W EB 2.0 AND THE CHANGING MEDIATED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN B RITISH LOCAL NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTS AND THEIR AUDIENCES

W HY LOCAL PRINT MEDIA IS CRUCIAL TO THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM Culture Media & Sport Committee 2009 Millions of users & thousands of products News pyramid: content and training Understudied and overlooked Little empirical evidence

C OMMERCIAL C HALLENGES Historical context Drop in advertising Fall in circulation Cutback against Web 2.0

T HE FIGHT BACK Adapt to survive, CMS, 2009, p.3: “Local media performs numerous functions in society. It scrutinises and holds to account local authorities and institutions, it informs people of news and events in their communities, and it forms part of the local identity of an area...It is therefore vital for local newspaper publishers to innovate to survive by continuing to develop websites and utilise internet technologies.”

T HE FIGHT BACK Web 2.0 has potential for empowerment and engagement (Bowman and Willis, 2003; Gillmor, 2006; Hermida, 2010) Multimedia Comments User generated content Transparency Normative or commercial motives?

R ESEARCH PROJECT Theoretical framework: Network society - Castells Collective intelligence – Jenkins Gatekeeping – White to Singer Public sphere – Habermas Two case studies Multiple sources: interviews, questionnaire, observation, document analysis Audience and journalists ends

F IGURES THAT SHOULD ADD UP 40 million local paper readers in Britain each week That’s 65% of the population 37 million readers log onto local news website each month 1,300 core local papers and 1,500 websites (Newspaper Society)