Newspapers, including this one, are fighting for their commercial lives as a consequence of ever increasing competition for advertising revenue and the current economic downturn.
Advertising revenues are migrating away from television and newspapers towards the internet. This has serious implications for local news gathering and the future of the newsprint and broadcast media.
Across the world newspapers have closed down, or reduced the number of days they publish, or cut back and centralised their news operation. There are fewer openings for budding journalists as the main training grounds for tomorrow’s national radio, TV and newspaper reporters contract in size.
The Select Committee I sit on is currently investigating the future of local newspapers. I start with the view that local newspapers are an essential part of our democracy shedding light on local decision making and holding people to account for their actions.
We will all be less well informed and able to make choices without the spotlight being shone on local affairs.
Take the example of the ‘Salford Star’, a paper that won Best Regional Newspaper category at last year’s Plain English Campaign awards.
Three years ago this now defunct local paper exposed the property company Urban Splash for not providing promised affordable housing in a flag ship development hailed by local MP Hazel Blears.
The paper argued that the average price of the first 108 Urban Splash homes were well beyond the pockets of the local population. This went against their promises that had won over local people to their plans in the first place.
It’s a small story but without the local paper it would never have been told. Instead, as the Salford Star editor has hinted, all you would ever get to read about Urban Splash was their own publicity handouts.
Urban Splash are one of the two bidders to take over Oldway Mansion and carry out the Mayor’s vision to build housing in the grounds of the estate. I don’t suppose they would have included their Salford Star press coverage in their offer, but the real point is that without the local paper there would have been limited scrutiny of their performance.
Our investigations into the future of local newspapers will involve looking at alternative funding models. We are going to have to ask some difficult questions such as whether some of the BBC’s licence fee money for public service broadcasting, or other funding, ought to be available to local newspapers? We will need to answer whether this would be used for local news gathering, or the maintenance of journalistic standards, or training the next generation of reporters?
We will also have to consider whether we should just accept the public are voting with their feet and leave it to the market to determine which paper survives and which folds?
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When I first raised the issue of Identity Cards and argued that they should be opposed, six out of every ten people asked thought they were a good idea. The fact that more than six out of ten now think they are a bad idea might have had something to do with the Government’s retreat over compulsory ID cards.
This week the Home Secretary Alan Johnson signalled a significant reversal over the Government’s identity card policy when he ruled out making them compulsory for British citizens. He also abandoned plans for trials at two airports that would have required some staff and pilots to carry the cards.
The announcement means that the only people for whom it will be compulsory to have an identity card will be foreign citizens. Quite how this works has clearly not been thought through. What happens if a foreign citizen when asked for their identity card claims not to be a foreign citizen? What happens when a UK citizen is asked for their identity card and the person asking does not believe them when they say are not a foreign citizen?
More worrying is that the Government is still pressing ahead with creating a national identity register that, from 2011-12, will include the details of everyone who applies for a passport.
Those who have campaigned against ID cards have won an important victory as the Government is clearly in retreat. Now we need to push for full scale surrender and the abandonment of the database to kill off the idea once and for all.
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There was a second victory this week over the issue of paying for care. Having resisted several attempts by Lib Dem, nationalist and rebel Labour MPs to abolish charges for personal care, as is the case in Scotland, the Government is proposing an Age Insurance Scheme.
The Government is saying such a scheme will be part of a package of measures to shake-up of the care system.
The current means-tested system forces thousands of pensioners each year to sell their homes or run down their savings. Under the proposals, those who want to protect their homes or savings would pay into a scheme that would then foot the bill for all members who require long-term residential care.
A range of payment options for “age insurance” will be set out in a Government Green Paper.
It’s not quite the ‘free’ care argued for, but the age insurance idea is a small step forward by the Government and the Green Paper is awaited with great interest.
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When people contact my office threatened with bailiffs it is usually as a last resort and in desperation. It is a sign of the hard times now being felt in this recession that increasing numbers of constituents are contacting me faced with this threat.
My office has a briefing for constituents explaining their rights that can be obtained on the advice line: 200036.
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