No news is bad news

Today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s chip paper. Wholly unhygienic, obviously, but you definitely can’t eat your greasy fried spuds off a website.

The problem is, the printed paper used to be a main source of news. Now, with the instant convenience of the internet and 24-hour rolling reports, the poor old printed format often seems hopelessly out of date by the time you unfold it.

Significantly, even if you’re willing to accept a notable time-delay by modern standards, why would you want to pay for something you can get free on the world wide web?

For national papers, the draw of expert journalism, in-depth analysis and insight can still win over readers who yearn for more than the instant short-form gratification of website articles.

For local papers, it’s that local – even hyper-local – news, which the regional sections of larger news organisations simply can’t keep up with. This isn’t about what’s happening in your ‘region’, it might not even be enough that it’s about your town. Sometimes you want to know why there was a police car outside that house down your road. Local papers cater for that, along with the smiley school fete photos, what the local councillor thinks about dog poo on the streets and all the glorious minutiae of precisely where you are.

But whilst this is a service no-one else can offer, the lure of the free, our increasing apathy towards the places we live, and the overwhelming volume of stuff vying for our attention means local newspaper circulations continue to dwindle.

So if the paper can’t sell enough copies, it can’t have as many local journalists, seeking out the latest story to delight, ignite or fright your sensibilities. Of course, almost all now offer an online version, but this has to be funded somehow. Hence, pop-ups, pleas for donations and contributions, background ads, and the need to scroll past the static and video ads interrupting your enjoyment of the article about the local library’s opening hours changing, or Mrs Smith being reunited with her cat.

You want local news? You’ll have to accept those “What this famous starlet looks like now will shock you” and “Incredibly awesome way to find out if you had PPI” things in the sidebar.

One day, we’ll look back and wonder where we used to get real, useful, news from, before returning to our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and attempting to work out if what we’re reading is just someone’s opinion, misinterpretation, or simply made up.

And where would all the witty, erudite, columnists call home? If I ever meet one, I’ll ask them, but personally I’m sure that having a newspaper column trumps having a blog any day of the week.

We seem increasingly happy to pay to watch our sport on satellite TV, or binge-watch a box-set via streaming services. Perhaps we should be more accepting that the price of good journalism and quality local news is, indeed, a price.
Free doesn’t always make you richer.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in The Mail, on the 29th of September, 2017. You can view the version published on their website here

Not much to add to this one, really. It was motivated in part by attempting to look at a news article related to my job at work on a local paper's website. Breaking up the article were several static ads and a video. As (presumably) these are automated and the article short, there were a couple of places where just one short paragraph appeared between the ads.

Not the paper's fault - they're desperately trying to monetise what they do to survive, but it got me thinking what a poorer place the world will be if local papers were to (ahem) fold.

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