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PA 'public service reporting' scheme could cost £15-18m

Posted: 30/10/09 By: Laura Oliver

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The Press Association's (PA) public service reporting project could cost between £15 and £18 million a year if extended nationally, its head of training said yesterday.

Speaking at the Digital Editors Network event in Preston, Tony Johnston said funding is currently being sought for both an initial trial of the scheme and being considered for a long-term national project.

The aim of the initiative, which was announced by PA editor-in-chief Tony Watson in July, is to increase coverage of local public institutions and produce reports made available online, for free to local news organisations.

In researching the project, the PA ran a two-week test in Essex and covered each of the local authority meetings taking place during that time to track the extent to which there were stories going uncovered, explained Johnston.

The agency is now looking at two or three areas for longer pilots, one of which is Liverpool, where the PA is in talks to work with Trinity Mirror's newspapers in the region. The test run is scheduled for the second quarter of 2010.

The PA will access the impact of the initial trial and, if successful, will begin lobbying for national funding, said Johnston.

A nationwide roll-out of the scheme could see jobs created for between 500 and 800 reporters, he said.

"Against a background of falling public spending that [£15-8 million] is a lot of money to bring in to the public spending round," said Johnston.

But the PA training chief added that money is already being spent on non-independent news services, such as local authority PR and newspapers.

The PA's service would be editorially independent, he said, adding that one source of funding had already been rejected for fear of compromising this.

The initial site would use a Wordpress or similar blog template with RSS feeds for distribution, he suggested.

While it will be accessible to the public, the site will be primarily for local publishers and media: "[A] content pool for publishers who can come up with innovative ways of distributing and monetising this content if they wish.

"It will be very straight reportage, not Hansard, but news that allows you as a publisher to take an angle on it and add value."

Such a public service reporting scheme could run alongside or become part of plans for independently funded news consortia, as proposed by Ofcom, and would not necessarily be a form of competition, Johnston added.

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