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Young blood needed for local news

Posted: 29/07/04 By: Jemima Kiss

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Local newspapers need to do more to take on new media and to attract younger staff into the industry, according to the new president of the Newspaper Society.

In an interview with industry magazine Media Week on 23 July, Stephen Parker said: "The Newspaper Society represents newspapers that have been around for many years - in some cases 150 years," said Mr Parker.

"The problem with that, and with the fact that they are newsprint, is that it's very difficult to move away from the perception that you're not part of the future."

The Newspaper Society represents local and regional newspapers across the UK, but has been criticised for its failure to modernise. Roy Jeans, managing director of media-buying firm Magna Global, described the organisation as simply 'managing decline', rather than addressing how to attract new, younger readers and promote the regional press as a powerful platform for advertisers.

'We need to recognise that we are a local info provider, there are very different routes to market and we offer those routes through different means."

Mr Parker also admitted that regional newspapers are old-fashioned by nature, but said that it is difficult to attract young people to the industry because they are not normally readers of the regional press.

Local newspapers have traditionally been seen as the centre of local communities - an aspect that Mr Parker says is still fundamental to the role of the regional press.

But Martin Hamer, lecturer in web journalism at the University of Sheffield, says that the internet presents a very different concept of a community.

"Traditionally, a journalist would be the spokesperson for their own community," said Mr Hamer.

"But the web allows people to produce their own publications and bypass local newspapers. It gives power to the people, if you like."

Local news can seem parochial in comparison, said Mr Hamer. Online communities are built around any number of shared interests or subjects - even if users are 12,000 miles apart.

"Online, your news can be as local or as global as you want. I only read my local newspaper because I used to write for it!"

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See also:
The Newspaper Society: http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk

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