They mightn’t admit it on the record, but many local journalists who have covered town council meetings breathed a big sigh of relief when they were abolished earlier this year. This is despite the fact that the shenanigans played out in creaky chambers were traditionally the backbone of newspapers in towns from Ballina to Ballybay, Listowel to Letterkenny.
There is only so much reportage you can write about potholes, pedestrianisation and car-park charges before one’s mind begins to melt into mush. To be fair to some councillors, their ability to create faux dramas about planning appeals or new traffic-calming measures often proved timely when a deadline loomed and there was a still space on the paper’s early pages that an editor desperately needed to fill with “fresh news”.
Of course, many of the theatrics were for our benefit. We jobbing journalists all knew that if we affected a mass walkout the meeting would be over within minutes. After one town council meeting a few years ago, I filed my report for the following day’s newspaper, and by mid-morning I had received an irate phone-call from a councillor who verbally abused me for not including his contribution to a certain debate. I retorted that he was “clearly phoning the wrong person”, and told him that if he wanted a full account of the meeting, he should “phone the council secretary, who had recorded the minutes”.
There was an interesting little moral in this exchange for me. In the past, it was an accepted protocol that local newspapers reported council meetings verbatim and didn’t really spin or develop the elements of the potential story. The tabloidisation of the print media in recent decades, however, has put huge pressure on all mass media – whether that is a family-owned newspaper in the west of Ireland or a national edition from an international stable of newspapers – to be more intrusive, more agenda-driven and more servile to the demands (perceived or implicit) of advertisers.
Digital revolution
This is compounded by the fact that, like the national print media, the local newspaper is now enslaved by the insatiable appetite of the mammoth new-media monster. It is forced to dance to the tune of the digital revolution and bend to the constant choreography of the concept of “breaking news” which dictates 24/7 immediacy. The parallels continue when you add in the recent collapse in print-advertising revenue and the migration of younger readers to (usually) free online content.
However, there are many nuanced distinctions that will equally determine the fate of the future of the local newspaper.
Up to a decade ago the majority of such papers were family or independently owned. They were in the charge of editors who were embedded in the communal and cultural life of an area. Design and production were carried out at the newspapers’ offices.
Celtic Tiger corporatism saw many of these papers capitulate to mergers with larger media companies, such as INM, Avondhu, Landmark, Celtic Media and River Media. As a result, there are only eight independently owned local newspapers left in the country.
Since the foundation of the State, the typical local newspaper was a community newsletter, an upholder of the political and cultural status quo and a probing commentator on the minutiae of local issues.
The recent pattern of mergers means ownership and senior management are often centralised and based far from the readership of the newspaper. While individual editors may argue that they are still invested with carte-blanche freedom, the erosion of autonomy coupled with asset-stripping and the geographical remove of key decision-making has diluted the distinctive brand of individual organs.
Brazen
This is further compounded by the fact that nearly all local newspapers are weekly. Nowadays, the ink has barely dried before vulturous dailies, waiting in the long grass, swoop on stories from out in the sticks and, without a nod or wink at their country cousins (in some cases), rewrite or simply copy and paste the story while brazenly adding a new byline.
Here is one example. I wrote a story a couple of years ago for the Mayo News and The Irish Times about the violent death of a man in Africa. It contained a small error about a geographical location. That error was reprinted in newspapers all over Ireland, the UK and the continent of Africa. Not one of the journalists or editors contacted me out of courtesy or acknowledged the original source.
Ah yes, media manners leave a lot to be desired these days. At least town councillors included the local hack on their Christmas card mailing list.