A pop star who was born on the patch dies and the news operation goes into overdrive.
Liam Payne was born and grew up in Wolverhampton and died in Argentina.
In three days, the Facebook page pumps out 81 posts in 36 hours and in a 24-hour period three days after the death still nets 846 reactions and comments.
High fives around the newsroom and living proof that the old print adage ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ is alive and well.
On the face of it, this is a solid result for Reach plc’s Black Country Live, an offshoot of Birmingham Live, which is in itself the online inheritance of the mighty Birmingham Post & Mail.
Scratch the surface, and you can tell a whole lot more about where local journalism is in 2024. For starters, of the more than six dozen posts, there was almost nothing from the people of Wolverhampton. No vox pop in the street, no statement from Wolverhampton College where he was a student.
Reach would probably say the no death knock at his parents’ and family house showed they were respecting their privacy. Old hacks would probably point out that there are no staff left who know how to execute such awkward tasks. In the olden days they may have even dispatched to South America their own photographer and reporter.
Secondly, their coverage showed an extreme example of a local title’s online presence milking a story. In this, the story is nudged on inch by inch with fresh coverage. I’ve seen this tactic many times before and it especially gets used by Reach plc with celebrity stories. If you’re invested in the story it’s great. If you’re not, it gets irritating fast. It also squeezes out other news coverage.
Here’s a selection posted to Black Country Live’s Facebook page on Saturday October 19, three days after the news broke:
Heartfelt tribute to Liam Payne from his father
Heartfelt tribute to Liam Payne from Cheryl
Heartfelt tribute to Liam Payne from Cheryl
Tragic loss of Liam Payne in Buenos Aires
Heartbreaking loss of Liam Payne at 31
Heartfelt tribute to Liam Payne from Zayn Malik
Heartbreaking loss for Liam Payne’s family
Liam Payne’s tragic final moments revealed
Liam Payne’s phone could unlock tragic mystery
Liam Payne’s final moments revealed in tragic incident
Remembering Liam Payne’s joyful moments with fans
Disturbing behaviour from Liam Payne before tragic incident
Liam Payne’s final moments revealed by shocked fan
The singer, from Wolverhampton, was in Argentina when he died
Tragic end for Liam Payne at Argentinian hotel
But thirdly, and maybe most importantly is the backlash from readers.
Of the 158 comments attached to the Black Country Live’s Facebook page on Saturday October 19, a weighty 42 per cent of comments were criticising the milking of the story.
Kathryn Lane: I’m annoyed with myself for writing this and giving this page what they want which is interaction. The more they annoy people the more they comment and react and build their page. As others have said there are family and friends who have to see this bombardment. 84 posts and counting is just disrespectful.
Chris Way: Give it a rest Black Country Live?! How many stories more you going to milk out of this?!
Jenny Thomas: Enough is enough! Please just let the family, friends and fans grieve in peace.
Natalie Carrol: Give his family some respect and let him rest in peace. A seven year old got killed yesterday in an explosion, nothing really even mentioned about that. Every life is precious, not just a famous one.
Philip Alexander:That’s gotta be the 4th article today at least and it’s only 11am.
Full disclosure, I was a reporter for 12 years and nine of those I was up against the Black Country Evening Mail who had five reporters based in the West Bromwich office a mile away from the Express & Star where I worked. I got to know several of them. Some I speak to and others I wouldn’t have trusted an inch.
I’ve no criticism of the Reach plc employees pumping out content on the Black Country Live Facebook page and its 71,000 followers. They have a hard job and I don’t envy them. It’s a local story of a boy made good with a sad ending.
On the face of it, hey, all engagement is good engagement, right?
In reality, if you annoy your readers so much they talk about blocking you this can’t be a long term strategy.
Then there is also Black Country Live being accused of stealing an image of a young Liam with his Mum around X Factor time. A former colleague and Express & Star photographer Tim Thursfield accused them of the theft. He should probably know because he took the pic.
What does this mean for public sector comms?
Please learn this. Reach titles have long stopped considering themselves as newspapers. They are not alone in this.They are news brands. The paper of record from a few decades ago has long gone. Those days won’t return.
Reach in the Liam Payne coverage are following a 2024 web strategy to maximise clicks. But as Facebook navigates away from news and makes it harder for titles to reach an audience this strategy itself may soon seem as archaic as publishing a Football Final on a Saturday night to get the football scores out. The reach of Facebook content in news has already fallen by a third, the UK Press Gazette reported. Meanwhile, on Reach titles, reporters are being asked to write eight pieces of content per shift.
News and how we consume it is very much changing. But in a crisis we still turn to the local paper, or rather brand. The Liverpool Echo, a Reach title whose brand is strong enough to resist the company-wide ‘Live’ rebranding, led some vital reporting in the summer of the Southport murders and subsequent rioting.
The Live brand does have an audience in the Black Country with 78 per cent of adults living in the Black Country weekly see some form of content, JICREG shows
We are told that local titles play an important role in the health of local democracy. They used to, anyway.
The milking strategy for stories does no-one any good in the long term. It iritaes people. It underlines the importance for the public sector of having their own channels. It also undermines confidence in people in their trust in the ability of a title to cover their patch’s news.
The Liam Payne story could be dismissed as a one off. But it taps into regular observation of the scarcity of local news reporting I’ve heard elsewhere.
As the trust in local titles dwindles day-to-day, what happens next?
Thanks for the thoughts Dan. As with every story or event covered, it’s important to look at what people are saying.
If I can challenge a little bit on your positioning of how Reach sees local news brands. As with local newspapers, the aim is to be as relevant to as many people as possible, and to recover the relevance lost as newspaper sales dwindled.
I think BirminghamLive/Birmingham Mail proves time and again that it takes its commitment to public interest local journalism very seriously. It is leading from the front with the child poverty crisis, its coverage of the many challenges facing Birmingham City Council have been well documented, and it has also become a beacon for mainstream local news in how to be representative of diverse local communities.
And titles across Reach are good at making sure local democratic content is more widely read than it used to be. I believe that is good for democracy, and while supported by many in local government, sadly there are too many cases of obstructions being put in the way in the pursuit of local democracy journalism. It is also an important counterbalance to direct local government comms, which, a bit like we saw with some council newspapers of old, can be abused. Indeed, a council local to me last week provided a write up of a contentious planning application for which it is the applicant. Its coverage failed to mention the many objections being raised to the scheme, during the meeting, which thankfully were reported by the reporter at the meeting (an LDR), which in turn made it into the public domain.
It goes without saying that we don’t want to erode trust. The people who used to tut (and undermine) the local newspaper when you and I were reporters can now do so with megaphones – we saw this in spades during the riots over the summer, where siren voices made local journalists the target of violence. And it’s important to look at what people are saying and see what we do next.
I’d like to counter your counter.
As a former employee, I can confidently say Reach has systematically destroyed local news coverage.
The premature acceleration of an admittedly declining local print empire hastened the digital descent into metric driven, populist nonsense.
An interesting observation is how few, if any, of these closed titles were offered for sale.
It would have been soul destroying for existing staff to see any titles sold on and thriving. It would have also given lie to the Emperors New Clothes business model.
More hits doesn’t equate to more relevant, as you’ll be patently aware.
I’d be interested to see your metrics on average time spent on pages. The number of trips to other content from the landing page is also a key indicator of how your content is actually landing with people. Bounce rate must be legendary.
The dream of the digital crowd who convinced the company there was only an online way forward in 2013/14 has been handsomely rebuffed in your P&L figures.
Sacrificing good journalists in exchange for shareholder dividends also fails to give confidence quality journalism was ever the aim.
The reliance on centrally produced content doesn’t serve local journalism or local populations.
On LDRs, I was one. I know several. The pressure on them to produce for the Reach machine, rather than serving their democratic remit is widely known among that fraternity.
I’m aware of journalists being told not to go out on jobs because they need to produce “content”. Note the term “content”, not news.
Verification and prosecution of detail in stories is woeful in many cases. Along with poor grammar, lacklustre spelling and almost unreadable stories on mobile devices, it doesn’t give confidence quality is the main driver. It’s lowest common denominator nonsense in the main, with a few hardy souls still fighting to get some news out in between.
Frankly, I think the author of this story was kind in his assessment and I salute his restraint.
Hi Stavros. There is no data to support the idea that focusing on digital audiences hastened print decline. We constantly checked for this, comparing ourselves to organisations which weren’t focusing on digital audience growth and the decline rates were the same. I believe we have sold titles which were due to be closed. There are precious few, if any, examples of titles opening in areas where we have had no choice but to close.
The more people who see local journalism, the greater the impact it can have. The switch to digital only exposed a relevance problem which had been masked for a long time by classified revenue. We live in a world where we have to compete with so many other things to grab attention of readers. So much of the journalism some like to belittle as not being to their taste actually sends people on to local journalism as well.
On the LDR scheme, we have clear rules from the BBC to work within and try to do that at all times. If we get it wrong, we correct what we’re getting wrong. I’d rather we trying to be a partner in making the scheme work rather than just a recipient of the content created, and the LDRs I speak to (who are quick to tell me when we get stuff wrong as they should) say the same too. I’m sorry your experience wasn’t a better one.
Data this year has local audience reach going up, and page views per session rising too which suggests we’re doing something right. But that shouldn’t distract from constantly listening to feedback and asking ourselves what we can do better.