So what is ‘local news’ anyway? asks Richard Horsman (@LeedsJourno)…
Once upon a time it was so, so simple. Newspapers were printed in city centres and distributed by an army of semi-itinerant guys shouting ‘Eeenin Po’ or ‘Teeaneh’ on street corners. A fleet of Bedford vans carried bundles of papers to outlying communities maybe -oo- five or ten miles away.
Local radio came from musty cupboards of pegboard and wires with news often enunciated by bearded men of a theatrical pedigree. Their coverage area was determined by the laws of physics and the accidents of geography. The signal could frequently get knocked down crossing the road.
Television was generally monochrome, for the better-off garishly coloured, and delivered to ’regions’ which placed Caernarfon in the North of England and King’s Lynn in Yorkshire. Viewers selected from two, three or (amazingly) four channels by pressing big springy buttons on the front of a ‘set’ rented from DER or Rumbelows.
Then the Internet came along and spoiled everything.
I was reading a post on Phil Riley’s radio blog the other day in which he spells out the changes that have happened in the radio industry in his daughter’s lifetime. Editing (of text, sound or pictures) that took minutes can now be done in seconds. Outside broadcasts which required telecom engineers to link miles of copper wire can be done from a standard-issue smartphone. In the inky-fingered world whole pages of national newspapers are produced by an unseen army of battery-farmed journalists based at Howden, just off the M62.
All of which begs the question; do audiences care where their newspapers or local radio programmes come from so long as they get the information they need, when they need it, in an appealing and accessible form?
Tonight (Jan 7) sees the launch of the BBC’s first regular evening show across all 39 local radio stations in England. Mark Forrest, the presenter, and his production team of three are based in Leeds. That’s a small but significant achievement for Leeds as a creative city. I’m proud that two of the team are alumni of my Leeds Trinity Broadcast Journalism course.
The programme has come about because of the need to save money. Two years back the Beeb proposed a response to cuts imposed by the government. Local radio was asked to absorb more than its fair share of savings, with a proposal to axe afternoon programming . A public outcry led to a compromise; afternoon programmes were spared, but offpeak evening output would be shared instead (with important provisos which mean sports coverage and news bulletins are not affected).
This follows a quiet revolution in commercial radio, which now regularly ‘hubs’ news with a single newsroom providing bulletins to a number of stations. So bulletins heard on Radio Aire, Hallam FM and Viking FM all come from Sheffield at certain times. Capital FM’s bulletins for the North East, the North West and Yorkshire are often read from Leeds. Real Radio’s news for the same three regions may be delivered by someone sitting at a microphone in Salford Quays.
Does the listener know, or care?
Arguably the audience is better served by a hub newsroom. A radio journalist requires three skills. He or she must be a reporter, an editor and a newsreader. Few people can claim excellence in all areas. I’m a bloody good reporter, an OK technician and a poor presenter. I can assure you some household-name newsreaders wouldn’t recognise a news story if it bit their ankle, looked up and said ‘hello, I’m a news story’. But they look and sound wonderful. Others have the screaming abdabs if they’re asked to edit anything unaided. Putting journalists in a hub lets them play to their strengths.
The flip side is local knowledge, which tends to dilute across a bigger patch. Woe betide anyone talking to Bradford who pronounces Keighley as ‘keely’ or Allerton as anything other than ‘ollerton’. Old time district reporters are also more likely to recognise the names on the New Year honours list and have some clue why they’ve earned a gong beyond ‘services to education’ or ‘the arts’
The new Mark Forrest programme has faced hostility in some quarters.
On my own blog I’m engaged in discourse with a campaign group known as the BBC Radio Forum, which vigorously opposes all and any sharing of programmes between stations; to them localness is a matter of principle.
Alongside what many see as the decline of ‘traditional’ local media there has been a flourishing of new information sources such as the blog you’re reading now, just one of a dozen or more thriving, volunteer-driven news, lifestyle and culture websites in Leeds. But there’s the rub; I’m not being paid for writing this. Nor would I expect to be. I can produce the odd public article above and beyond the requirements of the day job. Local and hyperlocal news relies a lot on goodwill.
Do we – can we – expect in 2013 all local news to be produced by paid professionals, or indeed all radio programmes to originate from a designated broom cupboard? I’m prepared to judge the new BBC network show on its merits. The biggest problem it faces, for me, will be getting a Leeds audience to care about something happening (and no doubt reported superbly well) in Truro or Gravesend.
There again, Frank Bough and Michael Barratt did the concept quite well on TV in the seventies with Nationwide. If it works, the Forrest show could emulate that.
Perhaps with less beige and orange. And fewer skateboarding ducks.
Great piece – really made me question my own thoughts on this.
I got all het up when BBC said there’ll be an end to a permanent base in Bradford – no more Radio Leeds or Asian Network in the Media Museum. I ensured I used very emotive language: “abandoned” was oft used and favourite. After reading your article, I realise that, actually, it doesn’t matter too much when it comes to the news. Much of our news is from elsewhere, so why not the BBC’s? Mobile technology allows broadcasts from anywhere and everywhere, so why have a base in every city? If it keeps costs down without letting editorial standards slip then so be it.
However, the Bradford-sized chip on my shoulder makes the valid point that, in Bradford’s case, it feels like abandonment. You can talk of money and mobile technology all you like, but they’re not leaving Leeds and they’re not leaving Manchester – in fact, they’re taking highly skilled, well-paid jobs away from Bradford and sending them there. If you want cheap, we’ve got empty buildings, a lower cost of living / operating, financial benefits to move here, and the rent’s much cheaper, so why not save some brass and move to Bradford?
So it’s partly about money, but partly about prestige. “Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death”.
But that’s the way it is and, like it or not, happen it’s time I got used to the idea that Bradford, big and bold and beautiful as she is, will allus be bridesmaid.
Just as long as editorial standards stay the same, have I really got a leg to stand on? Oh, by the way, the BBC Leeds & West Yorkshire web site spoke of pre-Christmas snow… in Queensbury… “near Halifax”.
The issue with ‘remote’ news production is that it relies more heavily on PR pushing stories to the ‘official’ news sources.
It might be easier to pick up stories through twitter and Facebook, replacing the smokey pub as the conversation centre where leads can be found, but there still needs to be a local reporter.
The best stories come away from the normal sources – actually spotting some activity that makes you curious to find out more. Hearing one person that complains and working out whether its a whinge or if lots of people feel the same way.
You can assume a line of logic that people in a locality want a new hospital … but without knowing the geography you’d miss out on the line that locals found it remote and tricky to reach the new place.
I once remember the first radio station I worked at being behind the police tape of crime scene. Being based in Macclesfield, it meant we were able to get a clear picture of what was going on, eye-witness reports and where the investigation was from the police.
This is the type of station that might now be ‘run from Manchester’. The line would have been one line of copy stating that “a domestic incident has closed a road in Macclesfield before moving on to a Manchester city centre story.” rather than a more local story focusing on how the local community was affected by the shock of the death of two local figures who were well known.