#JNTM: Think of Conservative local media plans as multimedia, not just TV, says Roger Parry

Don't think of it as local TV, think of plans from the Conservatives as multimedia propositions, former Johnston Press chair Roger Parry told delegates at a University of Westminster conference today.

Jeremy Hunt yesterday cited Parry's proposals for local television "stations" in his speech that killed off the Labour initiated Independently Funded News Consortia to replace ITV and STV news provision. But Trinity Mirror boss Sly Bailey - one of the IFNC beneficiaries - said her company didn't see 'City TV' "as a viable proposition."

Parry, in a report for the Conservatives last year, proposed creating 80 local media companies (LMCs) which would deliver TV, print and online services to local communities. A typical LMC would cover cover a single city or group of towns and "combine the media formats of local television, radio, print and websites".

Today, Parry faced hyperlocal blogger and trainer Will Perrin and former deputy chair of Ofcom Richard Hooper, who were involved in the IFNC process. Hooper joked that the guillotine has fallen and that he and Perrin were now "headless".

Speaking on a panel at the Journalism's Next Top Model event, Parry argued that local newspapers are a true reflection of where economies are and the reason that regional and local newspapers have been successful.

There is a new opportunity, he said, for television people to talk to the newspapers and the digital people.

The reason previous TV experiments by local newspapers had failed was because they had taken the wrong approach, he suggested. Channel M was operating on a cost base like a traditional ITN business, he said. "The level of integration [with the local paper] was virtually non-existent," Parry added.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk afterwards, Parry said that it was "very dangerous to think about these things just as local TV stations; local television historically has very high costs and high production value."

This is doing what newspapers did, with new technological tools, he added, calling the new proposals a local journalism "solution set".

Journalism.co.uk reporter Jude Townend spoke to Parry at the event, listen here:



Will Perrin argued that local bloggers could produce relevant, accurate news content in local areas.

He outlined his plans for a local video and aggregation site, which takes feeds from hyperlocal sites, HelpMeInvestigate and other places.

It would take maybe £150,000 to get it going: "it's not millions," Perrin said.

Since the IFNC announcement he will be "getting it back up again," he said. When the panel joked he was also surviving on public funding, via the 4iP grant for his Talk About Local training and publishing initiative, he said he was nowhere near being as much of a "subsidy junkie" as the BBC.

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