Here is the full chapter I wrote for the What Do We Mean By Local book which Roy Greenslade is currently serialising in the Guardian. I wrote this in December 2011.
Mike Rawlins isn’t a journalist, but he wanted to know more about politics so decided to do something about it. The experiment in political engagement took him further than he could have imagined. Continue reading
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
Last week I spoke at the Society of Editors regional conference in Manchester.
Here are the slides.
Continue reading
Posted from Manchester, England, United Kingdom.
Well actually, I contributed a chapter to What Do We Mean By Local published by abramis ISBN 9781845495404.
I was approached by the editors and asked if I would like to contribute to the book, the invitation came just after the announcement from The Journalism Foundation about their support for Pits n Pots. So I thought why not, it would be good to write something up about Pits n Pots and the journey we had made thus far, and it can’t be hard to write between 3000 & 5000 words can it? Yes it can! Continue reading
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
Tomorrow morning, at some ungodly hour I’m heading down to London School of Economics & Political Science for the POLIS Journalism Conference 11.
The overview of the days panels & discussions taken from the POLIS website is
As well as WikiLeaks and the Middle East Uprisings, we shall be looking at issues closer to home: are newspapers still powerful? Where are the new watchdogs? How do you build media for democracy? What do we need to know for an informed society?
It will be about the big ideas but also the practical skills we need as journalists and the real world problems we face.
Because of the stuff I have done on Pits n Pots, I was asked by Charlie Beckett to sit on a panel chaired by Nick Anstead to discuss DIY Media Democracy.
Others on the panel are
So all that said, what is DIY Media Democracy & what are the three really clever people and me going to be discussing?
Well I can’t speak for them, but for me DIY Media Democracy is about filling the gaps in where there is no mainstream local media or where there is mainstream media, but they are not holding power to account. It is about taking the information from your council and making it available is an easy to read format that promotes discussion.
This could be something as simple as
It isn’t about being a journalist, it is about using common sense, a basic grasp of the English language, civic pride and some simple computer skills to help people engage in the democratic process in their area.
If you go to a sub committee meeting you can have a post about it up on-line within an hour or so of the meeting closing, the council who have to prepare full minutes, won’t be publishing anything for days or possibly weeks. The local media, depending on deadlines probably won’t get anything published until the follow day.
If people don’t know something is happening or have missed an item buried deep in an agenda, then there is nothing they can do to engage and influence the democratic process.
If you are feeling particularly brave / aggrieved / mischievous, you could use some of the online tools to start digging and poking around in to the often murky inner workings of your council. Have a look at the council spending data on the fantastic OpenlyLocal site, or use the equally good What Do The Know to make some FOI requests, if you really think you are on to something then mail foi@yourcouncil.gov.uk and ask the question, that way it isn’t in the public domain and you may get a scoop! Once you have got your information you may need some help, Help Me Investigate* is an excellent resource for getting people onboard to help you with your investigations. There are tonnes of other sites & resources out there to help you if you want to try DIY Democracy, just remember keep it simple & keep it legal.
I’m sure that there will be a lot more discussion around these and many other points tomorrow.
The days discussions will be live streamed apparently and you can follow the discussions and tweets on everyone’s favourite super injunction breaking micro blogging site, Twitter, if you like by searching for #polis11
*Help Me Investigate is currently offline, see this post for details, but follow the blog for details of when it will be back.
Yesterday news that the BBC was looking at hacking away at their 40 local radio stations started to break. I think I read it first in this piece in the Guardian but since it has been reported pretty much everywhere including the by the BBC itself.
The short story is that the BBC want to save money and one of the ways they are considering to do this is to chop the BBC local radio stations so they have a local breakfast show and early evening (drive time) show with all other content being provided nationally by Radio 5 Live.
The NUJ are saying this could cost 700 jobs nationally, which is bad, but then put some perspective around this and look at Stoke-on-Trent City Council for example which is losing 700 staff in a city of around 240,000 people.
Jeremy Dear, the NUJ’s general secretary said, BBC Local Radio played ‘a crucial role’ in informing communities, and said that such proposals would ‘effectively sound the death knell’ for local radio, in a statement he said:
“The BBC’s plans would be a blow to quality journalism at the BBC and fly in the face of public commitments to localism and transparency. Local radio programmes are produced by local people for local audiences yet these decisions are being taken far away from communities and behind closed doors,”
The BBC Local Radio service has already been down graded with regional program sharing. If you look at BBC Radio Stoke right now as I am writing this (22:53) Keith Middleton is on the air, from Shropshire, before him Jim Hawkins also from Shropshire, at midnight it goes to Radio 5 Live until 6am.
So the damage has already been done, costs have been cut, sharing has started so would a bit more make that much difference? Would BBC Radio Midfordshire be any worse off by only having 2 shows a day? Of course there will be a group of people who will have a massive hole in their day because they listen all the time, although I fear this group of people are dying out, quite literally, but would it be so bad?
Although the plans are in their early stages, I don’t see anyone say there won’t be local news or content. I’m sure the BBC don’t plan to not report on anything unless it is of national importance or London centric, or maybe they do? It is quite feasible for the BBC to have regional news rooms, like the Mailbox in Birmingham and local reporters as they do in Stoke and for them to produce news packages that can be run on the end of the national news bulletin, look at BBC TV they have been doing it for years, so why should radio be different? Look at commercial local radio, they are creating news hubs that will centralise the news gathering for a whole region but provide local bulletins for each of the stations.
There was a discussion on the Today Program on Radio 4 this morning where Professor Gerry Stoker said it is essential to have local media coverage to call peoples attention issues at a local level. Charlie Beckett Director of POLIS cited hyperlocal websites such as Pits n Pots as delivering real accountability when it comes to holding councillors to account, you can listen to the discussion here on the BBC, Today 12 March. I have made an archive copy of the segment, which you can listen to in the player below.
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Personally, and this will be a surprise to some people both at 6 Towns Radio & the BBC, I would feel let down if BBC Radio Stoke went. I understand the need for change within the organisation and change should be seen as a launch pad to do different things, to push the boundaries. The BBC is one of the few organisations that probably could do the same for less, we all know that it is still gold plated, not Gold Plated like it used to be, but there is an awful lot of fat in the system still.
I strongly believe they could do a lot more, a lot better if they wanted to, but wanting to is one of the barriers that needs to be overcome. If only the BBC mentality of self importance could be broken down and the community and localisam could be put back in to the stations.
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.