Jonathan Heawood discusses PINF's recently announced Local News Commission, designed to bring fresh perspectives into tackling the crisis facing local news in the UK and making it a priority for the incoming government.
How can we encourage the next government to address the local news crisis?
This is a question that preoccupies us at PINF.
Over the last few years, we’ve been studying initiatives to support local news around the world. In Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and the United States, policymakers are taking steps to make sure that future generations benefit from high-quality local news.
Not so much in the UK.
The outgoing government made lots of nice noises about the importance of local news. But they didn’t do much to staunch the loss of local journalism jobs, the closure of titles or the steady erosion of the local media economy that once formed the bedrock of the British media and British democracy.
True, the government passed the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, which will require big tech platforms to negotiate with news providers over a fair share of data and revenue. This should make an important difference to the news industry, and it’s right to hold big tech firms accountable, but this isn’t enough on its own to turn things around, particularly for independent local news providers.
The next government will inherit a range of tough issues, from the cost of living in the UK and the climate crisis to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. How can we expect politicians to worry about the future of local news when they are already dealing with these interlocking crises?
In my view, politicians need to understand that local news provides the foundation on which, as a society, we can address these other issues. Local news provides a shared reality in place of the polarising discourse of social media. It provides a forum for debate about the things that matter in people’s day-to-day lives. And it drives accountability in the political system, without which democracy will fail.
That’s why we are launching a Local News Commission. We want to unlock fresh thinking and build a new coalition of allies to support local news. So, we have appointed a dozen commissioners with deep commitments to their communities and a track record of driving change – but no direct involvement in the local news industry.
Previous initiatives such as the Cairncross Review, the Scottish Publish Interest Journalism Working Group and the Wales Public Interest Journalism Group have been led or advised by journalists. They have built up a body of recommendations which our commissioners will review.
Our commissioners don’t work in local news, and they aren’t coming with ready-made ideas about what’s going right or wrong in the sector. They are, instead, deeply knowledgeable about related issues in the fields of culture, civil society, economic development and local government.
Local news providers will be involved in the Commission as expert witnesses, sharing their experiences and ideas at a series of meetings over the coming months. The commissioners will learn a lot from them, but we think that local news providers will also learn a lot from the commissioners, who bring such a wealth of experience and expertise from other sectors.
We don’t know exactly what the Commission will recommend. But we do know that they will bring huge interest and enthusiasm to their work. And we believe that they will drive local news up the political agenda, in part by finding ways to connect local news with issues that are already high on the priority list for the incoming government, like regional devolution and closing the inequality gap between different parts of the UK.
We don’t expect the commissioners’ work to stop when they deliver their report in early 2025. Instead, we hope that they will continue to help us to broaden and deepen the coalition of people who care about local news – not because they have a vested interest in the industry, but because they want to see local communities flourishing, and they know that high-quality journalism is fundamental to that.
Jonathan Heawood is Executive Director of PINF.
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