The UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Left-Behind Neighbourhoods invited submissions of evidence to their Inquiry related to the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda and White Paper. We submitted the following evidence, and the forthcoming report of the Local News Plan Project:
Levelling Up and the responses to it omit a key factor – the death of local media
HMG’s Levelling Up agenda has stimulated significant discussion, scrutiny and analysis of factors affecting many dimensions of life in communities across the UK, and what needs concerted policy attention and funding. Just in the last few weeks, this has included, for example, recent reports from the British Academy and Power To Change and Local Trust on ‘social infrastructure’, and thinktanks both right- and left-of-centre, such as Onward and IPPR. Local high streets and the economies around them are in crisis. Research from the Good Things Foundation, furthermore, shows how far the UK has to go to bridge its digital divide. The Thriving Places Index uses a range of indicators to calculate wellbeing in each Local Authority area in England and Wales.
Over a similar timeframe, a range of inquiries and other processes have established conclusively that the UK’s once healthy and abundant media ecosystem is in an increasingly parlous state – especially at the local level. The Cairncross Review of 2018 triggered a wave of research and analysis into the decline of local media and its impact on democracy and participation in the UK, culminating in the recent DCMS Select Committee report into the sustainability of journalism. Similar processes have happened in Ireland, Canada, Australia, the USA, and elsewhere. The Nesta Future News Pilot Fund – which DCMS funded Nesta to set up as a response to the Cairncross Review, and which it closed down after just one round – conducted innovative research looking at spatial inequalities across the UK in terms of access to locally-based news and journalism. More recent research from the UK’s Charitable Journalism Project has shown the emergence of ‘news deserts’ in localities across the UK, and how this compounds other social and economic problems at the local level.
Intertwined in local reality, but disconnected in Westminster policy
These two tracks exist in parallel, but no one thinks to connect them. This means, for example, that policies seeking to improve community wealth, health or wellbeing fail to take into account the contribution of independent local media.
In the former case, definitions of social infrastructure, diagnoses of the failings of local economies, thinktank analyses of Levelling Up, indicators of digital infrastructure and of wellbeing, don’t include local news or journalism as intrinsic to the life and functioning of those communities. It’s not that they do not think communication is the lifeblood of communities. They might mention social media, or commercial platforms like NextDoor, or community information campaigns – but they all omit journalism and media. They do not include the presence or absence, the strength or weakness of local media outlets – like local newspapers or digital media outlets – in their definitions, indicators and research. Where initiatives have supported journalism, such as the Far/Nearer journalism project that Power2Change co-funded with Friends Provident Foundation, they have used journalism to cover issues like local economic resilience, without looking more deeply at the role that local media plays in that resilience, or how resilient media themselves are.
And in the latter case, those working to try to restore and reinvent the fabric of local journalism across the UK meet misconceptions about the health of media and journalism, with government reluctance to intervene, and with – unsurprisingly given the multiple interlocking crises the country and our citizens face – extremely thinly-spread funding from UK philanthropy. The media entrepreneurs and outlets are also overstretched, underfunded, and are at risk of burnout through overwork and understaffing. Worse still, while they are financially precarious, they are often mission-driven and community-focused, and so are in many cases effectively subsidising their communities with quality journalism and information through taking on additional jobs, personal debt or loans. Nevertheless, they persist.
There is a wealth of research and evidence showing that journalism is important to democracy, to democratic participation (including in ‘everyday democracy’), and to governance and accountability. Increasingly the research shows what happens when journalism is weakened, captured, extinguished, or allowed to die. But there are many policy levers in democratic societies that could be pulled with relatively little effort to help level the playing field a little for those doing public interest journalism at the local level, and without compromising editorial independence or press freedom. There is, for example, recent research crystallising how public interest journalism creates and contributes to public benefit, and can therefore be a charitable activity, and should, as the Cairncross Review and many others have argued, be a charitable purpose in its own right – not as a panacea to all the ills of local media, but as one viable option that some might choose to take up.
Learnings from the Local News Plans project
Over the past several months, I have led a pilot project (for the Public Interest News Foundation, a UK charity, and funded by UK digital news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk, a sponsor of the APPG Media) asking how key stakeholders in six communities across the UK view the decline of local media, what impact they believe it is having on their communities, and what they feel should happen – and what they can do – to address this decline. The full report for this pilot project is forthcoming, and we will share it with the APPG in due course, but I would like to highlight what I believe are key findings for this Inquiry, and which crosscut several Mission Focus Areas (noted where relevant in brackets below).
The six communities are Newry in Northern Ireland, Glasgow in Scotland, Bangor in Wales, and Bristol, Folkestone and Manchester in England – these were selected through an initial filter of OCSI data, and then a series of opportunity and stakeholder analyses and visits. Unlike other recent projects in these and other places around the UK, which have focused on how journalism relates to and reports on particular places and communities, we’re looking more narrowly at resources and funding for journalism in those same types of communities – from businesses, civil society, funders, investors, local government, the NHS and so on.
Observations and recommendations on the Local News Plan initiative and early findings relevant to the Inquiry:
Media are part of local social infrastructure, and are key to local public debate and deliberation:
- While local media are largely left out of definitions of and discussions about local social infrastructure, the communities and stakeholders we convened, no matter the composition of the group, all felt strongly that local media at their best are a critical part of that infrastructure.
- Over and above the impact of spatial inequalities of funding, because many of these communities are served by media that are ostensibly local, but are in fact based in, for example, regional hubs, the resources spent on journalism in those communities rarely remains in those communities, contributing to what should be a community asset, going instead to regional or national conglomerates (in north Wales, participants said this money went ‘over the border’ when Reach PLC pulled out).
- They all talked about the impact local media have – and that their weakening or absence has – on the local sense of community and connection, on the local economy, and on local democracy. In some places – Wales and Northern Ireland particularly – there was a strong desire for greater locally-focused media in concert with greater citizen participation in local democracy through, for example, public deliberation (including citizens’ juries and panels, among other forms of everyday and participatory democracy at the local level. Examples in the project included engagement with both a local citizens’ e-panel in Newry, Mourne and Down, and with the national organisation, Involve. In a parallel national process in Wales, the Institute of Welsh Affairs partnered with the Sortition Foundation to gather insights from a nationally-representative citizens’ panel for its media reform work.
- All communities consulted were clear that new funding was needed to stimulate the local journalism/media economy, that this funding needed to ensure clear arm’s length mechanisms to protect editorial independence, and that the funding should be locally-governed and -based. The exact nature of this content should not focus primarily on the generation of journalistic content – but should be weighted towards starting, growing and transforming businesses, charities and other organisations dedicated to serving local communities. Approaches to this, however, were diverse, and showed that top-down national solutions need local-driven, locally-owned counterparts – whether this means Community News Funds based in Community Foundations, collective funds generated by donations from local businesses, or a local journalism co-operative owned collectively by the community – and that in most communities there was a desire for some form of citizen input or participation.
- Stakeholders expressed a genuine sense of collective responsibility (including funding) to be involved in whatever the next generation of building local media might be.
- The Inquiry should recommend that the presence of locally-based, locally-owned, locally-focused media and other relevant media indicators be included as an indicator within future research and assessments of community wellbeing, social infrastructure, community assets and related concepts.
- The Inquiry should also recommend that policy interventions aimed at addressing spatial inequalities, restoring social infrastructure, and repairing local economies should all include local media and journalism as a stakeholder in those same dynamics.
- Where potential funding mechanisms to address spatial inequalities and related phenomena exist or are proposed, such as a Community Ownership Fund, Community Wealth Fund, the recent consultation on the Dormant Assets scheme, or any financial settlement resulting of the regulation of platforms by the Competition and Markets Authority, these should all have support for locally-owned, locally-based, locally-focused public interest media as a specific priority area, and as an eligible cause.
- The Inquiry should take note that a one-size-fits-all, top-down or overly prescriptive approach to building funding for local media would likely not take root or build legitimacy.
Media are part of and help drive the local economy:
- In Bangor and Newry in particular, but elsewhere too, participants noted that the fortunes of the local high street, of many other local businesses and social enterprises, and the hospitality and arts/culture sectors, were also affected by the decline in local media. Bangor’s High St has an ever-growing set of empty shopfronts, and even many charity shops unable to keep going. The owner of one cafe told us that the lack of genuinely local media with resources to compile proper listings meant that they sometimes miss revenue opportunities – staying open longer when there’s a local festival or event, for example.
- Advertising revenue is a critical source of unrestricted income for local media, but a huge proportion of such advertising goes through the major tech platforms, and not directly to media. Local stakeholders understood the contribution that local media make to the local economy (e.g. by making other community businesses, venues, events, etc visible/accessible to people), and the impact that, for example, local businesses switching to digital advertising and away from working with local media has had on their potential sustainability. Some said that they would reconsider the balance of their advertising spend, and how to ensure that a greater proportion could be earmarked for local media.
- The Inquiry should note – and encourage further research and mapping of – the interdependence of local media and local economies, in all parts of the country, even in major urban centres.
- The Inquiry should recommend that local advertisers receive a tax credit or other relief on advertising spend that they allocate to locally-owned, locally-based, locally-focused media, to stimulate both a critical revenue stream for local media, and to signal the value of local media to local economies and businesses.
Local media are community assets, and contribute to community wealth:
- In each place, the cross-section of the wider community we convened expressly considered locally-based, locally-owned, locally-focused journalism and media both as community businesses, and as part of the community’s assets – not just as a detached fourth estate. They contribute to citizens’ and residents’ sense of place, the pride they have in their community and locality, and the distinctiveness and identity of their place relative to other places.
- In a couple of places (Glasgow and Bangor – coincidentally where this has been raised in the Public Interest Journalism Working Groups supported by the respective devolved administrations), this extended into thinking about what practically could be done to classify them as community assets, and to support them with existing initiatives like community shares, co-operative structures, and so on.
- We specifically engaged with local financial institutions like credit unions and local banks, as one of the major barriers to local media is access to capital – lenders tend not to understand local media as they’re often hybrids of businesses, charities, social enterprises, sole traders, and co-operatives.
- The Inquiry should recommend that work be carried out to explore if and how local public interest media could be classified as community assets, and what implications this might have for their survival, and for their relationship with other parts of the local community, including local government.
- The Inquiry should encourage incentives to stimulate local financial and funding institutions such as credit unions to engage with and explore support for locally-based, locally-owned, locally-focused journalism, including for new entrants, younger demographics, and transformation of legacy publications.
Cuts to the local public interest sector are making complex problems even worse:
- As well as local media, many of the professions and services that serve the public with quality information are suffering long-term funding cuts or even (where they work on politicised issues, like migration) attacks – legal aid/law centres, citizen’s advice, debt advice, public health, libraries, GLAM sector. These are key to communities being able to assert and claim their rights, and to hold local power-holders, such as local government, to account.
- Some stakeholders suggested that funding should be found – whether from public, private or crowd sources – to, for example, buy a building for such public interest organisations to own in common, that could act as an asset. Others noted developments like the community newsroom that Greater Govanhill, an independent media outlet in Glasgow, has built in partnership with investigative journalism outlet, The Ferret.
- The Inquiry should recommend that in addition to local media, focus and funding should be directed towards other public interest groups and functions that serve the information needs of our communities, and especially the most left-behind neighbourhoods with the complex, interlocking problems they face.
Macroscope 