BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporters working at various publishers have complained of low pay and being asked to write stories outside their brief.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is an effort to fill gaps in the UK’s regional public service reporting. Under the current contracts, 18 media companies employ 165 LDRs to cover patches across the UK, producing stories that are distributed for free to the BBC and more than 1,000 other news titles around the country.

The BBC is due to retender contracts for the scheme next year.

Publishers who successfully bid for LDR contracts are provided approximately £38,000 (outside London) or £40,500 (inside) by the BBC annually to cover the expenses associated with employing each reporter, including salary, national insurance and management costs.

The contracts also stipulate minimum salaries for LDRs of around £24,000 outside London and £27,000 inside. The differences between the stipulated minimum salaries and the total sums allotted by the BBC have previously led to clashes between the NUJ and LDR contract holders: the union accused Newsquest last year of withholding BBC cash from its reporters, which the company and two peer organisations disputed.

Under the terms of the contracts LDR salaries are guaranteed to increase by either 1.5% or in line with the retail prices index — whichever is less. LDR partners may increase pay above this rate at their discretion, however, and indeed the largest LDR contract holder, local publishing giant Reach, was paying non-trainee LDRs outside London a £31,200 minimum last year.

The NUJ said in a statement following a recent Local Democracy Reporter summit there are “significant differences in rates offered journalists carrying out the same work across different locations.

“Employers are expected to pay, as a minimum, their own salary levels if they are higher than the BBC set minimum. However, the NUJ has highlighted an existing lack of transparency by many LDRS suppliers on approaches to regional and local pay.

“In some cases, LDRs have been given only the 1.5% uplift in April when their newsroom colleagues have received higher annual pay increases. LDRs of similar experience can be paid about £5,000 more than colleagues elsewhere in the same group.”

The union has called on the BBC to stipulate that LDRs “cannot be given less than the general pay increase enjoyed by their colleagues” and to make sure that “local minimum pay rates of suppliers are transparent to their workforce so LDRs can be assured contractual arrangements involving public money are being adhered to”.

Asked about the NUJ criticisms, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “The BBC is completely committed to the ongoing success and development of the LDRS, and we will shortly be announcing a new funding model for the 2025-2027 contract period.

“As part of that process, the BBC remains in discussion with industry partners to ensure increased funding is reflected in salary levels.”

Some Local Democracy Reporters report being pushed to do stories outside their contracted beat

As well as the pay issues, the union said it was “increasingly concerned” at reports from LDRs at the recent LDR Summit that they were being pushed to publish more than the maximum 40 stories a month they are contracted for, and that some had been used “as substitute reporters” to cover things that would typically be assigned to a non-LDR journalist.

Chris Morley, the NUJ’s northern and Midlands senior organiser, said in the statement: “The number of LDR members at our summit and their geographical and employer spread meant this was a representative snapshot of what is happening on the ground in the LDRS.

“It was tangible that many LDRs felt they were being unreasonably pushed around to do things that were of dubious relevance to the LDRS and its original brief. There was frustration that publishers were seeking to extract more and more from them to the obvious detriment to the founding principles of the scheme and other partners of the service.

“Our members feel the BBC is not doing enough to keep its contractual obligations adhered to and in reality are presiding over a laissez faire, permissive regime where the boundaries are being constantly pushed to the expense of the core duty to provide unique content public interest journalism.

“The upcoming retendering process is a golden opportunity for the BBC to reset the service to solve the pay anomalies for LDRs and to make sure the journalistic success of the scheme is not tarnished by any selfish opportunism of suppliers.”

What Local Democracy Reporters say

One Local Democracy Reporter, who works at a National World title, told Press Gazette they had been stuck near the minimum BBC-stipulated salary for years.

They said: “I’ve been ‘lucky’ in that usually I do have the time to pursue stories and haven’t felt pressured to do much outside of the LDRS remit. And when that has happened, I’ve usually stated that it’s not in the remit, and that’s fine.”

But they added that on papers such as theirs “where roles have been cut year after year, there is, I find, a pressure to not let the team down and sometimes that means writing up a press release that I normally wouldn’t have covered”.

A Reach LDR who spoke to Press Gazette said the situation described by the NUJ did not match their experience. They were not under pressure to write high-traffic stories and that they have been able to push back when editors have “overstepped the mark”.

“My only minor complaint is they could pay us more,” they said. “I have thought about retraining and doing something with a higher salary. But I enjoy the job quite a lot to be honest.”

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All but two London boroughs have publications covering council activities, although in some cases self-published reporters have stepped into the gap left by the withdrawal of established publishers.

Ealing appears to be the best-covered London borough, with five news outlets regularly covering news from council meetings.

South East London appears the least covered, with Greenwich, Lewisham, Bexley and Bromley having one news outlet each.

Hammersmith and Fulham, and Sutton were identified as the only London boroughs with no media outlet providing frequent coverage of council matters. Their populations were 183,200 and 209,600 respectively, according to the 2021 census.

Press Gazette has previously investigated media coverage in Scotland and Wales, tracking the emergence of news deserts.

Press Gazette spoke to Darryl Chamberlain, the editor of The Greenwich Wire, the only local paper providing frequent local political coverage in Greenwich. It is a one-man-band with a few contributions from local democracy reporters and freelancers.

He said: "I started The Greenwich Wire a long time ago as a blog after I watched a resident being treated appallingly by the ceremonial mayor at a council meeting.

"I remember thinking that a journalist there would report on it, but there weren't any journalists, so I did."

With journalistic and editorial experience at titles including the BBC and Money Saving Expert, Chamberlain continued working part-time editing and reporting for The Greenwich Wire, particularly when "the legacy papers pretty much fell away from 2015."

Six years ago, Chamberlain asked readers to contribute financially. The outlet has a monthly revenue of £1,300, of which Chamberlain takes two-thirds for his salary. The rest goes to freelance contributors.

He added: "Covering Greenwich almost entirely alone is disconcerting, it’s very odd not having anyone to check yourself against.

“It’s not healthy that it is down to me, one-part timer to cover the council meetings, I really have to pick and choose.”

Chamberlain said that the situation was similar across South East London, noting Lewisham, Bexley and Bromley as seriously lacking local reporting.

When asked about the South London Press, which has grown from covering four boroughs to over ten, he said: “When the South London Press does original reporting, it is high quality."

But, he added that it is stretched in terms of the large patch it covers and relies heavily on BBC-funded local democracy reporters.

While there has been a decline of the 'legacy papers', there is evidence of smaller, online-only independent news outlets filling the gaps, with The Greenwich Wire being just one.

Haringey Community Press is another example, a free independent community news website.

Launched in November 2021 as an expansion from an earlier title established in 2016, Haringey Community Press became online-only this last month after publishing 82 print editions. It attributed this switch to "the unreliability of the local advertising market".

Chiswick W4 claims to be the "largest local community website of its kind in Europe" with over 200,000 visits per month. It is supported by freelances and local democracy reporters, and aims to cover Chiswick-related news with "no editorial line".

Similar sites cover news across London but in many cases, they publish stories irregularly and/or do not cover council meetings. SheperdsbushW12 is one such example.

When Press Gazette previously tracked London local news coverage in 2017 we found that many boroughs then had just one dedicated reporter and some titles had one reporter covering several boroughs.

Greater London has a population of around 9 million, or roughly equivalent to Wales and Scotland combined.

In 2017 Press Gazette noted that Kensingon and Chelsea had gone from having two local newspapers with around ten staff in 1990 to one reporter covering the borough on a part-time basis at the time. Many felt this meant the safety concerns raised by Grenfell Tower residents in advance of a fire which killed 79 people were ignored.

The Kensington and Chelsea News closed in 2017. Today the borough is one of many covered by the South London Press.

According to Press Gazette research there has been around a two thirds reduction in the number of UK local newpaper journalists since 2007.

Methodology

Press Gazette contacted all London local authorities, requesting a list of the outlets that covered the council’s news on weekly basis. Of the 33 local authorities, 23 responded.

This list was extended using data from Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) and Google News searches for the local authority.

The focus was on collecting information on media outlets that cover certain local authorities, not where those media outlets are based or where people consume local media.

We also visited each online news outlet’s website to ensure that those who published less frequent reports of council activities were not listed. This was done once, meaning that the data reflects the coverage at the time the research was conducted.

Many London papers cover multiple boroughs, such as the South London Press which covers most boroughs in South London. We therefore investigated how thoroughly they covered each borough before adding them to our list.

My London and the Evening Standard do not feature in this study because they do not appear to provide weekly borough-level political coverage.

Disclaimer: Mapping local news provision in the UK is challenging because most titles no longer publish audited ABC print circulation figures, and where newspapers survive they are often hollowed out. That is why we have based our research on trying to track published relevant online content, requiring us to make qualitative judgment calls.

If you know of a news outlet that should be added to our list (or you think some should not be on there) please email pged@pressgazette.co.uk.

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In response to a joint public statement issued by senior editors at the UK’s five biggest local commercial news businesses, the director of BBC Nations, Rhodri Talfan Davies, has insisted that the corporation is a “good neighbour”.

The editors from Iliffe Media, Newsquest, Reach, National World and Midland News Association put their names to a rare collective letter accusing the public broadcaster of using its government-guaranteed funding to squeeze out for-profit publishers.

But below, Talfan Davies drew attention to the BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Scheme, which was not mentioned in the statement, and an Ofcom report that contradicted their claims.

Read on for his response in full.

[Read more: Why BBC is ‘the neighbour from hell’ for leading regional newsbrand editors]

The BBC’s role in the local news sector: Rhodri Talfan Davies on BBC ‘neighbour from hell’ comment

Once again, a range of local and regional newspapers across England have published articles criticising the BBC for endangering local journalism and accusing the corporation of being a “neighbour from hell”.

Commercial publishers claim that our plans to strengthen our own local journalism by investing in new online and investigative reporter posts could jeopardise the sustainability of other local news providers.

This criticism of the corporation is again misplaced and misleading.

First, there is no evidence the BBC “crowds out” local competition through its online activity. In fact, successive studies and reviews over the last decade show it’s the internet – not the BBC – that has radically challenged the business models of local news operators across the world.

Second, the media regulator Ofcom has reviewed the BBC’s local online plans and determined that they are unlikely to have a significant impact on other local providers. In fact, Ofcom concluded that our plans to strengthen BBC local news provision across 43 areas in England are unlikely to impact more than 0.5-1% of existing local media revenues. In their own words: “We do not consider the change is one that may have a significant adverse impact on fair and effective competition.”

Their full findings can be read here.

The articles that criticised the BBC also invited readers to write to their MPs urging the BBC to be a “better neighbour”. What they pointedly failed to tell their readers is that the BBC is already investing millions of pounds every year to support high-quality news jobs within the local commercial sector.

In fact, today, the BBC funds a unique network of 165 journalists – all employed by commercial newsrooms – to scrutinise the work of local authorities across the UK. The impact of the Local Democracy Reporter Scheme (LDRS) is clear. Since the scheme’s inception, it has produced more than 370,000 original stories for over 1,100 different news outlets.

Alongside the LDRS, the BBC also provide video content to local news operators via the BBC News Hub, and our Shared Data Unit – based in BBC Birmingham – delivers a range of investigative reports for use by local and regional media partners, as well as data journalism training programmes for reporters based in commercial newsrooms. This all comes at a time when commercial publishers are themselves making drastic cuts to jobs and frontline journalism in the regional sector.

The truth is that the BBC has always recognised it has a unique responsibility to support our partners in the local community and – like all good neighbours – we are committed to deepening that collaboration in the years to come. But that won’t deter us from setting the record straight when our role in local journalism is misreported.

What exactly are the BBC’s local online plans?

Back in October 2022, we laid out our plans to strengthen local online news provision in communities across England. The plans include the creation of 130 additional posts across England, including over 70 investigative journalism working across tv, radio and online.

The plans will deliver a stronger and more distinctive local online news service for 43 different local areas in England – all available on the BBC News website and app. Our local journalism across tv, radio and online will also benefit from 11 new investigations teams based across England, delivering original journalism across our daily services.

The 43 online areas include four new news services for Bradford, Wolverhampton, Sunderland and Peterborough.

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Rival publishers have defended Newsquest after the regional news giant was accused by the National Union of Journalists of failing to pass taxpayer funding for Local Democracy Reporters to its employees.

Earlier this month the NUJ published the results of a Freedom of Information request that showed a more than £10,000 gap between what the BBC was paying Newsquest for each of its Local Democracy Reporters (LDR) and what those LDRs were receiving as a salary.

But the managing director of London news publisher Social Spider, which employs two LDRs, told Press Gazette it is wrong to suggest any of the scheme’s contract holders derive a profit from hosting the service.

Meanwhile Reach, the local news giant that employs more LDRs than any other publisher, said its competitor’s explanation for where the money went “does make sense”.

Press Gazette has also compared the workings of the LDR scheme to Meta’s grant-funded reporter programme, the Community News Project, which is run by the NCTJ.

[Read more: Newsquest urged to pass on more of BBC funding to £24k per year Local Democracy Reporters]

What is the Local Democracy Reporting Service and how it is funded?

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is an effort to fill gaps in the UK’s regional public service reporting. Under the current contracts, 18 media companies employ 165 LDRs to cover patches across the UK, producing stories that are distributed for free to the BBC and more than 1,000 other news titles around the country.

The BBC pays those contract-holders some £37,700 a year per LDR employed outside London, or around £40,000 for those in London – a sum intended to cover all the costs associated with their employment.

The BBC also stipulates that LDRs outside London should be paid at least £24,000 (or £26,200 inside London) -– a level the public broadcaster said was chosen to ensure “there is no scope or incentive for the supplier to retain unused funding through paying lower salaries”.

The NUJ challenged Newsquest earlier this month on that gap between funding and salaries after LDRs with the company were given a 1.5% pay rise earlier this year, arguing more of the BBC money should be passed along to reporters.

Newsquest responded that the money was taken up by internal business costs but did not specify how it is spent. A spokesperson for the Gannett-owned company said: “We entirely reject this flawed assessment which completely fails to take into account National Insurance, Employer Tax, Employer Pension contribution, the LDR bonus scheme, laptop and technology provision, licences and all the other real costs of hiring and supporting LDRs in our local newsrooms.”

The NUJ dismissed Newsquest’s defence, saying the digital bonus scheme is “virtually impossible… to trigger due to its high targets” and that electronic equipment is often recycled within the business.

‘Not a very rounded picture of the situation regarding costs’

David Floyd, the managing director of community interest company Social Spider, has now told Press Gazette that the NUJ’s allegations did not “give a very rounded picture of the situation regarding costs”.

Social Spider publishes five London community newspapers: the Waltham Forest Echo, Tottenham Community Press, Enfield Dispatch, EC1 Echo and Barnet Post. Floyd said that without the substantial additional funding on top of each LDR’s salary, Social Spider “would not be able to afford to deliver the contracts”.

He explained that LDR contracts were not intended to be itemised grants but instead as tenders to provide a service.

“If the BBC was operating the scheme as a grant funder they might say: ‘You have the wages, then you have £5,000 for line management costs and £3,000 for office rent and £2,000 for recruitment and £1,000 for laptops and £500 for phones and £200 for office furniture, etc.

“But because it’s a contract, not a grant, what they’re saying is: ‘This is the fee allocated to the service and this is what you’re expected to do for that.’”

The biggest indirect cost was not facilities or laptops, he said, but line management.

“In our case, this literally involved us adding an additional working day per week to each editorial role to cover the line management responsibilities of managing an LDR.”

Floyd said managers edit each LDR story published through the scheme’s platform, as well as carrying out all the other duties involved in managing an employee. In his company’s case, he estimated line management costs alone covered more than half of the gap between an LDR’s salary and their total contracted cost.

He added: “​​As a publisher that believes in the principles of the LDR scheme, we have many concerns about the way that corporate publishers deliver some of the contracts – particularly around sending LDRs out to do tangentially relevant, click-friendly vox pops rather than attending council meetings.

“But the idea that publishers who are genuinely trying to deliver the service that the contract requires in good faith are making a big profit (or, in fact, any profit) is not correct.”

Asked to expand on how the BBC calculates salary and funding levels for each LDR contract, a spokesperson for the corporation said: “We have clear processes in place to make sure all Local Democracy Reporters are paid at least a minimum specified amount. The BBC provides all suppliers the same level of funding per filled LDR post, no matter the size of the publishing company.”

Press Gazette approached the NUJ for a response to Floyd’s argument but did not hear back before publication. In a subsequently supplied comment, the union’s Northern and Midlands senior organiser Chris Morley said: “Newsquest is the outlier when it comes to the employment of LDRs in that with its huge economies of scale, it generally pays the minimum or close to it when it can clearly – as the NUJ has demonstrated – pay more just from within the scheme itself to its hard-working journalists desperately trying to cope with the cost of living emergency.

“Other publishers have commented about how they operate the scheme and its funding mechanism, but we know each business is different and any comparison between a company of 1,500 employees and one of less than 20 with contrasting profiles of LDRs employed in London and outside the capital is unlikely to be of much use.

“There is a simple way for Newsquest to justify the £10,000+ BBC licence fee cash it banks above the normal major employment costs of salary, employer National Insurance and pension contributions and that is to set out the accounting assumptions made for each LDR role.

“It hides behind commercial confidentiality for not doing so, but the facts suggest that other publishers can do more for their LDRs so why can’t Newsquest? The most productive way forward would be for Newsquest to value its LDRs and raise their pay above the paltry 1.5% imposed in April.”

How does Reach handle the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme?

Reach, the UK’s largest local news publisher as well as the biggest employer of LDRs, pays the BBC-funded reporters substantially more than Newsquest does. Non-trainees at the company, who make up the majority of its 77 LDRs, receive minimum annual pay of £31,200 outside London and £34,840 inside.

A Reach spokesperson told Press Gazette: “All in all, it does make sense that the allegedly missing £10k [per reporter at Newsquest] could be being used to cover the costs associated with employing an LDR.”

The company has in some cases employed staff specifically to manage LDRs. Currently, it has a business-wide head of the LDR project as well as a local democracy editor at My London overseeing the title’s nine LDRs.

The spokesperson added: “We’re a company which invests tens of millions of pounds every year on local journalism, and feel we have the infrastructure in place to support the LDR scheme and want it to succeed.

“Anyone who sees it as a subsidy for any of the partners who host an LDR doesn’t have a full grasp of how journalism works, or basic business understanding – or is ignoring those realities wilfully.”

How does funding for Meta’s Community News Project reporters compare?

While the Local Democracy Reporting Service is a tendered scheme, Meta’s Community News Project is based on grants by the Facebook and Instagram owner that are coordinated by the journalism training body, the NCTJ.

Like the LDR scheme, the Community News Project funds reporting roles in underserved communities.

NCTJ chief executive Joanne Forbes told Press Gazette that the grant payments it disburses “contribute to the costs of our publisher partners employing, equipping, training and qualifying trainee community reporters”.

At the end of June, there were 23 publishers receiving grant payments for 106 trainee reporters.

The maximum funding for each role in the project is £51,000 for a period typically lasting 22 months, which roughly breaks down as £2,300 a month or £27,800 a year. However, unlike the LDR scheme that pays publishers the same amount per role with London weighting as the only variable factor, publishers can be paid different amounts for their community reporters.

Forbes said the amount awarded “is based on evidence of actual spend on employment (salaries), equipment (IT) and reimbursement of training costs paid to external providers”.

For reporters on the scheme who train for their NQJ senior exams, their employer may claim up to £46,400 for salary plus £3,000 for training costs. For those training for their NCTJ diploma, the maximum salary contribution is £43,200 and maximum training costs are £6,200. The employers may also claim up to £1,600 for equipment.

Press Gazette has heard from one Community News Project reporter who said their salary was £22,000, but it is unclear how much money their employer was awarded to sustain that role.

Forbes said: “The NCTJ does not get directly involved in employment matters and publishers make their own business decisions about salaries, equipment and training providers. Grant payments are a contribution to costs and traineeships are typically for 22 months.”

After the publication of this article,

This article was updated the day after publication to clarify that the maximum Meta Community News Project funding of £51,000 is typically for a 22-month period, and so cannot be directly compared against annual LDR funding. It was updated again three weeks later to incorporate comment latterly offered by the NUJ.

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Regional publisher Newsquest is facing questions from the NUJ over the wide gap between the funding it receives from the BBC for its Local Democracy Reporters and what they are actually paid by the publisher.

Some 29 LDRs work for Newsquest titles, paid via funding from the BBC. The NUJ discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request that the BBC pays Newsquest up to £38,782 per year for each LDR – but those reporters are then paid as little as £24,000 per year by the publisher.

Newsquest said it “entirely rejects” the NUJ findings, which it claims do not take into account additional employment costs above base salaries, for example employers’ national insurance (which would add approximately £2,000 in costs to a £24,000 salary).

LDRs provide core local politics and council coverage for Newsquest’s newspapers and websites. On the Swindon Advertiser, for example, the LDR writes around two stories a day on everything from major planning applications to education – some of which are syndicated to Yahoo, providing extra revenue for Newsquest.

The NUJ said there is “more than £10,000” between the funding that Newsquest receives for each of its Local Democracy Reporters and the cost to Newsquest of employing them.

The journalists’ union made its complaint after Newsquest, which is owned by US local publishing giant Gannett, in April rejected a 6% salary increase for its Local Democracy Reporters that had been proposed by the company’s NUJ LDR chapel.

The 29 LDRs at Newsquest were instead given a 1.5% pay increase, “using only the annual uplift in funding provided to it by the BBC”, an increase which the NUJ said was obligatory.

The union said: “Experienced, senior qualified regional LDRs have often been left struggling on the bare minimum of £24,000 as double-digit inflation has undermined their living standards.”

But on Wednesday Newsquest hit out at the NUJ’s claims, calling it a “flawed assessment which completely fails to take into account” additional expenses.

What is the Local Democracy Reporting Service and how much do LDRs earn?

The Local Democracy Reporting Service launched at the beginning of 2018 to improve coverage of UK local governance amid a funding crisis for local news. They are paid for by the BBC as a Charter commitment.

A total of 165 Local Democracy Reporters are allocated to newsrooms in the four UK nations, the overwhelming majority of them within large regional news publishers Reach, Newsquest and National World.

The BBC’s response to the NUJ’s FOI request said that in 2021/22, the “maximum funding per filled LDR post” outside London was £36,627 (Newsquest does not employ any LDRs in London). Funding can be lower than the maximum if a LDR post is left empty for a portion of the year – for example, if a role were vacant for 10% of a year, the funding supplied would be 10% lower.

In 2022/23, the BBC stipulated that a full-time senior LDR based outside London should be paid a minimum salary of £23,700.

The BBC said that salary stipulation is set “at such a level that ensures there is no scope or incentive for the supplier to retain unused funding through paying lower salaries”.

The salary minimums, as well as the funding overall, increase each year either by 1.5% or in line with the retail prices index, whichever is less – meaning for the 2023/24 financial year, the minimum salary for Local Democracy Reporters outside London should be approximately £24,055.

Maximum funding per reporter outside London in 2023/24, in turn, should be approximately £37,700 – leaving nearly £13,700 to cover the non-salary expenses associated with an LDR.

The BBC says total funding “covers all remuneration, expenses, outgoings and other payments… including but not limited to salaries, wages, commissions, incentive payments, bonuses (even if not due and payable at that time), cost of benefits, National Insurance or other social security contributions or payments, pension contributions, PAYE/income tax remittances, holiday pay and payments in respect of any other emolument”.

While many Newsquest LDRs earn near the minimum of £24,000, senior LDRs outside London at Reach reportedly earned a minimum of £30,000 in the 2022/23 financial year.

What did the NUJ and Newsquest say?

The NUJ said it “acknowledges that employers also have to meet other expenses incurred by their LDRs over the length of the three-year fixed contracts, including the provision of kit such as laptops and phones.

“However, the BBC states in the FOI that ‘where a supplier’s annual LDR employment costs are less than the agreed funding, the difference is retained by the supplier’.

“The NUJ believes that in Newsquest’s case, where often only the minimum salary is paid, only very limited additional expenses are incurred and therefore LDR roles become a lucrative income earner with a large part of the £10,000+ ‘headroom’ between normal employment costs and the funding provided being kept.”

A spokesperson for the Newsquest NUJ Local Democracy Reporters’ chapel added: “We thank the BBC for the 1.5% annual rise but feel disappointed that Newsquest is unable or unwilling to release more of the money they receive for us directly to the LDRs – especially in these extremely tough financial times.”

A Newsquest spokesperson strongly disputed that claim, telling Press Gazette: “We entirely reject this flawed assessment which completely fails to take into account National Insurance, Employer Tax, Employer Pension contribution, the LDR bonus scheme, laptop and technology provision, licences and all the other real costs of hiring and supporting LDRs in our local newsrooms.

“It’s a shame that the NUJ continues to try and pick holes in a scheme that has done so much to sustain local government and public sector reporting across the UK.”

Previously the LDR chapel at Newsquest attempted to secure a £26,000 minimum salary or 6% pay increase for the 2023/24 financial year, which the company rejected.

The NUJ claimed to be “aware of LDRs forced to consider second jobs to bolster their income because of the low pay and rising living costs”.

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With a population of around 500,000, Bristol is not even in the top ten of UK cities by size.

Yet it supports a daily newspaper and associated wesbsite, The Bristol Post/Bristol Live, investigative news title The Bristol Cable, culture brand Bristol 24/7, historic anarchist newspaper The Bristolian, university newspaper Epigram, and the hyperlocal Voice network of newspapers.

Just a few months ago, National World, the new regional news outlet run by David Montgomery, launched its own title, Bristol World, in the already news-filled city.

The Cable and Bristol 24/7 were both shortlisted in the local news section of the 2021 British Journalism Awards.

To find out why Bristol’s media scene has flourished, Press Gazette paid a visit to the port city to investigate its present independent media scene and flourishing journalistic past.

There were five or six daily newspapers

“If I were ever to go on Mastermind, Bristol would be my specialist subject,” says Martin Booth, editor of Bristol 24/7, a culture and lifestyle-focused site and one of the city’s leading independent media outlets. “I’ve written a best-selling guidebook about Bristol, and I’m currently writing my second guidebook to Bristol.”

Booth says that when he leads gaggles of tourists on walking tours around the city at weekends, he always brings the groups to the old offices of the Bristol Times and Mirror, just minutes from the spot we’re sitting at on Colston Avenue.

“I talk about how less than 100 years ago there would have been five or six daily newspapers in a city the size of Bristol,” he says, before adding that he sees the current independent media boom as a continuation of that long history.

Bristol’s manageable size and rich local identity also seems to encourage interest in dedicated local media.

Bristol Post editor Pete Gavan says that “if you’re able to cover your patch in a way that’s inclusive for all parts of it… that does give an advantage”, adding that this is “much harder… in very large spaces like Birmingham or London”.

Founded as a blog in 2008 and relaunched in 2014, Bristol 24/7 used to be funded by a print edition, which was forced to end during the Covid pandemic. Now its four-person full-time team and network of freelances, currently without an office, is funded by a network of paying members. Booth tells me they’re glad to have “survived” the shift more than anything, though he admits they could “very much do with some more paying members”.

The city region’s GDP per capita of £32,500 makes it not just the wealthiest area in the south-west, but one of the five wealthiest regions outside of London.

But while leafy areas like Clifton Village have an average annual income after housing of just under £40,000, areas in the south or east of the city like Knowle West or Easton take home half as much or less. It means you can find areas in the poorest and richest 10% of the UK just a two-mile walk apart.

“On the outside, we’ve got this vibrant music scene, this vibrant art scene, some of the best restaurants in the UK,” Booth says energetically. “But once you get under the surface, you find that things are a little bit more complicated than that… It’s an amazing city of contrasts.”

Accounting giant KPMG is based at a sprawling sandstone Regency building just a few minutes’ walk away from abandoned industrial land. The dock, where in June 2020 at the height of Black Lives Matter protests an angry crowd unceremoniously plunged the statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the water, is full of luxury yachts. “You can use the phrase ‘the haves and the have-nots’, but here you even get the ‘haves and the have-yachts’,” as Booth puts it.

Beyond just giving reporters plenty to write about, those divides also fuel another central part of Bristol’s character: its activism. I’m chatting with Booth outside a converted shipping container coffee shop, which is just a few steps away from the now-empty plinth.

The protest was one in a long line of protests and acts of community activism in the city, from an 1831 riot over the lack of voting rights to the 1963 Bristol Bus boycott over the refusal to hire Black or Asian bus crews. The city is the base for a whole range of national and local campaign groups, fighting for everything from renters’ rights to combating mistreatment of the elderly or those with special needs. One person I spoke to said (whether as a joke or not was hard to tell) that the local Avon and Somerset Police have to deal with the highest number of protest call-outs of any force in the country.

“It’s just not the city where people sit on their hands and do nothing – people fight and then they see something is wrong and they shout about it,” agrees Alex Ross, editor of the newly launched Bristol World. “And I think the media reflects it. People need to have representative news titles that can say what they’re saying, bring their message across and advocate for the city.”

Ross’s fledgling title was created in October 2021, by the growing regional publishing giant National World, and has reported a one-third increase in page views every month since launch (though Ross wouldn’t give actual traffic figures).

He says that despite the competition from elsewhere, National World chose to launch a new site in Bristol because it felt there were “still lots of underserved parts of the city” where people don’t have access to or regularly read local news.

The Reach-owned Bristol Post (also known as Bristol Live online) is a top-50 UK news website reaching some three million unique visitors per month, although the vast majority of its traffic comes from outside the city.

The city’s well over 40,000 students are another of the reasons why some believe local media has flourished there.

Booth says the city has one of the higher post-graduation student retention rates in the country. Epigram, the student newspaper at the University of Bristol and a regular winner of the Student Publication Association Awards, can often be found reporting on the same protests and city events as Bristol’s professional newspapers according to all those I spoke to. Meanwhile, Bristol’s other university, the University of the West of England (UWE), has its own journalism department.

Those universities are just a small part of a huge ecosystem that helps support the city’s bigger independent media outlets, according to Chris Brown, a senior lecturer at UWE’s journalism department and the founder of the Bristol 24/7 blog back in 2008.

Long tradition of volunteer media

“Even back then, there was a really good, independent kind of blogging scene going on, [that] was doing some really good work in investigating what was going on at the council and bringing to light what the mainstream media really weren’t picking up on at the time,” he says.

As Brown explains, the city has long had a tradition of ragtag volunteer media working to hold those in power to account; be that activists or bloggers (some of whom, like Tony Dyer, have gone on to be city’s councillors) or the anarchist volunteer-run Bristolian newspaper.

“There’s just generally quite a good feel around the city for being a bit more independent, of not taking the status quo in terms of media at face value,” says Brown. “Bristol’s media scene over the last few years has been built on some pretty strong foundations.”

That somewhat irreverent, rebellious attitude of many of those early bloggers has seeped into a lot of the city’s larger publications too. Most potently at The Bristol Cable.

The investigative outlet, which runs a 30,000-circulation quarterly newspaper, prides itself on a sceptical attitude towards those in power.

That attitude is probably typified by the fact that the city’s mayor refuses to invite them to mayoral press conferences – the same conferences now boycotted by the city’s newspapers in response to the refusal to let local democracy reporters attend. Some of The Cable’s most recent stories have included police abuse of local powers to criminalise the homeless, the mistreatment of special needs children, and even the low pay for journalists who have chosen to strike at Reach (which publishes the Bristol Post).

Initially, something of a “chaotic start-up” according to membership coordinator Lucas Batt, it’s now more of a “mature organisation” with ten staff and more than 2,700 paying supporters. Batt tells me those supporters make up about a third of the title’s funding, with a further roughly 60% made up of charitable grants and the rest from advertising.

The fact that it isn’t primarily funded through advertising – like local competitors The Bristol Post, for example – is one of the defining strengths of The Cable, according to Batt.

“The best thing about a membership model is you’re always trying to serve readers’ needs, to provide them with value, than with an advertiser model where you’re trying to provide advertisers with value,” he explains. For The Cable, Batt says it’s not just about trying to keep a local newspaper alive without relying on page views or clickbait, but changing the way that news outlets themselves interact with the communities they sit in.

“We exist to make Bristol a better place; to report with communities not about them,” he explains, citing how the group runs community sessions and meetings in the most deprived neighbourhoods. “It’s essential, it’s got to be the future of local journalism if you want anyone feeling the media is for them and relevant, especially given the broken trust relationship it has with communities.

“We’ve seen other local media outlets respond to what we’re doing [on community funding and deep investigations],” he says, before adding that “mimicry is the best form of flattery”.

Bristol seems to provide a microcosm of different ways to fund and structure local journalism in the modern world. The only question that remains is whether the experiment can last.

“Survival is success, and we have survived,” Batt says. “We’ve contributed to a change in the media landscape… But it’s interesting to wonder what it will all look like in ten or 20 years.”

Picture: TheBristolNomad / Getty Images

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Update 8/7/22: Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees has insisted he has not banned BBC-funded local democracy reporters from his press briefings – but said they are not invited.

“There’s no ban but they’re not invited,” he said at a council meeting, according to a report on BBC News from one of Bristol’s local democracy reporters.

Rees, whose alleged ban of LDRs led most local media to boycott attending, said: “The whole fortnightly press conferences were set up by me. There had never been a practice like that in the council of setting up press conferences on a regular basis to give the city’s journalists easy access.

“Nobody’s been banned. I didn’t invite you to my birthday party, but I didn’t ban you from it.

“It’s up to me. It’s not statutory, I’m not required to do it, we do it to give journalists easy access to me to ask whatever they want, and we can invite whoever we want.”

Update 27/6/22: The South West Local Voice network of newspapers has joined the boycott of mayoral press briefings.

Though not a usual attendee of the briefings, the group said as a publisher of hyperlocal publications its titles “rely on LDRs” for information “and also reach tens of thousand of Bristol homes each month”.

Update 24/6/22: ITV’s regional newsroom in the Bristol area is the latest to join the media boycott of the Bristol mayor’s press briefings.

Ian Axton, head of news at ITV West Country, said: “ITV News West Country stands by other media organisations on this issue.

“We will not attend the fortnightly press briefings held by the mayor until the exclusion of local democracy reporters is lifted.”

Original story 23/6/22:

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees is facing a widespread boycott of his briefings after his comms team allegedly banned Local Democracy Reporters (LDRs) from attending these press conferences.

Reach-owned Bristol Live, independent outlet Bristol 24/7 and National World-owned Bristol World have also all said their entire newsrooms would now boycott press briefings from Rees (pictured) in solidarity with the city’s banned LDRs.

Another independent outlet, The Bristol Cable, said its team “stand in solidarity” with the boycott but as they were already stopped from attending these briefings they were not able to participate.

Press Gazette understands that this is likely to represent an almost total boycott of the mayoral briefings, although ITV regional news and Global Radio have not yet publicly said whether or not they will attend.

Why did Bristol Mayor’s team ban local democracy reporters?

The row was sparked after Alex Seabrook, who started six weeks ago as one of two local democracy reporters working for Bristol Live and the Bristol Post, was chastised by Bristol Council’s head of communications Saskia Konynenburg.

Konynenburg was responding to a question from Seabrook on the irony of the mayor’s decision to fly 9,000 miles to Canada to give a 14-minute TED talk on climate change.

She told Seabrook he was not a “journalist from a newspaper” so didn’t have the right to ask the question.

A video of the exchange uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday has since gone viral, being viewed more than 250,000 times.

When the Post’s other LDR Adam Postans asked to attend the next briefing he was told LDRs were now not allowed to attend, in a move that has been branded as “anti-democratic” by the National Union of Journalists.

The council has since denied the claim, saying LDRs have not been banned from the briefings but that it was part of a “long-standing agreement” for them not to attend.

Bristol journalists boycott mayor’s briefings

However, that did not stop the BBC, Bristol World and Bristol 24/7 as well as Bristol Live saying they would boycott future meetings until the LDRs are allowed to attend.

The local democracy reporting service sees the BBC fund 165 local democracy reporters across the UK to report on local authorities in partner newsrooms, like Bristol Live.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are deeply disappointed by the decision taken by the mayor’s office to not allow the Bristol LDR into his fortnightly press conference.

“It is an essential ingredient of local democracy that journalists should be able to ask robust, challenging questions to people in power.

“We have today informed the mayor that the BBC won’t be attending the fortnightly mayoral briefings until this important issue is resolved. We will continue to report on the city council and mayor as normal by attending all other meetings.”

Bristol Live senior editor Pete Gavan told Press Gazette it was “great to get this support” in boycotting the mayoral briefings and challenged the council’s claim that they had agreed not to send LDRs. Instead, according to Gavan, they had said they would send other reporters “when possible” but reserve the right to send LDRs.

“We do not accept that any reporters should be banned from attending meetings at the behest of the council, nor from asking relevant questions on behalf of our readers and council taxpayers at any time,” he added.

The National Union of Journalists’ Reach national coordinator Chris Morley argued that the actions of the council were “arrogant, high-handed, and essentially anti-democratic” and said “the slur it implies on the professionalism of our LDR members is thoroughly rejected”.

Bristol24/7 editor Martin Booth said it was a “slippery slope” if journalists let the council choose who “they want to attend briefings and who they want to exclude”.

He added: “Marvin Rees has previously said that his motto is ‘ask me anything’. I hope that he will live up to that motto and lift this ban on LDRs. Until that happens, Bristol24/7 will neither be attending nor covering any mayoral press conferences.”

Bristol Council said in a statement: “Any suggestion that LDR attendance had been banned as a result of recent reporting is completely false, and we continue to work day-to-day with its LDRs in support of their role.

“All mainstream local media outlets are invited to the mayor’s briefings. There has been a long-standing mutual agreement between the Mayor’s Office and the Post about personnel attending press conferences whenever they are announced and held, and that LDRs would not be sent due to the narrow definition of their role as an impartial service.”

Press Gazette understands the deal cited by the council pre-dates the current editorial leadership of Bristol Live.

Picture: Finnbarr Webster / Getty Images

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The News Media Association has written to the BBC Board demanding it withdraw plans to extend the corporation’s digital local news coverage.

The body, which represents national and regional newspaper publishers, accused the BBC of seeking to monopolise UK news. The broadside coincided with threats from culture secretary Nadine Dorries to scrap the BBC licence fee.

NMA chief executive Owen Meredith laid out his complaints to the BBC Board in an open letter on behalf of the NMA’s own board and membership.

Meredith wrote that “the BBC is directly threatening the sustainability of independent local journalism with plans to be ever more local”.

He wrote that while the BBC has an “understandable desire to fulfil its purpose” of providing impartial news to the public, this should focus as stated in its Charter on “content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers”.

Meredith added: “The BBC must consider how its services affect other media organisations and minimise any negative impact on the wider market.

“The plans set out by the BBC as part of the licence fee negotiations with government fail that test.”

Central to the NMA’s objections are the BBC’s Across The UK proposals first published in March 2021 which promised to create more than 100 digital reporter roles focused on serving “some of the UK’s most under-served communities”.

These roles would be separate from the local democracy reporters scheme, which sees BBC-funded local reporters placed at regional newsrooms.

Meredith asked the BBC to withdraw these plans and instead “commit to working in a meaningful way with the independent commercial news sector, setting boundaries to the BBC’s online news remit, to ensure access to quality journalism from a range of sources remains a cornerstone of UK democratic society”.

A BBC spokesperson said: “There is no evidence the BBC crowds out other providers and no reason to think we will in the future. Industry analysis and international comparisons show it is the decline of advertising revenues that’s the biggest challenge to local commercial journalism – not the BBC.

“We spend up to £8m a year supporting the local commercial news sector through our Local Democracy Reporting service. We pay for 165 journalists across the UK who produce stories used by a range of local media providers every day. We offer this support because we believe audiences value having a real choice of local news provision.”

The NMA disputes that the old local media business model is failing, arguing that “the sector’s rapidly-growing audiences and investment in recruitment of journalists” demonstrates otherwise.

Alongside its letter the NMA published the results of self-commissioned surveys indicating that most MPs “agreed it is important that commercial news providers, for example local newspapers, are not marginalised by the BBC’s local news provision”.

Yougov’s interviews with “a representative sample of 88 MPs” in December found that 78% of Conservative MPs and 67% of Labour MPs were worried about “independent local titles being crowded out by the BBC”.

A Savanta poll of 102 MPs in September, also commissioned by the NMA, found 65% of MPs felt local news was important for communicating with constituents.

Monday’s open letter is not the first time the NMA has come out against “Across The UK”. In March 2021, as soon the proposals for new local digital reporters were published, the trade body urged the BBC to channel those funds into the local democracy reporter scheme instead.

Its allegations of licence fee misuse come at an unfortunate time for the BBC, as the broadcaster finds its funding under attack from the culture secretary.

Nadine Dorries wrote on Twitter this weekend: “The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over. Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.”

And on Monday she told the House of Commons that the licence fee will be frozen at its current level until April 2024 – effectively docking the BBC an estimated £2bn over the next six years because of inflation. The fee will subsequently rise in line with inflation for the four years from April 2024.

The Mail on Sunday reported Dorries views as “inevitable” the abolition of the licence fee in 2027 – when the BBC’s Royal Charter is up for review – because of the rise of subscription streaming services.

The BBC axed regional current affairs show Inside Out in 2020 as part of cost-saving exercises, prompting outcry from journalists and celebrities. A similar replacement show, titled We Are England, was announced this month, and is set to first broadcast on 26 January.

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West Midlands local democracy reporter George Makin has died less than two months after revealing he had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.

Makin was among the first cohort of BBC-funded LDRs, covering the Sandwell and Dudley local authorities since 2018, based at Reach’s Birmingham Live newsroom.

He had been a journalist in the West Midlands for more than 20 years, including ten with the Walsall Advertiser , where was made deputy chief reporter before leaving in 2009. He worked in photography and as a press officer, but returned to news with the LDR role.

Colleagues have described Makin as a “top drawer journalist” and “talented writer” with a “wicked wit”, as well as “an important part of the LDR network”.

Birmingham Live editor Graeme Brown said: “George left a lasting impression on the West Midlands through his journalism – but an even longer impression on everyone he met.

“Professionally, he was determined, dogged and tenacious – but always fair.
“But he was more than that – someone always happy to help others and a team-member who always made the working environment better.”

There are plans to set up a new award in Makin’s honour at the next Local Democracy Reporting Service Awards run by the BBC. It will recognise the work of journalists who have been on the scheme for less than a year to help inspire new recruits.

Makin wrote in April about being diagnosed with advanced, incurable lung cancer just four days after getting his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

“In an absurd irony even I’ve had to laugh that I got the life-saving jab only to go and catch the wrong bloody illness,” he wrote.

He took the opportunity to encourage readers to continue working together to beat the coronavirus pandemic: “We are all going to die sometime and the worth of our days is measured by how we act.

“The decisions I make in my remaining time will probably have little impact but our actions on behalf of each other can.”

Matthew Barraclough, editor of the BBC’s Local News Partnerships, said: “George was among the original cohort of Local Democracy Reporters, filing his first story in March 2018 just weeks after the official launch of the scheme. He was a greatly respected and popular member of the team.

“To honour his contribution to the scheme and to his wider journalism career, the 2022 Local Democracy Reporting Service Awards will feature a new category named in his honour.

“The George Makin Award will recognise the work of Local Democracy Reporters who have been in post for fewer than 12 months, ensuring his commitment to public interest journalism continues to be an inspiration for new recruits each year.”

Brown said the award was a “fitting tribute to a brave journalist who proved to be a brave human being to the end”, adding: “He was only with us for a couple of years but nobody at Birmingham Live will ever forget him.”

Makin shared updates on Twitter about his illness, his love of birds and other observations until just a few days ago.

Don’t put off beauty till tomorrow https://t.co/zAVVXc49nW

— george p makin (@GeorgePMakin) June 4, 2021

Other LDRs and Reach employees shared their memories of working with Makin:

Absolutely heartbreaking news. My experience of George through the #LDReporter scheme was that he was a top drawer journalist and a funny and lovely man. RIP George. You will be missed by so many. https://t.co/GzSkKN8DPg

— Anthony Lewis (@tonylewis92) June 17, 2021

Incredibly sad to hear of the passing of fellow LDR @GeorgePMakin this week. He always had a great sense of humour on our weekly hangouts and was clearly a talented writer. Thoughts with his family. https://t.co/F2mIqCos6U

— Steph Brawn (@BrawnJourno) June 17, 2021

I didn’t know George well but he was an important part of the LDR network. He will be missed hugely by us all. Rest in Peace George. https://t.co/d1FKad98VI

— Em (@EmHunsleyGill) June 17, 2021

It was a pleasure to know and work alongside the lovely @GeorgePMakin, too briefly – going to miss his utter pride and love for his family, his joy in birds, dogs and nature, and his wicked wit. RIP George https://t.co/ssTfYHk7CE

— Jane Haynes (@JaneRockHouse) June 17, 2021

Such sad news this week. I was privileged to have worked with George, a great hack, an integral part of the #LDReporter team in the West Mids and a top man. RIP https://t.co/SlpRxapSqY

— Adam Care (@Adam_Care01) June 17, 2021

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The BBC has said its local democracy reporters scheme is having a “net positive impact on competition in local news” despite concerns too many of the contracts are given to just three publishers.

The BBC funds 150 local democracy reporters across the UK to report on local authorities for partner newsrooms.

In a review of its Local News Partnership, which also includes a Shared Data Unit and News Hub of BBC broadcast content for shared use,  the BBC backed expanding the LDR scheme.

But the review, written by BBC Northern Ireland director Peter Johnston, said any expansion should first focus on ensuring local authorities are thoroughly covered before moving on to other areas of public need like court reporting and emergency services.

Any expansion would also require external funding being sought and is subject to approval by the BBC Board.

About 390,000 pieces of content have now been produced since the first LDR was appointed in January 2018.

The review said the scheme has “successfully generated the public value that it was designed to deliver” and created new local roles “in a climate of widespread journalist job losses”.

Around 950 news outlets can now access LDR content, with 138 publisher partners. But about 90% of the host newsrooms are from the UK’s three biggest local news groups: Reach, Newsquest and JPI Media.

Reach has 64.5 LDRs, Newsquest has 38.5 and JPI has 36.5.

The report said the requirements for hosting an LDR should be widened so that more smaller publishers can take part, as previously the scale and capacity of some organisations may have given them a “greater advantage”.

It added that although winning an LDR contract could theoretically give a publisher a “significant competitive advantage”, it has seen no negative impact on smaller and non-print competitors or consumers as a result.

“Nevertheless, to the extent that we are understating any competitive advantages for winners, or negative impact on nonwinners, we believe the bidding process could reasonably be modified to facilitate greater inclusivity and we do not feel that the success of the scheme would be compromised in doing so,” it said.

The current contracts between the BBC and the host newsrooms are due to end in January next year.

Options to help smaller publishers win their bids could include relaxing the requirement for a newsroom to be physically located in the relevant area, and reducing the number of reporters allocated to the same newsroom in bigger areas: for example, Greater Manchester currently has six reporters in one contract.

The BBC also responded to concerns over ways publishers could try to exploit the scheme, including by using the BBC-funded LDRs to enable them to reduce the headcount elsewhere in their newsrooms to save money, or asking them to write stories not in their remit (like clickbait).

It said there had been “few instances” of such behaviour and that this has diminished since the scheme began thanks in part to monitoring by the BBC team.

“We acknowledge the fact that any market intervention such as this runs the inherent risk of subsidising some private activity and leading to a reliance on the scheme,” the review said.

“However we believe that sufficient measures have been put in place to minimise any subsidisation and that we should weigh the risk of reliance on LDRS against the alternative, where the contraction of the industry and reduction in political coverage would have continued without the LNP.”

The report also suggested the BBC may take up an idea put forward by the National Union of Journalists for an independent whistleblowing process for LDRs who want to raise issues of concern without fear of repercussion.

“Supplier autonomy is crucial and we appreciate that it is critical to the partnership that the BBC doesn’t stray into becoming a de facto employer of the LDRs, however we think a balance is achievable here whereby a suitable complaints mechanism could enhance transparency further and allow LDRs to feel more supported in their roles,” it said.

Picture: Press Gazette

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