#soe09: BBC looking for local press partnerships; will add RSS newspaper feeds

The BBC is planning to add RSS feeds from local newspapers to the homepages of four of its regional sites.

According to its controller of English regions, David Holdsworth, the feeds will be launched in the next few weeks.

The exact regions have not yet been selected, but areas with few RSS news sources are the focus, he told the Society of Editors annual conference.

The development is part of the corporation's commitment to be a guide to the web for its users and encourage external linking, as recommended by the BBC Trust in its review of bbc.co.uk in May 2008.

The BBC has been developing technology that automatically provides links to local papers, said Holdsworth.

"It's been slow progress (...) But we will even be able to find the stories that add the most value, the ones that provide the most depth. There's anecdotal evidence that that will provide a lot of traffic," he said.

"There's no payment involved. This is about providing value for the licence fee payer and providing them guidance to other sources of news and information," said Holdsworth in response to a question from Journalism.co.uk.

Holdsworth said he would encourage more partnerships with local newspapers, in particular with video syndication.

Last November the BBC's plans to increase its local video output were rejected by the BBC Trust. In July the corporation announced video partnerships with national newspapers, including the Independent and Guardian, with the potential to offer the same deals to local media groups.

Offers of partnership involving equipment and pooled content, such as those made to ITV as part of a memorandum on local news provision made in March, are still open, said Holdsworth.

But these would be 'off the table' if top-slicing of the licence fee was introduced, he said.

In the following session with the director of BBC News Helen Boaden, Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan said the BBC only wanted the 'pretence of partnership'.

"I've attended lots of meeting about partnership and nothing ever happens. All that ever happens are things that are useless to us," said Meehan.

"I don't want that [syndication of BBC video] because I don’t want my website to be an electronic billboard for the BBC.

"We want the BBC to stop encroaching on our business."

Boaden said the BBC could not be accused of encroaching following the end of its local plans last year and that it could be argued that other local media encroach on the BBC's audio and video tradition.

"[But] in a converged world we are all dealing with an internet that does text, audio and video," she said.

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