Local Newspapers

David Morris Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your guidance, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for securing the debate. His comments were very thoughtful and collegiate.

I attend the debate at the request of my local newspaper editor, Nicola Adam, who has asked me to express her team’s views. In my constituency, we have two local newspapers, which cross-cover both parts of it: The Visitor, which comes out on a Tuesday evening, and the Lancaster Guardian, which comes out on a Thursday morning.

Despite the doom-and-gloom reports we hear of decline, my local papers’ readership is ever increasing. That is because The Visitor and the Lancaster Guardian have embraced the new online audience in the face of the decline in physical, printed copies. Both versions have an audience in my constituency. Anyone who has ever been to Morrisons in Morecambe at 5 pm on a Tuesday will almost have been mowed down by the stampede of people trying to get hold of The Visitor. Some 22,280 people in my constituency read the paper copy each week, while there are 60,843 unique users online and 133,133 views on mobile devices. That shows that the audience for local news is still there, but that people want to access news in a different, instant, digital medium. For local news to survive, newspapers need to embrace the online market and not rely solely on paper circulation figures. The digitalisation of the local press, far from meaning that fewer people are engaged, has actually shown that there is a greater demand for local news, insight and opinion.

Local newspapers are champions of democracy. Nicola and her team work hard to ensure that the things I do in the area as the Member of Parliament are covered in a fair and balanced way. In addition, I have a weekly column in both papers, which also appears online as a weekly update to my constituents. Some more elderly constituents read my column every week and enjoy being updated about positive things that are happening in the area. If the local paper covered a wider area or multiple constituencies, residents would miss out on getting a personalised update every week. Instead, they would get a more general update on the whole area, some of which would not be relevant to the area in which they live.

Nicola has passed me research showing that, contrary to popular belief, there are no major gaps in the UK in terms of areas that are not served by a local paper, and we are lucky enough to have two covering my area. It is clear that, at a time when the market is struggling, free newspapers have declined, but the net reduction in the number of local papers in the past 20 years has been a mere 1.6%.

One of the main concerns expressed by the editor of Morecambe’s The Visitor, and by Johnston Press more widely, is that there could be a knee-jerk decision for the BBC to step in and save local newspapers. That would be misjudged and have a negative impact. More generally, there seems to be a feeling that the BBC could change and have a commercial and complementary relationship with its competitors, instead of undermining them. The BBC often covers a much larger area than the local newspaper, so local newspaper teams who live in the area they report on can sometimes handle local knowledge and interests better.

To sum up, the local newspapers in my constituency professionally represent local people’s views, and Nicola and the team are adapting to the increased digitalisation of their product. Local news teams must see that the future is digital, but I believe that local newspapers, if not always in print form, are here to stay for a long time to come.