In a submission to the Leveson Inquiry Enders cited the falling income of the major regional publishers. The numbers make for a grim story from Johnston Press down 23 per cent at £398 million to Newsquest down 56 per cent at £340 million.

It’s a slow death.

Internet impact
The story of the decline in newsprint first began in the mid-1990s with internet dial-up as online businesses such as Craigslist, Google and eBay lured away advertising revenues by matching buyers and sellers more efficiently than paper.

Regional media completely missed a trick in the move online. It sought to generate regional angles on national news stories in a bid to compete with national media.

Yet these were the media businesses that had a ready-made community; an engaged audience that willingly engaged via competitions, letters and vox-pops.

My 13-year-old daughter gets her local news from her Facebook news feed. But she has also been spotted reading the Northumberland Gazette for news about her mates, sport and music.

It’s very simple. People want to read about issues and people that are relevant to them.

Alternative models
Regional bloggers are making a valiant effort to supplement the work of the regional media. In the past I’ve recorded an interview with JesmondLocal founder Ian Wylie on the challenges of running a hyperlocal media site.

In nearby Sunderland, Josh Halliday’s SR2Blog secured him a role at The Guardian on graduation from a journalism degree at Sunderland University. As an aside it’s a crying shame that the university has let his site die. It was truly innovative model and clearly stood Halliday in good stead in his career.

The role of regional newsprint as a story teller has traditionally been critical to democracy. It was always the check and balance in holding local business and government to account. But to do it well costs money and ad revenues are no longer sufficient to support the format.

Bloggers, whatever their motivation, cannot replace the rigour of trained journalists or the discipline of editorial standards.

Regional publishers have dabbled with community networks over laid with an editorial function such as the ncjMedia network of 22 hyperlocal blogs in Northumberland but the top down approach makes it challenging to secure engagement.

At Speed we’ve tinkered with networks as a means of curating and serving content using services such as paper.li and Summify but have reached the conclusion that an editorial function is critical to prioritise and weed out irrelevant content. And that costs money.

Commercial model
We’re back to the well worn issue of revenue.

Arguably the smartest commercial move that the regional media has made in in the last 30 years is selling reprints of photos. A single photo of the football team guarantees numerous sales to proud parents.

If social media proves anything it is that there is a clear demand for local content but regional media hasn’t applied itself commercially to the communities that it serves.

Remember the sunset shot that I took of the Cheviots in Northumberland a couple of weeks ago? Probably not but stick with me.

I posted the image to the Your Place Northumberland Flickr group that’s curated by the hyperlocal team at the Newcastle Journal. It made the Your Place hyperlocal web site. And now the Northumberland Journal Extra local newspaper.

I think that its an important step because it shows traditional media engaging with its audience and sourcing content via a social network.

Here’s PaidContent:

“[The] three-month pay trial on six local papers sites is now ending, with apparently dismal results.  [...] While some of the sites had pay or registration barriers, others’ articles told readers to go buy the paper after paragraph two.”

Rick and his business partner Matt Waring are the team behind the Addiply local ad network that is brokering deals with regional media groups such as Trinity Mirror in the North East for its Your place network and independent hyperlocal sites such as Josh Halliday’s Sunderland’s SR2 Blog and Philip John’s Litchfield blog.

Addiply’s contention is that existing ad platforms are too complex to setup for local advertisers and aren’t sufficiently granular to work on a hyperlocal basis.

Addiply makes advertising as simple as posting an ad in a newsagent. And that’s important for small businesses and site owners alike. Costs are intentionally low to buy an ad on a hyperlocal blog (typically £10 per week) with 90 per cent of the fees returned to the publisher.

Rick’s goal is to sign-up more hyperlocal publishers nationwide and then package deals for brands and the public sector that are seeking to reach regional markets on a local basis. He’s got several deals with regional publishers in the works so watch this space.

Broadcasters, nationals and wires are all leading with arctic predictions for the next 48 hours. Yet according to AccuWeather it is currently 2ºC in London and - 21ºC in Antarctica. All sense of perspective has been lost our predominately based London media.

Much of the north and Scotland has had snow on the ground for the last three weeks. We’ve had snow on the ground at home in Northumberland for more than three weeks.

Here’s what Russell has to say.

[…] writing about my neighbourhood worries me deeply. Because the people and shops and cafes are going to notice that you’re writing about them, and if you’re in any way critical they’ll know and glare at you, and you’re going to feel really bad.[…] There’s a difference between slagging off a restaurant you don’t intend to go back to and walking past the same place every day.

I’ve tried it and its not comfortable. There is no doubt hyper local media is viable and that local bloggers are able to provide the content and reach of a regional newspaper but the issues of personal anonymity and legal protection need be tackled.

Russell again.

[…] if hyperlocalism is going to work in the UK maybe it needs to be aggregated rather than authored (somehow, I’m not really sure what I mean by that) or it needs some imprimatur of professionalism that says “I’m just doing my job”.

The twin issues of personal exposure and the backup of a publisher need to be resolved if hyperlocal media is going to work.