Hyperlocal web sites like MyWelshpool can keep the local news sector alive but archaic legislation controlling public sector advertising spend needs to be removed, according to the co-founder of its parent company MyTown Media Ltd.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, David Williams said: “It’s a case of evolution; it’s how people’s habits are changing.”
David joined presenter Vaughan Roderick for a debate on the future of the news media, following reports that two printed newspapers in north Wales would have closed this week. They were bought in the nick of time, but the question remained: Is time running out for print news?
“The onset of internet and the way it has changed our everyday lives, unfortunately - or fortunately, in our case - has meant that people are receiving their information online,” said David: “They're doing their shopping online, they're buying their music online, and these days, more and more people are reading their news online.”
Asked to relate MyTown's background - did it grow from printed newspapers or was it an entirely separate project, he said: “We’ve started afresh; three years ago we launched MyWelshpool, which was a pretty dynamic announcement at the time, because there weren't that many hyperlocal sites around in 2010.”
He added: “We launched the first site three years ago, the second site six months later; we’re not losing anything on those sites and anything we make in excess is being pumped into the two new sites which we've launched in Radnorshire and Breconshire.
“Three years on, they seem to be springing up all over the UK. It’s a mixture of independent groups of journalists like ourselves, and also the main newspaper groups have finally cottoned on that this is the way forward, and they’re now migrating their news onto the internet, more and more.
“We found that there was somewhat of a black hole that was opening up, purely because people's habits were changing; they were no longer picking up their local newspapers in the numbers that they were, so we felt that there was an opportunity there - we took advantage of it and it has proved extremely popular.”
The presenter suggested that such popularity might point to a migration in the opposite direction - from the internet to print - in order to attract advertising. But David said this was not likely.
“We’re not considering a print version,” he said. “We have created a business model that is actually very effective and we’re attracting growing numbers of advertisers.”
He added that hyperlocal sites might not receive their due - as far as advertising is concerned - because of the perceived reluctance of local and national government to place advertising. This may be due to legislation, he pointed out.
“There is a huge debate that is brewing nationally in terms of the public sector spends; at the moment big amounts of money are still being ploughed into local newspapers in terms of public notices and so forth - actually they feel that they're hamstrung by legislation, that they have to be advertising with local papers.
“Once it becomes an open market in terms of being able to bid for public sector spend, that's when the hyperlocal section will take off in earnest.”
MyTown’s four sites – MyWelshpool, MyNewtown, MyRadnor and MyBrecon – currently welcome around 25,000 users every month who read in excess of 180,000 pages of local news, sport, business and features. They also have almost 8,000 social media followers. This year it launched a mobile app (pictured) for the Welshpool and Newtown sites.
You can listen to the discussion on the Sunday Supplement podcast for May 19, which may be downloaded from http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/supplement - the segment starts 18 minutes and 29 seconds into the programme.