It’s time to stop taking local newspapers for granted

Too many people in the media are guilty of taking local newspapers for granted, Says Raymond Snoddy – but the local press is always with us and has admirably stood out from the crowd in recent weeks.

Businesswoman and professional dragon Deborah Meaden took time out from a very busy schedule this week to take part in a local newspaper awards ceremony.

She came fresh from scoring 28 points in Saturday’s Strictly Come Dancing with her quickstep and even managed a seven from Strictly’s licenced bad guy Craig Revel Horwood. Chief judge Len Goodman declared it was her best dance yet.

Nobody wants to talk business with Deborah at the moment. Strictly has taken over her life. But still she turned up to fulfil her role as the national ambassador to the Local Business Accelerators – the only break in her dancing routine.

The national LBA offers prizes of free local newspaper advertising campaigns and mentoring by local business leaders to young promising businesses all over the UK.

Deborah herself is the big prize on top of a £10,000 cheque from the Government’s Business Growth Fund for the overall winner.  Out of nearly 2,000 entries The York Cocoa House will have a year’s mentoring from the dancing dragon.

It should be of some benefit to the chocolate company because with Deborah’s help, last year’s winner, Ilkley Brewery, has doubled turnover and started exporting its beers to both the US and Sweden.

The local press has stood united against any statutory involvement in regulation even though they never hacked phones or bribed pubic officials in the first place.

The LBA competition, dreamt up by the St. Luke’s advertising agency for the Newspaper Society, throws up a myriad of examples of small companies proving just how effective local newspaper advertising can be to get new businesses off the ground. Naturally Number 10 is said to be delighted by the initiative.

It is a very smart example of self-help for an industry facing challenging times.

You can hear some of the London digerati ask casually whether people read local newspapers any more.

The second LBA awards ceremony gave NS President Adrian Jeakings the chance to point out that actually the local press is reaching more readers than it has ever done. It adds up to 31 million readers a week across 1,100 titles with 62 million web users a month via 1,600 web sites.

The truth is that most people in the media are guilty of taking local newspapers for granted most of the time. It’s so much more interesting to discuss whether the Daily Mail went too far with the now infamous article about Ed Miliband’s father and how to balance that against the paper’s worthy and successful campaign against the Liverpool Pathway of death.

But the local press is always with us and they have stood out in other ways in recent weeks, matters that were being discussed over the wine when the awards ceremony featuring the 15 national finalists was over.

While some of the national newspapers have blathered and prevaricated in the post-Leveson world, the local press has stood united against any statutory involvement in regulation even though they never hacked phones or bribed pubic officials in the first place.

Even when Culture Secretary Maria Miller offered the local press a small carrot – the apparent ability after a couple of years to opt out of the potential financial disaster that is the arbitration scheme – they stood firm.

They saw the ploy for what it was, an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between the national and local press.

Instead of trying to cut a deal the local and regional press allied itself fully with the Industry Steering Group that brings most of the publishing industry together.  Some of its words in response to the latest version of the politicians’ Royal Charter are worth repeating.

“This remains a Charter written by politicians, imposed by politicians and controlled by politicians. It has not been approved by any of the newspapers or magazines it seeks to regulate,” the statement said.

“Meanwhile the industry’s Charter was rejected by eight politicians, meeting in secret, and chaired by the same politician who is promoting the politicians’ Charter,” it added.

This is not a scientific survey, or even a survey at all, but the feel in the air is that the press is starting to get its concerns across to the public and opinion leaders.

This is despite the fact that the BBC insists on treating the celebrities from Hacked Off as a sort of official opposition to the publishing industry to be wheeled out endlessly whenever Leveson issues arise.

While all opinion polls on the subject must be taken with a pinch of salt the latest effort in the Sun is still interesting.

There is broad support for stricter press standards – no real contest there – but no less than 76 per cent believe there is “a risk that a future government would use a legal system of press regulation to try to stop newspapers criticising them.”

Chiming with the mass unease, one single, influential voice has made his opinions known forcefully this week.

The distinguished human rights lawyer Lord Lester insisted there was no need for further state intervention in the press in the UK.

Politicians were treating the press like some sort of East India company, and anyway there is already no shortage of criminal and civil laws to regulate the press.

What was needed was a system that both encouraged professional standards and provided effective redress.

At the same time the London Mayor Boris Johnson upped the temperature in his battle to become Conservative leader by denouncing the Royal Charter backed by David Cameron as “a monstrous folly.”

In his initial reaction in the House of Commons to the publication of the Leveson Report the Prime Minister courageously warned of the dangers of crossing the Rubicon by accepting state involvement in the regulation of the press.

David Cameron should now graciously accept his own advice.

In the meantime while the row between the press and politician simmers, there is only one final thing of importance to say: Vote, Vote, Vote for the national ambassador to Local Business Accelerators scheme on Saturday night.