Information – so long as we can tell you what you want

This blog is based on a letter I have sent to Malcolm Burr, Chief Executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, and to local press and media. In it I am asking Mr Burr to suspend the current public consultation, radically redefine the communications strategy and then return to public consultation.

The Comhairle’s public consultation, as it stands, can be accessed here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/commstrat

…………………………..

Dear Mr. Malcolm Burr,

re: Comhairle Communications Strategy and Consultation

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Comhairle on its decision to consult with the public on its communications strategy – congratulations!

But I must also take this opportunity to raise very serious concerns about the limited scope of the consultation, and to seek an immediate suspension of the current process in favour of a rethink and a relaunch that will give the public – the council tax payers and service users of the Comhairle – a real opportunity to comment on all aspects of this most important of Comhairle policies, and that includes the most fundamental aims of the policy.

The key missing elements in this strategy, and the public consultation, are, firstly, the public are not being asked to define the nature and content of Comhairle communications, members of the public are not being asked what information they actually want to have, how they receive it and to state why they want it. Click boxes and spaces for comment do not amount to a full consultation.

Secondly, issues of openness, accessibility and freedom of information are fundamental to local authority communications. These are not mentioned, and comment is not requested.

Too much of the current aims and benefits of the communication strategy, as presented on line and in this consultation, is focussed on ill-defined and unmeasured values, and too much on issues surrounding how the Comhairle can manage public perceptions of itself as an organisation.

Why should the public care?

The issue of communications has rarely been more important for the Comhairle.

At a time when the Comhairle is facing one of its biggest challenges in many years; with very serious pressures to which cash is not available as the answer, and at a time in which the Comhairle is having to make very painful decisions about cutting public services, the relationship between the Comhairle and the public is of profound importance – and communications sits at the heart of that relationship.

When so much is at stake and in a time of virtual austerity in Comhairle finances, the public, the tax payers, the service users, those interested in democracy locally, need information, and we need to be given the means of having confidence in the fact that the information we are receiving, and being offered access to, is as full and open as it can be.

I will happily urge local taxpayers and service users to fully engage with the consultation when and if it has been redefined, but as it stands, I fear that participation in the current consultation will only strengthen the negative impact of the current communications strategy, and will do nothing to increase openness and freedom of information.

In more detail, and some examples of what is wrong and what is missing…

The Comhairle’s current consultation on its communications strategy begins with an introduction (a kind of set of aims and benefits) that is not itself the subject of the consultation. It is a leading statement full of unmeasured, positive but subjective adjectives, and which, on the surface, as a consequence of the manner of presentation, seem obvious and consensual, but they are not.

What, for example, does the opening sentence of the Comhairle statement – ‘Good communication should be essential for every organisation.’ – actually mean? This is a value judgement not a statement of policy or fact, as ‘Good communication’ is not defined.

Who determines what is ‘good’ communication and how do they determine it? Is this value (‘good’) judged according to whether or not Comhairle members are re-elected? Or is ‘good’ achieved when public perceptions of the Comhairle are always positive? Is ‘good’ attained when public confidence is maintained by withholding or ‘spinning’ key information?

The risk for the Comhairle, based on the example above, is that the opening blurb of this ‘consultation’ is perceived as being designed to set and control the parameters of the consultation, and it is itself evidence that the communications strategy is in urgent need of serious review.

A reasonable response to the Comhairle’s introductory blurb, and hence the consultation as a whole, would be that the organisation is wishing to limit and contain the scope of public engagement and comment on its communications policy, and to maintain, at best, a status quo whilst appearing to be engaging with the public.

Controlling the flow and accessibility of information is a means of controlling and managing public perception. When we as council tax payers are being asked to understand the predicament that the Comhairle faces, we need confidence that we are getting the information we want, and in an accessible manner, to be able to know how decisions about information are made and who makes them and why.

Public perception is, it seems, a more valuable commodity to politicians than accessibility of information, and that is what is wrong with the current communications strategy, and this consultation.

There is too great a confusion between the communications strategy that enables an information supply from the Comhairle as a statutory organisation, concerning public knowledge and awareness of that organisation, its activities and efficiencies, and the communications strategy of the Comhairle as a political entity, and the needs of the elected councillors. See below.

We, the tax paying public, must at the same time reassure our elected politicians that deciding on a commitment to increased openness is not like turkeys voting for Christmas. Openness is fundamental to resolving the current crisis affecting the Comhairle, and the current crisis affecting public confidence in the Comhairle.

The opening statement referred to above is also mired in lazy corporate speak – who or what, for example, is a stakeholder? There are many other similar examples of corporate speak throughout the document and questionnaire which I will happily identify if necessary.

Some of this subjective and cliche-ridden waffle might be intentional, I fear that most of it stems from the same muddled sources that gave us the communications debacle that has surrounded the issue, for example, of charging some parents for their children’s use of the school buses.

An increase in public fear and confusion is not surely an aim of the Comhairle’s existing communications policy, but it has surely been an outcome. How did this happen? What can the Comhairle learn from such a mess? Does the Comhairle want to learn from such a mess? If so, halt this flawed consultation now.

Another example of what is wrong with this strategy and consultation, is that the opening blurb also says that:

‘The benefits of implementing the strategy are intended to be: [...] The Comhairle’s achievements will be better known by the public and other stakeholders;’

Really? Who defines what is an achievement and what is the measure? The policy/strategy should at least tell us this so that we can have trust in the independence of the determination. Is democracy not better served by telling us in equal measure the achievements and failures?

Is it the job of the Comhairle to engage solely in positive, vanity communications?

This so-called ‘benefit’ is, without answers to these questions, and more seriously a deeply undemocratic aim and one that is completely at odds with any policy about openness. All it will achieve is to further undermine participation in democracy and trust in the Comhairle, with a perception that the Comhairle’s communications policy is largely defined to support positive public perceptions of the decision makers.

I assert that this so-called benefit (to who? and who decided that this is a benefit?) needs to be removed, the thinking behind it explored, and a new policy of neutral communication based on openness and accessibility of information implemented as soon as possible. Otherwise, this so-called benefit is totally at odds with the statement, also in the opening blurb:

‘Good, effective communication also helps strengthen democracy and allows for participation with and by the Comhairle’s key stakeholders including the public and the Comhairle’s employees.’

If ‘good’ communication is measured by the flow of communications about ‘achievements’, and the public know this but do not control the definition of ‘achievement’, democracy is very seriously undermined.

As stated at the opening of this letter, nowhere in this consultation is the public asked to comment on fundamental questions about the information it / they wish to receive from and about the Comhairle. We are asked about the Comhairle’s use of ‘e-media’ and to comment on our favoured news sources. Fair enough. But that is tinkering at the edges of a policy when comment on the real issues is being very much controlled and/or denied.

Councillors very freely highlight what they define as public apathy. But in this consultation we are not asked to comment on openness and freedom of information. We are not asked if the format of public meetings on Comhairle cuts, for example, is the way in which we to be consulted. Alternatives are not suggested to you to help us decide what is the best way forward.

A lack of confidence in the openness of the Comhairle, and the on-going decline in public trust of the Comhairle, create apathy. But this can be addressed through the communications strategy. As it stands this will not be achieved.

The public are not asked in this consultation if Comhairle employees should be given greater freedom to comment in public debates about Comhairle decisions without fear of disciplinary action. Why not?

So, I close with an alternative vision for debate. I welcome comment of all kinds. Here are 8 proposals, I’m sure that there are many more, please let me know.

1. The Comhairle’s communications strategy is one of the major means by which the Comhairle defines its relationship to the public, other organisations and service users. It should be the embodiment and guarantee of a new aim to become the most open and accessible local authority in Scotland – If not, why not? Measurement of openness and accessibility are to be defined, utilised and published annually so that the public can determine whether or not this commitment is being fully implemented.

2. The Comhairle fulfils its statutory requirements with regard to confidentiality to the letter; and fulfils statutory requirements with regard to public announcements – yes of course.

3. The Comhairle commits to reducing the quantity of information that it defines as private or confidential. This to be measured against a baseline figure. Even if this is currently at a minimum, proof helps to boost public confidence. Very clear guidelines for officers and elected members are to be published so that the public can know why information might be with-held, and how the Comhairle interprets the law on these matters.

4. The Comhairle commits to decrease the quantity of meetings that are held in closed session. This can be measured against a baseline figure, proof helps to boost public confidence.

5. The Comhairle aims to make all agendas, minutes and other documents available to the public as quickly as possible, as defined by ensuring that the public and the media have the maximum time available to comment.

6. The Comhairle strengthens local democracy by using its communications budget to support plurality of ownership and sustainability of local media outlets, with a bias toward expenditure on community owned media platforms.

7. The Comhairle engages with the public and other organisations via social media, and works to simplify and clarify its language in all its communications.

8. Comhairle staff are encouraged to disclose wrong-doing, illegal activity or concerns about such things, and are encouraged, as far as the law allows and while respecting statutory requirements for confidentiality, to participate in public debate about the future of the services in which they work, and about which they care, and to do so without fear of disciplinary action.

To close, I repeat my call for the current consultation to be suspended, redefined and relaunched.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Urpeth.

Record Store Day – confessions of a teenage record shop storesman – or Downtown Records, the vinyl frontier

Record Store Day tomorrow, and it  brings back happy memories of my Saturday job working in Downtown Records, Romford, when I was but a schoolboy, aged just 15. Downtown Records was without doubt the hippest place to work in Romford, no – Essex actually - probably London - if not Europe, in fact the shop was the centre of the known universe when I was a lad, and I had a job in it - keeping it supplied. Yes, I was a storesman to the centre of the universe.

The job did of course catapult me into the higher echelons of popularity at school, and even gave the somewhat gauche and nerdy boy his first real connections with girls (as they were then).

This is a story of glamour and romance. The store was at the other end of the mall (The Liberty, Romford) to Sainsbury’s, where I would go for lunch supplies on a Saturday. Charmaine was her name, quite Romford as names go at the time but Ian Dury never managed to find a suitable rhythm for it. She worked behind the checkout, and she recognised me from Downtown Records. Need I say more? We spoke, it was instant attraction and that Saturday night we ponced underage drinks in the modern pub beneath Mercury House - its name escapes me – conveniently located opposite the main doors of the supermarket.

After closing time, I escorted Charmaine home on the 174 bus to the door of her parents house near Gallows Corner. We repeated this several times until we just didn’t any more, and I can’t remember why. The height of this romance was the fact that we shared ownership of one of the new fangled cardboard bus ticket strips that London transport introduced as the Routemasters were fading out. One clunk from the strip each for the trip to Gallows Corner. I’d then have the ticket, and it’d be one clunk more to get me to my own door. I’d carry it in my top pocket the following Saturday, and the ticket would last three weeks.

Anyway, I digress - and I also think that Charmaine story is more than likely riddled with inaccuracies, but that’s how it stays in my memory. However what is true is that I bought the latest box jacket styles (mine were all sky blue) in Granditers in Romford Market, to look as reem as possible for these meetings with the Sainsbury’s till girl - who I recall just wore her uniform, which was, as it happens fine. I have of course googled Charmaine, and all I got was a picture of Ben Elton, certainly not as I remember her.

I spent most of my early life in Downtown Records listening to LPs in the headphone booths, and the staff spent most of their working lives putting records on turntables for the booths – a consumer facility that seemed to generate very little income for the store. There was some notional time limit for each listener, and also some ban on the booths during busy times, but it was always busy and the booths were never out of bounds.

The job came about after I was walking past the shop one school day evening at about 5pm. A small note in the shop window informed the curious viewer that they were looking for p/t Saturday staff. I peered into the shop  interior, my heart pounding, in through the screen of clear plastic squares that held the sleeves of the latest releases, and which filled the window. This was it. My moment had arrived.

By now I was already a jazz junky, following off-the-wall stuff. The job application consisted of filling in a form with the usual data, and then a big question:  name ten or more record labels. My list went beyond the small box supplied and nearly filled the blank reverse side of the form. It consisted of labels such as SayDisc, and the then not well-known, ECM records. Downtown Records did not sell any of the products of these record labels, but the bloke interviewing me was very impressed that I knew all these small labels and offered me a job there and then. I took it, of course, and in a whirl of faint-headed celebration, pinching myself – was this really happening to me? It was. It was real, and the following Saturday I started work.

The SayDisc record I had was ‘Portraits’ by Graham Collier, a fine slice of British jazz that stands the test of time without blemish.

When it came to Downtown Records, I thought I’d seen it all from my position as a consumer. The naivety of the customer laid bare. At the far end of the shop was the spacious customer service area with its tills and booths and till-side items, and the other booth at the end of the counter where you could order tickets for major rock stadium gigs. Behind the till area, there was a wall of records, and then a small doorway closed only by a hanging blind of multi-coloured plastic strips, in which staff would go clutching empty record sleeves before returing store side with shining black vinyl in its pure white vest, and a new sleeve, not the thumbed card of the display copy, which was hurled into a store box beneath the till. It soon became my job to refile those display sleeves, and accuracy was everything.

Little did I know that the stairway beside all of this, mostly hidden behind the counter, lead to a first floor labyrinth of records in their wholesale boxes – thousands of records which had been delivered through a service door at the back of the store, and which were carried box by box up the stairs to be checked and stocked.

On day 1, I was sent upstairs and given orders about orders.

The hot vinyl at the time included  Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of the Moon – old even then but still selling like hash cakes. On an average Saturday, when I started, we sold so many of these that instead of carefully taking the wholesale boxes down the stairs to the waiting salesman yelling up his requirements, we’d just throw the box down and it really didn’t matter if a few copies got smashed or dented on route.

I had never seen so much money in my life. At least every two hours on a Saturday, the tills would be full and were emptied and the cash stashed in the backroom somewhere, but always by the older staff.

ELP sold well, and Yes and Genesis, and of course singles. Downtown Records was a 45rpm goldmine, outselling the WH Smith’s opposite (which had a large pop music collection and was good for the 45s).

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and MeatLoaf’s Bat Out of Hell also sold by the crumpled box load, but the biggest seller I recall was Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, and I hated it. Concept albums were everywhere. Music was not enough in the 70s, it need to be herded into linked sets and then silkscreen coated with layers of pretension.

The most damaged display sleeve by far was Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones. Unlike WH Smiths, we had this on public display. I never saw a copy of that record sleeve in which the zip wasn’t broken, having become derailed in the undone position. It was without doubt one of the most erotic things I’d ever seen in my brief stay on the planet at that time, and the scratched and dented zone behind the zip was evidence that the ardour of my adolescent contemporaries was even more insatiable than my own in the company of this provocative affront to public decency.

But back to the store. The pay was good, too, very good. I had cash in my pockets. But the real money was to be made on the up- to- 50% discount on records that the shop offered its staff. This meant that every Monday morning I’d go to school and open a list for anyone at the school to write down what they wanted, give me the money, and I’d deliver the following Monday - and I’d sell it to them at about a 20% discount, making about 30% for myself. This list would run into pages of A4 every week. I was happy, the punter was happy, the record shop didn’t know. LPs at that time sold for about £4 each. I was making about £1 on every transaction.

I quickly went from being an invisible nobody in a large, comprehensive school class of only slightly less insignificant nobodies, to being the unofficial, fringe, head boy. The one my peers really looked-up to, not the learned nerd chosen by Jakey, the elderly headmaster who remained head from the time that it was a grammar school. I was the people’s champion, a vinyl Robin Hood - who’d courted his Maid Marion (Charmaine in this analogy) -  and what’s more I got to inhale the unique aroma of a vinyl store stock room at least once a week, and to feel the near-death inducing jolt of the huge static discharges that came from the racks of plastic and plastic lined inner sleeves, on the same regular basis. The discharge was almost always caused by the brushing of synthetics, and the cheap carpet that led from the shop to the store being polished by myriad, crepe-soled wedges.

Sometimes, if short-staffed, I’d work a lunch shift on the tills. I often imagine what attaining Nirvana is actually like, it cannot be as good a feeling as being in the public eye in Downtown Records, Romford, selling records and attending to the listening booths.

But it couldn’t last – and it didn’t. I got bored, or something, and left. Charmaine and me drifted apart – with a terrible denouement occuring on a  rain-soaked Saturday night, a few hundred yards from the fly over of the A12. I was given the cardboard bus ticket for good by Charmaine, and with her angry words telling me that I could keep it, I left the scene of that romance for the last time, and returned to my sad life – the life of an unknown personage - following Dagenham FC on Saturday’s, and that didn’t last either.

The message of this rambling, inaccurate and inflated history is plain – no one adores you today for selling MP3s, or even CDs in quite the same way as they did the heroes associated with vinyl retail in the 70s, and me being a record store storesman. The panache, the local celebrity stuff, just isn’t in the music retail trade anymore, unless of course you’re punting vinyl.

I had it all back then, and all these year’s later I look back at it with pride, in the same way as, I guess, Brucie reflects on his glittering chin, and his long-toothed TV career.

Sadly, no pictures of Downtown Records survive. The picture here is the The Liberty Shopping Centre in which it was located, but out of view.

A broader lesson in Kodak’s problems?

Eastman Kodak’s recent filing for bankruptcy protection in the US has been met with a plethora of explanations detailing the company’s supposed failure to embrace the digital age in camera and image technology, but perhaps the real lesson in Kodak’s potential demise is more general and potentially affects all companies that have a longstanding and high-yielding knowledge base in an industry that undergoes rapid technological change. But the issue of Kodak is not so simple as the emerging mantra that the company failed to respond to the digital age of imaging. Eastman Kodak did respond to that change (specifically for more than 25 years), but the problem perhaps lies in how they responded.

For those of us who worked in the commercial news and magazine sectors in the 1980s onwards, the claim that Kodak failed to respond to technological advance is odd – and I certainly have a very different set of memories about this company in addition to the yellow envelope of sentimental family holiday snaps that currently swamps the mass media.

In 1984 I was a skint student and started doing some freelance and temp work at Time Out, mostly on the new (and 1st) TO Film Guide, but due to a shortage of staff cover in the music section, increasingly on the listings side of the magazine and with occasional forays onto the news desk. At that time, the daily round consisted of typing onto column lined paper, complete with the need for typed hyphenation and other page furniture. But this laborious process, in which the line between the average journalist and the print room was far closer than it is now, was quickly replaced by the arrival of a large quantity of large grey computer terminals that displayed, if memory serves me, text in a kind of sickly yellow/brownish colour. From that point onwards, all text would be entered into these machines and the print process changed for good.

The name on the programs running on these grey terminals was ATEX, a company owned by Eastman Kodak. ATEX had been producing cutting edge newsroom computer systems from the early 1970s in its base in Lexington, Mass., and by 1979 it had patented its Text Editing & Display System that enabled text to be typed and displayed with the guarantee that every line would end with a complete word (source: The Cole Papers: http://www.colepapers.net/tcp.archive/cole_papers_01/TCP_01_01/atex.html), and technology that enabled text insert in 1975, and the move toward interactive page makeup systems was in place. In 1981, ATEX was sold to Eastman Kodak for $77million (same source).

The acquisition clearly heralded Eastman Kodak’s early move into computer technology in an industry in which there was an opportunity for commercial activity with early adopters. In 1984 ATEX launched its Total Publishing Environment system on the market, running on AT&T computers. Two years later ATEX combines with Eikonix - a company that made its name in digital imaging - to launch an electronic prepress system. Over the next couple of years, Eastman Kodak’s strategy of corporate alliances continues and ATEX is working in close partnership with IBM, but ultimately to no avail other than the significant fact that ATEX systems would run on IBM computers.

By 1992 according to The Cole Papers archive, Kodak had decided that ATEX was no longer a part of its future plans, and was sold. In the mid 1980s the systems ATEX were developing and bringing to markets across Europe and America, were cutting edge and transformative, clunky in retrospect, yes, but nonetheless they were early entrants into an industry that would become a major driver for digital, technological innovation.

Apart from the various machinations of ATEX, this episode clearly belies the claim that Eastman Kodak was a moribund and slow adopter of computer and digital technologies. It is evidence that prior to 1981, Eastman Kodak had identified the changes that were taking place and were trying to adapt to the new technology. As recently as 2005, Eastman Kodak was working with IBM on digital imaging systems that enhanced picture quality in mobile phone cameras, but seven years later, the company is facing closure.

Yes, Kodak failed to make an impact in the home consumer digital market, but the failure was not one of denial, as is being claimed, but perhaps one ultimately of the inflexiblity of corporate structure. But even as recently as 2004, leading business academics were highlighting the efficiency of Kodak’s adaptation to the new technology and its markets through strategic corporate alliances. The FT states that Eastman Kodak’s revenues peaked just two years before these strategies were recognised ‘at more than $16bn, while employee numbers reached some 130,000.’

According to Robert M. Grant and Charles Baden-Fuller’s article ‘A Knowledge Accessing Theory of Strategic Alliances’ (Journal of Management Studies, January 2004, (c) Blackwell Publishing), on Eastman Kodak’s transition from chemical to digital imaging:

‘During its first 100 years of development, Kodak established a highly integrated corporate structure that was very effective in integrating knowledge of optical, polymer, silver halide, technologies; consumer and professional markets; largescale, low-cost manufacturing; and worldwide distribution. However, the digital imaging revolution required Kodak to extend its knowledge base into ‘infoimaging’ – including new technologies ranging from electronic sensing to file compression.

‘Many of the rules and organizational routines that Kodak had developed for managing traditional photography were not well-suited to the faster moving world of digital imaging (Grant and Neupert, 2003). In particular, when CEO George Fisher requested the company to introduce a fully digital camera for the consumer market, he was told that the company’s standardized system of phases and gates would require three years of development. Through an alliance with Apple Computer, the camera – the Apple Quicktake – was developed and brought to market within seven months (Pinto, 2000). Digital imaging’s need for differentiated rules and routines to achieve fast response capability and compressed product development and manufacturing cycles resulted in Kodak’s widespread use of strategic alliances in its digital imaging business.’

Many of these alliances came as the result of successive revamps to Eastman Kodak’s digital strategy.  Perhaps the problems with a reliance on corporate alliances (and acquisitions) is that they tempt the core business to remain the same, to protect its areas of longstanding specialism and to try and maintain profits in diminishing markets, especially when the route map of future technologues is difficult to judge. Eastman Kodak formed productive alliances with some of the most prominent companies in the new technology revolution – Apple amongst them – but it is the persistence of its old and core corporate structures that could be its downfall. Knowledge is worthless without meaningful  product, and product at the right time and at the right price. As Apple has shown, product is key, and speed of response is its mutual key. Grant and Baden-Fuller might of been premature in highlighting the success of Kodak’s alliance strategy in 2004, back then it was working and indeed those authors did apply considerable caveats to their example. But one claim they do make, and I apologise to them for borrowing and adapting their work, is that good strategic corporate alliances should not be about knowledge acquisition but about accessing that knowledge and, as Grant and Baden-Fuller state:

‘…alliances contribute to the efficiency in the application of knowledge; first, by improving the efficiency with which knowledge is integrated into the production of complex goods and services, and second, by increasing the efficiency with which knowledge is utilized.’

In this process, Eastman Kodak’s problems seem to reside, a lack of efficiency in utilizing knowledge, translated into a lack to fully integrate new technologies into corporate structures.

Community land buy-outs have transformed communities, now for community media buy-outs

by Peter Urpeth

That news media ownership is a hot political issue at present, is not in doubt. The reader has only to look to the recent row surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s take over of BSKYB to see that plurality and competition in news media is an issue that can strike at the very heart of the  coalition’s cabinet, and one that excites reasonably founded fears that media monopolies – or near monopolies – currently have or will have, too great an influence on our democracy.

But I am not in this blog going to examine the merits of the peculiar solution found to the issue of Murdoch’s ownership of SKY News that enabled Murdoch to proceed with his take over of the rest of BSKYB. Instead, I propose that whilst Vince Cable was busy declaring war on Murdoch, a real threat to democracy was and is taking place quietly, beyond the scrutiny of MPs, MSPs and statutory competition watchdogs on a very local level, and with very real implications for the future of local democracy. In turn, that means a threat to the vitality and strength of local communities, and no communities are more vulnerable to this than the fragile and remote communities of Scotland’s Highlands and Islands.

My experience of this issue is through being a reporter on, and subsequently Editor of the Stornoway Gazette, and then being the founding  editor of The Hebridean, a newspaper established by a local company, as a rival to the Stornoway Gazette. At various times I have also worked on other newspapers including a short spell as editor of the Girvan Gazette when that was in the same ownership as the Stornoway Gazette.

During my editorship of the Stornoway Gazette, I endeavoured to increase that newspaper’s scrutiny of the local authority and the activities  of our local MP, MSP and European representatives. I did so with a sense of duty toward the local community. At the same time I cancelled the weekly diary by the local MP on the  basis that such content is little more than free advertising.

The newspaper in a very short time became something of cause celebre with the national tabloid press, and indeed in leader comment, The Express referred to me as the ‘self-appointed guardian of political correctness in the Western Isles.’ I am genuinely proud to be the subject of their disapproval. But on a local level, the Stornoway Gazette was not owned by a local company, and much of my dissatisfaction at the Editor’s job came from the interference of the then owner.

Shortly after leaving the Gazette, I became editor of The Hebridean. This was a new paper started by a small group of local businessmen  with, it must be said, a shrewd eye for the opportunity and a keen sense of the need for the monopoly Stornoway Gazette to have a rival, especially due to the expense of its advertising and the bland ‘churnalism’ it had adopted as the main means of filling its pages. The Hebridean did well with a very small staff and with the limited resources of its owners. As soon as we started publishing, the Stornoway Gazette began to make large cuts in its advertising rates.  It saw us as a real threat and moved to undercut our market and to restore its monopoly. It did this finally by buying  The Hebridean and closing it down.

In that entire process, there was not room for a single consideration for the benefit to the local community of duality in local media or media ownership.  The law provided us with no protection from our rival, event though we were delivering real benefits for the local community and for the local economy.

In Sweden, the position of The Hebridean as the smaller of two local papers would have entitled us to state-aid through a scheme that  taxed the advertising revenues of the first or largest newspaper in the local area. The same would also have been true of another newspaper in the region, Orkney Today, that started at roughly the same time as The Hebridean  and which was bought and closed by its rival, as part of a new company that acquired the two titles at the same time. Both The Hebridean and Orkney Today achieved significant reputations for the quality  of their output, yet both are now closed. Does Sweden suffer from a democratic deficit from its enabling of this competition?

It is fair comment to say that the market must be allowed to function, but only if you consider that the value of local newspapers is such  that they can be left to the vagaries of the market, and that the consequences of failure are acceptable. To me, they are not.  Our local communities need local newspapers. They need this for news and information, and for local businesses to address their markets. Local newspapers are part of the vital glue that holds local communities together.

It is also my assertion that locally owned newspapers are far more likely to provide a decent quality of journalism than their non-local  counterparts, even when both are in monopoly positions in local communities.

In terms of local newspaper ownership in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands, I found 34 local newspaper titles – defined by me as  being published at least weekly; covering a specified or implied local area, and for commercial sale with advertising.

Of these 34 titles, 5 – or 15% – are currently in independent ownership – defined by me as being the sole title of a local publisher, or sole paid-for with an allied free advertiser. In addition the main regional daily in the Highlands & Islands, The P&J, is part of Aberdeen Journals Ltd, but this is owned by DC Thompson & Co. Ltd.

The main newspaper holdings in the region are:

Scottish Provincial Press – a local company but with 15 titles including Inverness Courier, Highland News, Ross-shire Journal, and with titles from John O’Groats to Lochaber, Nairn and Banffshire. The group also owns Highland Web offset in Dingwall, a major newspaper printing press in the region, printing SPP titles and other titles on a commercial basis belonging to other owners.

Johnston Press Ltd - major local newspaper ownership in Scotland, and third largest owner of local newspapers in the UK. JP has 5 local  titles include: Stornoway Gazette, Buteman, Buchan Observer and titles in Deeside and Donside. Also has blanket ownership /coverage in Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire, Edinburgh and other parts of the central belt, Borders and Dumfries and Galway.

Wyvex Media Ltd – are owners of Campbelltown Courier, Oban Times, Argyllshire Advertiser and The Arran Banner.

The independent titles are:

The Shetland Times (Shetland Times Ltd)

The Ileach (Ileach Ltd)

West Highland Free Press (WHFP)

Am Paipear (monthly)

The Dunoon Observer

plus a host of micro local titles including Fios, Ullapool News etc.

In the last seven years, as mentioned above, this list would have included two other titles – The Hebridean and Orkney Today. Both were  bought by their main rivals, and both were closed restoring monopoly positions for The Orcadian and the Stornoway Gazette.

Of these titles, I would assert that even the titles in locally owned groups are more respected within their areas than those of the  non-local group owners. This has a great deal to do with the centralised content management and production processes that the large group companies have adopted, and a great deal to do with the shrinking investment large groups make in their staff.

Of course, the issue of ownership is in many ways a secondary issue to the fact that many local newspapers are under immediate threat from reduced revenues as a consequence of the recession, and from changing patterns in the consumption of news media that is hitting newspaper sales and advertising. The risk of some local communities being left without a local newspaper is now more real than ever.

In its recently realised interim financial report for 2010, Johnston Press, although back to making a modest profit after a number of  year’s of losses, lists its first means of cost saving in 2011 as: ‘Closure of titles and waste management’.

JP’s revenues for 2010 were down 7% to £398.1 million. Like for like print advertising sales were down 7.1% on the previous year, and revenues from newspaper sales were down 2.8% at £96.7 million. JP managed to reduce it operating costs by £30.1 million. Income from digital sources was up 4% to £18.3 million, with 3% growth in usage of its digital services, and overall digital accounts for about 5% of JP’s evenues. A tiny figure.

Reading JP’s mission statements, it is almost laughable to read how they describe themselves as a ‘local community publisher’, with content by produced by ‘local experts who believe Content Is King’. In Stornoway, this equates to Churnalism being King. And how does JP square this claim with its proud boast to have cut operating costs by 8% due to the centralisation of content management and production?

The issue of the relationship between sales of printed newspapers and the use of the internet as source of local news, is now also becoming clearer, and to some extent more settled – even in terms of advertising revenues, with declines in print advertising slowing and levelling  out.

The growth of web-based news provision has been much cited by Government committees as a reason for the decline in sale of local newspapers. That might to some extent be true. But Ofcom figures from 2009 show that 61% of Scots surveyed buy a local newspaper (compared with the UK average of 41%), and 64% listen to local radio stations (compared with 55% UK average).

In short, local newspapers in Scotland have considerably greater reach than in the rest of the UK, and there is evidence that the  struggle between print and web is now beginning to level and settle, and whilst local newspapers have taken a hit, it is not a knockout blow. But closures, are still a real possibility, and that cannot be allowed to happen. if the banks were considered too big to fail, then I suggest that on a local level local newspapers must be considered too important to fail, especially in those areas where there is a monopoly, a single local title. I believe local communities should be empowered to act against such a threat.

The coalition in Westminster has already dismissed the idea of state funding for local newspapers and media on the basis that such a move would itself be undemocratic. But this decision needs to be re-examined on the basis that it was considered only in terms of local media assets – such as newspapers and radio stations – being owned by private companies, or possibly coalitions of local media owning companies.

Nowhere has the issue of alternative forms of ownership been properly assessed, and I propose that State funding (or State assistance) for  local community owned media would ensure democracy on a local level, and not threaten it so long as their was the opportunity for shift in the form and nature of ownership of local media assets.

In conclusion, I would like to draw on recent experiences in the Highlands and islands of communities taking control of their destinies in the form of land reform and buy-outs, and I propose that this model is one that could and should inform how we address the issue of threat posed to local communities by monopoly position media assets, and by the closure of local newspapers.

What I propose – and this might require a significant slice of new powers either being devolved to the Scottish Parliament or coming as a  consequence of independence in Scotland – is that communities be given the right and the means to acquire fundamentally important local media assets (such as local newspapers) in all circumstances from their private owners (as a first right of refusal), and where that media asset operates in a monopoly, to do so by compulsory purchase if the current owner is not willing to sell.

Communities could be owners through Trusts (as has happened wth land buy-outs), or social enterprises, and should be given the support  necessary to run media assets as productive, independent local news organisations.

I recall the days before land buy-outs when the abilities of local communities to take on the large role of estate management and  development was often called into doubt, and the same negativity will, I’m ure, be hurled at this proposal. But I do believe that local does not mean  inept or weak, and I believe that with support and with the process of gaining experience, local media assets could become unique beckons of independence in an increasingly centralised media world. The local media owning trust would not e permitted to acquire other local or non-local media assets.

I assert that it would be good business for government to invest in community buy-outs of important local media assets, and the dividend comes in terms of the contribution such assets could make in terms of community strength and the strength of local economies.

To avoid issues of interference by governmental organisations, I also propose that the administration of the community media asset / buy out, and the decision-making process for the allocation of funds ec, should be at arm’s length through independent Trusts or similar.

In community ownership, State funding for local newspapers, does not risk local democracy, rather it would provide a new opportunity for  local democracy and local participation.

If you’d like to discuss these issues come along to the Ramada Jarvis Hotel Inverness at 12.45pm on Friday 10th June 2011, when I’m  chairing a panel discussion entitled Media As A Community Asset, held as part o Go North 2011.

http://www.gonorth.biz

Comedians – some book reviews

I did not set out as the new year broke us ungently into 2010 with a resolution to read more books by comedians this year, but that is what has happened. In 2009, I read no books by comedians. In fact, my dislike of the celeb book craze is generally so profound as to be akin to a personal, anti-crap crusade. But now I find myself weakening, and maybe that’s because in my early adult years (1970s) most of the books by comedians were, it seemed to me, nothing more than sad confessionals, ghost written on behalf of  shabby racists who spent their working lives trading weak punch lines in rooms full of small-minded bigots. Now there are at least alternatives.

The four titles by comedians I’ve read this year are by four very different types of comic:  Jeremy Clarkson, Frankie Boyle, Paul O’Grady and Stewart Lee and I’d say that of the four, only the first three fit into the celeb book category.

The Clarkson and Boyle tomes I picked up from my teenage son’s bedroom floor. It is a trait of my reading habits that I really dislike that I am so easily distracted into reading almost anything that comes my way at the expense of reading time reserved for books I think I should read.

I’d bought him these volumes for Christmas in the ridiculous hope that I might lure my son into an interest in reading by making available such material. I know that is like giving a bottle of Bucky to a man dying of thirst but believe me, I’ve tried all other tricks of the trade including buying him copies of mags such as The Wire and Stuff (which is quite a good gadget mag but which has the most pointlessly gratuitous lad’s-mag type pics on the front cover).

My son might might of course have been interested in the books I’d spent ages wrapping up and secreting underneath the christmas tree had it not been for his father purloining them at just the moment boredom was taking hold of his (my son’s) Xmas hols.

What of the books themselves:

Clarkson, I suggest, wilfully writes in a tone that is unrelentingly mundane. He does this because he hinks that people who read, who actually like reading, are all French or as boring as Belgium and he does not want to alienate his following by making them feel that they are actually in danger of becoming nationals of these countries by enjoying reading a book.

Frankie Boyle’s ‘My Shit Life So Far‘ is, on balance, actually worth reading. I digested it in two short sittings, and found myself at times indulging in a light titter or two. The extended anecdotes that make up the greater part of the content of this book are in the most part strung together quite well, some are very funny, but they do highlight the fact that Frankie’s principle experience of life is not just that of everything being largely shit, but of an almost zen-like ennui that he has done nothing much to cure other than becoming a dab hand at onanism. I enjoyed it quite a lot (the book that is) whilst thinking that Frankie could actually do far better.

Paul O’Grady meanwhile is actually a very good writer, and the latest part of his on-going biog is a genuinely good read (I haven’t read the earlier vols). Of course, O’Grady brings to the table life experiences that are far broader and more intersting than those of Clarkson or Boyle,  which are explored with incredible honesty, frankness and humour because, I guess, such awareness has been key to his personal strength and survival and it retells well on the page.

Finally, and this being Celeb Book Thursday, on which every large publisher stacks high a selection of celeb auto-biogs with the soul view to finding some way of surviving in the business through 2011, Stewart Lee’s ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate – The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian.’

This is not a celeb book, though Lee has in recent years ceayed a substantial following and some ofnthe most original comedy on TV. Lee is a celeb but not all books by celebs are celeb books. Lee’s book is an erudite exploration of the writer’s craft as a comedian, and a genuine insight into the at times precarious life of the alternative comedian. In this volume Lee juxtaposes chapters of selected biographical material, not BMDs but incidents relating mostly to the development of his work, with annotated transcriptions of  three of his shows from the last 5/6 years. The annotations point at times to the origins of the material but are at their most interesting when he analyses the structure of the material / narratives and the recent history of alternative comedy; the uses and abuses of extreme material, especially with regard to religious beliefs, and the stage craft of the contemporary comedian. The shows themselves are to me extremely funny and engaging, and they write well to the page from the stage, and of course, there is also plenty on the fall-out from Jerry Springer: The Opera and the blasphemy prosecution.

Towards the end of the book, Lee comments that his aim is to create material that does not work so well on the page and which is in a sense pure stage comedy. Now, having seen a good deal o Lee’s work live and on TV it is difficult to remove his voice from the experience of reading this book, but having now had experience of the same material on stage and the page, I’d say that it might be a mistake for Lee to change the current balance without first mining what is a very rich seam indeed. To anyone considering  developing a career as a stand-up I’d recommend this book as a must-read before you stand wrong side of the mic stand.

Google Book Settlement

I’ve posted a new blog on the HI~Arts website, offering my take on what’s the best course of action before the author opt-out deadline of 28th Jan.

The link is:

http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/default.aspx.locid-hianewq7h.Lang-EN.htm

Interesting insights into publishing in Ireland

The new blog ‘Irish Publishing News’ is an aggregating site for daily news and features on the Book industry in Ireland. One of its first threads has been a fascinating series (five parts) on Irish publishing, including a forensic straw-poll (if that’s a possibility) of opinions of how many sales its takes to be a top 1000 selling title in Ireland, compared with the real figures. A little over 1500 gets you in amongst the top 1000 it seems, and that’s a lot less than those polled imagined! The series reveals some familiar trends in terms of lowering average price sales putting pressure on the industry as a whole, and the dominance of the UK book trade.  Highly recommended. 

http://irishpublishingnews.com/2010/01/04/publishing-success-in-ireland-part-one/

Digital Economy Bill – New Article From Robin Fry

Robin Fry continued his excellent commentary on the pit-falls of the Digital Economy Bill with this excellent article ‘ A Question of balance’ on the HI~Arts website:  http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/dec09-feature-question-of-balance.htm

Google Books – A Different Kind Of Copyright Infringement?

I am very grateful to Robin Fry, a copyright expert and Partner at Beachcroft LLP, one of the largest national commercial law firms in the UK, for his comments on Google Books. I had contacted Robin Fry following release by Beachcroft LLB of a press release calling for an ovehaul of the provisions in the Digital Economy Bill  (- Beachcroft LLP’s press release can be read here: http://www.beachcroft.co.uk/article.aspx?id_Content=1461).

As many will now know the Digital Economy Bill has, in my opinion, a wrong-minded approach to issues of copyright and  piracy and, as a previous blog posting of mine asserts, the UK government is at present engaged in a peculiarly misguided attack on so-called ‘piracy’ on the one hand whilst on the other remains silent about Google Books when other key European leaders (Germany and France) have, on behalf of their writers and authors,  opted out of the Google Books settlement. It is on these main assertions in my original blog (below) that I asked Robin Fry to comment, and as Robin Fry’s remarks below demonstrate, the Digital Economy Bill does nothing to clear up the confusion:

Robin Fry: “There is a real danger that publishers with large back-catalogues may enter into global licensing deals with Google without being certain that the original author-publisher agreements permit this. Authors could then use the new procedures contemplated by the Digital Economy bill to challenge both Google and the users who thought they were accessing these texts legitimately. 

“The Digital Economy bill does nothing to free up content which had been licensed for the old economy apart from for ‘orphan works’ which are still not defined.   It’s surprising that there should be such an obsession with file-sharing when far greater damage may be caused to authors whose copyrights are stripped away and sold on to Google without their permission. Isn’t that just a different kind of copyright infringement? ” [Ends].

Once again, my thanks to Robin Fry for these fascinating comments. Full details of Robin Fry’s work can be found at: http://www.beachcroft.co.uk/person.aspx?id_Content=769

Google Books – Did You Have A Say?

The many and varied reports over the last few days detailing the revised Google Books settlement have made for interesting reading.  There have been assessments that give the settlement a general welcome; many that accept it as the best possible compromise in a situation in which the power of Google is recognised as being almost unstoppable; and one or two that reject it as merely tinkering with the original. There are  many US analysts who hold that the settlement still does not have a chance of obtaining the approval.  Time will tell.

For me, one striking element of the entire process has been the role of the various trade organisations on both sides of the Atlantic who have acquired from somewhere a mandate to enter into negotiations adn agreements with Google, and then agree and sign up to a settlement supposedly on behalf of publishers and authors in the UK, but in reality on behalf of those across a large slice of the English language publishing world.  

Publishers obviously purchase and hold rights in various ways over the works they publish, and as such have sway over their property. They are free to join organisations and mandate those organisations to represent their interests. Authors likewise can join membership and trade bodies and participate in their decision-making processes.  But that does not mean that such organisations somehow own more holistic, generalised rights to define and control the very notion of copyright itself, and the laws that protect it. 

Authors of out of print works can opt out of the Google Books process, but that is not the same as having a tacit, legally enshrined and enforceable copyright over their work. The same is true of the so-called ’orphaned’ works,  and the sense I get of this is that the tacit situation could soon be - without any new law being passed by elected representatives in the UK - that control is something you have to actively opt for rather than having a tacit and passive right to enjoy.  This is like doctors and nurses organisations rather than elected law makers deciding that your organs will be donated after you die  unless you’ve opted out when alive.  It is a subtle shift that undermines a once basic right. OK, so you will be paid if Google have copied your out of print work without telling you, but that means, as many others have pointed out, that Google could have the right to grab your property, sell it without telling you and then give you some of the proceeds if you find out.        

Where does this type of mandate originate, and why, given the importance of the creative industries to the UK economy, hasn’t the UK government taken an interest in this issue in the same way as the US adn other across Europe, who are now exempt from the proposed agreement? Is this the kind of passivity in terms of  digital content that our cherished creators can expect from the UK government going forward?  This is a government that on the one hand is proposing legislation to remove internet access from those who download stuff  illegally, whilst at the same time remaining completely inactive when a subtle undermining of your rights as a creator over your work  is taking place before their very eyes. 

We have a government in the UK that is at present trying to get the government’s of other countries to sign-up to a unified code that would limit the excesses of the globalised banking world. Maybe we need such a process to properly define and settle rights in terms of global digital markets, and to impose limits on the excesses of those who abuse those agreements. Not the individuals who pirate stuff, but the multi-nationals who pirate stuff.

I don’t buy Google’s sudden altruism, this is a commercial activity not a charity, and an example of  power being wielded to undermine laws and legal principles that are inconvenient to its model of how the ‘net can be monetized for its own benefit.