Local media enters “critical period,” suggests research

More than 270 regional titles closed down between 2005 and 2022, according to a new research report which warns that local media will be subjected to a “critical period” over the next 3-5 years.

And while many traditional businesses remain highly reliant on print for their profitability, media research firm Enders Analysis suggests that as industrial print provision enters its “final phase” businesses will have to transform themselves into sustainable digital media.

In its wide-ranging review of the UK’s regional press, Enders calls on the government’s new Digital Markets Unit to prioritise helping titles that publish more local content online and urges publishers to stop “trying to second-guess the needs of search or social media algorithms.” Enders believes the scale and nature of sustainability for local media will largely be settled during its medium-term future; therefore, it feels critical for government to step-up support for the industry.

“The downside scenario is not difficult to envisage: that local media are systematically under-rated in the new digital markets regime; that online advertising revenues plateau; that LLMs cause more havoc for local media—perhaps crashing traffic—outweighing the gains hoped for; that the final phase of industrial print does not hold out long enough for local media to land a sustainable digital model; that investment in the longer-term future falls short of requirements.”

The report says that local media has experienced the most complex and comprehensive technological disruption of all the media markets. No other channel has been so systematically unbundled from its historic, lucrative offline proposition – and no other media disruption created a more rapid or transformational revenue decline. Since 2004, classified advertising has fallen 96 per cent from £2.1 billion to less than £100 million, while in the last decade print circulations has fallen by more than half. By comparison, in 2022 alone, the SME advertising market spent an estimated £11 billion with Google and Meta.

However, the report says that there are multiple reasons why local news publishers must maintain print products for as long as they reasonably can – amongst them profitability; visibility of the brand and the fact that they played such a disproportionate role in the lives of older demographics; newspapers being considered as the main source of news for 32 per cent of those aged 35 and over. A significant proportion of the over-70s still prefer a print product.

“Local media do something different from much of the rest of the internet: their content is verified. There is an editors' code, a formal process between content origination and publishing. Mistakes are corrected. Journalists are trained professionals, and owners defend their published content; they are accountable by law : no such safety net exists in the influencer world, or social media more broadly.”

There is a role for local journalism of all kinds as a trusted verification advisor for the general public, adds the research.

“The cacophony of coverage and noise on AI, generative search, and ChatGPT reinforces all of these arguments, amplifying a role for local journalism of all kinds as a trusted verification advisor for the general public.”

Owen Meredith (pictured), chief executive of trade body the News Media Association, which funded the report, said: “This report makes very clear the increasing importance of trusted local journalism to our society in the age of AI, and the efforts publishers are making to find a truly sustainable future for local news through innovation.

“The next five years will be critical for the sector and the report makes some helpful recommendations for interventions to support local journalism, such as government and the private sector making much greater use of the sector as an advertising platform.”