If we need the state to fund news providers, then it’s prop-up funding, not top-up funding.

And if news is funded by the state, it can’t be impartial.

these consortia, whatever form they take, can either be independently funded, or state-funded, but not both;

If state funds are to top up commercial funding, what if the commercial funds shrink even further? Will the top-up increase?
If so, this is a built-in incentive to be extravagant and/or inefficient.
If not, these new outlets will go bust anyway, and we’ll be back where we started.

Because, for me, the answer is not going to be big; the answer needs to be small. Hyper-small.

That if the news that really matters to me starts at the gates of my children’s school, how do we start to fund a 21st century village or postcode correspondent…?

With the technology at their disposal, they – just like any hybrid ITVLocal platform – are web broadcasters and publishers; albeit via little more than their mobile phone and lap-top.

But it is they, not local news consortia, that will deliver the news that really matters to me.

The trick is to empower these people with a way to source both local digital advertising and, more importantly, pin-point targetted Central and Regional Government advertising that can draw on the benefits of all Whitehall’s recent data mining, to message individual niche and local communities directly…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=309

… in effect that then becomes a subsidy; BUT one that I, as a UK tax-payer, have little objection to because it is a highly efficient and effective use of Government ad spend as opposed to them entrusting my ad pounds to the ’spray and pay’ ad delivery methods of old.

Create a true network of village and postcode ‘correspondents’ – all empowered to such UK Plc messaging mechanisms as well as digital advertising from the local butcher, baker and candlestick-maker and you start to re-carpet the UK with a news-gathering operation that is rather more relevant and appropriate to this new, digital landscape of ours.

If you are to invest public money in any sort of new plurality then demand transparency and open-ness in exchange for the money, rather than something as clumsy as impartiality

a) there is something lacking in the provision of local news that would be improved by plurality – i.e. competition

b) that in the current market there is no viable competition to the BBC

c) that public money should be pushed into the market to make it viable to compete with the BBC

So essentially the money we already pay the BBC doesn’t produce good enough local news, and so we should divert money away from the BBC (which presumably will lead to sacrifices at the BBC – potentially even in local news?) to other players in the market so they can compete.

This seems a very odd approach to me. I can see a better argument for either increasing the BBC spend on local news, or regulating in some way.

I seem to recall there was some debate on making BBC local news content reusable by other news media (e.g. local newspaper website) but this was halted – have I got this right? This seems like a more sensible approach – sharing the output of public expenditure to level the playing field somewhat, rather than introducing false competition?

Although I think the way the BBC is funded needs revisiting – I’m not sure that basing the licence on the consumption of a broadcast medium is appropriate any more – I do feel that there is some merit to the argument that the dedicated payment (via the licence) for the BBC creates a feeling of ownership that would not be there otherwise.