Reportagem na “The Economist” (07/11/2015) destaca a crise enfrentada pelos jornais regionais britânicos, um cenário que em nada lembra o agito nas redações desses veículos nas últimas décadas do século passado. Os anúncios classificados sumiram e ao longo da última década mais de 200 jornais regionais fecharam – mais de a metade gratuitos.
Confira abaixo os primeiros dois parágrafos da reportagem:
When Mike Brooke started out in journalism in the 1960s, regional newsrooms were buzzing. The paper he worked on had a dozen reporters to track down stories. Now Mr Brooke covers the news by himself in a “media centre” in the East End of London. Although his organisation breaks local news stories online, he rarely goes out to do reporting. Local papers used to be “the pillar of the community”, he sighs, but now mostly just fill space.
The past few years have been difficult for the newspaper industry. But the decline of regional papers, which relied more on now-extinct classified advertisements, has been particularly steep. Over the past decade just over 200 titles have closed (over half of them free). Since 2008 the number of print readers at titles such as the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Mail and the Midlands’ Express & Star has fallen by half. This has troubled politicians and media types alike. In January James Harding, the director of BBC News, argued that as parts of Britain were gaining more devolved powers, the decline of local news created a “democratic deficit”. George Osborne, the chancellor, has mooted a business-rate relief for local papers in England.
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