BU Research Blog

Last night at a packed house at Westminster we launched a new report: Mapping changes in local news 2015-2017 More bad news for democracy?

By Gordon Neil Ramsay, Des Freedman, Daniel Jackson and Einar Thorsen.

Speakers included Aasma Day, the investigative reporter and lifestyle editor at the Lancashire Post, professor Robert McChesney, Justin Schlosberg from the Media Reform Coalition and NUJ president Tim Dawson.

PDF of the report available from:http://bit.ly/LocalNewsMatters-Report_v1

Published by the Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community (at Bournemouth University) in collaboration with the National Union of Journalists, the Political Studies Association and the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power (at King’s College London) this report maps recent changes in the state of local news provision in the UK including newspapers, broadcast and digital.

We document how:

▶ The majority of the UK (57.9%) is not served by a local daily newspaper.

▶ 45% of local authority districts are served by a single publisher.

▶ Local daily papers are overwhelmingly located in major urban areas.

▶ 77.1% of local newspaper titles are owned by the big five local newspaper publishers.

▶ Another 418 local journalism jobs have been lost in the last 17 months.

And argue for a range of interventions that could help alleviate the democratic crisis that is emerging through a lack of local journalism in the UK.

This report will interest academics, journalists, activists and policymakers concerned with the state of local news in the the UK.

More details of the local news mapping project and 2015 report at: http://localnewsmapping.uk

To learn more about the NUJ Local News Matters campaign and to find out how to get involved, please visit: https://www.nuj.org.uk/campaigns/local-news-matters-week/

And tomorrow in parliament, MPs will debate the state of the UK’s local media and an early day motion has been tabled calling for sustainable investment in professional local and regional news provision online, in newspapers and on radio and television.