The Mill in Manchester is republishing articles hidden behind the Manchester Evening News’ paywall, in what it’s called an “act of petty protest.”
It explained that the move was because it had found that a number of articles on the MEN Premium edition were written by Local Democracy Reporters.
These reporters are funded by the BBC and therefore the Licence Fee. However, as Reach explains, in its case, this only “part funds” the journalists. It also added that it was operating within both “the terms and spirit” of the system.
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The Mill editorial references a specific article – “Six reporters conducted 73 interviews about the name “on Greater Manchester’s lips”, which was produced by 6 Local Democracy Reporters.
“The MEN, which is owned by the stock-market-listed, London-based media conglomerate Reach PLC, is asking readers to part with their cash to read the piece. It was paywalled as part of their new Premium service, in which top-tier MEN content is accessible for £4.99 a month. This all seemed perfectly just: We’ve long made the case for people paying for journalism, and after all, sending six reporters into 10 boroughs to do 73 interviews doesn’t come cheap. ‘This is a Premium article created exclusively for our subscribers,’ reads the tagline on the paywall.
“The only problem is, that’s an outright lie. The reporters on this piece are actually Local Democracy Reporters (LDRs), a publicly-funded scheme paid for by the BBC licence fee — ie. by all of us. They’re expected to do bread and butter public-interest reporting, attending local council and planning meetings. Their articles are all sent to the relevant local news outlets, for free, for potential publishing. The Mill receives this content too, we just don’t choose to publish it. We certainly don’t try to charge you for it.
“This means the MEN didn’t pay the reporters who worked on this piece – you did. We found that over a dozen Premium MEN articles were written by LDRs just over the last month.”
Reach says that it does contribute to the reporters’ wages, it said that its “regional salary structure requires us to supplement this [BBC] funding, which also does not cover any of the management and employment overheads associated with holding these contracts.”
The Mill said that in its “act of petty protest, to prove that this is not exclusive content” it will publish the content for free “every time they try to mislead their readers by publishing taxpayer-funded journalism under the guise of exclusive content.”
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When Prolific North put this to the BBC and Reach they said that media partners were able to charge readers for content produced by Local Democracy Reporters.
“Since the launch of the Local Democracy Reporting Service in 2018 we have been consistent that there is no barrier to any partner organisation charging audiences for access to content whether that is through a traditional print cover price, paywalls for selected stories or full subscription models,” said a BBC spokesperson.
“Content is freely available for all approved partners to use but it is down to individual businesses to decide how they share it with audiences.”
Manchester Evening News’ Editor-in-Chief, Sarah Lester told us:
“We are glad to see The Mill using the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme content as intended – to support local publishers.
“We are extremely proud of the content we produce for the scheme and it is inaccurate to suggest that putting LDR content behind a paywall is not allowed. The way the scheme works is that once the copy has been published to the BBC wire to be used by partners however they want, it is up to our newsroom to decide what to do with it. This could include putting it into the (paid for) paper or putting it behind a paywall. There is no difference.
“The premium articles cited are ones where significant additional newsroom resources have been deployed to develop in-depth features beyond straightforward council reporting. This includes commissioning, developing, and guiding the LDRs as well as editing their copy.
“We have chosen to share the complete packages with the LDR partners in keeping with our commitment to making the LDR scheme a success. Producing pieces like the ones referenced here take a significant amount of journalistic resource beyond the LDRs, so we are comfortable in publishing this as part of the content mix we serve our Premium readers.
“By ensuring we share full packages with LDR partners, we are providing a service above and beyond what we are contracted to do.”
Stories written by LDRs reporters are published on a wire system, which is available to any accredited publishers. Reach said that content produced by its LDRS teams is added to the wire “in advance” of publication in its own titles – as per the contract with the BBC.
It added:
“As a highly engaged partner in the scheme from the outset, Reach works closely with the BBC to ensure we are operating within both the terms and spirit of the LDRs at all times.”
