Paul Faulkner

Whose story is it anyway?

2012-01-31T22:49:00.005Z

Show me a broadcast journalist who has never got a story or an idea for a story from a newspaper and I'll show you a liar.

Cross-media fertilisation might sound like a concept straight out of a digital babble bible, but it is actually as old as broadcast journalism itself.   What kind of newsroom would operate in complete isolation, blind to the output or content of other sources? Just as press journalists will monitor television and radio news programmes, so broadcast journalists have traditionally checked the papers (and now their websites) to ensure that they are not missing out on a story which is yet to appear on their own radar.

This fact was seized upon by some critics of BBC local radio when the corporation announced a review of the service last year. Claims abounded that local radio journalists were lifting stories from local papers in their coverage area. Research by the BBC debunked that suggestion, but the threat of swingeing cuts to the local radio budget raised fears that local stations would be rendered incapable of sustaining the current standard of journalism.   Last week's announcement that local stations are having less money taken from them will hopefully secure their journalistic future.

The issue has, however, highlighted the oft-overlooked question of originality in broadcast journalism, at both the local and national level. Is the primary role of the broadcast journalist to uncover stories or to bring them to life for the widest possible audience? Every broadcast journalist with an ounce of pride will say that it should be both - but, in reality, how many times does the necessity for the latter mean the former is sacrificed?

Original journalism is the holy grail for any journalist, but it does seem the press often takes the lead when it comes to doing the digging.    Perhaps that is because broadcast is more labour intensive and the need for recording, editing and presenting a polished product usually leaves little time for anything else. Yet considering the pagination of newspapers nowadays, the 24-hour business of updating their websites and the fact that press newsrooms have seen some drastic cutbacks of their own, maybe that explanation is just a little too easy. Here's a more uncomfortable proposition - are print journalists just more suited to good old-fashioned investigative journalism than their broadcast counterparts?

Fortunately for broadcasters, however, nobody owns the news. Just because one organisation has originated a story does not preclude others from reporting it. And here is where broadcast comes into its own. Broadcast journalists are the profession's storytellers. A relatively dry story on paper can be brought to life by a television or radio package or interview. Real voices, explaining complex issues or conveying a sense of place or emotion. The best broadcasters transport the listener or viewer to the heart of a story - and then guide them through it.

Broadcast journalists are also usually best placed to develop a story. Original journalism is not confined to the bald notion of uncovering facts.   It can be about moving a story on, putting the facts unearthed by another organisation into perspective - and under scrutiny. This weekend, the BBC's Sunday Politics did not originate the story of a potential £8 million bonus package for the RBS Chief Executive Steven Hester - but it was able to put the Sunday Times findings to a cabinet minister and press him as to whether such a deal would be acceptable. That still counts as original journalism.

Similarly, as the most trusted and widely used source of news, broadcast outlets are well positioned to present stories in an accessible and engaging way for the widest audience. Last year, ITV Anglia ran an extended feature on the planned NHS reforms, hinged on the fact that the new commissioning groups were being trialled in the region. Anglia Television journalists were not the first to uncover the potential pitfalls and controversies of the reforms - but they did highlight and explain them to an audience which might otherwise have turned the page when seeing the issue reported in the press. Original journalism.

Of course, broadcast journalists do still get traditional exclusives. In the top tier of the hierarchy of news, broadcasters will often find stories come to them first.   In 2005, the preliminary findings of the inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground were leaked to ITV News, which handed them a powerful exclusive on one of the biggest stories of the year.   Meanwhile, broadcast journalists routinely prove just as capable of cultivating their own sources as their print counterparts.   Last year's Newsnight investigation into alleged corruption in boxing was an example of what many would regard as traditional original journalism - the direct reporting, rather than the re-reporting, of a story.   So while broadcasters must guard against the worst forms of churnalism, maybe their originating capacity is sufficient that the odd local radio or regional TV story 'sourced' from the previous day's papers can be forgiven.

Perhaps in this multi-platform world, it is not surprising that traditional news outlets are also beginning to collaborate with each other, for their mutual benefit. Channel 4 News has worked closely with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on several stories and ITN and the BBC have both partnered Guardian Films. Competition is a healthy aspect of the profession, both in broadcast and print, but as traditional outlets face new challenges, co-operation might need to be more readily embraced.

The apparent surprise in some quarters that the BBC occasionally uses private investigators (as revealed last week at the Leveson Inquiry) is perhaps indicative of a perception of the level at which broadcast journalism operates. There seems to be a tacit assumption that it is not the role of the broadcast journalist to dig as deeply as their counterparts in the press. Yet while broadcast outlets must fulfil their primary obligation to bring the news that matters to the masses, they should never lose sight of the scoop.

So as well as telling a good story, broadcasters should always be trying to find one, too.

And the headlines - television news still matters

2012-01-15T23:20:00.004Z

The permanent hum of new media soothsayers predicting the imminent demise of traditional sources of news has reached almost deafening levels.   And at the end of a week when one of the oldest provincial papers closed its daily operations and more than a million people were found to have drifted away from Sunday newspapers, the doom-laden prophesying of the past decade seems ever closer to becoming a reality.

Yet it's not all bad news for the news. A long-term academic study by Westminster University has just given television news a clean bill of health. Analysis of bulletins across the terrestrial network found no evidence that news on the main channels is dumbing down and, in contrast to the last time the study was carried out in 1999, the researchers' confidence both in the future worth and relevance of television news was positively unbridled. Their prediction that appointment-to-view television bulletins will remain broadly unaffected by on-going technological change is a bold, but welcome one. That television news has already weathered a digital revolution does seem to bode well for this particular branch of journalism, even while the rest of the profession appears to be in a state of constant flux.

Although the reach of television news is not what it once was (the combined BBC and ITV audience for their 10pm news programmes today is less than that enjoyed just by the ITV/ITN bulletin thirty years ago), recent polling by OFCOM has reaffirmed the value placed on it by the viewing public.   Three quarters of people rank television as their primary source of news and an even higher figure regard it as the most trusted source.   Incredibly - given the carefully-cultivated narrative of the direction in which news consumption is heading - the internet fails to make it beyond single percentage figures on either measurement.    Meanwhile, we are still watching more than twenty minutes of television news per day on average and the regular combined audience for all terrestrial bulletins exceeds ten million.

So what do the millions of us who are still tuning in actually get?   Fears about trivialisation have proved largely to be unfounded, with all the terrestrial channels except Channel 5 following an overtly broadsheet agenda. The unfortunate (but persistent) lie that the ITV bulletins have dumbed down in recent years should be nailed by the fact that their tabloid content has remained static, at about a third, for over a decade. The slight shift in their editorial stance - often overblown by ill-informed commentators - came not after the abandonment of the original News At Ten in 1999, but in the years prior to that, as costs were cut to the bone when the network merged into two controlling conglomerates. Remarkably, ITN is today producing content not dissimilar in terms of scope to that which made the organisation renowned, but for little more than half the £80 million budget they were afforded in 1990.

Editorial shifts and the vagueries of the news agenda have, in fact, resulted in tabloid levels fluctuating across all providers. At times, the BBC's tabloid content has hovered around a third, but has now settled at a fifth.   It is also worth pointing out that 'tabloid', in the definition adopted by the study, includes crime and consumer stories, many of which are inherently worthy of reporting and appear on bulletins across all channels.

The healthy ecosystem of television news in the UK is due in no small part to the breadth of coverage on offer - something which stems from having competing and slightly contrasting providers.   The BBC's ten o'clock bulletin, for instance, features the highest proportion of foreign news of any programme, whilst Channel 4 is the place to go for detailed coverage of social policy. Interestingly, polictial coverage has also generally increased in the past decade, in spite of the perceived wisdom that politics, for many, is a turn off.

Against all the technological and societal odds stacked against it, television news has proved itself to be a resilient beast.   It is comforting to know that, even in the digital age, when we want to know what's happening, many of us simply still turn on the TV - and find news that is worth watching.

"Keep the red flag flying, Auntie"

2012-01-08T23:49:00.003Z

So Ed Miliband is concerned that the BBC isn't giving Labour the coverage it merits in its news programmes. William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith doubtless felt similarly ignored as Tory leaders in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Does any of it equate to bias? Hardly - just a simple, if harsh, political reality. Leader of The Opposition is a tough gig when your party has been kicked out after more than a decade in power. It is even tougher when the replacement government is a once-in-a-generation (so far) coalition, making decisions which are having such a direct impact on everyday life. Competition for minutage in news bulletins is fierce.

Broadcast media will always gravitate towards the doers, rather than the would-doers. That's hardly news. And neither - sadly for Ed - is every policy announcement that comes out of Labour HQ on a wet Wednesday afternoon. However, does the Opposition really have it all that bad when it comes to broadcast coverage? Just this weekend, Miliband's declaration that Labour has a "very clear plan" duly appeared on bulletins on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. In fact, all of the mainstream political parties know full well that making any kind of statement on a Saturday or Sunday virtually guarantees a packaged or live slot on the weekend television news.

The welcome impartiality of broadcast news in the UK means that even when Government policy is being reported, comment is usually afforded to the Opposition. Then there are the set-piece party conferences, which command high profile coverage on television and radio for much of September, and the carefully-calculated quotas which apply to broadcast news to ensure absolute fairness of exposure in the run up to a General Election. With specialist, well-staffed, political reporting teams across the BBC and commercial networks, the average citizen wants for little in terms of political broadcast coverage. And neither - in truth - do the political parties themselves.

All of which makes it somewhat curious that Labour should turn its ire on the BBC, in particular. With the breadth and depth of its political coverage (both within mainstream news bulletins and specialist programming), Labour must surely get more exposure via the Corporation than any other broadcaster. Moreover, the party's recent themes of "too far, too fast" and "the squeezed middle" do seem to have found sufficient exposure somewhere to become part of current political discourse.

Perhaps Labour's complaint against the BBC is born out of frustration at the coverage the party is receiving in the print press. Whatever the reason, it gives the distinct impression that senior Labour figures believe the BBC is duty bound to follow, slavishly, every esoteric twist of its years out of power. It isn't. The path to greater exposure for any Opposition lies in having more to say that is deemed - by an impartial, public service broadcaster - to be newsworthy. To that end, Labour knows exactly what it has to do.

To borrow (and conflate) a phrase from Private Eye - that's just how politics and journalism work.

Judgement call

2012-01-06T11:42:00.006Z

Coverage of the verdict in the Stephen Lawrence murder trial this week resulted in some broadcast news reports that might have had the most cautious of media lawyers heading for the hills.   The possible involvement of other individuals whom the police have long referred to as "prime suspects" in the killing, prompted an understandable question - where might the case go from here?

Cue one report about previous stabbings "connected" to the gang - none of which were brought to court and one of which involved the death of an Asian man - and a live debate in which claims went unchallenged about the influence that the father of one of the convicted men might have had in scuppering the original police investigation into the entire gang.   Outrageous?   Not really - and for several reasons.

First, although the police have been at pains to stress that their investigation is very much on-going, there is not, at this stage, an active criminal case (in the legal sense of the term - no arrest, no charges) against any of the individuals identified as "prime suspects".   In that respect, the case is quite unusual - police would normally restrict descriptions of "prime suspects" either to individuals that were at large and in need of tracing or those against whom criminal proceedings were in the process of being brought. Neither applies in this instance.

So does that mean that the more responsible news organisations, like the broadcast media, should restrict their reporting on the basis that a trial against these individuals is possible (maybe not even likely) in the future? The law does not explicitly require such caution and, in a case like this one, there would surely be little point.    The suspects, if they do ever become defendants, will have to overcome a whole archive of adverse publicity in the public consciousness. They, like the now convicted David Norris and Gary Dobson, will have to rely on the capacity of jurors to follow the judge's directions to reach a verdict only on the evidence presented in court. Such directions should not give the media carte blanche to recklessly publish predjudicial information (particularly after arrest or charge), but they are increasingly the only method of ensuring fairness in the most high profile of cases.

Broadcast media have earned a reputation (albeit not totally unblemished) for responsible reporting of criminal cases, particularly when contrasted to the breathtaking disregard of some sections of the tabloid press. Just twelve months ago, several newspapers were in the process of conducting the character assassination of Chris Jeffries, the landlord wrongly accused of murdering his tennant Joanna Yates.   Fortunately, he did not end up in the dock and he later successfully sued for libel.

Broadcasters do have a fine tradition of constructing and, let's not forget, deconstructing criminal cases against individuals - it was the stock-in-trade of programmes like World In Action and Rough Justice for many years. Whilst broadcast news organisations should strive to remain within the letter and the spirit of the law regarding prejudice, it would be an unfortunate side-effect if that led to sterile reporting. The coverage of the continuing Stephen Lawrence investigation is an example of the broadcast media perhaps pushing the boundaries a little more than it usually would.   The fact that this is done rarely and selectively should enhance, rather than diminish, its standing as a trusted source.   Responsible and meaningful should not be incompatible aspirations.

The news from where you REALLY are?

2011-12-22T10:26:00.005Z

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has a vision.   If he is able to realise it, then large parts of the country will soon be served by their own local television service. That's right - local.

Content emanating from the next cul-de-sac, not the next county.    Television news tailored to the community it serves.   What's not to like?    In principle, nothing.   After all, other sub-national media naturally gravitate to the local rather than the regional - local radio, local press, even hyper-local websites. Yet television in the UK has traditionally been a different story.

Whilst the establishment of the different BBC and ITV regions was often more an accident of history and transmission sites than any plan to form geographically cohesive areas, the regional nature of television news in the UK now has a fifty-year heritage. Audiences never seem to have balked at the concept - rather they embraced the idea of regionality when it came to television, proudly and affectionately taking regional stations and personalities to heart.   Regional television, largely through its news coverage, helped to reflect - and even forge - a wider geographical identity than had ever before been the case.    Witness the fact that for several generations, the North West of England was often simply referred to as "Granadaland".

Time has undoubtedly moved on - sadly, non-news regional shows have all but been consigned to television history and the share of viewing for regional news progarmmes themselves has steadily declined in a digital era which offers so much more choice than news and, er, news at 6.00pm.   However, one thing which has never been called into question by the viewing public is the notion of news at a regional level. In fact, so ingrained is the concept of regionality in television, that in an OFCOM survey, respondants attached equal weight to the importance of regional news as to events affecting their own immediate locality (1).

All of which is not to say viewers do not appreciate regional news on a smaller, more coherent scale.   It is difficult to imagine modern-day viewers accepting the super-region that was the uncerimoniously-joined North West and Yorkshire, the sprawling coverage area for the BBC's North at Six back in the early '60s.   Regions steadily became smaller on both the BBC and ITV over the next few decades, with sub-regional opt-outs eventually giving way to dedicated programmes for these new mini-regions. Unfortunately, by 2009, financial pressures caused ITV in particular to row back on these commitments, re-merging split regions like Yorkshire and Central and even creating pan regions out of once separate entities like Tyne Tees and Border.

Yet the disquiet at some of these changes was surely an endorsement of television news at the regional level - as long as it was the meaningful regional level which viewers had come to expect. Even in these straightened times, the ITV licencees which have seen changes to their borders continue to provide significant amounts of split programming to ensure their regional news retains that 'closer-to-home' feel. Meanwhile, in Scotland, STV has been able to expand its sub-regional coverage after viewers responded well to the pilot of a more targeted service.

The proposals for local TV were born out of uncertainty over the future of regional news provision on ITV when the current Channel 3 licences come up for renewal in 2014 - for the first time in a fully digital televisual world.   So with the BBC guaranteed to continue producing quality regional content, why not experiment with local TV as a complementary, but distinct, alternative?

It is possible that local TV could hasten or encourage ITV Plc's exit from the regional news map. That would be a spectacular own-goal given that Hunt's plan is at least partially designed to protect plurality.   Initially, at least, the budgets and audiences for the new services are unlikely to provide the robust competition for the BBC which is currently generated by the healthy rivalry with ITV.   And when there is genuine plurality in news provision, it is always the output - and so the viewer - which is the winner.

Moreover, television is a big medium which thrives on telling big stories.   Of course, regional television does - and should - cover the worthy and the worthwhile.    However, the large geographical footprint of the regions provides opportunity for light and shade in the running orders.   City-based stations would find themselves covering the minutiae of life in the area, something which radio and the press does effectively, but which does not necessarily transfer well onto the small screen.

It would be trite to say of some of the proposed locations for local TV that nothing much happens there - but that does not mean enough happens there to support an entire television station.    Even some of the bigger cities with experience of local television from the mid-'90s onwards (like Liverpool and Manchester) have seen these services either fold or become hollow shells of their original intentions. Editorial sustainability, as much as commercial viability, will be a key factor in the success or otherwise of these new ventures - and, in an unproven market in much of the UK, neither can be guaranteed.

So can local TV work? Of course - in a decade's time, we might be wondering what took us so long in this country to embrace a concept which thrives in other parts of the world. However, at a time of increasing uncertainty over the future of regional news outside the BBC, is it the surest way to secure a diversity of news providers? My instinct would be to find a sustainable way to carry on doing what we have long done so well - making the regional relevant.

(1)    New News, Future News, OFCOM (2007)

The power of the package

2011-12-04T17:03:00.004Z

The opening and closing segments of last week's BBC Politics Show could have been produced as a tutorial for trainee broadcast journalists. The programme was helpfully bookended with demonstrations of two very different ways of covering a story - first, the big, set-piece interview, where the heavyweight journalist grills guests from opposite sides of a particular debate, perhaps generating a headline for that day's other news programmes in the process; last, the pre-recorded package, an altogether more reserved affair, which epitomises the broadcast news conventions of balance and fairness, using carefully selected contributors to guide the viewer/listener through a story in a short space of time.

Both have their place, of course - but the success of one is heavily dependant on the other. Live interviews and debates are an invaluable method of putting decision-makers and opinion-formers on the spot and exposing them and their views to scrutiny. In a journalist, they require a quick mind and copious amounts of research, ideally to cover every eventually. They are challenging to conduct and often theatrical to watch - at their best, they can be an adrenaline rush both for the participants and those at the other end of a television or radio.

Yet what if the subject under discussion is one about which the viewer or listener is not fully informed? Will they really engage with the topic, listening intently to glean any snippets of hard fact that might emerge from the debate - or will their interest wain in the cacophony of claim and counter-claim? And, if it does, could their attention have been better held by setting up the story with a package (as discussed elsewhere)? Imagine Newsnight without the packages. Just a constant stream of conciousness from guests wanting to get their point across. Would we really be that much better informed by the end of the proceedings?

As for the example from the latest Politics Show, it was editorially entirely justifiable to cover the two stories in the way in which the programme did. The first topic - the public sector strikes - necessitated the interrogation given to the two main protagonists in the story, the unions and the government. While the packaged story - which trailed this week's Autumn Statement - lent itself to a more considered approach. Yet even as somebody taking a keen interest in the news, I found myself distracted during the live interview, busy trying to call to mind the minutiae of the issue, prompted by certain references made by the contributors - a mini package beforehand might have given me the best chance of getting the most out of the subsequent interview.

The package - thankfully - remains the default unit of broadcast news.   Television news bulletins, at least, could not properly function without it.   However, it has endured a recent period of being considered rather unfashionable in some quarters.

While Radio 4's very deliberate brand of pause-punctuated packages continue to dominate the station's news programmes, packages on local radio became an endangered species in the 2000s. On commercial radio, this was a fait accompli, as the time given over to extended bulletins (remember them?) dwindled to almost nothing. On the BBC, meanwhile, the trend was for presenter-led news programmes, a tactic which usually resulted in a story being told via the live guest (usually over the phone), in much the same way as described above. "Don't give the listener the opportunity to tune away" - an oft-used mantra in radio - but why the presumption that the package provides an excuse to do so? Even on television, the advent of the superfluous pre-package introduction from the reporter in the field seemed to be subliminally apologising to the viewer for what was to follow - "I'm so sorry, but I'm now going to have to force you to watch a package."

The implication of all this seemed to be that the package should be tolerated only when no other suitable device could be conjured up. Of course, all programmes need and benefit from lives, two-ways and the rest, but the package was fast acquiring the stigma of being uncreative. Yet anybody with an interest in the art of broadcast news need only witness the packages produced by the best in the business to understand that this aspect of journalism is, indeed, an art.   Watch the workmanship of a Paul Mason extended package on Newsnight or the master craftsman at ITV News like John Irvine, Bill Neely and (taking the baton for the next generation) Geraint Vincent - subtly, they impart information and leave impressions without appearing to do either.

Similarly, in radio, IRN stalwarts Kevin Murphy and Political Editor Peter Murphy made necessary brevity a speciality.   When radio news bulletins usually provide thirty seconds to cover a story, a two or three minute package is a gift from the radio gods, which the best reporters can use to great effect.

The package gives a story room to breathe, to garner an understanding of each side of a debate.   Crucially, it also offers a platform for the facts, which are sometimes a casuality of other methods of covering of a story.   The package requires incisive, yet uncomplicated writing, the creation of an easily understood, but never simplistic, narrative and the ability to match words with pictures or to use atmospheric sound to bring a story to life.   All of which requires real skill and makes real impact - that's the power of the package.

Signposting the future of the provincial press?

2011-11-25T23:09:00.006Z

The announcement this week that the Liverpool Daily Post is to cease publication in its current form might have made headlines locally - but it hardly came as a shock.

The well-documented woes of the regional press were compounded on Merseyside by the decision in the late 2000s to turn the Post's more populist sister paper, the Liverpool Echo, into an overnight publication, thereby pitting it directly against its stablemate.   In an attempt to mitigate this obvious clash, the publishers morphed the always more analytical Post into a specialist arts, politics and sports paper.   The Echo was also given a "main extra" edition (usually off the press by early afternoon), in order that at least some of that day's news might appear in what is still regarded by many as an evening paper.

Neither sop was ever going to save the Post.   The nonesense model of publishing two, essentially competing local papers at a time of freefall in local readerships would always see off the more vulnerable of the two titles eventually. By the end, the Post had 8000 readers, just a tenth of those enjoyed by the Echo (which itself is down from over 110,000 only five years ago).   The luxury of having two local print papers might well come from an age which has now passed, but what of the future?

Local factors might have accelerated the demise of the Post, but there can be no hiding from the wider issue that is the perilous state of the provinicial press.    The Post will now become a weekly publication (heavy on the analysis), with a website that continues to update daily. The Echo might attempt to compensate by gravitating back towards its own more middle-market heritage, but with even the likes of Roy Greenslade forecasting a swift end to all print papers in the regions, perhaps it's time the traditionalists (declaration of interest: I am one) sat up and took notice.

The thirst for the kind of in-depth analysis now promised by the weekly version of the Post will be an interesting indication of just how much a new generation craves this type of local news.   The Birmingham Post followed an almost identical path in 2009 - and, two years on, the new model remains intact.   However, it is notable that the provincial titles which have been first to fall have been at the heavyweight end of the scale.   Similarly, the demise of the North West Enquirer, a laudable, but ill-fated venture back in 2006 to serve up a diet of considered analysis and in-depth politics to a region-wide audience, places a question mark over the kind of local news which is valued by potential readers. To complicate matters further, the value placed on a particular type of journalism does not necessarily equate to its worth - and local democracy hinges on the strength of local reporting as much as it ever did.

Are those who argue that it is only the method of consumption which is changing in the digital world actually failing to consider a more pertinent question - is there a new generation which cares in sufficient numbers about what might be called big-picture local news?

I hope and think that there just might be.   If so, then, as I have argued elsewhere, it requires the kind of journalism which can best be provided by established media organisations - and that means it needs to pay its own way.

Unfortunately, answers on that conundrum are as thin on the ground as increasing circulations.

Destination Digital

2011-07-12T20:07:00.007+01:00

"[The article] is not dead.   I did not kill it."   The words of new media prophesier Jeff Jarvis in a Media Guardian article investigating the future, ironically enough, of the printed article.   This defensive stance has become a trademark of Jarvis' musings about mainstream media.

Following a now familiar tack, journalism lecturer Jarvis pokes a digital stick at traditional media outlets. He suggests that their structures are inherently outmoded and on the brink of collapse and foretells of a brave new world diametrically oppposed to the linear one which they have inhabited for far too long. When he gets the occasional brickbat in response, his usual schtick is to feign shock (hurt, even), before conceding how unsettling it must be for those being forced out of their old media comfort blankets - but reasserting that it is a fate which inevitably befall them whether they embrace it or not.   Is that salt I sense being gleefully rubbed into an open wound?   Probably.

In his analysis of the article as the base unit of print journalism, Jarvis questions whether this is sustainble or even desirable in the near future.   In adopting a "digital first" way of thinking, he argues, articles should be viewed as luxuries or mere by-products of a new media process. The partially constructed immediacy of the internet should take precedence.   The article - and, by extension, its broadcast equivalent, the package - would no longer be the gold standard.

For a man so keen to promote the bottom-up wonders of the web, Jarvis is curiously quick to dictate how journalism should look in the future.   In his view of a world with fewer articles, he returns to a theme which runs through much of his new-media analysis - abundance.   More is, well, more, apparently.

"Digital is freeing...infinite," opines Jarvis.   For those with infinite time to explore these infinite possibilities, that may be true.   For the rest of the real world, the wholesale dismantling of traditional journalistic structures would leave chaos in its wake.   The benefits that might flow from a greater stream of information would surely be wiped out by the difficulty in navigating a meaningful path through the unmoderated verbiage.

Then comes the vague notion of the role journalists themselves will play in this new world order. And here, Jarvis wheels out his disturbingly amorphous vision of news organisations as "less of a producer, more an open platform for the public to share what it knows." In other words, professional journalists - with the contacts, access and training that affords them - are to be relegated almost to bystander status and are supposed to revel in the sight of others doing the job for them.   Of course, some might do it better - but many will not.

Whatever Jarvis might want to see jettisoned and whatever I would like see to preserved do not really count for much in the end. "Digital first" might already be coming down the track, though there is no guarantee that it will reach its final destination.

It's "digital only" which is a more worrying prospect.

Trusting Twitter

2011-05-23T21:13:00.004+01:00

Amongst the the many things spoken and written in the on-going furore about privacy injunctions, there have been some unlikely glimmers of hope for the future of the 'traditional' media outlets which are bound by them.

The fact that Twitter makes a mockery of such reporting restrictions should be an open goal for the new media evangleists who take any opportunity to imply that the microblogging site is rendering print and broadcast media equally obsolete.   Yet there has been a twist to that particular narrative.

The oft overlooked issue of credibility in relation to 'news' emerging from social networking sites is finally being acknowledged, bringing some much needed balance to this related debate.   Max Mosley, Max Clifford and Director of the Press Complaints Commission, Stephen Able, might seem strange bedfellows in any context - but they have all noted the greater weight attached to publication in traditional media. And little wonder.

The perceived freedom to publish and (maybe not) be damned raises questions about the provinence of any information revealed. After all, some tweets incorrectly indentified certain individuals as having taken out injunctions.   So what's the marker of credibility in the Twittersphere?   Traction?   It surely follows that the most trusted sources on Twitter are those individuals who are already affiliated to established newsgathering outlets - and are willing to put their name to a story and stand by it.

Mosley and Clifford (speaking to BBC Newsnight and BBC Radio Merseyside, respectively) both admitted as much, dismissing Twitter almost as an irrelevance when it comes to allegations from anonymous individuals.    The PCC's Stephen Abel goes even further, stating "You may ignore a story on Twitter.   It only really matters when it is published on a trusted site."

Interestingly, it seems many people not only ignored, but were completely bypassed, by much of the Twitter-gossip of recent months. In a recent edition of BBC2's Frank Skinner's Opinionated, recorded in mid-April, several weeks after the injunction speculation had begun to swirl, Chris Addison asked the audience if they were aware of the actor and footballer at the centre of the storm. Not a single person in the audience knew the (possible) identities of those involved. Admittedly, Skinner's target audience isn't as young as it was during his 1990s pomp, but it's fair to say they come from a media-savvy generation. Yet they had neither sought nor happened across the information that was available to them via Twitter.

Of course, issues of credibility matter slightly less when it comes to the superficial froth of celebrity gossip (not wishing to diminish the impact it could have on the wrongly accused).   However, when it comes to hard news, credibility counts.   And that's where the role of the journalist as assessor and arbiter comes into its own - no matter how deeply unfashionable that may be in the digital age.

Just before any like-minded flag-wavers for the "hierarchy of news" get too carried away, though, the Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, tried to rain our parade.   Speaking to ITV Granada's regional political programme, Party People, she commented that she's aware of many people "who now get their news solely from Twitter."   Now that's a thought that should really send a chill down the spine of journalists - more so than any superinjunction.

Fade to black?

2010-06-13T21:57:00.002+01:00

So, in the most widely expected of early announcements by the new government, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has pulled the plug on the independently-financed news consortia due to be pilotted later this year.   Barely twelve months after their inception in Lord Carter's Digital Britian report, they have become a casualty of Britain's uncertain plans for the future of public service broadcasting in the digital age.

Ultra local television has been heralded by the coalition as the saviour of plurality in broadcast journalism in the nations and regions, should ITV decide that it can no longer honour its commitments to regional news.   Several commentators and industry insiders have now begun to ask the obvious questions about the financial viability of such a plan. Factor in the dubious editotrial sustainability and resultant quality of hyper local broadcast news and the proposal is far from an appealing one to those of us who value regional broadcast journalism.   Parochial news on the cheap?   Hardly an enticing prospect.

The INFCs were not without their flaws, both ideological and practical. Their worth would largely have depended on the make-up of the groups chosen to run them.   Now we'll never know for certain whether they would have been a success. They were, however, at least a stop gap, where now only a void appears to exist.

In an ideal world, ITV would find a sustainable way of staying in the game. Sadly, the world of regional television news is anything but ideal.

The power of television

2010-04-19T21:58:00.002+01:00

The internet obsessives told us 2010 was going to be the year that the general election would be won or lost on the internet.   Really?   Well, television seems to be doing a pretty good job of setting the agenda so far.

The general consensus seems to be that the seventy-six rules imposed upon the broadcasters did not stifle the inaugral debate. Much as I enjoyed it and am glad it has been deemed a success, I did find the proceedings a little stilted as a result of the understandable fixation with timings. And perhaps it was just me, but I still felt like Nick Clegg got the lion's share of the the airtime - or was that just because he was doing such a good job of holding my (and the nation's) attention?

Whether or not Clegg can maintain his bounce in the polls, his emergence from the political shadows is testimony to the power of television.   It seems incredible that the leader of the country's third party (hardly an obscure political entity) can gain so much traction simply from ninety minutes of unveneered televisual debate with his two main opponents.

What is even more remarkable is that the last-but-one Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, had a man-of-the-people message that was just as strong as Clegg's and which he conveyed in an affable style which I don't think Clegg himself has yet mastered.   Kennedy's opposition to the Iraq war screamed "different from the other two" more than anything Clegg said on Thursday night.   Yet the Scot's seven years as Lib Dem leader saw only incremental gains compared with the recent shift in public opinion of Clegg and his party. The only thing Kennedy didn't have that Clegg did?   An hour and a half of primetime television.

So the blogosphere can carry on tweeting to itself while the box in the corner of the living room basks in its reaffirmed status as a superior power broker in the democratic process.

What next for regional news?

2010-04-02T14:14:00.002+01:00

So, where does OFCOM's slightly surprising announcement of its preferred bidders for the ITV regional news pilots leave this interminable debate?   The failure of ITN to win control of any of the three schemes can surely not have been the outcome anybody expected.   It means that the Scottish and Tyne Tees/Border pilots are to be operated by newspaper groups and television production companies with little or no track record in broadcast news. That doesn't mean it is impossible for them to be editorially successful, but plans in the Scottish bid to include ultra-local news provided by community groups and children has raised concerns that the ouput might be rather parochial for regional television news.

In the Scottish case, it also creates of the invidious situation of requiring STV to surrender its regional news slots, in spite of the fact that, unlike ITV Plc in England and Wales, it has never sought to do so. Indeed, STV has increased its sub-regional opt-outs and, as part of the ITN consortium for the Scottish pilot, planned to create a more rounded, outward-looking news offering in Scotland. It does seem a perverse outcome that STV might be forced out of regional news provision when it has never suggested that it wanted to walk away from its licence obligation in that regard. The pre-occupation with trialling the independently-financed consortia in the nations, as well as the regions, meant that the possibility of such an outcome was overlooked.

Added to the mix is an apparent softening of ITV's position when it comes to the future of regional news on the channel.   Chairman Archie Norman has said it is an important strand of ITV's output, a very diffferent tone to the one set by his predecessor, Michael Grade, who started the stopwatch ticking on the demise of the channel's newsgathering presence in the regions.

Meanwhile, the Tories remain implaccably opposed to the IFNC concept and, with the contracts now unable to be signed this side of a general election, they could be in a position to scupper the entire scheme.   As could ITV, if it decides not to surrender its airtime and either maintains its own output or walks away from regional news altogether.

So at least the future looks a bit more certain, then.

Cover those backs - there's a journalist about

2010-03-07T17:57:00.002Z

There's a strange paranoia pervading the nation.   It stems from the fear that, on an otherwise inoccuous day at work, there might be a call from .....a journalist!   And, in my case, a trainee one at that.

At some point in what I imagine to be the recent past, the majority of the working population seems to have been imbued with an inate fear of even the most harmless of journalistic approaches.   "You'll have to go through head office," comes the plaintiff reply.   "We're not allowed to say anything."   Even when the subject is a good/indifferent news story for the organisation for whom they work, the default position of most people is one of blind panic.   If you are lucky enough to coax somebody to talk, the next hurdle which you have to clear is the necessity to make some kind of record of what they actually say. Producing a digital voice recorder in such situations often elicits a reaction akin to if someone had been waving a sawn-off shotgun around in a confined space.

Accounting for a natural mistrust of journalists and the inability of most to distinguish between non-threatening broadcast trainees and foot-in-the-door tabloid types, this mindset is a difficult one to fathom.   The vast majority of companies are employing press officers or public relations bods to field all their enquiries. Whilst that is hardly surprising nowadays, it seems these individuals are trying to safeguard or even justify their existance by instilling an irrational fear into staff that anything they say will be noted, duly twisted and used against them in the very near future.   The result is that it's increasingly difficult to get informed, authentic local voices to comment on anything at all - thereby stifling one of the most important features of local and regional journalism.

So what scraps are journalists offered instead? A dry statement, prepared hundreds of miles out of the catchment area which eventually arrives long after your deadline has passed. And that's before you even start investigating anything controversial.

Or am I just being unlucky?

Substance and soundbites

2010-02-14T22:49:00.005Z

The BBC's Politics Show today brought together the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, and his Tory and Lib Dem shadows for a debate on this week's main political story - the row over the funding of personal care. Presenter Jon Sopel understandably opened the interview by teasing out the sudden divergence of opinion on the subject, after an initial attempt at forging a cross-party consensus appeared to have been shattered by the Tory's "RIP Off" poster last week. And so the political posturing began, with Conservative Andrew Lansley straight out of his starting blocks.

Andy Burnham's response to a direct question from Jon Sopel about the row was to meander off on a description of the issue itself, rather than focus on the political bust-up - normally an annoying diversionary tactic, but, on this occasion, one which seemed genuine enough. Sopel was having none of it. He assured the Health Secretary that the discussion would come round to the substance of the issue soon enough, but not before he had commented on the political fallout from the week's events. The tenor of the discussion was set and, inevitably, the substance never really made it to the table.

It wasn't the fault of Jon Sopel. It wasn't the fault of his Producer. It was my (and possibly your) fault for routinely indulging ourselves in the latest political spat. However much we might insist, po-faced, that we care only about the issues, our heads are easily turned by a bit of political theatre on the small screen.

It is for that reason that package-based political programming is so worthwhile. Ironically, The Politics Show is the only regular example of the genre on television, but it was obviously concluded that this particular topic demanded a three-way thrashing-out and nothing more. In-depth, well crafted packages deftly inform and engage - and we can always have our more combative cravings satisfied in a post-package 'debate'. It is a formula which largely works well on The Politics Show and, traditionally, on many of ITV's regional political programmes - Granada's erstwhile Sunday Supplement being a prime example.

As the broadcasters make their bold plans for the forthcoming General Election - leadership debates, swingometres and the rest - it's to be hoped they remember to provide an outlet for both the substance and the shouting matches.

Regional news - a confused picture

2010-02-09T21:59:00.002Z

The GMG decision to sell the Manchester Evening news stable to Trinity Mirror is clearly an important development in the ever-changing landscape of the UK's provincial press. However, from a broadcast news persepctive, it is the absence from the deal of Manchester television station Channel M which is particularly interesting.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the Tory idea for securing plurality in regional television news is the creation of dozens of city-based services across the country akin to Channel M. Trinity's decision not to buy the station may have been purely a strategic one. However, if the station is not soon snapped up from a GMG which seems willing to sell, a question mark would surely hang over the viability of the services which are a key tranche of Tory broadcasting policy. And maybe then Jeremy Hunt's vehement opposition to those ITV regional news pilots might seem a little out of step.

Here's to the hierarchy of news

2010-02-06T10:56:00.003Z

Where does news come from? You might think that, six months into a Broadcast Journalism Masters, I'd be able to answer that poser in a heartbeat. Not a bit of it.

I had naively imagined before embarking on the course that we were all going to be let in on some kind of industry secret about how journalists get a good story - or any story.   It transpires that the secret to finding a story as a trainee journalist is that rare combination of luck and judgement. Luck that you happen across something of vague interest in the first place and judgement that you are able to discern just how vague the interest is permitted to be before it no longer constitutes a story.

Until, that is, you find yourself in the fortunate position of working for a news organisation with real status.   Then, it seems, stories have a habit of coming to you.   How else to explain the fact that the country's national and local press, not to mention broadcast media, are full of stories which elude the mortal trainee? Because some of us just aren't very good? Well, probably - but I think there is a more fundmanental reason.

News finds its way to the organisations with the greatest ability to disseminate it.   If you had information on anything from a church fayre to a big political scandal, where are you going to take it?   Some obscure blogger (asks the obscure blogger)?    No - the chances are you would go straight to one of the 'traditional' media outlets that are increasingly portrayed as some kind of stain on the modern media landscape.

That's not to say established media outlets have it easy when it comes to generating stories .   Much of their material will be down to old fashioned legwork and contacts.   Yet here again, they excel, becasue of the access their status affords them. Real journalists from real news organisations succeed where trainees operating in an artificial environment never could.

All of which reinforces my innate sceptism about the fashionable concept that 'we're all journalists now'.   Even as a trainee, I don't consider myself a bona fide journalist - no authority has been conferred on my words. The lack of status and access means that I could never aspire to emulate anything a traditional media outlet could produce.

Some commenators seem to be confusing citizen journalism (the ability to state your opinion in a blog or get lucky with some mobile phone footage) with the craft of newsgathering and production. The internet and those who populate it have undoubtedly opened up a new journalistic frontier. The speed, bredth and depth of available information assists journalists enormously - but it should never replace them. Elites are deeply unpopular in an age when the internet is seen as a great leveller. Yet without a journalistic elite to gather, filter and judge the raw material, the competing, partial, biased voices of the internet could mislead us into thinking we know a lot about everything, when, in fact, we know very little about anything at all.

The hierarchy of news remains intact - for now. If the dark day ever comes when the presses stop rolling and the television news goes blank, then we had better hope the organisations behind them survive in some other form. If they don't, then it won't just be trainees like me who will be missing out on stories - we all will.

Regional news re-think?

2010-01-24T22:42:00.003Z

A change of government in the Spring would doubtless have many consequences. One of the less publicised (and, to many minds, less important) of these would be its effect on the future of regional news provision on ITV. The Tories are now openly admitting they would scrap the fledgling concept of independently-financed news consortia (INFCs).

This is hardly surprising, given their lukewarm response to last year's Digital Britain report, in which the proposal was first mooted. What is surprising is their proposed solution - the creation of more than eighty "local media companies", which will be able to take advantage of plans for a burgeoning number of local television licences. These LMCs will apparently generate sufficient advertsing revneue across print, broadcast and on-line and will require no government subsidy, either directly or through the licence fee - the very reason the Tories run for the hills whenever INFCs are mentioned.

This seems a curious standpoint for two reasons. First, given the collapsing revenue and readership levels of the traditional local print media, why would LMCs with their websites (a concept with which most local newspapers are familiar) and their substandard television channels be any more successful? Second, what would their presence mean for said crumbling local media, apart from a more rapid decline?

Meanwhile, even ITV is trying to distance itself from INFCs, in spite of the fact that they were created as a solution to what the company claimed was an accute financial drain on ever-dwindling resources. Contention over on-air branding and generation of advertsing revenue around regional news lots (thereby reducing its potential ad minutage around peaktime audience grabbers) are the two most significant issues. Yet surely these are mere sticking points in comparison to the implacable objection of a future government.

Encouragingly, there has been no shortage of bidders for the pilot schemes due to operate in Scotalnd, Wales and the Tyne Tees/Border areas. Those of us keen to see the survival of a plural sytsem of regional television news will be hoping some pretty watertight contracts are signed before May.

All Talk

2009-12-28T11:14:00.005Z

It used to be one of the great mysteries of U.K. radio - why can't local talk stations be commercially viable? The demise of Edinburgh's Talk 107 a year ago and the ever-shifting format of City Talk 105.9 in Liverpool have provided a rather obvious answer to that poser - such services are simply too costly to sustain in view of the number of listeners they attract.

Outside of the capital, there doesn't appear to be a successful business model for an all speech local radio format. After just over a year on air, City Talk applied for and was granted permission to introduce a 50/50 speech/music split outside of peaktime. Yet within six months of implementing that change, they were back at the door of the regulator and now even bigger changes are afoot. The station attracts around 50,000 listeners per week, but its share is a meagre 1% - to justify the cost of its operation, a talk station would probably have to equal or even out-perform the heritage ILR station in the area. Sadly, it always seemed a big ask.

Whatever the reasons for the difficulties experienced by recent attempts at all-talk formats, the inherent lack of local commercial speech dates back nearly twenty years - in fact to the demise of another station bearing the name City Talk. When the FM and AM frequencies of the early independent local radio stations began to broadcast seperate programmes in the late 1980s, most operators rolled out an oldies service on medium wave. Radio City, however, bravely went for the more daring option of a speech station - City Talk 1548AM. Although it broadcast for only twelve hours each weekday, it was a class act and will almost certainly have required levels of investment which would make today's commercial groups balk. Even with far less competition and so a much higher audience share, the station still didn't pay its way and the early 1990s recession is generally thought to have brought about its demise in 1991. A valiant effort, nonetheless.

There is a key link between this era of local radio evolution and the fate of local talk stations today. Radio City Gold, the station which rose out of the ashes of the original City Talk, retained a high level of speech content - full-length news programmes, discussion features within daytime programmes and the usual phone-ins. Meanwhile, even licencees which hadn't gone down the talk route, still had speech quotas (mostly in terms of extended news bulletins) to adhere to - and these were largely fulfilled on their AM stations. For a short time in the early 1990s, the U.K. had found its model for commercial speech. It wasn't all-talk, because maybe that format was never going to be viable on a local level - but it was meaningful and largely popular speech-based local radio.

Unfortunately, the recently-formed Radio Authority soon paved the way for the erosion of this embryonic model before it had time to develop. Mergers and format changes soon saw speech requirements jettisoned in favour of the quasi-national networks which we know and, according to listening figures, don't really love today. The regulator rolled over at almost every request. Meanwhile, unrealistic speech quotas were being forced onto applicants for the new small-scale licences of the late 1990s, which had neither the resources nor the editorial area to justify them.

The opportunity to make speech an integral part of strong local AM stations was missed. Had it been taken, these stations might today have been a worthwhile competitor to BBC local radio. They might even have been driving the migration of an important sector of the audience to digital radio - and we almost certainly wouldn't have witnessed two brave, but ultimately aborted attempts at all-talk local radio.

Head-to-head hype?

2009-12-21T22:58:00.005Z

The Presidential-style debates which have threatened to cross the Atlantic for so long will finally put in an appearance in the U.K. during next year's General Election campaign. It was confirmed today that the three main party leaders will all take part in a trio of a ninety-minute shows to be broadcast by the BBC, ITV and Sky.

The general consensus amongst politicians and commentators seems to be that this heralds a victory for democracy. To some extent, that will undoubtedly be true - but I'm not altogether convinced that such occasions represent the zenith of democratic debate.

Surely there is an inherent danger that the theatre of the occasion will take over and very little will be revealed in the way of detailed policy. The inadequacies of the only comparable event - Prime Minister's Questions - will be magnified. It will be all soundbites and pseudo anger. Factor into the equation the heightened level of interest in the occasion when compared with the average PMQs and you are soon confronted with another problem. The leaders will be so hamstrung by the fear of having their words and every nuance of their performance analysed to the nth degree that they will be more reluctant than usual to deal in the currency of candour.

The issue of fairness to nationalist parties was quickly raised and the suggestion is that there might be other debates scheduled in the nations involving the leaders of the parties in the devolved assemblies. However, that doesn't address a related issue - namely, the fact that three-way debates like this inevitably skew the political debate in favour of the three main parties. That seems a shame in an election when minority parties might be expected to put in a strong showing - but it was ever thus.

For me, the pre-election coverage in 2005 had the potential to be far more illuminating than anything proposed for next year. The one-on-one leadership interviews conducted by Paxman for Newsnight and Jonathan Dimbleby for ITV boasted the kind of forensic interrogation of our political leaders that we only really get during an election campaign. For some reason, this style of political programme seems to have fallen out of favour over the past five years.

The BBC ditched "On The Record" for a more package-based affair in "The Politics Show." Meanwhile, ITV turned Jonathan Dimbleby's one hour, one minister discussion into a sofa-based melting pot which did neither the presenter nor the audience any favours. When Dimbleby left soon after, ITV attempted a return to the highbrow with Andrew Rawnsley fronting "The Sunday Edition", but this was scheduled into oblivion before the channel decided to jettison its national political programming altogether. An unwise move for many reasons, not least because they don't now have a seasoned political heavyweight to front their version of leaders debate - luckily for them, Alistair Stewart is more than up to the job. Channel Four, inexplicably, has not sceduled a regular political programme for more than a decade.

As for next year's debates, I might be pleasantly surprised by the way in which they engage with and mobilise a mass audience. Yet even if they succeed on that level, will the viewing public be any better informed by the time credits begin to roll?

Chequing out

2009-12-20T17:11:00.008Z

This week, another once reassuringly familiar aspect of our daily lives has been deemed too outdated to be allowed to encroach too far into the twenty-first century. The cheque is next up to be written into history.

At the behest of a usually faceless committee going under the moniker the Payments Council, this three centuries' old method of payment will become a relic as of 2018. I use the term "usually faceless," because, on the day of the announcement, a representative from the organisation hawked himself around various media outlets to tell us all how little we use cheques these days. Granted, their use has more than halved from a peak in 1990, but something about this method of payment still prompts us to write four million of them a day.

The Payments Council admits there are certain situations in which only a cheque will do - and says an alternative will have to be developed in the next few years. If, like me, you're asking why we need a safe, easy alternative to the cheque when we have, er, the cheque, then the answer is simple - cost. It costs our cash-strapped banks £1 to process cheques (in a delightfully quaint process which involves all cheques being gathered and inspected in London), but only a quarter of that to administer a chip and pin payment.

Self-evidently, debit and, more worryingly, credit cards are a more convenient method of payment in many instances than the cheque. The days of having to register your intention to use one of these new-fangled plastic cards before you did your weekly shop at the supermarket (and I'm sure I haven't imagined that) are long gone. So I'm not suggesting we retain expensive clearing apperatus when only a couple of octagenarians in Western Super Mare are still writing them - but why can't the consumer decide if and when they want to abandon the cheque altogether? Apparently, in these situations, bodies like the Payments Council bear a responsibility to "manage decline." Is that manage, or hasten?

Granadaland goes digital

2009-12-02T21:53:00.004Z

It feels like it's been talked about for years. Ah, right - it has.

The much-vaunted digital switchover came to Granadaland this morning and sixty years of broadcasting tradition were wiped out at the flick of a switch (probably). Sadly, but predictably, neither the public-funded BBC nor the once federal ITV saw fit to mark the occasion with any kind of "farewell to analogue" special. Granted, that sounds horrendously dull, but done well, it could have been an interesting and fitting lookback at television's halcyon days.

For those days are now surely gone. There's always the danger of a rose-tinted view of television from days of yore, but the plethora of choice heralded by digital is in no way proportional to quality. Remember when television was just about modern enough to be good, but still remained a comforting, genuinely exciting presence in the corner of the living room? It was probably around the mid-1980s, when we had four whole channels to choose from and the medium was a cohesive, homogenising force - while still being quaint enough not to broadcast for much of the day. Now, it just feels like everything's been done before - only better.

As for the demise of Ceefax/Teletext, it's an insult that these once innovative (and still undeniably useful and used) services have been replaced by digital text, a set up so woefully inadequate as not to be worthy of the name. The rectilinear graphics of our youth could have survived into the digital age - but nobody cared enough to save them.

Today, more than usual, I feel like an anaogue man in digital times.

Redrawing the map for ITV regional news

2009-11-29T20:48:00.008Z

At last - an annoucement about the future of ITV in the regions which isn't just about allowing further drift towards the impending digital glacier looming larger than ever on the broadcasting horizon.

For so long we've been used to OFCOM and the Department for Culture Media and Sport acquiescing to ITV's (from a commercial outlook, understandable) demands to reduce its presence in the regions. First, the non-news regional quota was slashed and then virtually abolished. Next, network production outside bases in London and Manchester sharply declined and once iconic production centres like Central and Yorkshire were reduced to little more than a collection of offices. Finally, and most damagingly, various regions and sub-regions were merged to create geographically meaningless newsgathering areas - viewers suddenly found that their 'regional' news could now encompass places as far as two hundred miles away.

As a fan of ITV regional news and a firm believer in plurality, I feared for the furure - I feared whether there was a future. The announcement late last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that trials of so-called Independently-Financed News Consortia (INFCs) would begin next year (in the Scotland, Wales, Tyne Tees and Border areas) was a welcome one. It is probably not the panacea I would like to be, but it's a step in the right direction.

There are certainly some issues which need addressing, the most obvious being the question of where the "independent finance" comes from. The perceived wisdom is that it will originate from that part of the licence fee reserved in recent years for funding the digital switchover. That is top-slicing in all but name. Personally, I am surprisingly indifferent about it, but it is far from a done deal.

Another issue is the composition of the consotria themselves. Several local newspaper groups view INFCs as a much-needed way of diversifying, but concerns have been expressed about the ability of print media to operate a broadcast-led operation. For me, local newspapers undoubtedly have a contribution to make in this evolving model, although I would probably be more comfortable with an established broadcast news provider like ITN taking the lead.

Then there's the Tories. The other side of a general election, a future Conservative government would seem to favour taking the INFC approach beyond what I believe to be its logical conclusion. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested creating a network of local TV stations, adopting some aspects of the successful American model. In the States, there is competition between local broadcasters serving the same populations. Hunt concedes that there isn't the scale for this in the U.K., but believes monoplies of privately-funded local commercial broadcasters could be created.

As far as I'm concerned, the U.S. model, albeit modified, simply doesn't transfer to the U.K.. Local television news, let alone local television per se, would be too parochial and poorly funded to attract an audience. It could only mimic what local radio and the struggling provincial press already does so well - but which would be too naff to contemplate on screen. It would replicate the problem in local radio about ten years ago, whereby heritage stations with large populations were allowed to jettison many of their news commitments, whilst ultra-local stations had unrealistc quotas imposed on them even though they served unsutainably small audiences. Television is much more deft at reflecting, perhaps even forging, a strong regional identity in otherwise disparate areas.

That's not to say the slightly anachronistic map of the ITV regions shouldn't be redrawn. There are clear anomalies, such as the presence of the Scottish Borders in an English ITV franchise. Other tweaks to questionable border demarcations could also be made and, at the very least, the level of regionality enjoyed by viewers pre-2009 should be reinstated. This is emanently possible, since the annual budget for ITV regional news stood at £100 million before this year's mergers and that is now the level of funding being suggested for the INFCs. Noises from the DCMS suggest that they share my sentiment and it is one aspect of the proposals which should be non-negotiable. If broadcast regional news needs one thing to survive it is an injection of relevance.

There is still plenty to be finalised, both about the trials themseleves and any concrete inception of INFCs in the near future. For once, though, I'm excited - and it's a long time since I've been able to say that about the future of regional news on ITV.

What's all this about, then?

2009-11-28T21:27:00.003Z

Now, why would you be reading this? No offence meant - it was a genuine question. Apart from people who know me and might make the effort to visit a blog like this once in a while (probably to spare my feelings more than anything), why would anybody else be interested?

If I were in the public consciousness, that would be different. If I were a politician, journalist or broadcaster (rather than an aspiring one), there would undoubtedly be a whole swathe of people tracking my every blogged utterance - but I'm not. And that's why I have a slight problem with the 'blogosphere'. It all seems just a little bit conceited. Cue the digital obsessives who'll be wailing how, to use the well-worn phrase of the year, I "just don't get it."

So having spectacularly failed to answer the first question, here comes another. Given all that, why am I adding my voice to the ever increasing background hum of comment, opinions and unnecessary bile? Well, hopefully, I'll manage to avoid the bile element of the proceedings for a start. The overriding reason, though, is pure self-interest.

Trainee broadcast journalists up and down the country are having the multi-platform message drummed into them - some of us take a little more drumming than others. Maybe it's because, on the one hand, I'm being taught how to make finely honed and crafted radio and television packages and, on the other, being told that any old hastily arranged pictures or tatty bit of audio will do so long as it can be thrown into a mash-up (eh?) and flashed around the world in a nanosecond. It kind of makes you fear for the future of your chosen medium and causes you to resent the brave new converged, multi-platform world a little more than you probably should.

Anyway, having flirted with Twitter (and felt dirty and cheap for the pleasure), I think my contribution to the digital world can best be made here - as a little analogue outpost, gently nudging readers in the direction of those 'traditional' media which our digital cousins talk about with such rancour and vitriol. Now that probably isn't the spirit in which I've been advised to engage with digital, but at least I've got a blog - what more do you want?