Read all about it! iPM local paper project
Thanks to photographer Herschell Hershey's Newspaper Billboards photostream
The 'death of journalism as we know it' - not a new slogan for iPM - but the gloomy prediction this week of Sly Bailey, whose company Trinity Mirror owns 150 regional newspapers.
Around 60 local papers have closed in the past year.
You may be an avid reader of your local rag, you might never pick it up, but you'll probably have glanced at least one thing they've written - a headline on the advertising billboards at a news stand or outside a papershop.
iPM is taking part in a BBC project to collect photos of these little nuggets of local news. When I say iPM is taking part in the project - it's you doing the work.
So if you pass a bill advertising your local paper this week, would you mind taking a photo of the headline and sending it to iPM? There's also a BBC news Flickr group if you want to upload it there.
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Isn't there a film, released this week, with Russell Crowe and other stellar creatures, which takes as a theme the death of newspapers and the rise of the blogger?
Based on a BBC TV series.
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I admit to being a very dedicated newspaper reader. I get quite anxious if my paper is not on the driveway by 6.30am. During the day I will check the online papers, but nothing to my mind beats reading the paper over breakfast and sitting down in the evening finishing off what I missed in the morning.
James Aven
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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Sadly I didn't have a camera with me when I passed the following Derby Evening Telegraph board this morning :
"Slug found in salad".
If there's nothing else to worry about I'm happy.
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Those of us lucky enough to live in East Finchley, London have a free local paper, run by volunteers, called 'The Archer'. It has all the news on local issues; playing field sales, supermarket developments, phone masts, schools and voluntary groups. People in the community use it to find out what is going on; 'It was in 'The Archer'' is a common starting point for debate. This paper plays a key part in local democracy in our London 'village'. I can't send an advert as it is delivered free to all homes in the area!
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> Around 60 local papers have closed in the past year.
So is the East Belfast Herald bucking the trend? Could it be the only new local paper to launch in the UK so far this year? Is editor Fiona Rutherford taking a chance that the East Belfast community will dig 75p out of their pockets each week to buy a copy?
In last week’s show, you mentioned the surge in sales when schools are featured in local rags. And so it was that when I heard there was a photo of me in last week’s Eb Herald, I duly nipped up the street to the newsagents to buy a copy - more in a ill-thought-out attempt to prevent anyone else from seeing it than out of vanity you understand - to read the story and explore what else the nascent local press was covering. Good range of quality stories. And it seems pretty popular with folk I’ve talked to who are longing to find out what’s going on in there area. You should talk to Fiona and ask her why she’s bucking the trend and opening in such harsh times.
http://www.ebherald.com/
http://alaninbelfast.blogspot.com/2009/04/did-you-hear-one-about-new-local.html
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AP 3,
In case you missed it, see my photo 11 here: (if it works)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2008/09/food_14.shtml#comments
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I stopped getting my local paper when the newsagents that delivered it closed. I am not missing it.
Mind you I was finding that on numerous occasaions teh same story was in twice. Often as a short piece and a separate longer piece. That is fine
if the short piece refers you on to the fuller article but it never did. They also revamped the front page so there was often a photo relating to a story on page 2 or 3 then underneath the front page picture a smaller headlined story. Problem then was a picture pertaining to a "Good news" story was above a Crime report (or vica versa). To me that is not good content control.
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The Government announcement they are purchasing millions of face masks , and
Mr Donaldson stating on BBC News 24
that they are of little use and may even be counter productive by attracting
moisture is another example of joined
up Government wasting my tax
money.
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Local newspapers can really only be defenders of local democracy if they are independent.
When my wife, who is a GP, visited a patient, she got a parking ticket - residents only. The council say she has to buy a permit. "It's only £25". But it's every year, it's for one car (non-transferable), and it's repeated for every doctor, midwife, district nurse, care-worker and physio across the city. It's money skimmed off the NHS budget to line the coffers of the City Council. It could pay the salaries of a couple of cancer nurses, instead it just stops health professionals being harassed. It's a protection racket really.
I rang the Nottingham Evening Post and a nice young man came to interview, but the story was shelved.
Am I being too cynical in suggesting that that might have had something to do with Nottingham City Council being a major shareholder in the Nottingham Evening Post?
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Eddie, My end isn't crackling. No swine flu here....yet.
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it would be interesting to learn if the newspapers that folded were free (funded by advertisers) or bought by the paying public.
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I think that the authentic local newspapers with a genuine belief in their whole community will survive because they have the support. Perhaps even though many newspapers adopted new technology over the past thirty years, they stuck to an old fashioned business model based on property, housing, motors, advertising revenue in the paper rather than realising that they had an opportunity to listen to their local businesses and communities, provide really top notch local newspapers (without advertising) and persuade those businesses and communities to use advertising funded websites to fund the great papers (everyone) wants!
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Local [free] paper still being delivered in Leominster, Herefordshire, packed with ads of course, but also with much local news and a lively letters page. The idea of a council owning even part shares in a newspaper is appalling, one of the major tasks of a local paper is to provide a forum for criticism of the local council, how else are we to control them?
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