Written by Jonathan Walker
Government legislation will create subsidised news consortia bringing together blogs, newspapers and independent regional television news.
This was the plan set out by Creative Industries Minister Sion Simon (Lab Erdington) when he spoke to me during Labour's annual conference. A Bill will be bought in this autumn, he said.
While there's been a lot of discussion about the future of regional and local news, I'm not sure there's been a great deal of debate about this. The plan, as set out by Sion, is for the Government initially to subsidise the scheme, but in the hope that a business model will eventually emerge which does not require public funding.
How exactly local bloggers will feed into it remains to be seen. I wonder whether they will be happy for their work to be included in a commercial operation if they are not being paid themselves? Or maybe the plan is to pay bloggers too.
Ministers are apparently planning three pilot schemes, in Scotland, Wales and an English region which has not yet been named.
Sion spoke to me about the policy when I interviewed him in partnership with Yoosk, a web-based service which allows members of the public to pose questions to politicians, with journalists sometimes acting as middlemen. Apparently I was the first newspaper journalist to set up an interview like this with Yoosk.
The question he is answering, as you will hear, is actually about the Birmingham Mail. As I said, all the questions I put to Sion that day were chosen by users of the Yoosk website.
Here is what Sion said:
2 days ago