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Dave Harte ‘Tell it like it is’: The role of community not-for-profit media in regeneration and reputational change Castle Vale is an edge-of-city, 1960s-built, housing estate in Birmingham that has historically suffered from a poor reputation for crime and social problems. A regeneration initiative in the 1990s sought to address this and community media (consisting of a radio station, newspaper and news website) were funded on a not-for-profit basis to help improve the estate’s reputation. Whilst much research has focused on the civic value of this type of ‘hyperlocal’ media, the outputs of the media in Castle Vale have been contested by citizens. This case study, which draws on interviews and workshops undertaken with media practitioners and citizens, reveals the ways in which assumptions about the democratising functions of such media come up against the tensions over representation that exist between readers and producers. The research here forms part of a UK Research Council funded project into the role of local community media as an aspect of ‘Creative Citizenship’. Key words: community, hyperlocal, media, news, regeneration Introduction You live ‘on’ The Vale, as though it’s a ship. … As though you have to take a step up to get towards it (Clive Edwards, journalist, Tyburn Mail). This case study focuses on the role of community media (a radio station, a newspaper, a news blog and associated social media outputs) in the context of a major regeneration of a working class neighbourhood in north east Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The media operation discussed here was initially set up as an adjunct of the non-profit organisation undertaking the physical regeneration of the Castle Vale area (known locally as ‘The Vale’), and was designed in part to offer redress to the ways in which mainstream media had portrayed this edge-of-city estate. The media organisation has negotiated the politics of the Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 35
Dave Harte regeneration exercise while at the same time switching between different operational models – registered charity, limited company with charitable aims, in order to survive a funding landscape that has become increasingly austere. This paper contributes to our understanding of the challenges faced by non-profit, embedded, community news operations whilst also offering a critical case study of how citizens can become sensitive to what David Parker and Christian Karner have described as externally-imposed ‘negative reputational geographies’ (2011: 309) and how they negotiate their identity as a result. While one might expect community media to be seen as the ‘voice of the people’, such assumptions belie the reality of how the norms of journalism practice come up against the expectations of audiences. The paper draws on a series of interviews undertaken in 2013 with community media workers, and workshops and co-created research interventions with residents of Castle Vale. About Castle Vale Adam Mornement’s (2005) account of Castle Vale’s post-1990s transformation from troubled high-rise housing estate to a less imposing mix of suburban houses and low-rise flats is entitled ‘No longer notorious’, reflecting the widely held belief among citizens of Birmingham that for much of the estate’s history it was considered something of a no-go area. Mornement, a respected voice on regeneration issues in the UK, was commissioned by the Castle Vale Housing Action Trust to write an account of the estate’s physical and reputational transformation. He does not hold back on the role that mainstream local media played in painting the area in a bad light: ‘The media didn’t help. Castle Vale was constantly portrayed as a den of iniquity by local papers’ (ibid: 84). Ali Madanipour, writing for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (2005) about the importance of ‘physical capital’, offers a description of Castle Vale that shows how much it had in common with many other 1960s failed estates that were already looking tired within 20 years of being built: ‘The neighbourhood suffered from poor quality infrastructure and buildings, lack of services, fear of crime and vandalism, poor health, unemployment, low educational standards, and a poor image’ (ibid: 51). The building of the largely council-run estate had begun in the early 1960s following extensive slum clearances of inner-city properties in Birmingham. By the time it was completed in the late 1960s it included 34 high-rise blocks and housed circa 20,000. Mornement (2005) highlights how the estate’s social issues were exacerbated by the poor condition of the housing stock. It was clear something had to be done. For years Birmingham City Council had been aware of the gravity of Castle Vale’s problems. Final confirmation came in 1991 when a chunk of concrete fell from one of the tower blocks. There was nobody underneath, but Castle Vale was falling apart (ibid: 9). 36 Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016
Page 1 and 2: Beyond clickbait and commerce The e
Page 4 and 5: Contents Editorial Looking beyond t
Page 6 and 7: EDITORIAL Looking beyond the tradit
Page 8 and 9: These questions of independence are
Page 10 and 11: of the work produced by foundation-
Page 12 and 13: Crisis Center, for example, has a g
Page 14 and 15: library that spotlights progress in
Page 16 and 17: journalists working on the developm
Page 18 and 19: Note on the contributor Dr Mel Bunc
Page 20 and 21: 2014). One response has been to par
Page 22 and 23: and/or distributed by ENGOs to mobi
Page 24 and 25: democratic dissent’, while DeLuca
Page 26 and 27: ecording the interviews, I engaged
Page 28 and 29: spent two weeks collecting images a
Page 30 and 31: Although photographs of spirit bear
Page 32 and 33: up the article ‘Pipeline through
Page 34 and 35: Alexandra Garcia, iLCP communicatio
Page 36 and 37: killed/, accessed on 27 December 20
Page 40 and 41: Veronica Coatham and Lisa Martinali
Page 42 and 43: which content its audience is most
Page 44 and 45: in the 1990s and early 2000s. Borge
Page 46 and 47: in Leeds, he notes the valuable rol
Page 48 and 49: Yet the nature of the journalism at
Page 50 and 51: Foucault, Michel (1980) Power/Knowl
Page 52 and 53: Unitec research colleagues; media p
Page 54 and 55: voice in seven unique contexts was
Page 56 and 57: therefore, challenging to strike th
Page 58 and 59: 7 The Pacifica Mamas, ‘matriarchs
Page 60 and 61: sharing approach to collaboration,
Page 62 and 63: programme, and they wanted the spot
Page 64 and 65: and that I was entrusting myself to
Page 66 and 67: ecosystem (Cooren 2015b). In a 2015
Page 68 and 69: Saifoloi, Malama, Stowers-Ama, Jarc
Page 70 and 71: informed citizenry. Most see journa
Page 72 and 73: While there is no universally accep
Page 74 and 75: news organisation are decisions to
Page 76 and 77: is largely seen as unethical to ask
Page 78 and 79: open to paying for content. Others
Page 80 and 81: Conclusions Overall, oppositional n
Page 82 and 83: Foster, Michelle (2012) Calling the
Page 84 and 85: Judith Townend ‘Charitable journa
Page 86 and 87: In the second category, where the r
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Among the issues is the Charity Com
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House of Lords (2012) House of Lord
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press in a democracy to campaign, l
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The tribunal’s decision For the p
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charitable journalism may be recogn
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Denis Muller Conflict of interest:
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Tanner et al. (2005: 187) identify
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to its audiences. To engage in jour
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creating a commercial climate in wh
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that a sponsor would have no role i
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Items about Dove not labelled as sp
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their public-interest responsibilit
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Murtha, Jack and Gourarie, Chava (2
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Recognising the shadow elements of
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admits that ‘systematic’ may be
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Rather than ethics being an issue t
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