Deregulation or democracy? New media, news, neoliberalism and the public interest

Abstract

This article began from the premise that news media are in crisis. The crisis is being managed by closing papers or shedding staff. Drawing on extensive empirical research the paper argues that these cuts are having a devastating effect on the quality of the news. The cuts are being delivered to news so that shareholder profits remain in an increasingly deregulated news environment. This is having a particularly negative impact on local news. While new technology is opening up new spaces for the engagement of local communities and communities of interest, and new news spaces are emerging these are far from being adequate replacements for a quality, genuinely local, independent news service. The paper suggests that at the heart of this dilemma is a contradiction between the democratic potential of new technologies and the stifling constraints of the free market.

Notes

1. The main research project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and undertaken in Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. It forms one of the first thorough empirical investigations of journalistic practices in different news contexts in the United Kingdom. Using interviews, ethnography and qualitative content analysis to investigate news production processes in a representative sample of news media, the research combined macro-social critique with micro-organizational analysis to gain a complex, critical understanding of the nature of news and news journalism in a digital age (see http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/media-research-centre/index.php). The follow-on research also reported on here and funded by the Media Trust was based on four in-depth case studies selected to cover areas that contained different socio-demographic and different news characteristics. The case studies included an analysis of the community news outlets/platforms and their relationship with mainstream news media through interviews with key protagonists and local news providers. Three focus groups were also held in each of the communities served for each case study (12 in total). Further interviews with news policy leaders also informed the research.

2. Newspaper Society Intelligence unit, 1 January 2010, ABC/VFD/Independently audited figures.

3. The NUJ in its 2009 submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Inquiry noted that in the 12 months prior to its submission Trinity Mirror had axed 1200 jobs.

4. Birmingham is the second largest city in the United Kingdom and has the second largest economy. The Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Post are newspapers that serve Birmingham and are owned by Trinity Mirror.