I am in Belfast to speak at the rebirth of a vibrant newspaper group. Well, more of a relaunch really, with a new name and a renewed sense of purpose. So, in a twinkling, the Andersonstown Newspaper group of yesterday becomes the Belfast media group from today. The new name is certainly justified since the group has titles covering the majority of the city and its managing director, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, clearly wishes to expand still further.
The group's papers - the flagship Andersonstown News, the North Belfast News, the South Belfast News and the Irish-language Lá - have performed well in their various markets. But what makes these papers so special for me is the way they exemplify what we mean by niche marketing and hyper-locality. They understand their readers and stay close to them. The Andersonstown News clearly has a political agenda, having been in the forefront of supporting Sinn Féin's long crusade for peace. As with all papers that are both transparent and passionate in their politics, the readers are never under an illusion about the editorial content. That's why so many people buy both issues of the bi-weekly.
Most of my speech was dedicated to explaining why local papers in Britain have not done so well. Some have suffered from the breaking up of communities. Local papers do best in places where there is a relatively stable community, as there undoubtedly is in west Belfast. On the other side, some papers have let their communities down by offering the wrong kind of content, imitating the shock-horror-probe characteristics of national papers rather than sticking to the basics. The best local papers eschew big headlines week after week about crime and choose to be sober, sensible and responsible organs, acting in the public interest.
I said: "Newspapers are the glue for communities. They are the record of a community, embracing its past and its present. To the journalists writing every day, it's all about the present. They write about the latest school sports achievements, that week's births, marriages and deaths, the most recent council decision, what the local opinion-formers are saying. But, for many of readers, there is an historical dimension to it all. They interpret these current events in a very personal context. The older ones unconsciously fit them into the pattern of their understanding of the history of the community. The younger ones enjoy the fact that they are part of a wider community and revel in those moments when they 'show off' by featuring in the paper.
"All of a newspaper's content - the crime and the charitable works, the sports results and the election results, the serious dramas and the trivial fluff - all of it has a greater resonance than we often realise. It forms part of the tapestry of the readers' own lives, giving it a meaning, a sense of place and purpose. That's why 'community newspapers' are so important."
Of course, I also addressed the growing importance of the net, urging that the Belfast media group get involved in video content because, apart from its editorial worth, it is an important way of attracting the kind of advertising that will bring in much-needed online revenue. Right now, the paper's website requires a lot of upgrading. But I also have a hunch that, as fast as we're seeing newsprint decline, papers like the Andersonstown News will probably hold on longer to their newsprint audience than many other less focused papers.
