The Trinity Mirror Group has offered to print the hyperlocal newspaper, Bay Life the Journal, the broadsheet published here in Pevensey Bay—Bay Life, 7 June 2017
Simon Montgomery, editor of Bay Life the Journal, who is also responsible for the development of the second hyperlocal newspaper, Westham Village Voice that launches on Monday 12 June, explained that he was “flattered and slightly puzzled by the offer”.
The offer to print the newspaper is to be considered this coming week, but Simon said “what is fundamentally important is that the independence of the emerging hyperlocal press in this country is supported, it is just beginning and too early to say what value this new component will have in the future of the press in this country.”
The Journal already has established links with the Cardiff University Centre for Community Journalism with its brief to offer networking, information and training for hyperlocal or community journalists, the first centre of its kind in the country.
The broadsheet hyperlocal paper here is printed by the independent award winning Newspaper Club in Glasgow, which already has an established footprint with the printing of small scale newspaper across the country.
Simon, who said he would be talking to the Trinity Mirror Group in the coming week, explained that he would ‘consider the offer’, but did not want to see the small scale production in any way to be linked to existing offerings from large newspaper companies because he “saw the potential for the hyperlocal press to make its mark in the coming few years in a way that could be of sustainable value to both local businesses and local residents in terms of profiling critical questions that link to the future of rural communities and their regeneration and sustainability.”
He said “:it is not every day that you get a communication from a national news group offering to print a local newspaper that you helped to set up only a year ago, but nonetheless the offer has to be considered carefully.”
The hyperlocal press which this year sees up to two hundred of these smalls scale newspapers launching in the country appears to be something of a new phenomenon.
The newspapers are a new way of working within in rural communities in print and some cities, which Simon described as, “very small, but nonetheless exciting in the context of the changing shape of the way that the press works in this country at a hyperlocal level.”
Yet to be fully tested is the perception and sustainable value to local businesses of these new local newspapers.
The signs are positive that local businesses, for example in and around Pevensey Bay, see the newspapers as a prospect of some description and a viable platform to promote their services.
“One interesting aspect of the process” commented Simon, “is that the newspapers can connect in a much closer way to local businesses, helping to plan their profiles and develop campaigns, with business and news features for example that are much closer to all the business action and sentiment,
He offered the view that by publishing directly to a local niche audience that the hyperlocal press was groundbreaking. to a certain extent.
He ended by suggesting that maybe “nothing was new under that Sun” and that maybe the press across the country is simply beginning to reorientate itself, “something the press has done for 200 years.”
At their best Simon suggested “hyperlocal newspapers do not not speak directly to a local community, they speak from a local community”.
