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More than a local edition
Local problems in India are compounding faster than solutions are being found. But the extent of national and regional coverage in our print and broadcast media is over-proportionately more than local news. More local journalism is the need, and will improve prospects for our local self-governance. The India Together editorial.

16 May 2005 - In response to an earlier editorial we wrote on journalism and proportion, a reader wrote back to say that unlike in western countries (the reader cited the United States), India does not have an abundance of reporting on local public affairs; most newspapers and broadcast media cover plenty of national and regional matters, but hardly any space is devoted to city or district level reporting at the same level of proportion or depth. This assessment is correct; newspapers need to redress the current disproportionately low coverage of public affairs and the lingering question of relevance of public matters to citizens by increasing the amount of local affairs coverage. Indeed, this may be necessary to build citizenship that develops a positive allegiance to our cities and a stronger political, but local identity as well.

Why is this significant?

As citizens most of our experiences and interaction with government departments and public officials happens where the rubber really meets the road - at the local level. This may be in dealing with municipal or panchayat administrations on taxes or permits, or likewise in local offices of state government departments. Also, in our developing society, citizens and officials alike are distraught over messy traffic management problems, water supply and sanitation, pollution, green zoning issues, slum development, fair wages and trading, and much more. It is here that we really encounter governance, and it follows naturally that reporting of this arena should be substantial and regular.

Furthermore, our cities in particular are in a situation where local problems are compounding faster than solutions are being found. But the extent national and regional coverage is over-proportionately more than local news. Metro and local supplements of most English newspapers do exist, indicating that publishers know that 'local news' is legitimate. But these supplements are typically only a few pages long; moreover they allocate only a portion of that space for city affairs, and even this not daily. Newspapers' assessment of citizen interest in public affairs mirrors our administrative legacy - i.e. it has been centralised to affairs at New Delhi and the state capitals, as opposed to more bottom-up growth, with the notable exceptions of 'juicy' matters like crime.

Some will argue that English newspapers in India are read only by economically better off citizens who are mostly cynical and less concerned with local affairs, especially development. They want to know where the nation is going nevertheless, and so are happy reading national newspapers with small doses of local news. Publishers may be partly premising their business models on this, but if anything, they must be alert to recent indications. Informed organising in the citizenry is on the rise, and increasingly larger groups of citizens from both the better off and the poorer sections of our society are able to engage local governments. This is only going to grow.

Nor are studies showing that regional language media is any different; merely publishing news in the local language is not equivalent to providing significant local coverage. Like their English counterparts, they lean towards substantive regional and even national coverage and go thin on local and civic affairs. From a demographic perspective, publishers are again assessing that non-English readers -- both rural and urban -- are not very different from their English speaking counterparts in what they want from their newspapers.

We cannot all be more aware of what's going on at the national and international levels but be locally disconnected at the same time, with little say over our local problem solving.  •  News, in proper proportions

The problem with this lack of proportion is this. We cannot all be more aware of what's going on at the national and international levels but be locally disconnected at the same time, with little say over local decision making. Without adequate local news in print and on broadcast networks, media and citizens may not be able to together build and nurture a sense of citizen allegiance, identity and consensus for problem solving in and around our messed up metropolitan regions. In fact, without more and deeper local news, we may be putting a damper on the development of our civil society itself. National citizenship cannot be developed by shackling its local cousins.

There is also a natural, but often forgotten connection between journalism and local reporting. One consensus amongst journalists we have cited earlier is that the original purpose of journalism itself is to provide information for citizens to be free and self governing. If self governance is the goal, the degree of local self governance -- as heralded in our Constitution and in many other democracies -- is the most important indicator of our democratic health. If anything, our developing society (like other developing democracies) is failing more in two areas, even with stable national adminstrations. One is local planning and administrative capacities; the other is our citizens are not gaining a better and collective understanding of themselves as communities. More local journalism can address this.

In arguing for more local reporting, we are not saying that national and indeed international coverage be diluted significantly or altogether dropped. We live in a society where there is already considerable apathy in one part of the country about implications of injustices in another part. Our reporting therefore needs to allow a connectedness that strengthens our common citizenship. This, local newspapers alone will not be able to offer. But our point is that current newspaper and broadcast news markets nationwide contain disproportionately lesser local affairs news, with perhaps a few exceptions.

An evolving business

Some national publishers may argue that the tremendous diversity of the population forces them to pick stories on a least-common-denominator basis, thus eschewing local content that may be of interest to only select groups. (For rural areas, the complaint is that agglomerations of villages -- for increased circulation -- at the district level, presents the same problem.) But this does not mean there are no markets for viable local news and broadcast; in the United States, regional and city branded newspapers have a far more proportionate mix of local and national coverage and have remained viable. Major media houses as well as smaller publishers own and operate community/local newspapers chains.

The US experience, moreover, suggests that the 'national' newspapers in India are vulnerable to competitors who take up local coverage earnestly. True, some Indian cities already have neighbourhood papers for specific suburbs, but these are microlocal. They are politically less significant because they not reporting to an audience at the same level as the local government, but below this. Many do little reporting anyway. And between these neighbourhood papers and our regional/national news outlets is a journalistic vacuum that must be filled. Indeed, this is now more likely to happen as one primary driver of revenue - retail advertising - gains even further ground in the new economy.

In the meantime, recently, our publishing houses have set about launching more newspapers in our cities, apparently because news markets are growing and are increasingly attractive business propositions. These are still 'national' players trying to distinguish themselves in local markets. One newspaper in Mumbai even commissioned surveys to understand what readers want, to differentiate its to-be-launched offering. Market research certainly has its place, but researching readers as mere 'consumers' of news is one-dimensional. The information that journalism must provide to citizens may not come out of preferences stated in survey responses, especially in our developing society.

Significant differentiation between publishers who launch more meaty local editions or run new local papers or broadcast channels, however, depends on recognising what is truly distinct to all local markets; namely that each is at home in its own woods - and this advantage is unerodable. This realisation is essential to give local reporting the fillip it needs. In North India, a few Hindi newspapers are beginning to take a stake in much more regional reporting, and this may be a good trend. ⊕

Subramaniam Vincent

Ashwin Mahesh