[thePineapple]

The argument seems to be "our product is so bad it can't stand up to competition".

Take this from David Higgerson - from Reach PLC - on Twitter. twitter.com 

"Why, for example, pay for a local news service if you can get the bulk of what you need for free?" he says.

Also, some of this seems to be twisting the truth - "There was no demand for the BBC to be providing deeper local news coverage online." he says. What?!

As you might expect, the Nations and Regions NUJ wasn't very happy with this - pointing out about the LDRS etc etc.

[Spencer]

The biggest issue with many local newspaper sites is the ads literally make them unreadable.  It's not so much their ad free rivals which lower their readership bit their own greed - prioritising being able to view ads over content.  Ads are a necessary evil but if they make a website unusable people will either ad block or go elsewhere.

I can’t think why anyone would choose to advertise on one of those sites. When your ad is competing against so many others, surely your message is just going to get utterly lost amongst all the commercial clutter. And is an irritating pop-up that a user is desperate to swat away as quickly as possible a great context to build trust in a brand?

[Josh]

An update to the BBC Sounds homepage, station descriptions are shown now:

i.imgur.com 

[Keith]

Would be nice if they moved the links to stations & schedules into the main Sounds menu at the top. Especially considering that menu bar has a link to Podcasts.

[Steve in Pudsey]

I can’t think why anyone would choose to advertise on one of those sites. When your ad is competing against so many others, surely your message is just going to get utterly lost amongst all the commercial clutter. And is an irritating pop-up that a user is desperate to swat away as quickly as possible a great context to build trust in a brand?

There's a good chance advertisers aren't specifically choosing those websites, it's done through an agency and algorithms.

The editor of my local Reach rag got rinsed in the comments on his version of this article. (Yes, that really is his name)

www.examinerlive.co.uk 

Don't let the BBC silence YorkshireLive and other regional media - Wayne Ankers …
The BBC has cut local radio services and plans to provide more local news conten…
  Source: www.examinerlive.co.uk

There seems to be a real hypocrisy that they have chosen to expand from being a Huddersfield website to (attempt to) cover the whole of Yorkshire, doing the same thing to other local papers that he accuses the BBC of.

[Brekkie]

I don't know what other areas are like but my local website of choice (wrexham.com) isn't associated with a newspaper, though I think they do benefit from the LDR scheme. It's not the BBC local papers are losing out too, and then of course you have things like Facebook groups which although unverified can provide hyper local information.

In reality too people don't tend to use these things in isolation - if I see a story on the BBC website or Facebook I'm probably looking for other sources which may give more info too, especially as a BBC story will usually be tailored for a national readership rather than for the locals it might affect.


It is criminal though how regulation has pretty much allowed the local media in this country (TV, radio and print) to pretty much self destruct whilst in other countries where it has been protected it somewhat continues to thrive.

[Steve in Pudsey]

Of course those local Facebook groups are often the source of a good chunk of the non-clickbait content on these papers' websites.

[Andrew]

The biggest issue with many local newspaper sites is the ads literally make them unreadable. It's not so much their ad free rivals which lower their readership bit their own greed - prioritising being able to view ads over content. Ads are a necessary evil but if they make a website unusable people will either ad block or go elsewhere.

I’m not even sure any local news site even loads properly on my iPad, it just constantly tries to load all the heavy adverts, fails and then starts again, with the page jumping up and down all over the place

Round my way you’ve got the Huddersfield Examiner which is Reach and the Bradford T&A run by Newsquest and they are as bad as each other with millions of adverts, clickbait, national stories, stories from miles away, “The EXACT time snow will fall in the UK” type articles, local stories often where the only available information has been sourced from a tweet that a road is closed or a bus route is diverted, meaning literally no journalism has actually taken place. Stories that are basically adverts ‘We try out McDonalds new burger’, stories about the council are just regurgitated press releases with no critical analysis, and then just tons and tons of crime stories.

Although to be honest the BBC local news pages are awful as well, many areas seem to get no more than one or two stories a day, and often they are national stories just allocated to a local area based on the content.

[Brekkie]

That's the thing - in reality the BBC aren't trading on their toes at all. If anything their only local reports come from the LDRs which were forced upon them, presumably by the local newspaper industry.

[AndrewP]

An update to the BBC Sounds homepage, station descriptions are shown now:

i.imgur.com 

The description for Radio 4 seems a bit too wordy, almost certainly not written by someone who listens to it.
The previous tagline 'Radio for curious minds.' would be more appropriate I feel.