ABSTRACT

Previous chapters have been largely about the challenges faced by the ‘national’ journalistic media, by which I mean those produced mainly in London and distributed throughout the geographical territory of the UK: the broadcast network news of the BBC and ITN, and the UK’s 22 London-based daily and Sunday newspapers (see Chapter 1). But the UK is not a nation so much as a collection of nations, which are in turn divided into myriad regions and communities, each with its own distinctive characteristics. England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all possess particular cultural identities, in addition to being ‘British’. In England, the North is perceived very differently from the South, while in Scotland, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the surrounding conurbations have as much to separate as to bind them together culturally. Throughout the UK, these differences are reflected in local media, so that

while the country as a whole shares a common culture of ‘national’ news and journalism, the greatest proportion of it produced in London, many of its constituent parts, from the nations of Scotland and Wales down to the remote island or rural community have their own media covering their own issues and agendas. This chapter focuses on those media – their recent history, current challenges and future prospects, against the backdrop of four trends. The first, to which we have already referred in other contexts above, is

technological. The online revolution has had an impact on the local newspaper

sector as much as, if not more than, the national press, reducing circulation and advertising revenue as readers slowly but steadily migrate to the web. In local broadcast journalism, meanwhile, analogue switch-off, and the onset of complete digitisation of TV in the UK by 2012, has generated a serious crisis for the commercial producers of regional news such as STV in Scotland, as the old business model that governed commercial TV for 50 years and more fades into history. As a result, the future quantity and quality of local commercial TV news throughout the UK has never been in such doubt. Second, these technology-led trends have added to the competitive pressures

caused by an expanding ‘free-sheet’ sector. Free newspapers, distributed to commuters on trains and buses, have grown substantially in number and readership since the first edition of this book appeared in the early 1990s, to the point where, in the view of some observers, they threaten the very viability of the paid-for regional press and the quality of the journalism it produces. Third, London-based editions of national titles such as the Sun have intensified

their competitive strategies in the regions, particularly in Scotland, with major consequences for the circulations of indigenous titles such as the Daily Record. Fourth, hanging over all this is a constitutional question, which has now

reached a pivotal point in the UK. How should the BBC’s journalists, for example, adapt to the changing needs of a devolved Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as those of the English regions, at a time when UK cultural identity is on the agenda as never before in living memory? 2008 was a key year in the debate around these questions, with reports from

Ofcom on the future of public service broadcasting; from the BBC Trust on the failures of BBC news and current affairs to serve the regions adequately; and from the Scottish Broadcasting Commission (SBC), set up by the Scottish National Party government after its election in 2007 to review the future of broadcasting in Scotland. While a number of key decisions remained to be taken by the regulators and broadcasters as this edition went to press, the main lines of debate had emerged and are summarised in this chapter.