Prime Minister Andy Burnham needs to extend his plans for devolution and regional powers to the local press and regional media, according to a new editorial in no less a tome than the Financial Times.
The piece sets out how Burnham’s vision for decentralising power needs to be accompanied by a robust local media sector.
Earlier this year the government launched its Local News Fund, designed to help with the slump in local newspaper sales and the online news monopoly of social media giants, with £12m of grant funding set aside for the sector over the next two years.
But the FT’s editorial suggests ministers need to go further if Burnham’s devolution agenda is to work.
It said: “When Britain’s ousted prime minister Sir Keir Starmer decided last week to stand down as an MP, he gave the scoop to the local newspaper, the Camden New Journal.
“As Starmer’s successor Andy Burnham plans to devolve some powers and tax revenues from Westminster to England’s regional mayors, something is missing from his vision: A robust local media sector that can hold local officials to account for their decisions and spending.
“Burnham wants to turn back the clock on the centralisation of power since the Thatcher era. Back in the 1980s, though, an estimated 1,600-plus local daily and weekly newspapers in the UK supported tens of thousands of journalists.
“Local reporters made it their business to track local movers and shakers, sit through council committees, follow court cases and monitor services.
“But the digital revolution hit regional media especially hard. Local paper circulations dipped and print advertising that supplied much of their revenues plunged by more than two-thirds between 2007 and 2017 as ads migrated online.
“A core of local journalism survives. But the broad decline of local media matters for Burnham’s project. The point of devolution is to make local decision makers both more responsive and more accountable to their voters.
“The old local press cannot be recreated and building more viable local media ecosystems will be a long process. Alternative funding is hard to find.
“A BBC scheme funds 165 journalists to do public-interest reporting at local news organisations, but the BBC’s own funding is severely squeezed.
“The Starmer government launched a local media action plan earlier this year including £12mn of grant funding over two years. But Burnham wants to go much further with his version of devolution.
“If he is committed to regenerating local governments and communities, reviving local media has to be part of his strategy too.”
NCTJ chief executive Joanne Forbes appeared to agree. She wrote on LinkedIn, she wrote: “If more power and public money is moving from Westminster, strong local journalism becomes more important.
“The government’s £12m Local News Fund is very welcome, but something much more radical is required to build a sustainable future for local journalism.
“The FT is right: local journalism isn’t a nice-to-have alongside devolution. It is part of the democratic infrastructure that makes devolution work.”
