Local Newspapers

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on obtaining this important debate. I thank him for his kind words about my chairmanship of the Select Committee.

This matter has caused the Committee considerable concern for quite a long time. We carried out an inquiry on the future of local and regional media in 2010 and were alarmed by the number of closures and job losses, of which there was a steady stream. At that time, there were 1,300 local and regional media titles. Claire Enders, of Enders Analysis, told us that she expected half of those to close within five years. It has not been quite as bad as that, but we are down to about 1,000 and the closures are continuing, as the hon. Gentleman said.

It is not just closures. We have seen steady reductions in the number of staff; the journalists are often young and low paid; there have been relocations away from high streets; and there has been a reduction in the number of photographers. What Nick Davies, in The Guardian, has called “churnalism” is becoming ever more obvious, with local newspapers taking press releases and reproducing them without any attempt to establish whether facts within them are correct, or whether there is an alternative.

Investigative reporting has also declined. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Mid Staffordshire inquiry and investigation, which was a shining example of investigative reporting. We in the Committee heard from the journalist responsible for that. It is interesting to note that the Rotherham scandal was exposed not by the local paper, but by The Times, which allowed Andrew Norfolk, one of its journalists, to spend four years investigating that story. He rightly received commendation and awards at the Society of Editors press awards a few days ago. That was an extraordinary commitment to pursuing a story on the part of a national newspaper. It is possible that a local paper simply would not have the resources to do that.

In my area, as we have already heard to some extent from my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), who is a distinguished former editor of my local newspaper, we have two local newspapers—both weeklies—the Maldon and Burnham Standard, which he mentioned, and the Essex Chronicle. Both do their best. The Maldon and Burnham Standard used to have an address on the High street, which my hon. Friend described, but is no longer there, having moved to Braintree. The Chronicle is now based in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Chelmsford. The Standard is still performing well. The editor tells me it has one of the highest year-on-year ABC sales figures and that its decline is around 1.8%, which is considerably better than many others. I am going to see the editor, Andrew Bennett, tomorrow, and his two young, extremely hard-working and excellent reporters, Nina Morgan and Ally Grainger.

When I was first elected, the Chronicle had a veteran local government editor called Kathleen Corby and the Maldon and Burnham Standard had a deputy editor, Geoff Percival, both of whom had been there for years and had a breadth of experience. I suspect that my hon. Friend remembers both of those characters. One problem for young journalists working at local newspapers is that there is no longer an upward career path, so it is difficult for them to get promoted to achieve higher earnings. The consequence is that they go into other areas, such as public relations or public affairs. It is understandable. However, that is a worrying development, because most journalists acquire their training on local newspapers. National newspapers, television channels and radio stations depend on local newspapers to train the journalists whom they will one day employ.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. The hon. Gentleman is right. The Stornoway Gazette, in Lewis and the Hebrides, employs local people in the local community and provides a service that would be sorely missed if it were not there. There is not enough appreciation of what the local press is doing. What are the hon. Gentleman’s views on what we can do to support the local press more and ensure that we have a local press in years to come? There is a feeling that it will always be there because it has been there in the past. Local papers are under great pressures, as the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. What does he think could be done to support them?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The turnout in this debate reflects the concern felt throughout the United Kingdom, which is replicated in every community. I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s question in a moment. I do have some suggestions about what can be done to assist, which I will mention shortly.

The decline of local newspapers has been attributed to many causes that have undoubtedly played their part, including: the growth of local authority free sheets, which sometimes masquerade as local papers and are not obviously publications of the local authority, although they are, of course, paid for by the council tax payer; the decline in public service notices and public service advertising, which has removed some revenue streams; and competition from the BBC, which I will mention. Many local papers resent the fact that not only is the BBC competing with them by providing online news reports free of charge, but frequently those news reports are taken from local newspapers without proper attribution. The attitude of the competition authorities is another concern; they have adopted a very narrow definition of competition, which has in some cases prevented consolidation, which represents the best chance of creating viable local media companies.

The internet has changed everything. More and more people are accessing their news online and not paying for it. Local newspapers have rightly followed that trend and almost every local newspaper has developed its own online distribution, but it is still provided for free, and therefore revenues have declined. At the same time, the advertising on which local papers depend has migrated away from them, and to the internet.

On the way here this morning, I bumped into Mark D’Arcy, the BBC’s excellent parliamentary correspondent, whom I suspect will be familiar to all hon. Members in this Chamber. He told me that he began his career on the Leicester Mercury. At that time, the paper had a section for property advertising that was a couple of centimetres thick. “Now, of course”, he said, “it is all on Zoopla.” That is reflected right across the board. Classified advertising has been in steady decline as ever more is done online. That is another source of reduction in revenues.

Local newspaper groups are seeking to adapt to this new world. I heard the critical comments of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington about David Montgomery’s company, Local World. I have to say that I spent a morning sitting in on its news conference and was impressed with the way that he is trying to ensure the integration of the online news coverage with his local newspapers. There is no question but that the business models have to change. In this world, the old business model is simply not going to work. David Montgomery is making a valiant attempt to develop a viable news model when other former newspaper group owners have withdrawn, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

The decline has left some areas with just one paper, and some with none at all. I will not repeat what has already been said about the dangers that that holds for accountability and democracy. In five weeks’ time, we do not just have national parliamentary elections; in many areas of the country, including mine, we have local elections that in some ways affect people’s lives more than whom they elect to send to this place. How are they supposed to reach a judgment on the performance of local authorities if that is no longer covered in detail by the local paper? That is why local papers matter so much.

The same thing applies in the court system. It is a fundamental principle that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done. That means that the proceedings of courts need to be reported, as do those of health trusts, education authorities and the new local enterprise partnerships. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) was absolutely right: as we devolve more power out to these different institutions, we have to ensure accountability by having coverage of them.

To go back to the points made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, one or two things can be done to help. First, I congratulate the Chancellor and thoroughly welcome his announcement yesterday on the possibility of business rate relief for local newspapers. There is no question but that that will help. It is gratifying that the Treasury has listened and acknowledged the importance of this matter, but more needs to be done. In 2010, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee welcomed a proposal put forward by the Press Association on what it called public service reporting. The idea is that journalists sit in the local council chamber or the local court and make factual, independent content available to any news outlet that wants it. Those journalists would be funded by a public service fund. There was a pilot to introduce that, and it offers a potential way forward.

There is an additional element to that proposal, which I press on the Minister. In the Committee’s recent inquiry on the future of the BBC, we received evidence from the chairman of the KM Group, Geraldine Allinson, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) referred. She suggested that the BBC should commission content from local media. Rather than just taking it and not paying for it, the BBC would commission content and so support local media. We received an excellent submission from the South West News Service, which extended the idea with an interesting suggestion. The BBC has an independent production quota for drama. It has to place 25% of its commissioning outside the BBC with independent production houses. SWNS’s suggestion was that we should consider extending that measure to local news, so that the BBC would be required to contract out part of its local news coverage to outside media groups. That could be done on a competitive basis and would be a way in which the BBC, which is extremely well financed by the licence fee, could be part of a solution, rather than being seen to undermine and damage newspapers.

[Mr MacNeil]

I worked as a journalist at the BBC—it was more than 20 years ago, I have to be honest—but does the hon. Gentleman think that the BBC should name-check and credit local media? The BBC picks up a lot of stories from local newspapers, and they go UK-wide and worldwide, but the credit is never given to papers such as the Stornoway Gazette or the Oban Times or whatever.

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[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree that the BBC should do that, but it should not just credit stories. I hope that the BBC will, when it takes a story from a local newspaper, not only attribute it, but include a direct web link on the online report, so that someone can go straight across to the original article on the newspaper’s website. That is beginning to happen, but our suggestion goes a bit further than that. It calls for the BBC to buy in content as part of a quota.

I have been encouraged by the response we have had. James Harding has already made a speech in which he emphasised the importance of local media and the need for the BBC to try to support local media. I have spoken to James Purnell about the idea, and he was also receptive. I hope that the Government, whichever colour they are after the election, will examine that when they come to look at the charter review. The BBC does and will continue to play an extremely important role in this country, but it could also provide a vehicle for supporting local media, which, as every speaker in the debate will agree, is of vital importance to the democracy and accountability of institutions and the governance of this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

I shall be coming to my comments on the BBC very shortly. I apologise for not responding immediately to my hon. Friend’s question. I have to have a translator, not to translate things from English into Yorkshire dialect, but because I am stone deaf.

I was going to argue that there are more cheering points. Grimsby and north-east Lincolnshire, because it is a real community—unlike most places, which are just slices of somewhere else—has a great interest in its history and politics and has been more supportive. The Grimsby Telegraph has had one of the lowest falls in circulation of any paper. It is making a profit from selling its own past in the form of “Bygones”, which sells well and helps to support the newspaper. The number of people who see the newspaper—the number of eyeballs that read it, whether in digital or print form—has actually increased over the past 20 years.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has an outstanding example of enterprise in his constituency in the form of the Cleethorpes Chronicle, a local success story that was started from scratch. That is cheering, and the hope of recovery as the economy recovers, very slowly, will keep us going, but we have a real problem that affects the quality of debate and politics and the sense of community in our societies: the decline of journalism—the decline in the number of journalists and their training—caused by newspapers’ financial problems.

I have envisaged the forthcoming election having to be covered by Members sending in reports of our own speeches—they will not be published as they were previously —and taking selfies. That is how David Montgomery’s vision of a digital future will end up: idiots writing rubbish for electronic forums and sending in photographs of themselves as the authors of this gibberish—[Laughter.] But not me.

Think what our communities would be like without trenchant and active local journalism to cover community and council events, court proceedings and local functions, as opposed to asking people to send in their own photographs, as is increasingly the case. Think of Bradford, where the Poulson scandal was exposed by Ray Fitzwalter at Bradford’s Telegraph and Argus, who later went on to work for Granada. Think of the various problems unearthed by that paper’s competitors in the northern region. Think of the ability to discover who is getting what out of council deals, and any scandals that emerge. All that would go.

National journalists’ training is based on the local papers—they are the training grounds for quality journalism. That is where journalists learn their craft. If the functions are to be shifted from the local paper to a hub somewhere else in the country, the all-round experience of producing a newspaper, producing and editing news and developing the argument is going to be gone, and gone from a diminished number of journalists. There was a well-beaten track from local journalism to Fleet street. It provided the training ground for the quality journalism in Fleet street, but that is going to be undercut and will disappear.

This morning, the editor of the Grimsby Telegraph argued with me that at least her journalists are now more multi-skilled. Well, they can take photographs, deal with websites and upload news—that is certainly true. That could not have been done by my generation of journalists. I was at the glamour end of the profession, not the literate, intelligent end. Nevertheless, although they are more multi-skilled, there are fewer of them and they have less ability to inquire into what is really going on behind the scenes.

All that is easy to describe, and I have just done so, but in a debate such as this we must ask: what is the alternative? What do we do about it? That is the singular deficiency of all the debates on this issue that I have heard, read or seen over the years. That is why we want, and the National Union of Journalists is demanding, a short, sharp, quick and strong inquiry to discover the roots of the problem and offer solutions. We cannot develop them here and now, although the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) has tried to offer some, but we must have an inquiry into the whole issue.

That brings me to the BBC. I do not and cannot support, and I do not think we should support, any proposal for top-slicing the BBC. Everyone wants to top-slice the BBC: ITV wants a bit, local media want a bit and local television stations want a bit. The BBC licence fee must be there to support quality production in this country. That is its purpose and that is what it should be devoted to.

[Mr Whittingdale]

The Select Committee had two potential solutions, one of which was top-slicing the licence fee to set up public service reporting. The hon. Gentleman is right that the BBC was opposed to that. However, the solution I was setting out was not top-slicing. I was talking about the BBC itself commissioning content. The BBC would continue to use the licence fee for itself, without giving it to any other body. As long as it remains within the control of the BBC, I do not think that there is an objection.

[Austin Mitchell]

There are alternative ways for the BBC to help out the newspapers financially. It now observes a requirement to buy stories from the local television stations—indeed, it has begun to buy stories from Estuary TV in my constituency. That is a good thing. There is no reason why the BBC should not buy stories from local newspaper journalists, provided that the money goes to the journalists, not to the directors and chief executives of the newspaper.