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Going over to the news
Should community radio attempt to do regular news bulletins? Here are some of the issues that they might face.
News is a very tricky area for a community station. Regular news-updates are, undoubtedly, a very worthwhile service for a community station to be broadcasting; but the effort-to-output is high and you need to be confident that volunteers are suitably skilled in broadcast law not to get the station into trouble.
Many stations start with very noble ideas of how much time they want to dedicate to news bulletins, and whilst this is to be applauded it is also worth considering whether this can realistically be maintained. For example, the standard five minute bulletin that is broadcast at the top-of-the-hour on a BBC local radio station is the equivalent of a two-person full-time job (and that’s excluding the national copy). News doesn’t happen when your volunteers can be in the studio; and your reputation can be ruined by missing a significant story (such as police closing a major thoroughfare).
News is also notoriously difficult to source, especially if you don’t have a particularly strong reputation so won’t get people bringing stories to you. Even in a big town there are unlikely to be more than three stories on the police news-line. Crime, accidents and significant events do not happen as often as we perhaps think they do. Trailing your news as “the most up-to-date”, as I’ve heard one community-focused station do recently, which would have been fine but then their lead was a local take on a national event happening the next day and then details of a teenagers event happening next week. What’s On content is vital on a community station, but it is really important you don’t attempt to portray it as hard news.
And here’s another problem; it is all too easy to turn your bulletin into announcing a series of local authority (and company) press releases, and whilst many of them may have good community news-values (eg new library opening hours, new benefit support, a product recall), are you really giving a voice to your community if that is what constitutes your news? You need to be finding the stories that aren’t generated by a press officer; you need to be out in the community proactively generating news stories. That will require even more of those precious resources and time.
Should a community station be broadcasting national and international news? Although perhaps it is not in the ethos of a community station, you have to respect the medium and realise that when listeners are tuned to your station they are not listening to other stations broadcasting a full bulletin. It would be incredibly crass to ignore major news stories because they are happening outside your patch, although it has happened - “North east man lost at sea” is the famous headline that the Aberdeen Journal supposedly ran to announce the sinking of the Titanic. Undoubtedly there will be a local angle to any major news story, but interviewing a local resident because they had been up the World Trade Center somewhat misses reflecting the tragic events of September 11.
My personal belief is that a community radio station should be providing news wherever possible, but it should be realistic about how much it can afford to do. My suggestion would be hourly two-minute bulletins at breakfast and drive should suffice, as well as news-sport bulletins on weekend mornings.