It’s time to boost the government’s puny aid for local journalism

In this general election, political parties have shown so much respect for local newspapers that they have been creating sham editions of those very papers to push propaganda for their own campaigns.

Rightly, the industry’s trade body, the News Media Association, told them to stop it.

In airing its outrage at this unseemly example of fake news, the NMA’s statement referred to it as a “damaging practice which harms and undermines our democratic society”. It called on politicians to consider the “enormous challenges” faced by regional and local news brands because the digital revolution has wrecked their business model and turned generations of print-readers into screen addicts.

The NMA reminded our political class of the Cairncross review released earlier this year, which urged the government to provide direct financial support to public service news providers. It also called for the creation of a regulator in order to ensure fair play between the tech titans and news publishers. Regardless of who gets into No 10, I wouldn’t hold my breath that these demands will be met.

My hunch is that the incoming government, of whatever persuasion, will prefer to put its faith in an expansion of the Local News Partnerships, the joint initiative pioneered by the NMA and BBC, which was created prior to Cairncross. It has sprinkled ailing newspapers and websites across Britain with local democracy reporters (LDRs) to cover local councils and other public bodies, such as NHS trusts and police commissioners. The jobs are funded by the BBC but they are managed and employed by local news outlets.

At present, there are 150 LDRs, many of whom are hugely enthusiastic about their work. Over the past year, I’ve noted how several of these reporters have written hymns of praise about their contributions.

No wonder. The scale of their coverage is breathtaking. In one week alone in September, some 1,300 of their stories were shared with the scheme’s 900 partners, which were then transformed into 3,200 separate items published in print, online and on air. Town halls are being held to account.

Everyone involved in this project views it as a success, but many more LDRs are required to widen the coverage. This is a major reason why both the BBC and the NMA are hoping for an expansion of the partnership. The plan is to create a not-for-profit company, which will enable it to accept external funding. “I want businesses and other institutions to join with us,” said the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, earlier this year.

Additional external funding is necessary because the BBC’s finances are already stretched. Despite the government’s apparent wish to make it so, our public service broadcaster is not a branch of the social services. It is, however, committed to the support of local journalism. Note that. Not the support of local news brand owners, but the support of the activity of journalism itself.

On face value, that sounds fine. I know it was the original intent.

But isn’t the reality rather different and troubling? In effect, the BBC is subsidising media organisations which have spent years reducing their editorial staffs to such low levels that they are unable carry out the basic journalistic task of reporting on local politics on their own.

It means that the payers of the BBC’s £154.50 licence fee are bankrolling profit-seeking companies that, in order to maintain unrealistic profit margins, have cynically fired the very people who provide news. Now, those businesses are able to draw on the work of journalists whose salaries they are no longer obliged to pay. No surprise then that, to quote Ken MacQuarrie, director of BBC Nations and Regions, it “has been warmly welcomed by the news industry”. You bet.

In fairness, and this is a big point in the partnership’s favour, the LDRs’ content is shared. Aside from the BBC, all those signed up to the partnership – newspaper publishers large and small, independent websites, commercial broadcasters, community radio outlets – can receive the reporters’ work, regardless of their location.

LDRs are also only one of the partnership’s three legs. There is also a shared data unit and a news hub. The data unit, with both BBC staff and journalists drawn from the 900 partner news outlets, produce data-led stories.

The hub, meanwhile, provides local news websites with access to BBC video news content.

However, the government should not be allowed to sit back and expect the BBC to make all the running and supply most of the funding in this important process. Henry Faure Walker, chief executive of Newsquest, the regional news chain ultimately owned by the US company, Gannett, has called on the government to provide “proper” financial help to support local journalism.

He pointed out that Canada has set up a £70m annual fund while Denmark is providing £44m over six years for similar purposes. He didn’t mention, but could have, that France hands out £1bn a year to its press industry.

Walker is underwhelmed with the single government initiative since Cairncross: the creation of a “future news pilot fund” which is offering grants of up to £100,000 to assist projects aimed at helping the regional press explore “innovative ways” to provide local public interest journalism.

Its overall £2m budget looks anything but generous. As Walker says: “It certainly looks light compared to the £1bn tax credits that go to other creative industries”.

If that sounds unimpressive, then the two initiatives by Silicon Valley’s behemoths look pathetic when set against their enormous profits. Google’s “digital news innovation fund” has spent all of €115m (£97m) on 550 projects in 30 European countries to fund new technologies which support good journalism. Then there is Facebook’s £4.5m “community news project”, aimed at creating 80 reporters in under-served areas of Britain.

All of this, although welcome, seems too little too late. The hollowing out of newsrooms across Britain amounts to a crisis for our democracy. Unless politicians take it seriously by finding a way to help the news industry without, of course, controlling its output, journalism will go to the wall.