Local & Green 1: flicking the switch
Each day this week I’ll be posting on Local & Green: why environmental journalism is best at the local level, and can help grow a renewed local media industry. Today I’m looking at…
Flicking the S
witch: which newspapers are making the leap to communal green media?
Inspired by last month’s Carnival of Journalism, I blogged about why local media should take the opportunity to connect with its community through environmental action and campaigns. I picked up on a number of examples that were delivering a positive “communal address” to help people take small actions in their lives: however, none of the examples were from local media groups. And it left me wondering why regional media were not using green to drive growth.
Well, thanks go to Northcliffe’s Digital team, who have just won the Campaign for Change category at the New Statesman New Media Awards with their project Big Green Switch. It’s a ‘green living’ portal that they have white-labelled to roll out across their local newspaper sites, starting with the Derby Evening Telegraph.
The site is a bit shouty in its design, but is doing everything right in combining local news (Evening Telegraph headlines in the middle of the page) with both 1) a communal campaign and 2) common Northcliffe-wide content elements and group-wide figures of how many people have made the switch (112,485 people, which looks like they’re all from Derby, but that’s the total figure for all the Big Green Switch sites). This both taps into the uses of online (peer-to-peer) and the economies of scale of shareable content.
The critical thing here is: communal address. There has been such a disconnect between the scale of environmental challenges (huge) and the government/NGO response (you’ve got to do your bit) that people have felt overwhelmed. But if the Big Green Switch can help the people of Derby ‘Save the world, starting with Derbyshire’ by making the problem local as well as the responses, then both the environment and local media can survive.
As Northcliffe’s MD Michael Pelosi told the Observer yesterday, their reinvention in digital, including their green developments one assumes, is “gaining readers” for their local brands. “Our titles are read by over 80 per cent of the adult population in one week, so we still have high penetration. There is a crossover of people who read our papers and our website.” And presumably as well as new readers, new advertisers.
There are some critics (here and here) of Northcliffe’s regional digital media (the ThisIs… series) which make some valid complaints about design in particular.
Let go of the log: dead-tree values not needed
Those criticisms also, importantly, highlight some clues from the Thisis… sites that show Northcliffe’s team are still holding on to dead-tree values (e.g. delaying full story publication online).
And this isn’t limited to Northcliffe. Also in the Observer yesterday, quoted in their business/media piece exploring local paper’s migration online, Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror’s regional division, said this about the difference between web and paper:
“The web is now the biggest news medium. Newspapers are more about campaigning and opinion forming.”
I think this says more about sentimentality than awareness of digital: the desire to hold on to newspapers, rather than being open minded about the opportunity for growth online. Particularly when Roger Parry, head of Johson Press, goes on to say: “when [advertising] comes back it will come back online, and it will come back in special supplements and magazines.”
That is, not supporting news, but campaigns, issues, niches and lifestyle content. And what is growing more than green? It’s also the green communal address that won the Lakeland Gazette its award as an ‘environmental champion’ for it’s ‘Go Green with the Lakeland Gazette’ campaign.
But don’t throw the log out with the logwater
These newspaper groups are not backing away from the challenge. And not everything about retaining strong newspaper brands is sentimental. If regional media can make the best of online to complement their experience in print to see how cross-promotion and shared content can really work, then newspapers can survive, albeit in a sharply refined format. Benson at Trinity Mirror does get it when he starts talking about “community media franchises”:
A typical weekly paper might reach 60 per cent of a community; a well-developed group of websites plus a paper will reach 80 per cent. The developing community media companies will play a greater role in local democracy not less.
And for tomorrow…
Others such as Alfred Hermida, Dave Lee, Charlie Beckett, Adrian Monck and Paul Bradshaw (excellent writers and thinkers) suggest that journalism in relation to geography is reducing in importance (Dave: ‘hyperlocal is dead‘ and Alfred: ‘pay more attention to the notion of cultural proximity‘; Charlie: ‘it’s rarely about place‘; Adrian: ‘it’s about communities of interest) [edited July 8th: see comment] and that traditional newspaper locales are often arbitrary (Paul: all journalism can be local). My argument (not only mine) is that geography is gaining in importance. Location will become more critical in low-carbon economies; in, as Benson says, ‘local democracy’. I agree it’s not all about place. But there are some things you cannot do online. And there are some campaigns and actions that media can drive geographically. A new future, or stuck in the past? I’ll expand on this tomorrow.
What do you think? Is green going local, or is it not enough to save journalism?
Comments
2 Responses to “Local & Green 1: flicking the switch”
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It’s a great point about the increasing importance of local in a low carbon economy. I would disagree that I said geography was reducing in importance - my point is that the arbitrary geographies of traditional newspapers apply less and less (particularly as the city centre becomes less of a focal point as people work from home, etc.), and personalisation becomes more important. That personalisation includes (very specific) geography.
Thanks for the comment Paul, I’ll address your point in the blog.