It has been hard to feel very positive about the prospects for local and regional journalism in England and the rest of the UK in recent years. The state of the sector by almost any metric you can find is one of consistent decline in the past decade and a half — in audience reach and use, overall financial health, number of titles serving cities, towns and regions and the impact this has had on the number of journalists and other skills employed by the sector.
Stark statistics include a 70% drop in advertising revenues for local news publishers in the last decade (2010-2019), a more than halving of adults using local and regional print titles from 2018-2024 and a significant drop in the number of print titles serving local communities. It’s estimated that UK print titles dropped below 1,000 last decade (from over 1,300 in the late 2000s). The Public Interest News Foundation (PINF), a charity representing independent news providers, estimates there are just shy of 1,200 local news outlets currently in the UK, stretching across print and online titles.
News deserts
A particularly worrying trend that has emerged from this decline identified and tracked by PINF is the growth of ‘news deserts’ — areas and districts which lack any coverage from a local news outlet. PINF’s most recent Local News Map published last spring found that 4.7m people in the UK live in a news desert — around 7% of the overall population.
This bleak picture has been recognised for some time by both central and local government. A report by the House of Lords communications and digital committee last November warned that without intervention, there was a “realistic possibility of the UK’s news environment fracturing irreparably along social, regional and economic lines within the next 5—10 years. The implications for our society and democracy would be grim”.
The report identified that the decline of local news risks undermining local democracy with reduced coverage of local institutions leading to “falling civic engagement and lower voter turnout” — and that this was particularly pertinent given the devolution of power driven by successive governments. And local journalism allows a two-way conversation between leaders and the public which is “particularly important in times of political tension, crisis or war” the report states. The widespread anti-immigration riots which took place across the UK last summer — fuelled by misinformation spread on social media platforms — were a stark reminder of this.
Philanthropy & government support
Given its wider societal importance, could government support and incentives or private sector philanthropy be one way to revive local journalism? There is certainly no end of ideas where public and private intervention could play a part to address a failing market — these range from innovation funds and grants to tax breaks for hiring staff, publicly funded training schemes and guaranteeing a proportion of government and public body advertising to reputable local news outlets. On the private sector side, there is also inspiration from the US where very significant grants are handed out to media organisations — one coalition of funders, Press Forward, launched in 2023 committing to handing out $500m investment to local media.
There have been signs that philanthropy as well as the idea of support is building some momentum. An online newspaper, Guildford Dragon News, was granted charitable status last year by demonstrating it delivers ‘public interest news’ and there are a growing band of new local titles that have established themselves as community interest companies.
And in London — impacted by the effective closure of the Evening Standard as a news title — a meeting was held late last year between independent news outlets with representatives from the DCMS and City Hall to discuss what could be done to support the struggling news sector in the capital. The group is committing to meet again to further concrete ideas in this space and a spokesman for Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “determined that local media continues to provide a vital service for communities and holds local government and other organisations to account on decisions affecting residents”.
And one of the organisers of the meeting, Tabitha Stapely, who founded the Social Streets media organisation which has established news outlets in East London said a potential next step from the meeting would be for publishers to work more closely with councils: “I think that might be quite key because local news is very much about working with local authorities.”
However, speaking to a cross section of a new breed of entrepreneurs who are aiming to revive high quality local journalism from the ground-up and it’s clear their focus is not on receiving hand-outs but on creating new sustainable business models.
New business models
A poster child for this is Mill Media which has attracted considerable media attention in the last year. Founded by Joshi Herrmann in 2020, its mission is to lead a “renaissance in high-quality journalism across the UK”. The business has titles in six cities — Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow and, most recently, in London — and is attracting a growing number of paying subscribers eager for longer form features and investigations. Speaking to the Media Confidential podcast last year, Herrmann was concentrating on making a success of his commercial model, rather than seeking local or central government support.
Other titles have adopted a similar reader-supported model — such as the Bristol Cable, the Leicester Gazette and a new crop of titles emerging in London serving specific boroughs. This movement is also a reaction to many established local and regional news websites losing touch with their audiences by chasing volume of traffic over relevant and engaging content. The result is sites with poor usability due to multiple adverts — including pop-ups — that feel increasingly distant from the needs and interests of their audience. By adopting a reader-first approach, new titles can charge for some of their content and, in time, build advertiser interest as well.
Ad revenue
Social Street’s Stapely says reader contributions are her primary income stream but that “the most interesting element of fixing media” is in the advertising space. This is the area that has been particularly disrupted by big tech such as Google and Facebook.
Stapely is working on an advertising model aimed at smaller and medium-sized local businesses with limited marketing budgets who can become members of local media outlets as organisations rather than readers. This membership will then offer them opportunities to promote their products or services. “... For me, it’s really important that the local economy isn’t kept out of the solution for local journalism because they benefit from it as well,” she says.
Other publishers are also focused on establishing flourishing advertising models suited to local media. One example is SoPublishing who claim their SoGlos digital publication — the content is mainly a mix of lifestyle and business articles - is Gloucestershire’s leading media brand. The site is primarily advertising funded through a mixture of display and native advertising which they work together with clients to create. They also run two local awards events. Chief Executive Michelle Fyrne is optimistic about the future of this model and they are looking to expand as a business beyond Gloucestershire to other areas in the South West. “Funding through advertising and sponsorship is something that’s a proven sustainable revenue stream for us. It is definitely where we see our future,” she says.
Fyrne stresses that their advertising model does not sacrifice user quality experience and advertisers are carefully selected — they don’t have “adverts for earwax solutions or the secrets to a flat tummy” and there are “absolutely no pop-up ads, no intrusive questionnaires to fill out”.
A new start-up in East Anglia, Ipswich.co.uk, is taking a similar advertising-led approach. Launched by Oliver Rouane-Williams in mid-2024, the site has quickly established an audience and is bringing in commercial partners.
Rouane-Williams sees this model as one more suited to less affluent areas where there is a smaller proportion of the community willing to pay for journalism. “The Mill are doing an incredible job of solving local journalism for the 10%... the small chunks of metropolitan cities and large towns... where the money exists amongst individuals that value that type of long form investigative journalism,” he says. His model is aimed at the remaining 90% of towns and cities such as “Ipswich, Reading or Preston”.
Speaking to this new breed of local media providers, there is a sense of optimism about the future — whether there is public or private support offered or not. As Stapely put it: “I think challenge only brings about creativity... The optimism is generally, we’ll get through this and we’ll find something that works.”
Ipswich.co.uk
Oliver Rouane-Williams quit a successful career in media at News UK and Newsquest to start a news outlet in Suffolk with a mixture of his own savings (as well as selling his car) and some investment. “I’ve effectively risked everything to start a local news brand which is... a slightly questionable life choice!” he said.
He launched the Ipswich news site in August 2024 and within just over six months, has established a significant audience — 73,000 visitors last month — a crop of new advertisers and is advertising to bring in new staff. Advertisers are local businesses and organisations which Rouane-Williams terms as ‘funding partners’. They have listed pages on the site but also partner directly with Ipswich.co.uk on editorial content. Rouane-Williams cites one example of a local law firm who are quoted responding to new legislation on property rents.
“We’re working with the people within these organisations to create genuine editorial content and in doing so, helping position the people in these organisations as trusted, local, credible experts.”
Rouane-Williams has plans to establish a media ecosystem which serves Ipswich and the surrounding areas — this could include a print presence as well as a physical presence in the town centre. “I think we’ve got half a chance,” he says.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
