the market for experimenting, for trying out new ideas. So, when I was in Kent last month, Geraldine Allinson of the Kent Messenger Group asked whether local news groups provide certain programmes or information packages for use on the BBC’s regional and local outlets in much the same way the independent TV sector delivers programmes for BBC Current Affairs? And so we’re looking at whether we could do that for sports or court reporting. When I was in Leeds a couple of weeks ago, editors from the Yorkshire papers asked whether we might stream radio or distribute TV packages over regional and local news sites, extending our reach and your dwell time? Again, we’re looking to see if we can do just that.”
Harding said he had asked David Holdsworth to lead a working group to take forward these ideas.
“For our starting point is, I’m guessing, the same as yours: we are determined to keep on improving the local news services we deliver to audiences and licence fee payers. And I hope that today’s event can be the start of a meaningful effort - on all our parts – to drive the revival of local journalism in this country.”
The Revival of Local Journalism Conference in Salford on 25 June was hosted by the BBC and the Society of Editors.
