Pictured from left at the meeting are: Chris Adams (office of Mark Williams MP), Dr Ian Johnson (Jonathan Edwards’ office), Nia Griffith MP, Jonathan Edwards MP and the Rt Hon Alun Michael MP

The crisis facing local newspapers is a cancer threatening the nation’s democracy and system of justice, the Institute has warned a parliamentary inquiry.

“It is probably the greatest crisis ever to hit our profession, and will have far-reaching consequences long after Lord Justice Leveson has put down his pen,” the IoJ’s Professional Practices Board chairman Amanda Brodie said.

Giving evidence to the all-party parliamentary group on the local and regional press, Amanda Brodie said that a fifth of the UK’s 1,100 local titles had closed in the last seven years, a loss of more than 240 papers, and many jobs.

Speaking at a hearing at Portcullis House, on July 4, she told a panel of MPs and their advisors: “If we lose our local papers, it will be a loss for the community, a loss for society and – ultimately – a loss for democracy.

“Democracy is not only the right to vote, but the right to know.

“Our councils and courts need to be covered, authority needs to be challenged, press offices need to be bypassed. This cannot be left to so-called ‘citizen journalists’.

“Both the Local Government Association and the Magistrates’ Association have expressed concern that local councils and courts are no longer being covered properly by their local papers.

“This is because the papers simply do not have the qualified staff to do these jobs.”

Community assets

The APPG, under the chairmanship of Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards, is gathering evidence for an amendment to the Localism Act 2011 to allow local papers to be designated ‘community assets’. As it stands, the Act allows this only for buildings such as village pubs.

Ms Brodie cited Johnston Press as symptomatic of what was happening in the industry.

The company has announced that it will halve the number of journalists it employs by 2020, after which content will be produced 50/50 by journalists and ‘community contributors’, most of the latter untrained and unqualified.

“Our industry has relied on its journalists and the quality of its editorial content to pull it through difficult times in the past,” she said.

“But this requires experienced journalists to provide the content which newspapers need, to maintain the trust and loyalty of their readers.”

Amanda Brodie, a former assistant editor in local press, blamed the crisis on several factors:

A fall in advertising revenues due to the economic situation;

The rise in use of the internet, with a resultant expectation of free content and a migration of ad revenue from print;

The advent of local authority publications (so-called ‘town hall pravdas’), funded by taxpayers’ money, which take ad revenue away from local newspapers and hit their circulation;

The merging of many local independent newspapers into big groups, resulting in cost-cutting on an unprecedented scale driven by a desire to return higher dividends to shareholders, or the need to pay off huge debts, and

Poor senior management, with decisions often taken by people with no feel for newspapers who saw them as mere ‘products’ and qualified journalists and investigative journalism as an unnecessary expense.

“They are using the economic situation as an excuse to take a filleting knife to our newsrooms,” Ms Brodie said. “They are systematically denuding our local papers of the very people the industry vitally needs.”

Local journalists were much more likely to adhere to high professional and ethical standards, because they live in the communities in which they work, and are accountable to readers in a way which the national paper journalists are not.

“Local papers are not just in the community, they are part of it,” she added.

Local newspapers are the training grounds for national journalists of the future and their duty to educate, inform and campaign sits well with granting charitable status – to those which demonstrated genuine commitment to their communities.

Major groups proposing to reduce publication frequency or close titles should first be required to offer those titles for sale, at a fair market price, to local consortia, with the Government possibly providing funding through loans, grants or tax-breaks.

The same help should also be offered to new publications set up to replace titles closed by the big groups.

“Those newspapers which are still independently owned and operated are not experiencing the same difficulties as the big groups, nor have they dispensed with their journalists and quality editorial content,” Ms Brodie said.

“We feel that the conditions for approving future newspaper mergers or takeovers should be strengthened by requiring the potential new owners to provide a statement of intent incorporating guarantees for the maintenance of the acquired titles and that any future departure from this pledge should require the permission of the Government.

“As things stand, a newspaper can be taken over one year and closed down the next, without anyone being able to do anything about it.

“The Chartered Institute of Journalists feels this is a massive betrayal of both the journalists and their readers, for a purpose which benefits only the publisher.”

Self-interest

Closing her submission to the MPs, Ms Brodie said: “Without your support, self-interest will prevail and our local newspapers will be lost.

“We ask you to do your utmost to ensure that quality local newspapers do survive, so they may continue to provide a valued service to their communities, well into the future.”

Ms Brodie, who was accompanied at the hearing by vice-president Charlie Harris, a former local newspaper editor, and was followed by NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet, whose evidence to the panel echoed the Institute’s on most points.

Also giving evidence was Dr Andrew Williams of Cardiff University’s journalism and media faculty.

I joined the Institute more than 25 years ago. When I joined it was just because I was working for a local paper and I wanted to join a journalists’ organisation – and I didn’t want to join the NUJ because it was so political and faction-ridden. Looking at the NUJ’s decline since the 1980s and its current precarious financial state I’m mightily glad I didn’t join!

The reason for writing this letter, though, is not to criticise the NUJ, much as I’d like to! The reason is this. When I saw the ad for the Institute of Journalists in Press Gazette, or UKPG as I think it was then called, there was a statement to the effect that joining the Institute would be an insurance policy. I didn’t take much notice at the time because, as I’ve already said, all I wanted was to join an association for professional journalists, and the chance to meet other journos. Since then, the ‘insurance’ aspect of the CIoJ has become clear to me – and I have considerable reason to be grateful to the Institute for coming to my rescue on no fewer than three occasions.

One of these was when the trade union side of the Institute helped me through a very difficult legal problem with a former employer (and forced the former employer not only to pay what he owed me in unpaid salary but also to repay funds he had taken from my pension fund). The Institute’s General Secretary gave advice and I also had the benefit of advice from the CIoJ’s lawyers, without which I could not have got through this difficult patch, let alone come through the other side – and won my case, hands-down!

Another instance of CIoJ support was the assistance that I received from the Institute’s Benevolent Fund when, as a result of losing a job through no fault of my own, and having received duff advice from one of the so-called ‘counselling services’, I found myself in very serious financial difficulties. The Benevolent Fund helped me out at a crucial time and its support was absolutely vital in getting me through that terrible period in my life.

The third, more recent, incidence also involved the Benevolent Fund, and came about when I had a long bout of illness and was unable to work (unable, in fact, to do pretty much anything at all!) and, being nowadays self-employed, had no income whatsoever to get me through this period of incapacity.

So, all told, the CIoJ has come to my rescue three times when serious health or financial problems have threatened to sink me. For this I shall be eternally grateful!

Institute members – and prospective members – need to know about the help, including financial assistance, that the CIoJ Head Office and its various committees and charitable funds can provide.

Joining the Institute of Journalists was one of the best moves I ever made!

Please go out and tell all the journalists you know about the CIoJ, and tell them if they join the Institute they will be joining a professional institution, a trade union, a legal support network, and an extremely valuable insurance scheme, all in one!

Now get on and read the rest of The Journal !

Andy Smith

They were joined by several members of W.T. Stead’s family.

CIoJ President Norman Bartlett gave a speech about Stead, “the greatest journalist of the Victorian age”, and laid a wreath on behalf of the Institute.

“William Stead was powerful because of his effective pen,” said Norman Bartlett. “But he was a big man. A big man is one who uses his power in the interests of those who are weak. He campaigned for the poor. He campaigned for women and their rights. He campaigned against the abuse of children.”

After the wreath-laying ceremony, CIoJ members attended a service at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, in which the Rector, Canon David Meara, paid tribute in his sermon to the work of the CIoJ and to the journalistic profession.

He said it was important to maintain “the finest tradition of vigorous and fearless investigative journalism” of which W.T. Stead had been ‘a pioneer and champion’.

Mr Brown told the Inquiry that his local newspaper in Fife, Scotland, had just had its editorial staff merged with those at a neighbouring title, and this, he said, was a problem throughout the country and even across the world: “As you know, there’s a debate about whether the BBC should be in local radio, whether it should simply be commercial radio, and how the integration of local newspapers with local broadcasting, with local television and local radio should happen. It’s clear to me, however, that without some underpinning — and it may be financial — then there is a market failure here.

“There are not enough resources now to support the quality journalism that you are talking about. My own local newspaper has just had its editorial staff merged with the next door newspaper. They’re running down the numbers of staff that are providing this local service and I think you would find this in every part of the country that you go into, and more than that, you’re finding it all across the world now, because an internet journalist, who is someone who’s sort of doing their own, if you like, self-journalism, can put their views up on a screen and put their views across the world, but if they’re not resourced and they’re not doing proper research and there’s no investigative journalism, then we’re diminishing the quality of the output that is available to us.”

The model used by the BBC could be used to fund quality journalism in the future, Gordon Brown said. “I would think that if we are genuine in trying to root out the bad but also trying to encourage the good, I think we to have to say something about how quality journalism in this country can be financed, supported and really sponsored in the future.”

The meeting, at the Frontline Club in Paddingdon, London, heard Dr Mukesh Kapila, Aegis Trust Special Representative and former head of the UN in Sudan, and Baroness Cox, founder of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, condemn the British government for drawing a “moral equivalence” that blames both Sudan and South Sudan equally for the conflict.

CIoJ Past President Stuart Notholt, who has worked in South Sudan, was at the meeting. “With over 1,000 bombs dropped by the Sudanese air force since June, 500,000 people displaced and the Khartoum regime blocking all humanitarian assistance, it is simply not acceptable for the British government to claim that it has to be ‘impartial’,” he said. “There can be few conflicts in the world today where it is clearer who is the aggressor and who the victim. Rightly or wrongly, the British government found no difficulty in taking sides in other regional conflicts, such as in Libya or Syria, so why not in Sudan?”

Incredibly, says Notholt, the UK government has even threatened South Sudan with economic sanctions, through cutting DFID aid to some of the most needy communities in the world, if it does not return to the negotiating table with the Khartoum government.

Whilst Notholt accepts that the practical dangers of working in South Sudan, and the near impossibility of getting into the warzones in Sudan, make frontline reporting very difficult, he still believes there is more the international media can do to highlight the nature of the conflict.

“It is as if it’s September 1939 and the British government is holding Nazi Germany and Poland equally responsible for the Second World War. This is an unsustainable and repugnant position that shames our country and our leaders.”

Representatives of all mainstream political parties in Greece condemned the incident. The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI), reports a rise in physical attacks against media outlets and journalists in Greece.

SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic said: “I hope that the new government, once formed, guarantees media freedom and brings to justice all those responsible for the attacks and threats against journalists.”

Two weeks before the latest elections, on June 4, four Molotov cocktails were launched at the headquarters of the Kathimerini SA media group. Nobody was injured. One month earlier, on May 9, Skai TV and radio presenter Konstantinos Bogdanos was attacked by several individuals in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia. According to the Athens-based daily Kathimerini, the journalist said that the attackers were waiting for him. “I can say with absolute certainty that they knew I was a journalist. As they were kicking me, they made reference to Skai.”

In separate media-related developments, several journalists have been attacked in the past weeks, especially those covering anti-government rallies or attacks against immigrants. On June 6, an Israeli journalist with the Jerusalem Post, Gil Shefler, was attacked after trying to film a mob of armed, masked men beating a group of refugees and homeless people outside the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. He was treated at hospital for injuries to his head and chest.

On May 29, Greek journalist Lambros Panayiotou, who worked for Star Channel TV, witnessed six municipal policemen arresting a Somali immigrant in Athens. He filmed the scene and was allegedly hit and insulted by one of the municipal policemen who tried to snatch the mobile phone Panayiotou was using as a camera. Panayiotou identified himself as a journalist.

Hit with a baton

Seven weeks before that, on April 5, Mario Lolos, the president of the Greek Photojournalists’ Union, was covering an anti-government rally on Syntagma Square, downtown Athens, when a policeman allegedly hit him several times with a baton. Lolos suffered serious head injuries and underwent surgery for a cranial fracture at Hygeia hospital.

“I am very concerned about the media situation in Greece,” said Oliver Vujovic. “Both journalists and media outlets are being attacked. I call on politicians and the police to guarantee the safety of all media, to allow them to function freely, and to bring all the aggressors of journalists to justice.”

He added that SEEMO would be monitoring media developments in Greece and will send a delegation to Athens to address all the attacks against journalists in the past year.

By Patrick Emek

From being hailed as a hero and champion of free speech, Julian Assange is now persona non grata in much of the mainstream British and American media.

UK media coverage of Assange’s legal fight against extradition is always tinged with dark implications that he has been ‘indicted’ on criminal charges, or that such are ‘pending’ – to leave the reader in some doubt about his credibility.

It is reminiscent to me of the Cold War years in Eastern Europe when blacklisted individuals just ‘disappeared’ – fired from their jobs, losing their homes, deprived of everything except the basic means to survive, perhaps by being allowed to clean public toilets or empty bins. Thankfully Mr Assange has not yet reached this level of descent, but it’s no thanks to his fairweather friends in the UK and US media, most of whom are too frightened to speak up in his defence for fear of being ostracised, sacked or blacklisted, or all three.

Witch-hunts

With the UK media almost totally dominated by big business, and with pressure being piled on from the US, is it any wonder that the knives have been sharpened for the ‘subversive’ Julian Assange? TV coverage of Assange’s extradition hearing in the High Court was almost non-existent. Yet was this not a major news event in its own right, especially in view of his ‘celebrity’ status?

The fact is that Julian Assange was responsible for making available to the world the greatest leak to date of United States classified papers. These papers, the Wikileaks documents, cover everything from US foreign policy to spying and the funding of clandestine organisations to the indiscriminate murder of Reuters journalists. Surely this makes him at least newsworthy?

So, why then is Assange being sacrificed by the Western media?

The answer is quite simple. His deal with the Guardian newspaper (to release extracts from the Wikileaks papers) fell through because Guardian Group wanted to control all of the material, how and which papers would be released, and they also required source material and all copies – always anathema to any journalist or researcher. The end result would have been that, as soon as all materials were turned over to the Guardian, a legal injunction by a QC from an eminent chambers on behalf of the government of the United States would have been placed preventing their publication on grounds of ‘national security’ and the fact that they were stolen and their release was unauthorised.

It could also have been argued that the public interest was best served by preventing the publication of these papers. This is the same public interest which, ironically, Mr Assange says that he is best serving. You may have figured out the ending already. In due course (maybe after years of incarceration of the banned documents and videos) the leaked material would be deemed by the British High Court to be the property of the US government and an order made that they be returned to their rightful owner – the United States.

Jealousy

I can understand the anger, jealousy and frustration which mainstream media must feel at being bypassed by an individual such as Mr Assange. I felt the same incredulity myself when I cited Pakistan in 2002 as our main problem and a conduit point for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters exiting from Afghanistan after 9/11. Everyone I knew was frightened to run with this ball as it was entirely contrary to US and Western policy at that time. This included the BBC and CNN.

At that time also, I had occasional access to the US Naval Headquarters in Grosvenor Square, and copies of my book were available to senior staff known to me. But my book was simply ignored by the media and by Western governments. My previous book on the Philippines achieved wide coverage on the BBC and Sky but I became invisible when exposing Pakistan as one of a major danger to the West. In any case, as a ‘fringe’ independent journalist and researcher, I could be easily dismissed.

But what of Mr Assange? The UK and US media appear to have gone apoplectic in response to Assange hosting his own show on Russia Today, which, like the BBC and PBS, is a state-affiliated Russian television network of very renowned standing in its own right.

We are making the same mistake today – crucifying messengers like Assange while encouraging the likes of Arabsat (controlled by the Saudis) to dominate the Arab world media and giving Salafists (also controlled by the Saudis) a free hand to dominate the military and political agendas across the Arab world post-‘Arab Spring’, which, in my opinion, could turn into a horrific winter for Christians living under these new tyrannies; and all sanctioned by our Western politicians.

Write-off

Making an example of Julian Assange in order to keep the rest of us in line is no answer to the problem, and embarrassment, of ‘leaks’. A better solution would be to write off the loss and move to ensure that further leaks of highly sensitive materials are not so easy to achieve in the future.

If a similar leak of highly classified documents had taken place in Russia, the perpetrator of such a leak would be dealt no less harsh treatment by the authorities than the court-martial Private Bradley Manning is currently facing in the United States.

The contrary argument might be that we are not Russia and, as we purport to champion a system that is better than that of our adversaries, we should be held to higher standards of accountability and transparency.

So, for me, supporting Julian Assange is part of a crusade in support of freedom, democracy, open sources and open electronic frontiers.

Shirin

By Shirin Aguiar-Holloway

I grew up in Bahrain. Since coming to the UK as a student, I have described it to the uninitiated as an idyllic combination of sun, sea and sand. Years later, on a three-day trip last month to the archipelago of islands that make up the country, I discovered that in more ways than one this description is no longer quite accurate.

I saw very little sun or blue sky. Mostly Bahrain was covered in a non-descript haze. There was also, more to my consternation, very little of its magical soft sand left. Bahrain’s wonderful beaches have all but disappeared. I was desperate to swim in the bluey-green, wonderfully shallow waters of the Arabian Gulf again, but alas, this was not to be. A lot of Bahrain’s coastline has been sacrificed to land reclamation and the prolific construction of high-rise modern offices and apartments. The once-popular Zallaq Beach is now dominated by a hotel, and the Sheikh’s Beach, once only the preserve of western (white) folk, is no more. A trip to a beach would have meant a long-ish drive to the Hawar or Amwaj Islands south of the mainland.

Finding a beach was not my first challenge however. On arrival in Bahrain, I was detained at immigration. After handing in my passport and having watched the immigration officer disappear inside with it, I waited half an hour before enquiring in the airport immigration supervisor’s office. There on his desk I saw a print out in Arabic with my photo at the top. It was my LinkedIn profile photo and profile which told them that I was a journalist. As I was not visiting as a journalist, and was not in paid employment as one, I did not state this as my occupation on the disembarkation card.

I tried to explain to the supervisor that I just wanted to stop off for three days on my way back from visiting my poorly father in Asia. I said that having grown up in Bahrain, I wanted to visit old friends, and had a return ticket to London.

I thought I was going to be refused entry. After four hours, during which he made calls to the friends I was due to stay with, asked me further questions, and dealt with other hapless would-be visitors, the supervisor, who was not unkind, finally signed me in after receiving a phone call, telling me that I was ‘lucky.’ I think I was, given that Bahrain denied entry to several western journalists – including from Sky, CNN, Reuters and the Financial Times – during last month’s Formula One Grand Prix. I myself was only allowed in after clearance from Bahrain’s Ministry of Information, and after making a fuss (having grown up there, I knew how to ‘make a fuss’ without rattling cages). Before leaving the airport, I was asked to sign a form for members of the press.

Visa checks

Bahrain tightened its visa rules in 2010. Previously, journalists and others from many Western countries could receive visas upon arrival with no problems, but restrictions are now in place because back then some US and Irish journalists entered the country as tourists and immediately joined the anti-government protests. Thus background checks are now a matter of course for all western visitors, and it is better to apply for a visa beforehand.

The inauspicious start to my visit didn’t end there. Later that day I had my first experience of teargas. During a balmy evening car tour of Budaiya, a suburb, with a friend, I had partly rolled down my window as the air conditioning in the car was over-efficient. It was dark. Suddenly my nose began to sting. I bent my head, trying to shake it off. It was a burning, uncomfortable sensation. Then my friend’s chauffeur exclaimed: “It’s a demonstration!” We had chanced upon a full-blown fracas between Shia protesters and police. It was a battle scene. Police in riot gear were running all over the tiny crossroads, fires burned all around, the air was dark and thick with teargas and roving green laser lights designed to flush out undesirables lit up nearby buildings.

My friend’s chauffeur happened to be a cocky Keralite from south India who was constantly on one of his mobile phones while driving. Not content with happening on this war zone, he chose to halt the car in the centre of the crossroads, assuming that as a journalist I wanted to see what was going on. I didn’t. Just as I was regretting not finalising my will and making permanent arrangements for my cat to be looked after, and before my friend could relieve him of his job, the chauffeur drove on.

Prevarication

Neither this experience nor the delay and detention at the airport spoiled my stay. I went on to have a fantastic weekend with friends as I discovered the new Bahrain with its myriad malls and eateries. I took both experiences in my stride, as part and parcel of Middle Eastern culture, a culture of prevarication and saving face. While in the immigration supervisor’s office, I chatted with other officials about going to school in Bahrain and where my father used to work. The supervisor even arranged for a friend of mine waiting for me in arrivals to send up some Bahraini Dinars so I could wander off inside the airport and buy myself some grub.

This is surely a far better way than acting as a steel-toed journalist who believes they have a God-given right to enter the country and report on human rights.

My feelings about human rights are equivocal. Is controlling protests, bringing order or meting out Arab-style punishments in an Arab country any worse than was, say, continual (often indiscriminate and often civilian) bombing of Iraq or Afghanistan?

There have been complaints that no member of Bahrain’s security forces has been convicted of human rights violations. But how different is that from the ongoing list of black deaths in custody in the UK where those responsible with protecting the public, including its minorities, seem to get away with it? I can’t see that much difference.

Decent hardworking expats, including public relations consultant Ashish Gorde whose family has lived in Bahrain for over 40 years, say Shias do receive fair treatment. Although the ruling family, the Al-Khalifas, are Sunni, the majority of MPs in Bahrain’s Parliament are Shias.

Justice and democracy need time, and don’t always work to the shrill cries of ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’ of the western press. Bahrain may need to move on in terms of its democracy but should this entail descent into anarchy, as in Egypt and Syria, the loss of hundreds of lives, and ruination of the economy?

I craved for the ‘old’ Bahrain with its simple lifestyle, beaches and warm waters, where a dhow (old Arab fishing boat) could take you to the shallowest and sandiest of beaches around tiny magical islets for a lazy Friday.

But just as the beaches have had to make way for construction projects to boost the island’s economy, Bahrain’s majority Shias rightly seek more power, and change must come. Bahrain is just growing up.

By Robin Morgan

The next edition of The Journal passes a significant milestone – it will be exactly 100 years old when you receive your copy!

The Institute is already working on a special celebratory issue to mark 100 years of news about news – for in many ways that first edition of The Journal represented a new-look approach to news coverage of our noble profession and can be claimed to be the ‘grandfather’ of today’s trade press and media sections in our daily newspapers.

The Journal represented a coming of age for the Institute in the recognition of the fact that our means of distributing news about the organisation through an irregular publication of the dry-as-dust Institute of Journalists’ Proceedings was totally unsatisfactory for the modern times of 1912! It was, the Council of that day admitted, almost unreadable and certainly could not rivet the attention of our members.

The President of that year, George Hodgson, told members: “It is no disparagement to the Proceedings, as an official record of the transaction of the Institute to say that they did not meet the ‘felt want’ for information published at more frequent intervals, a more prominent and rapid record of the work the Institute is doing, and a convenient medium for the exchange of information within the Institute. That want the Journal hopes to supply.”

Press ganged

Council member George Springfield, whose day job was on the Financial Times, was ‘press ganged’ into being the first editor and a pretty hectic role it turned out to be.

The Institute’s Council met on Saturday, November 16 and decided to go ahead with the new Journal and handed the reins to Mr Springfield. In just one week he managed to put together a 16-page edition which was in the hands of most members on the morning of November 23!

It was, he admitted, a working-on-the-move experience – and it showed. He had, he said, enough copy to fill four pages by the Monday evening – provided he used a large typeface! – but as the week moved on more copy flowed in and by Wednesday he could go up to eight pages if he reduced the font size of type on the extra pages. During the final two days an avalanche of news descended on his desk and the move to 16-pages was made – shoehorning it all in by yet further reductions in type size!

The Journal hit the streets on Saturday, November 23, and began “a century of devotion to journalists and journalism,” as we have termed the forthcoming event.

A full reproduction of that first edition will come with the bumper special edition we are planning to publish and be in our members’ hands on that November 23 anniversary date.

George Springfield’s first edition was a huge advance in Institute communication but it was still pretty turgid – excusable given the rush job he was asked to undertake.

Subsequent editions became much livelier and newsy as our commemorative edition will demonstrate.

The Journal’s appearance was not without controversy. Some stick-in-the-mud members complained at its cost – about £30! Today, 100 years on, you can multiply that cost by 100 to get close to the cost of this edition of our magazine! To shave pennies off the costs Institute districts were asked to contribute to the cost of postage or take bulk deliveries for handing out to individual members. Subsequent editions managed to attract a healthy proportion of advertisements to further reduce the cost to the Institute and the regular monthly publication of the magazine was established.

Concern over the cost of The Journal’s production has always occupied the attention of the Council which is why, these days, its appearance is confined to quarterly publication.

For that reason there will be a slightly longer than usual delay in the appearance of the next edition, which will be our celebration of the centenary – but it will be well worth waiting for.

Special articles are being commissioned. There will be supplement looking at the news of 1912/1913 – and very interesting and relevant it is to today’s situation in journalism. To give today’s youngsters an appreciation of the history of our profession, we are hoping to distribute copies of the special edition to every student on journalism or media studies courses in the country!

Hopefully – for a lot depends of the Post Office’s ability to deliver mail promptly – that edition will pop through your letter box on the anniversary date…

November 23, 2012.

The Thames River Pageant was one ingredient in this summer of public entertainment. According to the prior publicity, the event was to set off from Battersea Bridge and continue downstream to Tower Bridge – and that’s it. Except, of course, that there was far more to it than that.

It was not that a thousand boats and ships came on low-loaders to be launched into the Thames at Battersea and be retrieved from the water at Southwark and be whisked away back to their bases. A very high level of organisation was required to make sure all the vessels were marshalled in the correct pattern in holding areas upstream from Battersea. After they passed the Queen on review at the Tower they continued for some miles to Greenwich and beyond or they would have blocked or interfered with the rest of the fleet following behind.

Drowned out

I don’t know the details of how it all happened – I only watched – but I do know that it is part of the back story to the main event. In fact that ‘back story’ was drowned out – literally by the unforgiving rain and metaphorically by the BBC’s notorious dumbing down of the commentary about it.

Nevertheless, the simple anecdote illustrates a key element of good journalism: looking for the back story. As Clare Balding has said of her aim in commentating, “I want to tell viewers something that can’t see for themselves.”

Restricted by time and limited resources, too many journalists today are forced to accept press releases at face value or wired stories from agencies. They are denied the opportunity to develop stories by editors who face financial constraints and sometimes advertisers’ pressure.

We all know that digging out the back story is usually worthwhile. It may produce an unusual human interest story. It may lead to the uncovering of dirty deeds. Or it may simply add colour to the narrative and useful experience to the journalist.

This sort of stuff transforms local media from the mundane reports on meetings and fetes. Find out the real reason why a county council has pushed through a planning application against local opposition. Discover why the incidence of parking enforcement notices has suddenly shot up. Investigate a hospital trust that made nursing staff redundant while hiring more consultants. Probe why the local constabulary paid out a large sum to a prominent figure.

Members will be familiar with the constant drip, drip, drip of announcements of regional dailies going weekly, of local titles being merged, of weeklies ceasing to publish. The cause has been laid at the door of the internet or changing demographics. The back story to many of these scenarios is of news groups who used finance to leverage corporate growth then sought production economies to fund the cost of finance. The effect was to lower the quality of the papers, lose readership and so make further retrenchment. Overweening ambition led to overstretch and failure – and journalists paid the price.

Dreadful

The same dreadful effects have been seen in the USA. There a team of redundant newspaper staffers have spent time on a documentary to highlight the loss of investigative journalism due to media cuts. (http://bit.ly/LDNtaZ) The documentary will follow three back stories that have fallen by the wayside simply because the people working on them got laid off.

However it does not have to be like this. In many cases, progressive local papers have utilised the internet to develop their local web presence. My own local paper in Chelmsford, the Essex Chronicle, claims to have 100,000 readers a week (the district has a population of 160,000) and that more than 90 per cent of the content is unique and cannot be read anywhere else, either in print or online.

Alan Geere, the editor (sadly not a CIoJ member), accepts that on-line is taking hold of its traditional advertising platforms of jobs, cars and houses but says “… if we continue to serve our communities with news, information and advertising that people cannot find elsewhere our future can still be very bright.”

The Institute’s efforts to try and support – and possibly restore – the role of local journalism to deliver those back stories that matter in towns, villages and districts throughout the land, may have found a champion.

Louise Mensch, MP, has spoken out quite forcefully on the subject of local newspapers. At the end of April she hosted a debate at Westminster on the future of local newspapers. Clearly ambitious (she switched from membership of the Labour party to the Tories in 1997) she is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Her sympathies for journalism may be reinforced by the fact that her sister is a freelance.

The Professional Practices Board (PPB) is lined up to make a presentation to her in the near future having already written in support of her message. PPB has outlined an approach that identifies community needs as the driver to sustain local media. Too often, positive developments like this have been thwarted by the financial burden imposed by national news groups.

Our back story is to get an advocate in Parliament who shares our vision for local media whether print or on-line. Can she get government interested too?

Norman Bartlett