I am almost flabbergasted that Press Gazette is making such a hoo-ha about "allowing" online journalists to enter the regional press awards this year. Highlighting the fact that online has not been included until now just goes to show how irrelevant the awards are - and, more tellingly, how ridiculously detached the regional press has become.
People that love local newspapers will violently disagree, and of course those people, if so inclined, will say that regional newspaper sites are doing some interesting, innovative work in this area.
My point is slightly different: few people that live online - particularly young people - won't will start out by seeking their local newspaper site when they look for news. Community is no longer defined by location but by interest. And where a local story is of interest to a web user, the chances of their newspaper being "out there" enough to be part of The Web Conversation are pretty slim.
Our own Stephen Brook insists that the online efforts of the regional press should have been recognised in these awards earlier, but the fact they have been overlooked until now indicates how detached the industry is from the vast and very vibrant community of people that live online.
Rather piecemeal efforts to put video in the classified section or slapping Google Maps at the end of a story really aren't enough - but then what should we expect from an industry dominated by penny-pinching corporates with no short-term financial incentive to invest in innovative new journalism.
Most regional journalists, as far as I can can tell, are stuck in a time warp where they feel they are protecting some long-cherished, socially valuable notion of Proper Journalism.
How often is that really the case in local newspapers? See note about ownership above, as well as well-documented battles with management that will try to get away with paying journalists £12,000 salaries.
It doesn't help that so many print journalists are hasty to dismiss "citizen journalism" (after putting it in quote marks, just to reinforce their disapproval) without taking the time to understand what it is and why it is happening. The best citizen journalism projects are vibrant, exciting - and fulfill a demand for detailed, relevant and responsive local news that newspapers, for whatever reason, increasingly fail to provide.
I know there is great work being done by journalists, but the industry just has to meaningfully engage with all this new opportunity and not just tack it on when it suits.
I feel duty bound to point out that the awards' ugly sister, the British Press Awards, still has no online awards. Astonishing.
Press Gazette's new sugar daddy Tony Loynes in his opening few lines at the ceremony last month couldn't wait to apologise enough that they weren't included this year, and then made vague promises about the future.
A token award category for best website made an appearance in 2002 and 2003, and then evaporated again. PG's then editor told me in 2004 that everyone was sick of the BBC winning the best website award, so they decided to ditch it. Hardly in the spirit of competition, is it?
