Late last year, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced plans to develop a local media strategy. We've gathered evidence on challenges providers face and summarised them in this blogpost.
As part of their work on a new local media strategy, officials at DCMS recently asked PINF to help identify practical obstacles to newsgathering faced by local news providers. Especially among those doing investigative journalism work.
We relayed the question to the network of indie news providers we host and, as always, they didn’t hold back. We fed their responses back to DCMS and thought it worth sharing these here, too.
Capacity
The biggest obstacle to newsgathering and the provision of local news in the public interest was felt to be capacity. With greater revenues, newsrooms said they could do much more news gathering to better meet the needs of communities.
‘We have to turn down important investigative work most weeks, really unjust stuff about fire watches, private parking scams, illegal planning, failing council officers…We tell readers we are here for them and then often have to say we don’t have the resources to investigate things when they do turn to us.’
‘I also have examples of concerned citizens getting in touch pleading with us to investigate certain issues but having to turn them down because we simply don’t have the resource.’
Several publishers pointed to the public notice regime as a blocker on growth in the sector, by incentivising print regardless of original content or audience and preventing independent newsrooms from winning public notice contracts.
‘Outdated rules mean only print publications can carry public notices, directing taxpayer money to underperforming titles while limiting public access to important information.’
As well as challenges to revenue growth, several other obstacles to newsgathering were mentioned.
Poor responses from press officers
The providers in our network are largely local news providers, so this mostly related to local government, including parish councils.
This included responding late to enquiries: ‘taking days or weeks to come back to enquiries’; ‘taking an age to get a reply’.
Lack of access to public meetings – or decisions not being made in public
Some providers felt councils were deliberately avoiding openness and making it harder to learn what’s going on.
’The council used to withhold all papers attached to their meeting agendas until I pointed out that it was their statutory duty to include them… Now they publish it all but at the very last moment they possibly can, not giving us time to investigate any issues raised or encourage residents who want to have a say to attend the meeting.’
One provider pointed to councillors leaving public meetings to make decisions behind closed doors:
‘So much of council meetings [is] held in committee or [we hear] ‘I’ll discuss that with you after the meeting, councillor”.’
Poor local government websites
Providers reported that it was often hard to find information on local government websites.
‘The ease of access to information on council websites is a biggie – finding planning cases, meeting minutes (especially for historical meetings), published decisions, strategy documents, etc. is near-impossible at times. If information they already have to publish was easier to access, there would be far less back-and-forth with comms teams, FOIs, etc...’
One provider commended councils’ livestreaming efforts as ‘a real help’, but worried that parish councils — which could become more important following the shake-up of local government — had no capacity for this.
‘Most parish councils currently have no facilities or media functions at all, so local democracy coverage will be limited.’
Lack of access to press cards
Availability of press cards — which allow journalists to prove their credentials, such as to attend press conferences — has long been an issue bouncing around the PINF network’s Whatsapp group.
‘When we first launched, we were denied entry to full council meetings due to a lack of press cards…the entire system is controlled by broadcasters and legacy media.’
‘I was an NUJ member and had a press card for many years… in local newspapers and as a freelancer overseas. I cannot obtain one now because journalism makes up none of my income, ironically because there is no funding.’
Cost of Land Registry searches
Understanding who owns land is a useful tool for local investigative reporting. The Land Registry recently put the price of access to a title deed up from £3 to £7 — a 133% increase. If a story requires several searches — for example, if a rogue landlord is thought to own several properties in a street, or a parade of shops — then this can add up quickly, especially given that resources are already very limited in local news.
‘The Land Registry search was a very useful, low-cost resource for investigations, fact-checking and sometimes a speculative enquiry for something that looked odd (who does own that odd bit of land that someone wants to build something strange on?). A 133% price rise has now made it a tougher option for small newsrooms (and I suspect large ones with their cost controls too).’
Thanks to all the news providers who offered their thoughts for this research. PINF is looking forward to continuing to work with DCMS to build the evidence base for assertive action in the UK Government’s local media strategy.
Next week, we launch the report of the Local News Commission, which will offer a multi-step approach to regenerate local news for communities across the UK. Stay tuned!
Is there something critical that we missed in this list of obstacles? Get in touch via Bluesky or email: contact@publicinterestnews.org.uk
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