Interesting article in a recent Guardian on changes in local and regional press which gives food for thought.
“What’s more important to citizens – journalism or commerce? Which is more valuable to our democracy – public information or private profit? What matters most to people – holding power to account or acting as power’s PR?
Tony Watson, told a parliamentary committee: “Things have got so bad in the regional press now, courts and councils are not getting covered sufficiently.”
…The effects of that decline – the over-reliance by editors on filling space with single-sourced PR-provided “oven ready” copy – were highlighted in Nick Davies’s seminal Flat Earth News in 2008. He may not have invented the description for such material as “churnalism”, but he certainly popularised it.
..“One of the biggest market failures in the last decade is local journalism”, it says, arguing that “vast swathes of modern life are increasingly unreported or under-reported.”
Read more:
East Devon Watch 