What if the decline of local media is not principally a problem for the media industry? What if it is a failure of civic infrastructure?
That proposition deserves to be discussed, tested and challenged. It should not be accepted simply because community media organisations, independent publishers or media-reform campaigners find it attractive. Nor should it be dismissed because it does not fit comfortably within the categories through which government has traditionally understood broadcasting and publishing.
The argument is that locally rooted communications capacity performs functions that communities increasingly cannot do without. It enables residents to understand decisions, scrutinise institutions, exchange reliable information, represent their experiences and participate in the cultural and civic life of the places where they live.
If that is correct, local, civic, community, cooperative and independent media should not be treated merely as a collection of vulnerable organisations seeking assistance. They should be considered as part of the foundational infrastructure of democratic life. The opportunity to test this proposition is immediate. The timescale is also narrow.
The UK Government’s Watch This Space Green Paper is establishing the direction of media policy. Work is proceeding simultaneously on local journalism, radio, media literacy, public-service media, online discoverability, BBC Charter renewal and devolution. Once these policies are translated into settled programmes, regulations and institutional relationships, it will be much harder to correct what has been omitted.
The question is therefore not whether a complete Foundational Media model can be implemented immediately. It cannot. The urgent question is whether government will establish a credible forum in which the proposition can be examined before the current policy window closes.
What Is Missing From The Government’s Media Model?
The Government has correctly identified trusted media as essential to democracy and social cohesion. The Green Paper describes media as part of the civic realm: a source of shared understanding, reliable information, cultural connection and common ground. Yet, the policy discussion remains concentrated on established public-service broadcasters, major publishers, global technology platforms and the future distribution of television.
Between these large institutions and the fragmented world of social media lies a neglected middle layer. It includes community radio stations, independent local publishers, cooperative newsrooms, specialist publications, local television services, podcasts, newsletters, civic-media projects, participatory digital platforms and community-led cultural organisations.
These organisations are not interchangeable.
- Some are commercial businesses.
- Some are charities, cooperatives or social enterprises.
- Some rely substantially on volunteers.
- Some concentrate on journalism and scrutiny.
- Others combine reporting with education, cultural participation, community development or media literacy.
They should not be romanticised. A small organisation is not necessarily accountable, representative or trustworthy simply because it describes itself as community-based or independent. But neither should institutional scale, longevity or national visibility be treated as automatic evidence of public value. The concern is that government policy may be looking for trusted media in the wrong places, using categories inherited from an earlier broadcasting and publishing system.
Does Devolution Require Communicative Devolution?
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has promised to move power into every postcode and promote development from the bottom up. The Government wants mayors, combined authorities, councils and other place-based institutions to take greater responsibility for investment, skills, transport, regeneration and economic development.
But transferring political and economic power does not automatically give citizens a stronger voice. It may produce the opposite result. Larger combined authorities and regional partnerships can exercise considerable influence while receiving less routine scrutiny than national government. Their structures are often unfamiliar to the public. Responsibility may be distributed across mayors, councils, boards, contractors, public agencies and private partners.
If local information systems are weak, devolution can increase the distance between institutional power and public understanding. That leads to a proposition which should be considered alongside the Government’s devolution programme:
Devolution transfers decision-making power. Foundational Media supplies the local information, scrutiny, participation and cultural voice that make devolved power legitimate and effective.
Communicative devolution would mean ensuring that every place has sufficient independent media capacity for residents to:
- understand who is making decisions and why;
- question public bodies and elected representatives;
- compare competing claims;
- discuss local priorities;
- acquire practical media and reporting skills;
- represent their own experiences; and
- participate in local civic and cultural life.
This idea needs testing. It raises difficult questions about independence, funding, representation and accountability. But those questions are reasons to investigate the proposition, not reasons to ignore it.
Can The Market Rebuild Local Media?
There is little evidence that the market alone will restore a geographically balanced local-media system. Advertising has migrated to global platforms. Print circulation has declined. Production and distribution costs have risen. Digital subscriptions and membership models work unevenly across different places and populations.
The Government’s Local News Fund announcement noted that as many as 4.4 million people may live in local-authority districts without a dedicated print, online, television or radio news outlet. These news deserts disproportionately affect deprived urban areas. This suggests a structural inequality.
New independent publications are most likely to succeed where communities possess sufficient disposable income, professional capacity, digital confidence and potential subscribers. Places experiencing deprivation or social fragmentation may have a greater need for trusted local information but fewer resources with which to sustain it.
Short-term grants may help individual organisations buy equipment, undertake experiments or reach new audiences. They do not necessarily create a viable local-media ecology. The Government should therefore test whether policy needs to move beyond supporting isolated outlets and attend instead to the conditions that enable locally rooted media to survive.
These conditions include:
- accountable ownership and governance;
- skilled staff and volunteers;
- affordable production facilities;
- shared technology and administrative services;
- fair access to audiences and distribution;
- public-interest commissioning;
- relationships with schools, libraries and universities;
- practical editorial and complaints standards; and
- appropriately governed, patient finance.
The issue is not simply whether individual organisations can be rescued. It is whether places possess enough communicative capacity to support democratic and civic life.
What Might Foundational Media Mean?
Foundational Media should be presented as a proposition for co-design, not as a finished doctrine that organisations are expected to endorse. The proposition is that locally rooted communications capacity is an essential part of civic infrastructure. Its value cannot be measured solely through audience size, advertising revenue, subscriber numbers or national visibility.
A useful model would support a mixed ecology. A community radio station might provide participation, volunteering, language provision, cultural expression and trusted emergency information. An independent newsroom might specialise in investigations and local-government scrutiny. A cooperative publisher might give readers and workers a formal role in governance. A public-service broadcaster might contribute commissioning, training, archives, facilities and distribution.
The purpose would not be to make every organisation conform to one institutional model. It would be to ask what forms of support and accountability should accompany different kinds of public benefit. The Government must also ask what Foundational Media is not.
- It is not a claim that every small provider is trustworthy.
- It is not a mechanism for ministers to influence editorial decisions.
- It is not an argument for indiscriminate public subsidy.
- It is not a campaign to weaken public-service broadcasters.
- It is not a demand for organisations to adopt a single political or editorial outlook.
These boundaries are essential if the idea is to be taken seriously.
What Should Government Be Attending To?
If the Foundational Media proposition is to be tested properly, the Government will need to attend to a series of connected questions.
Recognition And Policy Categories: Do current policy categories adequately recognise organisations that combine journalism, participation, education, cultural expression and community development? Recognition affects eligibility for funding, access to consultation, relationships with regulators, public-service commissioning and online discoverability. If the categories are too narrow, valuable forms of provision will remain invisible to policy.
Sustainable Capacity: What is the difference between emergency support and long-term capacity-building? Funding should be examined in relation to governance, skills, revenue development, shared services, technology and succession planning. Application and reporting requirements must also be proportionate. A system requiring extensive unpaid administrative work will favour larger organisations, regardless of their local value.
Editorial Independence And Accountability: How can public support be provided without enabling political influence over editorial decisions? Transparent criteria, independent decision-making, published conflicts of interest and clear complaints processes will be necessary. At the same time, providers receiving public benefits should be able to explain who controls their output, how corrections are handled and how complaints can be made.
The standards must be credible but proportionate. A volunteer-led station cannot reasonably maintain the same administrative system as a national broadcaster.
Public-Service Partnerships: Should the BBC and other public-service media organisations be judged partly by how they strengthen the wider media ecology? This might involve local commissioning, training, shared facilities, archive access, technical support and distribution partnerships. But partnership must not mean extracting stories, contributors or local knowledge without returning resources and value. Nor should it make smaller organisations dependent on the priorities of a dominant broadcaster.
Public Procurement And Commissioning: Could some public communication and cultural expenditure help develop independent local capacity? Public-interest commissioning might support explanatory reporting, multilingual information, community listening, cultural documentation and media-literacy work. This would require a firm boundary between public information and independent journalism. Public bodies must not be permitted to purchase favourable coverage or control editorial conclusions.
Discoverability And Distribution: The Green Paper proposes making trustworthy news easier to find on major online platforms. But who will qualify as trustworthy? If eligibility is restricted to established publishers and broadcasters, prominence rules may reinforce those that already possess the greatest reach. Criteria should be developed openly and should consider transparent ownership, editorial responsibility, corrections, complaints, local relevance and plurality. Institutional size should not become a proxy for trustworthiness.
Media Literacy As Participation: Is media literacy simply the ability to identify misinformation, or should it also include opportunities to participate in media production? Citizens develop critical understanding when they ask questions, check sources, record interviews, make programmes, discuss editorial choices and correct errors.
Community and civic-media organisations may be particularly well-placed to provide this participatory form of media literacy. The Government’s proposed collaboration between public-service media, civil society and the wider sector should therefore consider joint delivery, not just national awareness campaigns.
Devolved And Place-Sensitive Policy: Can a single national model reflect the different political, linguistic, economic and cultural circumstances of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? Within England, there are also substantial differences between mayoral city-regions, towns, rural communities, coastal areas and diverse urban districts.
Any credible approach should test contrasting place-based pilots rather than assume that a model developed in London or a major city-region will work everywhere.
Why Is A Forum Necessary Now?
The Government does not need to accept the Foundational Media proposition before investigating it. It does need a credible structure through which the proposition can be tested. The Watch This Space consultation itself asks whether collaboration should take the form of a “structured forum with agreed objectives and reporting”. This provides an immediate and unusually direct opportunity.
Lisa Nandy and Ian Murray should consider establishing a 12-month Civic and Foundational Media Forum, independently chaired and supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
At least half its membership should be drawn from civic, community, cooperative and genuinely independent providers. It should include all four nations and every English region, while also involving public-service broadcasters, civil society, education, libraries, local government, researchers and appropriate commercial organisations.
Its work should be transparent. Evidence, interests, minutes, disagreements and recommendations should be published. It should not regulate journalism, allocate existing grants or direct editorial content.
Within 12 months, it could:
- develop and test a working definition of Foundational Media;
- map provision, gaps and news deserts;
- examine standards and accountability;
- identify sustainable ownership and infrastructure models;
- consider fair approaches to commissioning and discoverability;
- design three contrasting devolved pilots; and
- recommend whether a permanent Civic Media Council or network is justified.
Why Is The Window So Narrow?
The urgency does not arise because every reform must be delivered immediately. It arises because the principal policy frameworks are being formed now.
The Green Paper will lead to final policy positions. The Radio Review is expected to inform further policy development. Local News Fund decisions will shape the Government’s understanding of sustainability and news deserts. BBC Charter renewal and public-service media reform will influence commissioning, partnerships and distribution for years.
The Government’s devolution programme is also moving from political declaration towards institutional implementation. If civic, community and independent media are absent while these systems are designed, they may later be invited to participate only on terms established by larger incumbent institutions.
The immediate request is therefore modest but urgent: establish the Forum, agree its safeguards and begin gathering evidence before the current policy tracks harden into separate settlements.
Can Consent Be Built Without Manufacturing Agreement?
The purpose of a forum should not be to recruit organisations to a predetermined position. It should build a shared understanding of the problem, test the evidence, identify disagreements and develop legitimate options. Consent does not mean unanimity. It means participants have been able to influence the questions, challenge assumptions, and see disagreements represented honestly.
Some organisations may reject the term Foundational Media. Others may support the diagnosis but dispute the proposed remedies. Established providers may argue that new structures would duplicate existing work. Community organisations may question whether government can convene the process without controlling it.
These objections should form part of the discussion. The proposition will become stronger if it survives scrutiny and weaker if it depends on avoiding difficult questions.
A Question The Government Should Not Postpone
The UK Government has an opportunity to move beyond managing the decline of local media. It can ask whether the country needs a more plural, accountable and sustainable system in which communities possess the means to understand public life and speak for themselves.
That proposition has not yet been proven. It requires discussion, evidence, practical testing and consent. But the absence of a finished answer should not become an excuse for postponing the question until the current media and devolution settlements are already fixed.
If power is genuinely to move into every postcode, should communicative power move with it? And if the answer might be yes, how much longer can the Government afford to wait before finding out?
Official Sources: Watch This Space Green Paper And Consultation; Local News Fund Announcement; Lisa Nandy’s Media Speech; Radio Review; and Andy Burnham’s First Speech As Prime Minister.