To build grassroots democracy, journalists across the world are consolidating and reinventing their local media

To build grassroots democracy, journalists across the world are consolidating and reinventing their local media

The Bureau Local is a collaborative media, launched in the United Kingdom in 2017, built on the idea that “holding power to account, both locally and nationally, is crucial for a just and equitable society” and that “local journalism is integral to this accountability”.
The team gathered in London in July 2018.

(Rob Stothard/The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

It is news to no one that local journalism, and the press in general, is in crisis. The number of local newspapers in the United Kingdom went from 1,303 to 982 between 2007 and 2017. In Canada, over 200 went out of print between 2008 and 2019.

Newspaper companies are struggling to find a sustainable economic model in the face of digitisation. In some parts of the world, this very same type of journalism – centred on proximity, on monitoring the activity of local institutions and covering regional news – has never been given a chance to develop. And yet local journalism is essential to democracy, as it in enables more balanced coverage across countries, helping to avoid certain population groups being left behind. Moreover, the “proximity” characterising this type of reporting plays a key role in building the public’s trust in the media.

The decline of the local press is therefore a problem. In the United States, almost one in five local papers have vanished over recent years.

And the repercussions are serious: according to a study by the universities of Illinois and Notre Dame (Indiana), there is a causal link between these newspaper closures and poorer financial management within local authorities, as a result of their being less closely monitored and less held to account.

The decline of the local press in England also has grievous repercussions. It is argued, for example, that wider and more local news coverage in the London Borough of Kensington would probably have helped to limit the risks in the case of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire that claimed the lives of 70 people in June 2017.

Investigative journalism: the way forward?

Given the stakes, the question of how to keep local media alive is being asked with ever-greater insistence. Investigative journalism is one of the potential answers to the crisis in local media. In Europe, a number of media outlets operating at local level have decided to specialise in this field, such as the Bureau Local, in the United Kingdom, and Mediacités, in France.

“There is very little investigative journalism at local level in France,” says Jacques Trentesaux, editorial director of Mediacités, a “multi-city” online newspaper focusing on four major French cities, other than Paris (Toulouse, Lyon, Lille and Nantes).

“The national press is largely Parisian and it is ever less present beyond the périphérique, the ring road surrounding inner Paris, due to the fall in resources. As for the regional newspapers, some are near monopolies within their areas, which also means there is less emulation within the profession.”

For Mediacités, a closer eye needs to be kept on local authorities and institutions. “Decentralisation, which has been underway for the last 35 years in France, has given rise to powerful local institutions, steered by appointed or elected officials with enlarged powers,” recall the founding members of the news site. Mediacités therefore works with around 100 freelance journalists to look into local institutions, representatives and businesses in the cities covered, for example, and has also created an “inquiry launcher” (lanceur d’enquêtes), a secure platform open to all citizens wishing to share concerns and information. In 2018, Mediacités received an award for its work as a “counterpower to local fiefdoms”, from anti-corruption association Anticor.

Collaborative and data driven journalism

On the other side of the Channel, the Bureau Local (part of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a not-for profit media organisation based in the UK) has also made local investigative journalism its focus, using a very large network of members. There too, the results are concrete. The information compiled by local journalists led members of parliament to call for measures to deal with the serious flaws exposed in the immigration enforcement system, and to the opening of a parliamentary debate about the budget cuts affecting domestic violence refuges across England, for instance.

The Bureau’s ability to collect large amounts of data locally, on the whole of the United Kingdom, enables it to combine the data and paint a very precise picture of a given situation, as well as providing a national overview.

To do this, the organisation uses “data journalism”, enabling it to analyse data published online by local authorities. It is a very specific skill, and one that is becoming increasingly essential. “An ever-increasing amount of information is being digitised and structured into data,” developer-journalist at the Bureau Local, Charles Boutaud, tells Equal Times. “But the skills required to collect, store and analyse the huge amount of data now at our disposal remains in the hands of a few. As such, a big part of what we do is the heavy-lifting required to turn that data into something people can feel comfortable working with.”

The Bureau Local – which was awarded the European Press Prize for innovation last year – also makes the information it collects available to other media outlets (Cambridge Independent, for example, used the data gathered by the Bureau Local to publish an article on how Brexit might cause a hospital staffing crisis in the area).

Whether it be at the pre- or post-investigation stage, the collaborative work of the Bureau Local is crucial. It is thanks to its network of over 450 collaborators, ranging from national and regional reporters to local bloggers, civic tech workers, activists and experts, that it is able to collect and analyse data all across the United Kingdom. It describes itself as “a collaborative, investigative network revealing stories that matter to communities across the UK”.

Its cross-cutting approach is similar to that used by ProPublica (a non-profit organisation producing investigative journalism), in the United States, especially when it comes to cooperation between media outlets. ProPublica, which conducts investigations throughout the country, encourages other press companies to reproduce its articles and to use – be it free of charge or for a fee – the figures and raw data it collects. It has also launched a local reporting network through which it offers support to local and regional newsrooms across the country working on crucial investigative projects. It is also a way of supporting local journalism: “As many existing local news organizations grapple with budget constraints, accountability journalism has been shrinking and underfunded,” it explains on its website, in an article on the move to expand its local reporting.

The importance of editorial independence

A few thousand kilometres to the south, in Colombia, the journalists at La Silla Vacía (“The Empty Chair”, the term used in Spanish in reference to various political events in the country, but also alluding to the fact that there “is a space to be filled by better journalism”), and its various regional editions, stress the importance of editorial independence in a country where such freedom does not always come easy. “There are very few local media outlets and there is, above all, very little diversity,” explains Juan Esteban Lewin, chief editor of the news website. “There are usually a couple of major radio broadcasters in the cities and a local newspaper, plus a TV station covering various departments. They often rely largely on state advertising, so they are heavily influenced by local politicians.”

La Silla Vacía is therefore trying to act as a counter-power. Empowered by its network of local newsrooms, the site offers critical analysis of political news and current events across the country.

To ensure its independence, it started out by securing funding from international foundations, such as the Open Society Institute. “The donations helped to sow the seeds of independence, as they enabled us to do journalism without relying on commercial links,” explains the editor. “This also allowed us to lay the foundations for establishing new sources of financing that don’t conflict with our DNA.”

The money from foundations currently represents less than half of La Silla Vacía’s resources, as it has since managed to open alternative sources of financing, be it through sponsorship systems linked to the “network of experts” operating on the site, partnerships with universities, or the holding of events and workshops (such as “immersion courses” to raise future leaders’ awareness of the major challenges in the country).

Working to give a mouthpiece to those without a voice

In Africa, the role of local journalism as a tool for building democracy takes on particular significance, especially in countries where the media (especially the written press) is not always accessible to a large part of the population, is often closely tied to the government and does not really reflect local realities. And even more so where the political environment is tense.

A radio news programme produced by Studio Kalangou in Niger, West Africa, seeks to address these problems, by working to give everyone a voice. “When we went to Diffa to record a programme on the repentant Boko Haram insurgents [editor’s note: militant Islamist group responsible for widespread atrocities in the region], we gave a voice to everyone involved in the situation,” Pauline Bend, representative of Fondation Hirondelle, which is helping to develop this media outlet, explained during a speech in September 2018.

Fed by journalists from the capital and a network of regional correspondents, the two-hour daily news programme endeavours to cover the everyday lives of all Nigeriens, with independence and objectivity.

It works with around 30 partner radios and tries to be as close as possible to the population, very often rural, by broadcasting its content in the five languages spoken locally (the country has a very high illiteracy rate, and the use of the radio, a verbal communication medium, also responds to this problem). For Bend, the aim is to provide inclusive spaces for dialogue and information and, by so doing, to provide often marginalised population groups with the tools needed “to influence the decisions that are often made without them on issues that affect their daily lives”.

Regardless of the context, journalism still has a great deal to offer, at all levels. By ensuring its independence, it continues to demonstrate the crucial need for a counter-power to consolidate democracies, by fostering proximity and serving the public interest, to provide citizens with the tools, in the words of Bend, “to shape their own destinies”.

This article has been translated from French.