“There is arguably a correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform – we worry that taking the focus off UK news makes it harder for us to do exactly this kind of reporting there is currently such a market for.”
It is possible to at lesat muse on the alternative – that the more people know about how Britain is governed the more they vote Reform?
Since I’m wondering whether I should give my primary vote to a more right wing party here in Oz, I can easily believe that people in the UK might be doing the same.
The assumption that there’s a market for the sort of local news the ‘Guardian’ would prefer to see seems…optimistic!
Guardian notices trend 30 years too late shock.
My district somehow manages to support two weekly ocal newspapers, but most of their real output is online these days. Facebook appears to be the main source of local intelligence.
Even London struggles to support a daily paper. When I was a kid there were two and in my parents’ day three. I wonder what the regional London press is like these days : in my immediate vicinity were the South London Press and Wimbledon Borough News as well as a free paper.
Local news? An asylum seeker’s hotel has opened down the road. Several square miles of solar farm planned despite local objections, all on good farming land. I’ve lived here sick for four years and seen my doctor once.
Exactly how is real local news going to help the Guardian narrative?
Local papers are going away. No income from classifieds, no real news coverage, can’t compete with the internet.
Ah, but all that stuff online is Far Right propaganda. We need the Grauniad to tell the masses the truth.
On the subject of news and principled journalism:-
https://x.com/10pillar/status/1925018578576880092
The bbc last Tuesday – “There are 14,000 babies (in Gaza) that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them”.
Standard weasel-worded correction issued several days later.
Otto,
“My district somehow manages to support two weekly ocal newspapers, but most of their real output is online these days. Facebook appears to be the main source of local intelligence.”
The likes of Reach are just filled with trash and almost unreadable because of the number of popups now.
The news content was always free. Journalists were just the recorders and distributors of it. We can do our own recording and Facebook and Reddit can do the distribution. So… why do we need journalists?
JuliaM, agree, classic non sequitur . I want to stop Reform therefore there is a market for my stop reform articles.
“There is arguably a correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform – we worry that taking the focus off UK news makes it harder for us to do exactly this kind of reporting there is currently such a market for.””
Katharine Viner resembles a tranny. Just sayin’…
“… “There is arguably a correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform ..”
Decimation was the practice in Roman legions whereby any Century which had shown cowardice or not fought hard enough was punished.
The Centurion would choose every tenth (hence decimation) man and they would then be beaten to death by the rest of the Century with wooden staves.
But then… it is the Grauniad.
“taking the focus off UK news” says the news organisation obsessed with America.
At least the Guardian are acknowledging the rise of Reform rather than denying the polls. Those polls are getting very interesting too with some of the pollsters giving Reform double the voters of the Conservatives. The Lib Dems are rising fast too, currently approaching the Conservatives and peaking at 2/3 of Labour’s vote. I’m wondering if two party politics might not be over, but just continued with two new parties.
Local newspapers can still fill a useful role, in keeping an eye on the local authorities etc, but unfortunately there isn’t enough money in it, which is why the Reach online stuff is so dire, as Western Bloke points out.
There’s certainly room for local citizen journalists with their own blog. Unfortunately the sort of people who have the time and are prepared to put in the effort are likely to be single-issue cranks.
Western Bloke:
“So… why do we need journalists?”
You need journalists to provide the Party line, and filter the local news to those bits that support it. Otherwise some news might not support the Party, comrade.
“The Lib Dems are rising fast too, currently approaching the Conservatives and peaking at 2/3 of Labour’s vote. I’m wondering if two party politics might not be over, but just continued with two new parties.”
It’s State (or Establishment) Party vs. Country Party as usual. What’s the ultimate apotheosis – within the mainstream – of what Reform, the new Country Party, represents? It’s the LibDems. Labour has the same problem the Tories have: its leadership is State Party, but its voter base is Country Party. The LibDems are State Party through and through.
@JohnB
Isn’t decimation what Grauniad jounalists practice? Any Graun journalist not sticking to the party line gets beaten to jounalistic death by nine of his comrades. They draw lots for the opportunity to participate.
Watch out for the Muslim Party, Sam. Also the Greens, the turbo-nutter-bastard State party, having soaked up the nutter Labour leftards.
It’s been clear since the 2019 Euros, where it was a clean sweep LibDems and Reform (ne Brexit), with everybody else also-rans.
On my local news site I read last week that everybody is in favour of a big new development nearby. Strangely, 90% of houses in the affected streets have a poster up opposing it. It’s almost like they’re not reporting real things.
Norman: Fair points. I don’t think either is in imminent danger of troubling the frontrunners though.
Splitters though, Sam. Greens, Muslims and Labour split the left vote between them. This could all end up in interesting coalition negotiations.
‘arguably a correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform’
‘Rise of Reform’ sounds zactly like Orange Man Bad. An objective local press wouldn’t care who is rising. But Telegraph and Guardian, in desperate cry to save local news, declare their partisanship. They believe left wing partisanship is their path to success, even as they announce the rise of Reform. Dumbasses doubling down.
Sam Duncan,
“Labour has the same problem the Tories have: its leadership is State Party, but its voter base is Country Party. The LibDems are State Party through and through.”
The thing I don’t get is why there are so many parties on the left hand side of politics that are really, broadly, in the same area. Reform is a reasonable reaction to betrayal by the Conservatives. But Labour, LDs, Greens and probably the SNP are all broadly of the big state/more eco/more immigrants/trannies are great mindset.
I think entryism has a lot to do with it. The Greens started out tree-huggers but are basically Malthusian utopian infiltrated by queers, trannies, and Marxists looking for a replacement proletariat. Their social policies, apart from being batshit, have nothing whatsoever to do with improving the environment or placating Gaia. They’re Globalist Left new industry vs. proletarian nationalist old industry Old Labour.
New Labour is simply the bourgeois socialist metropolitan class which has realised the proletariat will never play ball. Its problem – common to all the Statist parties – is that to get its votes it needs to con the proletariat/countryside that it works in its interests and represents it. This con is collapsing and Reform is mopping up.
LibDem are big-state Liberals, Euro-Federalist, at a local level representing bucolic bourgeois interests. Their success in the West Country and Amersham sums them up. Their batshit social policies are to appeal to Gen X mums with Munchausens by Proxy who think it’s cool to have their daughters’ tits off.
SNP are socialism-in-one-country Marxist ex-fascists who have figured out that they can get the Scottish proles, workshy and Establishment self-interested to vote for them by going all Braveheart and behaving like Teenager Kevin whilst getting the parents – English taxpayers – to support them. And of course there’s the fly in the ointment because if they ever achieve independence the English taxpayer money fucks off. Probably the most overtly Statist of the lot.
What a fucking shower. Why do they occupy the same space? Paranoiac projection. Splitters. Judea passim.
Someone should point out that the ignoramuses wrote “There is arguably a correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform”
That is, they confuse correlation and cause. Twats!
Norman,
Yeah, I think you’ve nailed most of it there.
@ PiP
The *alleged* correlation between the decimation of local news and the rise of Reform is certainly arguable because the decimation of local news pre-dated the formation of UKIP, let alone Reform. I can remember having two local newspapers, one daily and one weekly (not counting advertising “freesheets”)
I wonder whether they are as stupid as you think or whether they are doing one of their “bait and switch” tricks
You can tell them why people want to support Reform until you are teal blue in the face, but they just can’t understand. They still think in terms of left and right, welfare state or even more welfare state. They can’t see what we see. And that is why they tell us we’re wrong, and what we notice isn’t happening at all, and it’s a good thing anyway.
This applies to the whole shebang, not just the Guardian.
I wonder what the regional London press is like these days
My local paper is the Bucks Free* Press, noted chiefly for being where Sir Pterry cut his writing teeth. It continues into its 170th year, but is now part of Newsquest and a shadow of its former glory days.
* free as in free speech, not zero price – which once confused by dear, departed mum, who inadvertently shoplifted a copy!
Another front-page gem from the bbc.
Floyd was murdered in 2020 during a police arrest in Minneapolis when Chauvin, a white police officer, stood on his neck for more than nine minutes.
Sorry, I meant deliberate provocative outright lie, not gem.
free as in free speech, not zero price – which once confused by dear, departed mum, who inadvertently shoplifted a copy!
I did something similar when we first visited the area to go house hunting in the early ‘90s. Fortunately the shopkeeper saw the funny side after I made an embarrassed apology.
The problem was that here in Dorset where I was living at the time the Blackmoor Vale was free and it carried a lot of house listings.
I suspect Rhonda Klapp is right. If we had a local press that actually reported what was going on locally – the knife crime, shoplifting and other theft, aggressive takeover of public spaces and other antisocial behaviour, benefits fraud and bludging, immigration, pressure on public services and housing – Reform would be on 70%.
Comments are closed.