A 12 -year-old girl was airlifted to hospital after being involved in a traffic accident in Lichfield on Sunday.

It's a story the people of Lichfield and the surrounding area might be interested in. And to its credit, local paper the Lichfield Mercury has the tale up on the front page of its website.

But search in Google News for "girl airlifted Lichfield" and the sites that come up are the BBC and the Lichfield Blog (at least for me, as I write this). The Mercury is nowhere to be seen.
The Lichfield Blog claims to be edited by "Sammy J" - better known as Lichfield's statue of Samuel Johnson.
Image by Tim Ellis, published under Creative Commons License.

That seems to me like a good example of the challenge facing existing newspaper websites.

The issue is not so much, despite the claims of some "social media" enthusiasts, that established newspapers don't "get it" when it comes to the Internet.

Both the Lichfield Blog and the Lichfield Mercury's site - clumsily named thisislichfield - have social media elements.

They both invite readers to comment on stories. The blog also invites ratings, while the Mercury doesn't. The Mercury has icons for sharing stories (on Facebook, Digg etc), while the Blog doesn't.

Bizarrely, the Mercury doesn't seem to offer an RSS feed, which is a big minus. But they are basically doing the same thing.

Despite using Wordpress, a platform usually associated with blogging, the Lichfield Blog even looks like a newspaper website rather than a traditional blog (not a criticism - it looks better than most websites for small newspapers, in fact).

If it was named The Lichfield News it could happily describe itself as a news website rather than a Blog.

What the Lichfield Blog does demonstrate, however, is how easy it is to set up a news website, and one that looks professional, if there are people who have the time to do so.

Read more...

What I thought was particularly interesting was his point that newspapers are still making money (even during this recession).

It's a point I've made on this blog before, but a lot of discussion about the state of the industry seems to be based on the assumption - sometimes explicitly stated - that local papers are not profitable.

That's just factually wrong. Of course, one might still predict that they won't be profitable in the future, but anyone who claims they're not making money now is mistaken.

As Steve also says, the profits are lower than they used to be. Trinity Mirror recorded a profit margin of 17.2 per cent for its regionals in 2008, which is down from 24.5 per cent a year earlier (although still a good profit margin compared to most other industries).

He suggests that the newspaper industry will have to accept that the days of 30 per cent margins are gone for good.

I don't usually do this, but I am crossposting from my Birmingham Post blog.

This is a video blog post showing some of the work I have been doing as Political Editor of the Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Post over the past week, and how MPs have responded to the expenses controversy.

"This was all set up to give people a little bit of extra cash and hide it from the taxpayer, and that was very wrong." John Hemming MP.

You may also be interested in my Post column.

An embarrassing situation earlier this week, when I attended a press conference - and was the only person to turn up.

There was a Cabinet Minister, a podium, coffee and about a dozen press officers and officials.

It was awkward because the event had been organised especially for regional political editors - and we frequently push the Government PR machine to pay more attention to the needs of local papers (in fairness, that doesn't mean they do a bad job already).

The Cabinet Minister, Harriet Harman, scarpered and left me to talk to a more junior minister, but I can't get too upset about that.

But I can also explain why nobody else went. The topic was the Government's new equality Bill - which had already been reported in great detail before the press conference even took place, due both to official announcements and "leaks" (stories placed with selected papers).

I still thought it was worth going, because the diversity of the West Midlands arguably makes equality laws even more important and because one of my papers, the Birmingham Post, has a business slant. The Bill is very relevant to employers.

But I can understand why other local journalists felt it was a waste of time.

So press officers, please remember that the local press do want to work with you, but we have the same criteria as the nationals - something has to be true, interesting and new to be considered a story.

And if you tip me off in advance of the official statement, I'm very discreet.