Collaborate with other actors
Collaborating with national media is also a way for local media to showcase their expertise. The BBC is collaborating with British local news media. 150 journalists have been recruited from local media “to be local democracy journalists”. They cover news in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and provide content used by 900 local media outlets.
“The BBC pays the salaries of journalists assigned to local newsrooms. This allows us to have good coverage of local politics and exchange good practice. Partner media have access to BBC content, produce local content and we share datasets,” explains Matthew Baraclough, Head of this Local News Partnership.
1,500 articles are produced per week, 99% of which are used by at least two partners. The budget is £8 million, 5 of which is covered by the BBC.
“LNP is a huge contribution to the news ecosystem in England and this organisation is replicable. It is already the case in New Zealand (12 journalists) and Canada (105 journalists),” adds Matthew Baraclough.
Another example of collaboration at the local level: the partnership viber data between Nantes Métropole and Ouest France during the pandemic to print two special editions with the following data: food and social aid from the city, reopening dates for schools and markets, contact details of associations that provide masks. The challenge of this partnership was to publicize important information from the city through the PQR.
If local media are experiencing a crisis in their economic model with the fall in print sales and competition from GAFAS with advertisers, the interest of readers allows them to innovate in their economic model and to consider hybrid models.
In France, Maïté Torres created Made In Perpignan in 2016, Flo Laval created Far Ouest – a magazine that tells the story of the region between journalism and documentary series – and Pierre-Olivier Bobo founded the associative media Sparse . These three local media each have a business model that is based on several activities: media training, content creation for third parties and crowdfunding.
Different business models have thus emerged in local media: Lincolnite in Great Britain via a model based on advertising, Bristol Cable with a model based on subscription, Our Media in Norway on a collaborative and associative structure and Texas Tribune in the United States on the basis of reader donations.