Michael Harrison: How do we save democracy? Do more for our local papers

The news is grim these days if you happen to be part of the regional newspapers business. Johnston Press, the third-biggest player in the market, has just gone into administration and been controversially sold to its debtholders after failing to find a buyer for its 200 or so daily and weekly titles.

We do not yet know what Johnston’s new owners will do with the company. It is business as usual for the time being. But the gimlet-eyed bondholders who are now in charge are not generally known for their sentimentality or tolerance of underperforming assets.

Johnston’s fate looks to be one more chapter in the seemingly inexorable decline of the industry. In the past decade 300 local newspapers have closed, circulation has more than halved, advertising revenues have nosedived by 75% and 6000 fewer journalists are employed. The result: two thirds of local authorities and more than half of all parliamentary constituencies no longer have a daily local newspaper to report what is happening at grassroots level and keep politicians and councillors honest. This is known as the “democratic deficit”.

It is an interesting juncture, therefore, for Dame Frances Cairncross to be putting the finishing touches to her review of the sustainability of the UK’s local press. Her modest remit? “To ensure that the UK has a vibrant, independent and plural free press as one of the cornerstones of our public debate,” or so said Matt Hancock when, as Culture Secretary, he ordered the review.

The first thing Cairncross may have done is to interrogate just how accurate a picture those statistics paint. For the reality is that most of the local newspapers that have closed are weekly freesheets which are advertising not news-driven, employ few journalists and are delivered door to door. Remarkably few paid-for daily or evening papers have closed, with the sad exception of the Liverpool Daily Post.

In the place of declining local print sales, a burgeoning digital sector has sprung up. Reach, the publishing group formerly known as Trinity Mirror, is the biggest player in the regional press market with a 29% share. The print circulation of its daily regionals is around 300,000 but the websites of those newspapers attract 25 million unique users a month. The Hull Daily Mail, for instance, sells just 22,000 paid-for copies, but half the town’s population log on at least once a day to its Hull Live website. So successful has this been that Reach is rolling out the Live model in cities where it has no print newspaper presence, such as Leeds and Edinburgh.

Admittedly, this has meant trading print pounds for digital pennies because online news is intrinsically less lucrative per reader than its physical cousin. The move towards a digital future has also been accompanied by content hubs, where several local newspapers are replaced by one edition served by a single newsroom in the nearest large urban centre and containing much common content.

The result has been a decline in the absolute volume and range of local news and much less “parish-pump” reporting of what goes on in the courts and council chambers. This democratic deficit has partly been addressed by the creation of 150 “local democracy reporters” funded from the BBC licence fee, whose sole job is to cover local council meetings and make their copy freely available to any local newspaper. Consolidation and regional concentration has also reduced plurality of ownership, resulting in what some see as a widening of the democratic deficit.

How bold will Cairncross be? Some want more regulation to force internet giants such as Google and Facebook to peddle less fake news and more local news from trusted sources, who would then receive a fairer share of advertising revenues. Facebook seems intent on heading off such action by offering to invest in social media training for regional reporters.

Some want more government intervention to increase plurality of ownership. Some want more state subsidy through a big rise in the number of local democracy reporters. Cairncross cannot please everyone. Scale has enabled the big regional players to innovate. Break up their local monopolies in the name of plurality and the perverse result may be a democratic black hole.