Regional UK papers ask for government help

This is interesting. It comes from Ben Fenton at the FT via @juliansambles.

The chief executives of the UK’s top regional newspaper groups have banded together to negotiate with the government as they seek urgent help to save further titles from closure, the Financial Times has learnt.

Without any announcement, the Local Media Alliance came into being in January and held a secret meeting at Claridge’s hotel in London with Lord Carter, the communications minister, on February 2.

There they told him how serious the financial circumstances affecting their industry were and asked for merger restrictions to be relaxed.

The seven chief executives, whose companies control 72 per cent of the UK market, also sought the government’s help in reaching agreements with the BBC and ITV for local papers to provide paid content for the broadcaster’s online news services.

People present told the FT that Lord Carter said the group had a strong emotional case, but needed to prove empirically that the government should intervene. The consultancy OC&C has been employed by the LMA to provide that proof.

Interesting that the emotional nature of the group’s plea was pointed out here. Much of the discussion around the future of news and future or otherwise of newspapers does seem emotional.

There’s a real reticence to let go of the familiar, and apparently real fear that the loss of existing journalism structures (newspapers, agencies, old distribution networks) will break democracy and all the things we hold dear.

I don’t think democracy will break, though, nor the things we hold dear. Journalism will carry on regardless, in one form or another, using whatever delivery mechanisms make sense at the time.

Newspapers have made sense in New Zealand for about 150 years. Doesn’t mean they always will. The future of journalism, the health of democracy and the future of newspapers are different conversations, albeit related.  We should be wary of conflating them.