journopig: monitoring the media

As part of Sarah Hartley’s project on Help Me Investigate to analyse how much local council coverage there is in regional newspapers (see her original blog post on it here), we’ve been looking at the most recent (19 November) edition of The Oxford Times.

The Oxford Times is a big paper. By that, we mean the number of published pages is quite impressive; this week, there were 184. In a city like Oxford, which is full of students and academics, you’d expect the paper to be of a high standard, informative, intelligent and newsy – which, on first glance, it is.

The arts coverage is good, and it maintains an intelligent tone throughout (we should state here that Journopig One does some freelance work for The Oxford Times, so may be slightly biased about its arts coverage). It has a distinctive feel that separates it from other Oxfordshire weeklies.

But when you break down the number of pages given to non-news related items or supplements, things start looking bleaker.

This week, there were a:

• Christmas Light Night publicity supplement – 8 pages
• Oxfordshire Food supplement – 8 pages
• Property section – 80 pages
• Weekend section (arts, TV, wildlife etc) – 36 pages

The main part of the paper was therefore reduced to 52 pages, which could be further broken down into its constituent parts:

• Business section – 2 pages
• Appointments – 5 pages
• Family announcements – 1 page
• Classified ads – 7 pages
• Sport – 6 pages
• Letters – 2 pages
• Public notices – 3 pages

This left just 26 pages of news out of the total 184 page newspaper.

We counted the equivalent of just three pages of council stories within this 26 page total, using Sarah’s guide to counting up coverage; but we were being generous by including brief mentions of, or quotes by, councils or councillors.

• Two stories were about planning. One was about the difficulties Oxford Brookes University is having with its expansion schemes, which included a reference to Oxford City Council refusing its planning application two months ago. Another story quoted the city council about a planning application to revelop a shopping centre.
• Another story seemed to be about a council-operated scheme to collect food waste from people’s houses; but although it quoted a city councillor, nowhere did the piece state that it was a council scheme.
• One story wasn’t about the city council, but simply mentioned that it “welcomed” the opening of a new museum. Another story again just quoted a councillor welcoming something.
• A “local news” story mentioned an ecotown summit, with one of its organisers being Cherwell District Council.
• The city council have saved some toilets, said another brief story.
• And there was only one significant story, half a page on Oxfordshire County Council cuts.

We reckon there were more news stories about Oxfordshire NHS than about local councils.

Of course, there were three pages of public notices from the city and district councils in Oxfordshire, but these were buried at the back and weren’t in the news pages.

There was also one reader’s letter that included mention of a council, but this was part of the regular letters section, rather than the main news.

We were slightly surprised by the findings, as we had been fairly confident that a newspaper of The Oxford Times’ size and status would contain a good amount of council coverage. Its circulation area includes not only Oxford City Council but also district councils such as West Oxfordshire, Cherwell, South Oxfordshire and Vale Of White Horse – which serve diverse rural areas.

But perhaps The Oxford Times assumes that other regional newspapers – such as the daily Oxford Mail, or the weeklies in the district, such as the Banbury Guardian or Witney Gazette – will cover the councils, and leave it to be more arty and intellectual.

We’ll be looking at those other regionals in the very near future to see if they really do pick up that council baton. Because if they don’t, then who does make those councils accountable?

If you want to analyse your local newspaper and see how it compares, have a look at Help Me Investigate’s survey here.