Read all about it - good news (and bad)

When the Liverpool Echo published a blank front page earlier this month, it alighted upon a novel way of launching an age-old concept - the reader survey.

This eye-catching device and the accompanying social media hashtag, "TellAli" [Alastair Machray, the paper's Editor], were clearly designed to generate maximum interest.   Moreover, the highly personal tone of the appeal for views suggested that this was far from a superficial stunt.

Whether by dent of audience research or gut instinct, the paper's questions indicated that it already had an idea of where it might be going wrong - namely, its daily diet of crime stories and a broader failure to portray the city as one which has evolved beyond recognition in the last twenty years.   To its credit, the Echo has given its critics a prominent platform to air both their anticipated grievances and others which it might not have seen coming.

The issues raised have relevance both for the provincial press and all news outlets operating at a local and regional level.   The consensus seems to be that crime stories do, indeed, dominate the paper - to the extent that they have a detrimental effect on its likeability amongst locals and the impression it gives of the city to the outside world.   Potentially alienating readers is obviously of concern, but this assessment also begs the question as to whether it is the responsibility of the local press to sell its area in a positive light or simply to reflect what is happening on a daily basis.

All media with a local focus needs to present an affinity for the locality it serves and be prepared to defend it when it comes under unjustified attack.   That is part and parcel of forging a strong local identity, both to the benefit of the outlet and its audience.   Yet there is a fine line between celebrating success and serving up an anodised alternate world, divorced from reality.   

In broadcast, the geographical spread of regional television sometimes leads to the perception that an area is only visited when the worst has happened.   Whereas the community feel of local radio means it has to guard against the risk of presenting a picture of a nauseatingly perfect corner of the planet, which listeners might not necessarily recognise.

For the most part, all sectors of the local media landscape deftly navigate this tightrope, offering just the right balance of light and shade.   As for the Echo, concerns about a preponderance of crime stories overlook the fact that their presence at least means the paper is not participating in the slow death of court reporting.   Their prominence is something which might be worth reconsidering - as is the use of the gutter tabloid word "caged" instead of "jailed", which should be outlawed in the forthcoming revamp.

The other main criticism to have arisen from the #TellAli consultation relates to the paper's football coverage.   Buried beneath accusations of bias and theories regarding why neither of the city's Premier League teams is the success it might be (hint:  maybe they are just not good enough), lies a more important point.

Several respondents have bemoaned the lack of 'investigation' into the teams' financial affairs.   Such endeavours are costly to mount and, crucially, offer no guarantee of anything to show for the commitment.   Provincial newspapers - like local/regional broadcasters - sadly cannot afford to have the equivalent of The Times' Insight team sitting in the corner, generating one big story a year.   Yet it is testimony to the determination of much of the local press that the proud journalistic tradition of off-diary investigations continues.

In an age when institutions, corporations and the people who populate them are more combative than ever, such reportage is particularly fraught.   Local media are inherently reliant on the goodwill of those individuals and organisations which are potential investigative targets and to dig deeply is to run the risk of souring relations - as evidenced by the introduction of "preferred media partners" at Newcastle United press conferences and the refusal of the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner's office to answer questions from a persistent reporter.

The Echo itself also has good form for attracting the ire of those in positions of power.   It doggedly pursued the story of Liverpool City Council's joint venture project with BT and Private Eye recently reported that one of the paper's journalists allegedly became persona non grata with the local authority after revelations about the purchase of the iconic Cunard building.     The problem for the Echo is the shadow cast by its now defunct sister, the Liverpool Post, which had a particularly enviable reputation for investigative work.   It was suggested that this mantle - like that of heavyweight political and business analysis - would be taken up by the Echo when the Post closed in 2013.   Unfortunately, only the current business coverage really bears comparison.

On balance, the Echo's self-flagellation and withering reader criticism (some of which has been hilarious) seem rather unwarranted.   The exercise has undoubtedly been a genuine and worthwhile one and improvements will no doubt follow, but all such interactions have the potential to engage only those who are already engaged.   The consultation was never presented as a way of stemming, at the Echo, the circulation falls which have the beset the regional press.   However, the debate did seem focused on the print product and, whilst that will always be my favoured method of consumption, the age range of those who scoff at the idea of buying a hard copy of any paper grows ever wider.

So whatever shape the 'new Echo' takes, the hope must be that it maintains and strengthens the foundations of solid local journalism which underpin it.   The role of local media is defined by contrasting duties - reporting the relevant, both positive and negative, and being a champion of the area when it is merited and a critical voice when it falls short.   It is worth acknowledging that these building blocks of local journalism remain in place at the Echo and elsewhere - in spite of the shifting sands beneath.

Liverpool's last Post

Less than two years after it morphed into a weekly paper, the presses have stopped rolling on what was the Liverpool Daily Post for the vast majority of its 158-year history.

The migration from daily to weekly publication has become a trend in some sections of a struggling provincial press in recent years.   Yet while several titles have flourished under this new model, increasing their circulations compared to the latter days of their daily incarnations, the Liverpool Post faced a bigger challenge than some - and it came from within the same building.

With its sister publication, the Liverpool Echo, selling ten times as many print copies, the clock was always ticking for the Post.   To its great credit, the relaunched paper tried to offer something distinctive and adopted a more investigative approach, often leading with an exclusive on some aspect of public life in the city.   Unfortunately, these scoops, combined with detailed analysis and specialist business and arts coverage, failed to excite the dwindling newspaper-buying public of Merseyside (declaration:  I bought the Post more often as a weekly than a daily, but still only if the lead story caught my eye).

The good news is that the closure isn't resulting in journalistic job losses.   The bad news is laid bare by that same fact - this isn't about naked cost-cutting, it's purely due to lack of demand.   Broadsheet-minded print titles appear fated to struggle at a local or regional level in times of falling circulations, as evidenced by the demise of the brilliant, but short-lived North West Enquirer in the mid-2000s.  

Two years after the Post went weekly, there is still no answer to the question posed by this blog at the time - is there a new generation which simply doesn't care for what might be termed big-picture local news?   Moreover, is the appetite for all forms of local news falling in proportion with collapsing readerships?   

Website traffic for the local and regional press is, unsurprisingly, on the rise.   However, whilst it might be reassuring to suggest an inversely proportional relationship between the two, on-line hits don't always equate to the fully-rounded experience of reading a print copy.   Although every reader won't read every story in print, the process of flicking from cover-to-cover increases the likelihood of encountering journalism which the individual might never make the necessarily active choice to access on on-line.   Factor in links to suggestions for similar stories and it's easy to see why even regular website visitors could end up with a rather narrowly-focused diet of local news.   

The Liverpool Echo has promised to absorb both the staff and the substance from its sister publication and, although it has shed tens of thousands of its own readers in the last decade, the paper's circulation appears remarkably healthy when compared with others serving similar-sized urban areas.   And that has to be welcomed, because the need for local news - whatever the commercial realities - hasn't diminished in the digital age.   

The local press is a vital component of journalism's ecosystem.   Whatever those of us in broadcast might like to think about our ability to originate, there's many a local radio station and regional television newsroom that would notice the difference if they started each day without local papers as a reliable reference point.

So Liverpool is unable to sustain two daily papers in 2014 - hardly news worthy of holding the front page.   A sad change, certainly, but not seismic - yet.   That tag can be reserved for if the day ever comes when it can't sustain even one.

Signposting the future of the provincial press?

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 stable mate.   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 nonsense 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.