A?LEAKED memo spelling the demise of local news in Coventry and Birmingham has hit the headlines and offers a grim snapshot of the media’s health in this country.

Responding to complaints about swingeing job cuts to an already-decimated editorial staff at the Trinity Mirror-owned Midlands newspapers, the statement reads: “The days are long gone when we could afford to be a paper of record and dutifully report everything that happened on our patch.”

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade gleefully picked up the story to gloat about the rival media conglomerate coming unstuck.

But he conveniently omits to comment on the Guardian choosing to divest itself of its stable of local newspapers across Greater Manchester in 2010. The Guardian Media Group got rid because it was unable to run them profitably and so the organisation sold its titles to… Trinity Mirror. If the Guardian had really wanted to defend local journalism against the perils of the market, it would’ve endeavoured to keep its papers at all costs. A plague on both your houses.

Greenslade laments that Trinity Mirror’s “abject admission that the papers are no longer able to fulfil their journalistic mission to provide comprehensive coverage … spells the death knell of reporting that takes time and effort.” But does this matter?

George Monbiot, for one, slates the local press as “the most potent threat to British democracy” because the industry “champions the overdog, misrepresents democratic choices and defends business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them.”

I am unsure which papers Monbiot was musing on when he penned his vitriolic comments, but I find Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen comments on local media to be much nearer the mark. He edited the recently published Local Journalism and the Rise of Digital Media and in the introduction he paints an informative picture of the industry — warts and all — while charting the stormy waters it is currently struggling to navigate, namely falling revenues in a digital age.
“Local journalism does not always play its roles well, but the roles it plays are important,” he writes.

For Nielsen, these include supplying reliable local news, fostering social integration, providing inspiration and good examples, representing people, maintaining a memory of local affairs and contributing a sense of belonging to the locale.

Nielsen states that local newspapers’ decline?“must raise concerns over a growing local ‘news gap’ between the information we would ideally want communities to have access to and the information that is actually made available from independent news sources.

“We face the prospect of local ‘news deserts’ where communities have to rely on the local grapevine of interpersonal communication and information from self-interested parties — politicians, local government and businesses — to stay informed about local affairs.”

There is truth in this. Poorly staffed newsrooms have pages to fill and the quickest way to do that is with press releases written by PR folk paid by business, local authorities or the government. On the treadmill to get out newspapers, it’s easy for reporters to regurgitate press releases verbatim — thereby providing unmoderated comment as if it’s news. Failure to report on the courts, inquests and local authority meetings also presents a threat to the functioning of local democracy.

I have a vested interest in Trinity Mirror’s decision to make further redundancies at its papers. I started out as a cub reporter on the Macclesfield Express, then owned by the Guardian Media Group, in 2000. I then spent three years reporting for the Coventry Telegraph. And so the cuts deeply depress me.

During my tenure, the paper boasted a dedicated motoring correspondent, business editor, education correspondent and political editor. In total it had 14 reporters, 10 of whom were each responsible for a “patch” of the city. It was our responsibility to spend as much time as possible making local contacts, reporting on meetings and interviewing people who had something to say.

After the cuts, rumour has it that the Coventry Telegraph will be served by four reporters.

My view of national media — present company excluded — is negative in the extreme. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s classic Manufacturing Consent is bang on the money. In the book, they chart how opinion in the United States was moulded by media corporations who strove to reinforce the rule of the capitalist class.

But my opinion of the local press is different. I saw first-hand how a decent local newspaper can play all the positive roles that Nielsen identified. We covered the issues of significance to the people who cared enough to come into the office or pick up the phone to speak with us, we promoted fundraising initiatives and raised awareness about issues such as domestic violence or depression — we covered all of this and more.

It wasn’t perfect. We all keenly felt the effect of dwindling paper sales. Collectively we failed to engage young readers in what the paper had to say. But we felt we played a key part in the city’s life.

Greenslade says Trinity Mirror’s restructuring is “all about private profit and not about public interest. To put this in economic terms, publishers are elevating exchange value above use value. In this case, Trinity Mirror is letting down both the public and its journalists.”

But would the Guardian behave any differently in the same situation?

The Guardian is currently leading a campaign against fossil fuels, stressing the effects of climate change and it espouses many noble views. But at the same time the paper merrily accepts cash from firms advertising cars, flights and all the trappings of modern life. The paper is caught in a contradiction.

There is one newspaper which is proudly owned by its readers and which doesn’t fall victim to the perils of sporting adverts by corporations that it then implicitly criticises —?the Morning Star.

Digital media have so far failed to plug the gaps being left by the demise of local newspapers. It would be wonderful to think that the Morning Star could serve as a model for local newspapers in the future, with co-operatively owned media serving the community that sustains them.