It is 1978 and I am a trainee reporter in the newsroom of the Southern Evening Echo in Southampton. The room is full of people…and cigarette smoke. The crime reporter, Mary, who gets through three packs of Embassy Gold a day, shouts “Copy!” A teenage runner rushes to her desk, grabs the sheaf of paper and heads for the sub-editor’s desk. Within the hour her story is on the front page, and the paper is on the streets.
A newspaper seller shouts out the headline, preceded by a cry of “Evenin’ ‘Co!” which sounds more like a strangled seagull than English. People queue up to buy the paper, as much for the small ads – jobs, flats to rent, cars for sale – as for the news.
His pitch is just outside the Echo’s headquarters, an imposing building slap bang in the middle of the city centre. It is right at the heart of the community. It is prestigious, important, accessible. It is now a shopping centre.
By the end of the day, more than 100,000 copies will have been sold. Several hundred people – journalists, photographers, printers, delivery van drivers, advertising sales staff – are employed in the process. And the paper’s parent company makes a tidy profit.
This is how it used to be – and this is what we’ve lost.
Price of a cup of coffee
For a handful of change people would buy and read countless stories and features about their local area. They would know what the local council was up to, they would know what was happening in the criminal courts. They would be informed.
Local newspapers were a vital part of local democracy.
Of course, they still exist, but in far fewer numbers. And the 100,000 people who used to buy the Southern Evening Echo, or indeed The Chronicle in Newcastle, Sunderland Echo, or Northern Echo, has now dwindled to a fraction of that circulation. Yes, today local papers also have an online presence, but stories are often geared towards a click-bait culture designed more for titillation than information.
Some might argue that social media has replaced newspapers and we are as well informed as ever. To some extent that might be true. There is more round-the-corner news, if you look for it. But proper local journalism should offer much more than that. It holds society to account; it explains the implications of political and other decisions; and, importantly, the best of it finds out what others try to conceal.
Training to be a journalist in 1978 meant joining an honourable profession – despite the tabloids, which were no better behaved than they are now. Journalism was, and still is, known as the fourth estate – because of its influence on society and role as a political watchdog.
Local newspapers, dailies or weeklies, were in almost every city and town. Now the number of publications has halved to around a thousand, the number of journalists has reduced by two thirds. Circulation has fallen by around 90%.
Years of decline
However, even if local journalism was somehow restored to what it was, the years of decline means that millions of people who would once have kept across local events have long since lost interest, or become news-avoiders. The habit has gone. We now seem more interested, if we are interested at all, in opinions, chatter and gossip, rather than facts.
It is the threat to democracy that worries me the most.
We only have to look to America to see how corruption can gallop into the politics of a democratic country. Once scrutiny and public interest wane, then those in power realise they can get away with more and more. Donald Trump has added another element with his cries of “fake news” aimed at discrediting and undermining any accusations, or truths, from journalists and publications he doesn’t like.
So what next?
So what next? We have to start by building from the bottom. Schools need to start teaching democracy and the importance of knowledge, facts and scrutiny. Social media companies need to be properly regulated.
Then, I wonder if the BBC licence negotiations can take on a broader look at the media as a whole. The BBC already funds, at a cost of £8mn a year, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) to pay for journalists who cover local government and public services across the UK.
Reporters are employed, not by the BBC, but by regional news organisations. Can this scheme be expanded to include investigative reporters? Should ITV play a greater role in sustaining local democracy? Their income may come from commercial activity, and they may bleat about the cost of sustaining a much-diminished local news service – but they still make profits of £500mn a year.
Any schemes would need tough rules and proper oversight. There are already rumours that local democracy reporters are in some cases diverted onto clickbait style stories.
But increasing news consumption, via newspapers, online, podcasts or more traditional broadcasting, needs to be addressed. A democratic society requires knowledge and understanding to thrive. We can’t turn the clock back to 1978, but we can try to reverse the decline. Ignorance is not bliss.
Andy Cooper moved from local newspapers to local TV news, first with ITV, then as Editor of BBC Look North in Newcastle, until retiring
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