Town Halls and the Local Press

I've done a feature for the latest edition of The Journalist, which you can read here, about the local press and local council press offices.
It takes a look at how cut backs by regional publishers and an exodus of talented journalists into council communications have changed the balance between the press and local government.
One of the best quotes was from an editor who said: "We used to have four reporters covering councils. Now we have just one - and the rest work for them."
The article also touches on the growth of "newspaper-style" publications being launched by councils, as in a story I did yesterday for Press Gazette about Barking & Dagenham Council, which could undermine the local press and deprive them of advertising.
To some extent I can see the arguments of councils who claim falling circulations of newspapers, the growth of the web and the fact that journalists no longer cover their meetings means they have to come up with new ways of communicating with the public.
It's just I don't believe they are ever going to be editorially independent.
One editor of a council paper told me: “Some council papers are trying to ape the look and feel of a local paper, but what we do is propaganda. When I report the council’s budget proposals I look for positive stories and don’t mention the £6 million worth of cuts. If I reported that I would be sacked. I don’t tell lies, but I always look for positive stories.”

BBC Newsnight's Paul Mason on the future of journalism as the recession begins to bite

BBC Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason makes some interesting observations about the impact of the recession on journalism in an interview in the latest issue of The Journalist.

On the recession, Mason says:"The recession is going to shake out the weakest economic actors. We've seen it with local papers, we've seen it with commercial TV. When it's shaken out and it finishes it won't come back the same. Professional journalists have a place in it but we're going to have a different place in it."

On the newsroom vs. bloggers: "The newsroom is a real-time peer review mechanism where people are in a very tough and abrasive relationship with each other that bloggers in their pyjamas cannot replicate."

On journalists' jobs: "There are going to be less journalists. It's not the recession that is doing that. It is the deskilling and the rise of new technology. What you have to do is define what
the skilled class of professional journalist actually does in that world. What makes us worth employing? I am very robust about it. I think we are going into an information age and we are the ones that provide that information. We are not going to disappear."

The interview is a good read in The Journalist which looks miles better after a re-design that, thankfully, hasn't aped the trade press where all the titles seem to be shrinking in size. You can see a video interview with Paul Mason by Journalist editor Tim Gopsill here.