Thursday, April 26, 2012

Johnston Press's hopes for a local media future

The troubled Johnston Press media group (owners of the Scotsman) have set out their plans for the future in a fascinating document that seems to be available to the world. They  see the future as being local and mobile and they want to become involved in communities. They aren't the only ones chasing this goal actually and perhaps all the big media hopefuls won't  get there. The world of news content generation and the way people read it is changing dramatically and rapidly. More and more people are coming to the Gurn on Iphone or Android devices and also tablets, so maybe the future is mobile but how do the traditional media folk transfer their advertising revenue onto these platforms? Who wants to look at pages of ads on a mobile? 

"The future of local media will however be very different in its delivery. It will be predominantly digital on a daily and hourly basis with most print editions being a weekly, in-depth, read," according the the Group.
Maybe we're already there in Nairnshire with
folk coming online to the Gurn and elsewhere for a bit of news and going to the Nairnshire Telegraph for a once a week immersion. Maybe the Johnston Press or others will be able to dominate this scene one day but as somebody once said (recently) "we are all the media now" and witness Nairn County fans tweeting live reports from the Highland League if you don't believe that.

Big media are chasing the hyperlocal news content. Out there there are at least 500-600 blogs/journals  creating that content across the UK. A document entitled "Here and Now, UK hyperlocal media today"  is an enlightening read about that scene if you wish to know more.

1 comment:

maclocal said...

The future is The Gurn, hyperlocal before there was hyperlocal