The Story of a 21st Century Society is a Story of People, Place and Purpose

In 1814 The Times was first printed using a steam-powered press.

This event marked the literal (if not entirely accurate) meeting of hot air and hot metal in a relationship which has continued ever since.

The industrial age of newspapers had arrived.

Many major innovations followed but as for the content and style of newspapers the die had been cast, it was just the way they rolled, and what we see today is pretty much yesterdays news.

The Story of a Nation and its People

The steam powered press propelled itself forward like an angry punctuating locomotive into 20th century society, spewing news and spitting; bias, opinion and gossip, in exchange for the price printed on the front page.

The press quickly gained such importance that they became known as the ‘forth estate’ of the realm joining; the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.

Their self appointed role was; to uphold democracy; to hold power to account; and to tell the story of a nation and its people.

In their day newspapers were our equivalent to the Internet.

They were the connective tissue of our cities and towns and performed an important role in civic, social and economic life for millions of people for more than a century.

They brought information together and they brought us together. It was a job that needed to be done and other than the printing press and the newspapers business model there was no other way of doing it.

The forth estate held a privileged and unrivalled place in society.

They wrote the Story of a Nation and its People.

But it may be time for this to change.

An Industry in Decline and Retreat

The 21st Century brings us to a different world indeed.

Newspaper’s haven’t had it easy since the arrival of the Internet.

Their previous advertising supported business model could not defend itself from the onslaught of the new media advertising giants.

‘Free for all’ was the disruption but the giants could generate profits upon every freedom without the need to compete or fairly share. The traditional newspaper went into decline and retreat.

Nowhere has the deterioration of news been so pointedly noticeable as in our local newspapers.

Media companies brought up local news outlets rolling them into investment portfolios and consolidating local newsrooms into larger networks in order to realise economies of scale and maximise profits.

Local media didn’t reinvent itself for the age. In fact it found it easiest to slip its responsibility.

National newspapers too have failed to respond. In a networked world they have become as disconnected as the society that invented them.

It has been a sad decline of a once proud industry.

We Need to Talk About Place

If newspapers were our connective tissue in an age of disconnectedness what is their role in today’s connected age?

To answer this it is worth taking the opportunity to look at how one aspect of our society is begining to change and it reflects many of the changes happening elsewhere.

Whereas our previous disconnectedness led directly to centralisation, silos and isolation. Our connected age is leading to distinctly different ways of doing things.

One such example of this can be found in ‘place-based’.

It isn’t complicated.

“approach used to meet the unique needs of people in one given location by working together to use the best available resources and collaborate to gain local knowledge and insight. By working collaboratively with the people who live and work locally, it aims to build a picture of the system from a local perspective, taking an asset-based approach that seeks to highlight the strengths, capacity and knowledge of all those involved.” — Fiona Munro, Iriss 2015

It’s working together.

It is increasingly being used when working with communities and to bring together civil society organisations and the state into working relationships around the needs of places.

This would have been practically impossible to do in our disconnected past but in our connected age and with the right collaboration tools and support working together becomes much easier.

Working together also realises the unique capabilities of each place and collaborator. It is simply a better way of doing things.

In this realisation, perhaps there is an opportunity here to reinvent local news for the purposes of place?

Forget everything you thought you knew about what local news could be.

Today we are able to start telling a story of connection.

It’s a story we write together.

A New Model is Possible

Once we realise that local newspapers represent a design from a disconnected past, we can choose to reinvent them for our connected future.

Once we understand that working together (communities, civil society and the state) around the ‘needs of place’ is the new norm it opens up fresh possibilities about designing, creating and funding local media that fits our new needs.

If the newspapers have abandoned our towns do we have any choice?

Once we see these things it begins to make sense that Civil Society could choose for itself to fund its own network of local media.

This is what Socially Enterprising puts forward with Socially. This is local media reinvented for the needs of people and place. It’s entirely different in its ethos, its ownership and its practice.

Most importantly it tells a new connected narrative of people writing the story for themselves, a story in which civil society and the state become the enablers in a new future.

A newspaper of the commons and for the commoners!

A Platform which is able to No-Platform

A platform which is owned by civil society and is funded by civil society is a platform which can say no.

It can say no to hate. It can say no racism.

It can say no to politics.

It can become a space where everyone can be safe and welcome.

It can be a platform which can no-platform what is otherwise accepted on other forms of media on the Internet. There isn’t a rule that says those platforms must allow that kind of opinion or behaviour they just choose to do nothing as it’s financially advantageous to their business model.

There’s plenty of platforms but civil society’s can choose to be different.

It can be the start of a new story of connection and hope.

A Story of People, Places and Purpose.