“I am heartened and excited”, says Ashley Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press. In these straitened times for local and regional newspapers, that’s an unusually upbeat statement.
He is referring to the section about local media in the report on the future of the BBC by the Commons culture, media and sport committee.
He views the MPs’ call for collaboration between the public service broadcaster and commercial press owners as something of a breakthrough moment.
“The politicians have pressed a button with their recommendations in the report,” says Highfield. “This should act as the impetus for further dialogue between us, because our views are so close.
“The report is positive about the way in which we can work together for our mutual benefit. So it is time for a really constructive, coordinated debate and it would be helpful for us to meet now”.
He believes it is possible that “a two-way flow” of news-gathering and news transmission is within imaginable grasp. “Now we need a structured framework to make it work”.
To place this optimism in context, it comes just three weeks after Highfield wrote an open letter to the BBC on this site complaining about the sentiments expressed in the corporation’s own Future of News report.
He was upset by the BBC’s apparent intention to park its tanks “on every local lawn and offering its version of hyperlocal news controlled from London W1A”. And the tanks reference came up again in our conversation.
But he thinks the select committee’s call for a “more symbiotic relationship” between the BBC and local press industry reflects not only his views but also those of the head of BBC news, James Harding.
Highfield believes that he and Harding share an understanding that news should be jointly covered in Britain’s towns and cities by the BBC and local papers. He points to key paragraphs in the MPs’ report:
“The BBC must not expect to receive others’ news content without providing something in return. We are attracted by the idea of exchanges of content and information, where the BBC local websites link to the source of local material they have used, and in return the BBC allows others to use its content and embed BBC clips on their sites, where these would be of local interest, under a licence agreement.
There need not be a financial transaction. However, we also see the case for the BBC outsourcing the supply of some local content on a commercial basis, where there is an ongoing requirement for such material, and it is a more cost-effective way of meeting this need.
We recommend this be ensured by extending the BBC’s independent production quota to cover local news”.
Cross-attribution is obviously key to an agreement. Local and regional newspaper websites would be delighted to run video clips produced by the BBC. Similarly, the BBC would be able to run stories originated by newspaper reporters.
Cynics will inevitably point out that the BBC already runs local paper stories, without revealing the source. Why should their newsrooms change? But Highfield - a former senior BBC executive himself - scoffs at the notion that the BBC can afford to ignore the MPs’ report in the run-up to charter review.
Highfield also indicates the significance of the statement made to Media Guardian by the committee’s chairman, John Whittingdale:
“I am worried about the parlous state of local newspapers which is quite dangerous for local democracy. We should consider using part of the proceeds of the licence fee to support local newspapers directly”.
He does not view this as some sort of back-door public subsidy for news-gathering, which is anathema to publishers, as Geraldine Allinson, chair of the Kent-based KM Group, has made clear.
For Highfield, it is simply a matter of codifying an agreement. And it isn’t, he says, only about news. Co-ordinated coverage of sport, the weather and entertainment, for example, would be beneficial too.
He believes he speaks for his fellow publishers because there is a consensus among them on what should be done.
So let this blog play honest broker. Since the differences between the BBC news division and regional newspaper publishers appear to be so narrow, let me call on Harding to meet Highfield or vice versa.
It is time to hammer out a workable agreement. It is, after all, in the overall public interest to do so.