Today the BBC Trust pulled an absolutely stinking howler. With its decision to prevent the BBC from improving local journalism, the only people who are suffering are viewers and listeners.
The money, the Trust said, should instead by used to “improve existing services”. Existing services like, I dunno, local news?
The Trust also concluded that an improved local video service — which would have seen ten clips of hyperlocal news posted online every day in every region — would have a “significant negative impact on commercial providers”.
Ok. There may be a point there. If the BBC are going to be doing great local video, then why would people go to the local newspaper for video as well? After all, the BBC’s national news videos mean that people have stopped visiting Sky News, or the Guardian, or the Telegraph, or the Times, or ITV, or… you get the picture.
Competition ups everyone’s game. If local newspapers offer something unique then people will still come.
The simple truth is this: local newspapers are scared stiff. The likes of Sly Bailey, so critical of the BBC’s plans, clearly has no idea what to do in the next year. In fact, I’ll shorten that to the next six months. She’s got a newspaper group that is flapping its wings about in panic, feathers flying out in all directions.
Pay freezes and job cuts don’t solve the problem. In fact, they put you in a worse position. How will you make any local video content without any bloody staff?
Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a screenshot of 4 key local news websites. Over the next few months, I’ll monitor any changes. I’ll see if the local press are rising to the challenge. I’ll stick my neck out a bit here and predict nothing will happen. The designs will stay the same. The production values of multimedia will not improve, and more job cuts will be announced.
You know, in some ways I’m glad the BBC Trust has rejected the plans. Perhaps it’s too early. This way, when local newspapers do absolutely nothing to improve local news, they won’t be able to blame the big bad BBC. It will be their own incompentence. A reluctance to get face the times and sort out their shoddy product.
Screenshots after the jump. I’ll take a look at these after Christmas. Lets see what happens.
No.1: Lincolnshire Echo – Northcliffe Media
I’ve picked the Lincolnshire Echo for four reasons. Reason 1: I know it well, I studied at the University of Lincoln. Reason 2: It’s a great paper. Reason 3: It’s a poor website. Reason 4: They have the facilities to improve.
No.2: North Devonshire Gazette – Archant
Here’s a prime candidate for improving local websites. All things considered, this isn’t too bad. But I’m struck by the appalling usability of Archant video posts. I’d like to see it improve.
No.3: The ‘Somewhere’ Echo – Newsquest
Where is this site for? ‘Echo’ reads its strap. No sub title or anything. Turns out it’s Basildon. They really should write that in somewhere. It’s not like they’ve not got the room… look at it! Loads of white space.
No.4: The Birmingham Mail – Trinity Mirror
Now, to be fair to Trinity Mirror, the Birmingham Mail is a great local news website. But lets not get cocky. I’ve picked this out because I know they’ve just moved to a lovely shiny new multimedia newsroom. Let’s see what they do with it.
Great idea Dave… but to make those sites LOOK different will take much more than individual papers grasping the nettle. At least two of those groups (probably all but I’ve only worked for two of them) have designed awful, counter-intuituive templates that leave no room for creativity at a regional level.
Newsquest ‘bans’ embedding of iframes or widgets, so the only way you can use sites like Flickr or apps like Cover it Live is to cheat and hope the big bosses don’t notice. We have a maximum display window of 310 pixels so even when we do sneakily embed google maps or dipity timelines you can’t read them.
In your Basildon Echo example, they don’t have access to that second column of white space except to use preset Newsquest panels – on our site, I’d love to have a Twitter widget and a Flickr panel but we can’t.
You don’t expect all regional newspapers to look identical – so why can’t the groups loosen up a bit, let each site work on developing its own version of the basic template that does allow for a bit of design flexibility, proper display of pictures – and most importantly lets us use some of the great tools that are out there? When you read the comments to our site, lots of them complain about how all the newspapers look the same online. It just contributes to the ‘it’s not a local paper, they don;t really care about us’ feeling that many of our readers have,
Sam Shepherd’s last blog post..Online storytelling
Well, he was elected by the voters of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath. In a parliamentary system, I suppose it’s always wrong to say that the prime minister was elected by anyone other than his own constituency, but the personalities of the parties’ leaders do seem to play more of a role than they did even 15 or 20 years ago.