Adrian Roxan - Local Democracy, Journalism and Public Relations : The Changing Dynamics in Local Media and Public Sector Communications

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LOCAL DEMOCRACY, JOURNALISM AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

This is a critical examination of the impact of sustained large-scale austerity cuts on local government communications in the UK. Budget constraints have left public sector media teams without the resources for robust citizen-facing communications. The nose for news has been downgraded and local journalists, once the champions of public interest coverage, are a force much diminished. The book asks, what is lost to local democracy as a result? And what does it mean when no one is holding the countrys public spenders to account?

The authors present extensive interviews with communications professionals working across different council authorities. These offer important insights into the challenges currently being faced by communicators within local public services. The book also includes in-depth case studies on the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Rotherham child-grooming scandal and the Sheffield tree-felling controversy. These events all raise serious questions about the scrutiny and accountability of local authorities and the important role the media can and does play.

Local Democracy, Journalism and Public Relations provides new empirical data on, and the real-world views of, working communications teams in local government today. For students and researchers interested in local journalism and public relations, the book illuminates the current relationship between these professions, local democracy and political accountability.

Carmel OToole has worked in journalism and public relations for public and private sector organisations, including local government and Channel 4, since 1979. She is a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her research interests include local media and crisis communications management.

Adrian Roxan is a journalist and public relations practitioner. He has worked as a journalist and in the field of public relations for more than 40 years in local government, the NHS and central government. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His research interests include the media and its role in politics.

First published 2019

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 Carmel OToole and Adrian Roxan

The right of Carmel OToole and Adrian Roxan to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-138-04462-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-04464-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-17225-5 (ebk)

Adrian Roxan where I started

I started my first job as a journalist in 1978, working for a small, weekly local newspaper one of three in the area covered by the local council in Haringey, north London. I began as the most junior reporter fresh out of college in a newsroom containing an editor, deputy editor, chief reporter, arts correspondent and five other reporters.

The Hornsey Journal covered a varied area, including the wealthy suburbs of Highgate and Muswell Hill, through the less salubrious but up-and-coming communities of Finsbury Park and Wood Green.

Our main competitors were the Tottenham Weekly Herald, which overlapped our target area in Wood Green this was latterly joined as a rival by a freebie, the Haringey Independent. There was also the long established paid-for paper the Ham & High, which overlapped in the western area of our readership. Each reporter on the Journal was given a patch or area to cover with a brief to find out what was going on and provide a regular flow of localized news relevant to each patch.

As part of my role, I visited the local police station every week to find out what, if any, newsworthy crime had been committed and soon, once I had shown that I could write a reasonable news story, became interested in covering the local councils role in the wider community of the papers readership.

This was a febrile and frenetic time for local government, with the main news agenda being dominated by the winter of discontent in the last 12 months of the Labour government under Jim Callaghan. Margaret Thatchers election brought a wealth of local government stories as central government embarked on a cost-cutting exercise for local authorities.

This would eventually lead to the showdown between Haringey Council along with around 20 other councils with central government over the Rates Act commonly known as ratecapping in 1984/5, but I left the paper in 1982.

But my time in reporting the local authority saw a plethora of stories come my way in the form of cuts to services undertaken by the Council in a not too dissimilar nature to those sought under the austerity period from 2010.

These stories didnt just present themselves. I got them by regularly attending council meetings both full council meetings and many sub-committees. I spent many hours talking to councillors, council officers, local community groups and assembling a list of contacts willing to share what was going on.

I was not alone in doing this in a newsroom with six reporters, so it is fair to say that Haringey council found it difficult to act without the scrutiny of the local press through three reasonably resourced local papers and so was made fully accountable to its electors.

The picture today could not be more different, with shoestring budgets reducing local papers to a shadow of what I experienced in my first role in journalism.

The key is advertising, which paid for these reasonably resourced papers. Now advertising has migrated online and reduced in value so the model of a commercially owned local newspaper is fast receding from reality.

It goes without saying that, as the commercially viable model of local newspapers is fading, so its role as a guardian making sure that elected representatives such as local councillors are held to account for their decisions and actions is also a fast disappearing concept.

Carmel OToole where I started

I started on the Belper News in 1979 as a trainee reporter. The newspaper office was based then in the middle of the high street, in the heart of the little Derbyshire town. Local people would walk in with their obituary reports, racing pigeon and rugby match results, summer fayres and fund-raising events. They would also bring their stories about anti-social behaviour, crime, potholes and UFOs.

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