Seeing justice done

"Without [the journalist], how is the public to be informed of how justice is being administered in our courts?"

When Lord Justice Watkins posed that quandary twenty-five years ago, he probably did not imagine that, by 2012,  there would be a direct answer to what was then a rhetorical question.   Last week's announcement that the government plans to legislate to allow cameras into court heralds the start of what is likely to be a complete shift in the nature of court reporting in England and Wales.

Under the proposal, filming will be restricted to a judge's summing up and sentencing.   That has countered concerns - for now - that the presence of cameras might debase the trial process and lead to defendants, witnesses and even barristers, playing to the TV production gallery.  However, critics of the move predict that it will be the first step on the road to fully-televised trials  - and, given the lobbying of the broadcasters to secure just this concession, it appears reasonable to assume that they will one day be demanding more.

Whatever the potential consequences of inviting cameras into court (and these shouldn't be glibly dismissed), it is interesting that those in favour of the move have sought to suggest that we are poorly served by the current arrangements.   There seems to be a bizarre assumption that, without cameras, courts may as well be sitting in camera - that only filmed justice can truly represent open justice.   A greater threat to that principle is probably the dwindling number of local press reporters able to attend court on a regular basis.

In spite of their enforced simplicity, broadcast court reports, as they stand currently, can make for remarkably compelling viewing.   It is a challenge to convey the presentation of the evidence, the cross-examinations and the atmosphere surrounding the proceedings without creating a dense, unwatchable piece of television.   Yet the best broadcasters have managed this feat for generations, making an art out of the process.   Just last year, Jon Clements's reports for ITV News of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial were comprehensive, while remaining comprehensible and uncluttered.   

Then there is the need to find pictures (any pictures) over which to tell the story.   The traditional court sketches - impressive as they are given the time constraints in producing them - can now be supplemented by high-end graphics, which model the inside of a courtroom, giving a more polished feel to a package.

Indeed, of all the footage of trials from the United States that we have seen over this side of the Atlantic, I can recall only one - the prosecution barrister in the Louise Woodwood trial mimicking how she had allegedly shaken baby Matthew Eappan to death - that was more powerful seen first-hand than if it had it been described.

Of course, any decision to allow cameras into court should not be made upon the relative aesthetic merits of broadcast news reports.   Neither, however, should it be based on the flawed premise that if we don't witness the proceedings for ourselves, we can't fully know or understand what happens in a courtroom.   Odd as it may seem in an on-demand world, we do not necessarily need to see everything first hand in order to be informed.   That's why we have reporters - the clue is in the name.  

It's good to talk

Confessions of a broadcast journalist, number 257 - "I don't listen to enough Radio 4."   

Catching a slice of Today and later dosing off to the brilliantly simple, but (by 11.30pm) sadly soporific Today in Parliament, leaves a lot of undiscovered gems in between.   Scanning the Radio Times and making a mental note to i-Player that strangely enticing documentary which aired on Tuesday morning usually remains nothing more than an aspiration.   

That all says more about my own chaotic media consumption habits than it does about the appeal of Radio 4.   However, demographics dictate that, for many, speech radio is a format they will never explore.   Some of that untapped audience might simply find the concept itself unappealing, but others are undoubtedly put off by perhaps misguided notions about the character of the few outlets which provide the service.   For instance, when my A-Level English Language teacher declared, "Radio 4 makes me weep" [in its quality, I hasten to add], he was met with the bemused faces of a room full of 18-year-olds, not one of whom had ever dabbled in that part of the dial.

So it is both understandable and laudable that one of the stated aims of a new venture called British Public Radio is to bring quality speech radio to a new, younger audience.   By drawing fresh listeners into the concept as a whole, all providers should, in theory, benefit.   Naturally, for a service proposing to attract a younger audience, the founders of BPL are promising to utilise social networks to target listeners' specific interests.   Reassuringly, for the linear luddites amongst us, there is also going to be a traditional slate of scheduled programming.   

Whilst clearly not targeting the core Radio 4 audience, the new service would necessarily provide some direct competition for the BBC network.   BPL is not proposing to aim exclusively for the younger demographic and, if the content is good enough, the station would no doubt hope to attract speech radio aficionados from across the spectrum.   The undoubted benefits of plurality in television news would be brought to full-service speech radio for the first time.

The upbeat nature of the planned service is matched by the positive pitch being made by its founders.   However, the group will have to overcome the problems faced by failed speech radio services at a national and local level.   Channel 4's foray into DAB speech radio was aborted back in 2008 before its official launch and local stations in Liverpool and Edinburgh have either closed or become skeletons of their original grand ambitions.  

As with all launches, there is much optimism about British Public Radio and the initial proposals suggest there is much to be optimistic about.   The group's plan is clearly an ambitious one and that can only be a good thing - because recent radio history demonstrates that delivering talk requires plenty of action. 

Whose story is it anyway?

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

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 vagaries 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, political 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"

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

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 prejudicial 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 breath-taking 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 tenant 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?

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 programmes 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, respondents 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 unceremoniously-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

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 dependent 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 consciousness 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 casualty 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?

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.

Destination Digital

"[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 opposed 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 sustainable 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.