5 days ago
Who will save local news?
Illustration by Harry Haysom / Ikon Images
The 160-year history of the South London Press has come to an abrupt end. Its website shows a somewhat mournful 'This site can't be reached' message.
If only the outpouring of grief from south-east Londoners across social media had been matched by them buying the paper or paying for its digital content, it may never have come to this. But the locals of Dulwich, Greenwich and Millwall cannot alone be blamed. Shifts in societal habits and media consumption mean the South London Press is just the latest of almost 300 local titles which have closed in the last 20 years. The number of journalists on regional and local titles has dropped from around 9,000 in 2007 to 3,000 in 2022.
The reasons are well documented: the shift of property, jobs and motoring ads to digital; the hoovering up of ad revenue by Google and Meta while also controlling visibility of content; and an endless feed of more entertaining content for scrollers have left publishers starved of BBC's expansion of local online news rubbed salt into a weeping wound.
Cuts and consolidation followed resulting in the loss of experienced journalists, closure of town-centre offices in favour of regional 'hubs' covering vast areas and titles becoming less local. Readers turned away and the doom loop continued. The consequences of all this are less well understood. Local journalism always served a dual purpose. Not only did it hold power to account and reflect on important local issues, covering council meetings and magistrates' courts, it also contributed to a sense of place and pride. Those stories about dog shows and weddings and giant vegetables were important (although admittedly I didn't appreciate that as I wrote them for the Harlow Star) because they knitted people in the community together.
There is much research showing Reform's popularity in towns that have lost pride in their high streets and communities. The local paper lay at the heart of those places.
Also lost is the pipeline of stories and staff to the national media. Ever wondered why the national news is so dominated by Punch and Judy political stories? In part it is to fill the gaps once crackling with fascinating tales from local reporters.
Already there are concerns some areas of the UK are becoming 'news deserts', with no trusted local news coverage. Donald Trump won 91 per cent of counties categorised as 'news deserts' in last year's US election. In those gaps voters were fed less trustworthy, more polarising content from social media and national sources.
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The situation is not entirely bleak. The big owners of local media still attract significant traffic. In April 2024, regional Reach titles were visited by 58 per cent of online adults, Newsquest by 28 per cent and National World by 27 per cent. And there are exciting start-ups, such as Mill Media, building engaged communities in Glasgow, Manchester and beyond.
There has been much hand-wringing about the crisis, with calls for a government innovation fund for local news, and tax relief, greater philanthropy or charity status for news sites. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has spoken of local media as an important bulwark against misinformation, but in a fiscally constrained environment there will be little public support for tax breaks for news organisations. Unless part of Nandy's media plan is building a time machine, I am sceptical of its success.
The artifice of AI has once again resulted in very real-world consequences. The Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson was threatened with violence and told he would be tracked down after an AI-edited video appeared to show him calling Nigel Farage a 'c**t' in the Commons. The clip was posted on X by the Spen Valley Reform Party account and viewed almost 100,000 times before it was deleted and an apology issued. There was no response from X to a complaint.
It's estimated 34 million images are being created daily by AI. The spread of misinformation, and its ability to undermine our democracy, is becoming ever greater as we move to an increasingly visual and aural media world. Spen Valley of all places should have been alert to the dangers of minds being manipulated by media.
Trump is such a fan of Fox News that his national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, is apparently considering delivering his regular intelligence briefings in the style of a Fox bulletin. Currently, the president's daily brief is a written online document (yawn!) which Trump has reportedly read less than once a week since being in office – fewer times than his predecessors.
Hence the plans to come up with a style, insiders say, would be 'more aligned with how he likes to consume information'. Imagine it: 'So that's the siege on Gaza and troop movements in Ukraine, Mr President. And now to the weather…'
Reform MP Lee Anderson has been doing his pound-shop Donald routine with an outburst at local news site Nottinghamshire Live. In a Facebook post he raged: 'We will take our country back and these lefty out-of-touch, low-level so-called journalists will have to go and get a proper job.' The post was a response to a report about the £25k cost of a by-election, which was triggered just days after the local elections when a newly elected Reform councillor quit. Presumably to get a proper job.
[See also: Will Jeremy Corbyn trap the government on Gaza?]
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