IS IT TOO LATE FOR THE LOCAL PRESS?

by Philip Parkin, Operations Director, Birmingham Press Club

An item in one of the national newspapers caught my eye this morning, under the headline ‘Beware of town hall spin, says top judge.’

For those who haven’t seen the article, it is a warning from Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge (wow, what a name – that must knock Lord Mandelson’s pompous job title into a cocked hat, and some).

Anyway, Lord Judge, who is the heard of the judiciary, said that there was a danger that the public these days is getting information about what local councils are up to from the councils themselves, rather than ‘independent sources’.

Well, obviously ‘independent sources’ can be taken largely as the local press – but, as the article states, local papers’ reporting of the councils on their patch is just not what it used to be.

Lord Judge summed it up by saying that some local newspapers are ‘relying on council press officers’ for the information they print.

So how have we come to this? In my days on the local weekly, we covered, to some extent or another, the county council, the district council and around half a dozen parish councils.

And we did this by going along to their meetings – well, we only did the full meeting of the county council, but we faithfully attended all the committee meetings of the district council.

Often, we used to print stories that got right up the nose of the council – at the time, the top local official was a boring jobsworth who hated the local press. Ask him for clarification of some matter, and he would do so, but ever so reluctantly. And he would never be more helpful than he had to be.

Siding with him were those members of the council who would rather a lot of things went unreported. But they didn’t – we saw to that.

However, before I left, the paper was taken over by the local freesheet – and that was the beginning of the end for reporting on the council.

The newspaper stopped attending council meetings, as its policy switched from reporting local news to filling in the gaps around the adverts, which is pretty much what most of today’s local papers do.

It’s all about resources, of course – plus the fact that most local newspapers (particularly the weeklies) have dispensed with their (more expensive) experienced hacks, thus relying on young (but green) journalists to deliver the goods.

Also, local newspapers in recent times have had to battle against increasing competition from the internet, and have been further weakened by the loss of advertising revenue during the recession.

Even worse, some areas have lost their local newspapers altogether – so what chance do the people living there stand when it comes to finding out what their council is up to? Are they supposed to go along to the council meetings themselves?

No, the magnificently named Lord Judge is right to warn us about the dangers of a lack of proper independent reporting of council activities.

However, I fear he is too late, which should give us all cause for concern.