Local and Regional News

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Nuttall. I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which really shows how the Committee responds to issues such as local journalism when they are at a crunch point.

I will focus on local media in York. We are well served in print by The Press and The Yorkshire Post, online by YorkMix, and in broadcast media by BBC Radio, Minster FM, ITV and BBC TV. We have already heard so much today about the excellence that local media bring. Local media are where stories are broken, where research is done, where we find out what is really going on in our communities and where people are held to account. They really prove that local news matters.

Local media are part of our local democracy and local citizenship. They strengthen the bonds across local communities such as those in my city of York. I thank the National Union of Journalists, Unite and all those who support people on the print side of media and across the industry so well. It is very hard for journalists to tell their own story about what is happening to their own industry, so today’s debate is timely and important.

As we have already heard from hon. Members, it is clear that we need a proper inquiry into what is happening in the governance and structures of local media. I will return to that point shortly, but first I want to raise the importance of local media on a very practical level. In the floods of 2015, when my community was cut off—the phone lines went down and there was no means of communicating outward—BBC radio had to move location and work night and day to get out messages not only about what was happening across the community but about public safety. It made us think back to the public service ethos that Lord Reith wanted for public broadcast. I thank BBC York for the service that it provided to the community at that time; everyone said that it provided a lifeline at that crunch point.

I want to talk in particular about print and about what we are seeing in our local paper—a story that is echoed right across the country, as the NUJ report that was launched yesterday confirms. We have a great history, as so many towns and communities have. The Yorkshire Evening Press was first published in 1882. It used to have four publications a day; people used to get their papers literally hot off the press because they wanted the latest edition with the latest news. Obviously the news process has moved on, but 17,342 people read the print edition of The Press daily, which proves that it still has a strong leadership. However, media are changing, as we know. Some 54,000 people now access The Press’s digital content—the eighth highest readership in local news. The trends are changing, but the digital content is clearly not providing the revenue, because 80% of revenue comes from print. The industry is really challenged by the shift to an online presence.

We have heard about the importance of local papers and local media in providing a democratic solution and ensuring that stories are well balanced and investigated. We know that social media can often be an echo chamber for news, where fake news is often recirculated, whereas local media really work at the craft of reporting stories and getting to the heart of matters. We also know that the industry is challenged not only by digital changes but by changes in advertising: in the economic global recession, advertising in local media dried up significantly—another financial challenge for local papers—and the market has not picked up since. Advertising has moved more online, particularly because readership is higher there, but also because there are new means of operating.

We have to come back to the issue of ownership. As we have heard, the press in York is owned by Newsquest Media Group, which has 211 titles. Printing no longer takes place in York, and nor does the editorial function. That has taken away from the local community. Although there is excellent local content—community news and events, charities, political reporting, events in the city and, not least, sports news—a lot of the content is national. People do not necessarily want to read it, but we can understand why papers have moved to that model as a means of filling space. Thankfully, there is still a lot of local content, but those pressures are building.

We have seen real cuts in the number of local journalists. Since 2008, the number of journalists at The Press has fallen by 50%. They now have to work under incredible stress, trying to produce copy constantly to ensure that they get good cover in the paper. They have to churn out content at a really high level, so although they are incredibly industrious, they are more tied to their desk rather than out in the community building relationships and learning their craft. They are also constantly worried about what the future is bringing down on them. The pressure is there.

As journalists are being made redundant, trainees are losing mentors, so they are not able to learn skills or how to avoid errors. Instead of learning their craft from senior mentors, trainees are often left on their own because there is not enough time for a proper structure to bring them through the apprenticeship—if I can call it that—of learning the skills and craft of journalism.

We have also seen a cut in the number of editors. The Press has lost its subbing sub-editor and its page sub-editor. The checks and balances in producing copy have therefore been withdrawn, which puts more pressure on journalists to ensure that everything is accurate, along with the pressures of balancing news and finding time to research and dig into stories and get the other side of the story. They have to work incredibly hard, often on low pay, to get the right story into their papers.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In my early life in politics, reporters went out and met people, spoke to them and interviewed them at length. They got to know the local politicians, the local community and the local areas; they were really in touch with the local community, and they were better for it.

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That is exactly what journalists want—to be the people who are uncovering the stories, building the relationships and really getting that personal touch into their stories—but the limitations that are now placed on them are curbing their ability to do those things.

We are also seeing a reduction in the number of photographers—a profession that has not yet been mentioned today. The York Press, which would once have had six, seven or eight photographers, now has only one professional photographer, with others freelancing. A photograph tells a story, and there is an art in being able to get that photograph well. We are often requested to send in a photograph, so readers get the typical line-up instead of the creative story that a photographer can provide. We need to remember the essential role that photographers play and the pressure that they, too, are under when they contribute their skills to produce a paper.

We need to think about what we want for the future of our papers. We can all agree that the corporate ownership model has not delivered the local democratisation of news, and that we need to rethink it. That is why an inquiry would be so timely: it would ensure that we could look at all the options that are now open to local papers.

I have had some discussions about what a co-operative model looks like. I both agree and disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman); I think it is too late to start looking at that kind of model when a paper is failing. We need to look at it now. We need to build local co-operation from the community into papers, to ensure that there is a local eye on what is happening, not just a distant editor doing their best, possibly over a number of publications, or even just their own paper, but who is not based in the local community.

How do we bring that local voice right into the workings of a paper today? We need to raise the voices of journalists, the people working day and night on our papers, to ensure that they have real input into the shape and the future of not only their own publication but their industry, to make sure that they can use their professionalism in determining what a real community paper looks like.

I certainly support suggestions about hypothecated taxation being a means of supporting the industry in the future, ensuring that there is a real wall between content and income sources but ensuring that papers receive the injection of income that is obviously needed to keep alive the vital democracy that they provide.

We face the challenges that I have set out and we must ensure that we respond to them, because these papers and in particular their journalists, who are at the frontline, are looking to us. At the moment they are just part of the wider corporate picture, and if the money is not returned to these corporate giants, which we have heard monopolise the sector, we could lose a real element of our social democracy and we will regret that when it is gone.

I thank the NUJ for raising this issue with Members of Parliament, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the urgent need for this debate, and I ask the Minister to ensure that there is a proper inquiry into what is happening now to our local media, particularly our local print media, so that we can sustain the sector and put a proper model in place for the future.