The BBC shouldn’t consult about linking to community news sites — it should just get on with it

It’s summer, so it must be BBC-hunting season. The UK’s politicians are competing to remind us that they love it so much, they want to kill it, carve it up and give it to their friends.

One of the strongest scents these loyal foxhounds are chasing comes from the phenomenally-successful BBC News website. I spent 10 years there, and I’m still proud of the work my former colleagues produce day in, day out.

Back when I started, the site was less than a year old, and still treated with suspicion by the rest of the corporation’s news department. Now, to most readers, it is the BBC’s news department — reaching people who avoid the TV news and eschew radio bulletins.

Commercial rivals complain that its huge reach damages their own products. But it isn’t the BBC’s fault that they were so slow in developing their own web offerings. Even then, a late start doesn’t rule you out of the race — it took until 2003 for Mail Online to belatedly appear.

In any case, Northern Ireland benefits from a disproportionately large slice of the BBC budget, but has more local newspapers than anywhere else in the UK. Meanwhile, the sector is dying in London, where the BBC’s local offerings are thin.

These moans are nothing new — in the 1980s, the newspaper industry complained Ceefax would put it out of business. But the way the BBC is funded gives it a special responsibility to promote innovation and high standards across the industry, and to give new talent a leg up.

That applies online too. Back when I was toiling in the news website’s entertainment section, we’d always look for a good fan site or two (remember fan sites?) to link onto, so someone else benefited from our reach. (In fact, I think we managed to knock a Have I Got News For You site offline when Angus Deayton was sacked — sorry, whoever ran that.)

Supporting the best of the web

Many years on, the web world’s a bit more sophisticated. Live-blogging means the BBC can link out and support the best of the web without too much hard work. The new-ish Local Live services are linking out to local newspaper websites, highlighting good stories that might be a bit too parochial for the BBC to cover itself.

All this, however, assumes that the local newspapers are the only people out there covering local news. In many places across the country, council and court reporting has been abandoned, as ever-more depleted and distant newsrooms try to cover huge news patches by following Twitter.

Stepping into that breach is an uneven patchwork of community news sites — or hyperlocals, though I feel that term’s becoming increasingly irrelevant — who are doing the donkey work that local papers used to do.

Some try to turn a profit, some are simply done out of a sense of social duty. Some are cheerfully partial — often emerging out of some local disagreement — while others are scrupulously even-handed.

I should declare my interest here — I have two local sites: 853, which covers issues in and around Greenwich, south-east London; and the Charlton Champion, which tries to look at news and events in the SE7 postcode where I live.

Reaching out to community sites? Brilliant

So it’s brilliant to see the BBC talking about expanding Local Live so it covers community sites. In fact, it’s great to see the BBC embracing all things independent and local — I was lucky enough to take part in its Data Day in January, which looked at how data journalism can work for local newspapers and community sites. It’s encouraging to see its College of Journalism reach out far beyond the BBC’s own staff.

BBC English Regions head honcho David Holdsworth talks warmly about new community sites.

“The growth in numbers of community news providers — often the closest source of information to their audience — should be properly reflected in these conversations. I believe their role in connecting to local audiences is crucial to the BBC’s understanding of the changing ways audiences consume and engage with news and information in their local area.”

But then he announces a consultation. Hold on… wouldn’t it be easier just to do it? It’s a peculiar BBC habit to faff around and prevaricate instead of just doing something.

I’m sure every BBC journalist who compiles a Local Live page has a list in their head of favourite websites about their local area. So why aren’t they linking to them now?

Just get on with it

It shouldn’t need a consultation — it just needs empowerment. Let the teams behind each local BBC site compile an RSS feed of decent local sites, and then let them to go for it.

This isn’t just about community news sites. Diamond Geezer and IanVisits aren’t news sites as we know it, but consistently produce material that beats the established news media. What’s holding the BBC back from linking to them? Its local coverage will be richer and more varied as a result.

There’s a lot of talk and chin-stroking about about how best to make community news sites financially sustainable. Yet few people go into this thinking they can make money — most sites are set up the people behind them enjoy telling stories, and one day they just decided to get on with it.

The BBC should be learning from that spirit. Never mind consulting about community sites. As one of the BBC’s best-regarded director generals once said: cut the crap, and make it happen.