Local zero: how local newspapers can be revived
5 min read
Stories that helped places define themselves, bind communities and sustain trust are going untold as local newspapers wither. Roger Lytollis explores what might be done to revive them
In 1995 I began working at The Cumberland News and the News & Star, weekly and daily sister papers in north Cumbria. They had the resources to cover huge stories – including foot and mouth disease, devastating floods and Derrick Bird shooting dead 12 people – superbly.
They broke stories such as a fake psychiatrist who worked in the NHS for more than 20 years. Their campaigns helped to save a cancer unit and provide Cumbria’s air ambulance. But they have been reduced to toothless watchdogs.
In 2005 The Cumberland News was selling 40,000 copies a week. Now: 7,000. The News & Star’s sales have fallen from 26,000 to just 2,000.
Their declines in circulation and quality are mirrored around the United Kingdom. My Carlisle newsroom included specialist reporters covering politics, health, education, business and crime. None of those roles exists now. In 2019 I joined the many journalists who had been made redundant in the previous decade. By then, the number of staff in the newsroom had fallen from about 70 to 15.
The effect of so many departures is evident every day. The papers and their websites are now filled largely with press releases from businesses and the public sector. These often appear to be published verbatim. Jargon is left unexplained, obvious questions unasked. Many local issues are entirely unexplored.
As a feature writer, I analysed the impact of local and national issues. I profiled ordinary people with extraordinary stories. On the road with an Elvis tribute act. Fight night with Britain’s oldest boxer. In conversation with a pensioner recalling D-Day; standing shoulder to shoulder with men who were there one minute and gone the next. The kind of stories that are no longer told, replaced by press agency celebrity interviews.
I profiled ordinary people with extraordinary stories... The kind of stories that are no longer told
Around the country the dwindling number of local journalists have a more thankless task than ever, their dedication increasingly exploited. They work long hours, including large amounts of unpaid overtime, for low pay. Six years ago an apprentice was taken on in my newsroom. He wrote hundreds of stories. His salary was £7,250.
Any perks certainly don’t include being valued by society. Journalists have always been regarded with a suspicion that’s become more aggressive. Many are frequently abused on social media. In 2021 my memoir was published. Dominic Ponsford, editor of the Press Gazette website, wrote a comment piece about it. The replies included: “Journalists today are utter scum and millions cheer when job cuts and paper closures are announced.”
There have been thousands of job cuts and hundreds of paper closures in recent years. How did we get here? About 15 years ago, local (and national) papers began prioritising their websites and putting their content online for free. Many of us regarded giving away our product as a questionable business model. So it has proved.
Publishers hoped that online ad revenue would cover the loss of income from newspaper sales and advertising. It didn’t come close. Income slumped. Publishers made cuts that weakened their newspapers. Their websites resorted to celebrity gossip and stories such as “Halloween fancy dress for dogs from Lidl” to try and attract clicks and, with them, that elusive ad revenue.
Clickbait cheapened respected newspaper brands, deterring readers who might have been willing to pay for quality local news. More publishers are now looking at subscriptions as a means for websites to pay their way, with varying degrees of success. People are being asked to pay for local news only after years of having it for free, and when staff numbers and standards at established titles have plummeted.
It’s unfair to blame all of local newspapers’ problems on the handful of companies that now own the vast majority of them. National as well as local papers struggle to find successful business models in a world moving increasingly online. My papers in Cumbria were owned by a local family that cherished journalism, and which suffered the same headwinds as everyone else. There were redundancies and other cuts. But the axe came down much harder in 2018 when Newsquest, a division of US media giant Gannett, bought the titles.
Newsquest’s six newspapers in Cumbria now have no photographers, no feature writers, no sub-editors and one sports journalist. Most of the remaining reporters are either trainees or have recently qualified.
Local papers could use some assistance. The government could be more imaginative when spending its ad money, prioritising subscription-based news websites to incentivise that business model. The BBC could scale back its website’s rapidly expanding local news coverage, which is making it harder for local papers to charge for their sites.
And the papers could help themselves by providing something worth paying for. By holding the powerful robustly to account. By giving people good quality local news and features, rather than press releases and clickbait.
Roger Lytollis is the author of Panic as Man Burns Crumpets: The Vanishing World of the Local Journalist
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