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0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Mar 9, 2008 | by Peter John Meiklem

HEARING the relaxed response of BBC Scotland chieftain Mark Coyle to last week's launch of 12 "ultralocal" news websites in Glasgow would have been enough cause many in the Scottish news fraternity to choke on their lattes.

The Beeb's editor of continuous news was giving his thoughts on the Evening Times's new series of local web portals to many, a direct competitor to Coyle's Scottish website patch of bbc. co. uk. The websites, he said, were so good that he'd decided to link BBC websites to them.

Excuse me?

And there was more: the dozen new sites, which went live last week and that will grow to more than 80 across Glasgow over the coming year, were just what he wanted to see from local newspaper companies in Scotland. The BBC's website, he believes, should link to other local websites, and the Evening Times project was not competing with BBC Scotland's local news strategy.

"There are certain things the BBC can't, shouldn't and won't do, " he says, dismissing the suggestion that the innovation by Newsquest, parent of the Evening Times, Herald and Sunday Herald, could compete with the corporation's plans to ramp up online local video.

Coyle's position is radically at odds with the expectations of most of the Scottish media. The BBC has been criticised by newspaper publishers for its aggressive push into online local news and, although a truce has been holding, most expect hostilities to resume.

Indeed, some newspaper executives privately talk about "beating the BBC" with their online strategies as they try to rebrand their companies from local newspaper publishers to multimedia groups.

With last week's regional Audited Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures making grim reading almost every local and regional paper is down between 2-per cent and 7-per cent year-on-year and with traffic to local newspaper websites increasing all the time, the battle to provide local news online is a fight that can only get fiercer.

Which makes Coyle's comments all the more surprising. BBC director-general Mark Thompson caused a stooshie in 2006 with his plans for what Auntie then called "ultralocal TV". Thompson's stance was enough to put Johnston Press chief executive Tim Bowdler on the counter-offensive, telling the Beeb it had no business spending licencepayer's money on a direct competitor to local news businesses.

Coyle says "hyperlocal television" is no longer a buzz phrase in the corporation's corridors. The new project, which has not yet been put to the governing body the BBC Trust but which is intended to go live in March 2009, is simply called BBC Local. Coyle says there was never a plan to provide hyperlocal news of the kind carried by the new Evening Times sites. The six areas the BBC divides Scotland into roughly Edinburgh, Glasgow, Highlands, Tayside and Aberdeen and the South was as local as the BBC ever wanted to go north of the Border. The extra content, Coyle observes, will be an extension of video content into those areas.

"Our plans [to provide more local news in Scotland] have never shifted in the slightest. I'm not afraid to say the Evening Times sites are good and if other companies came up with something similar then we would probably link to them as well. I hope we can be grown- up about it. The internet works through people linking to each other's sites. It is a different concept for people to go through, " he says.

Helen Smith, community editor of the Evening Times and who oversees the 12 new Glasgow sites, is content with the BBC's decision to link its site to her community web portals.

Well aware that the competition for online local news provision is hotting up, Smith says the 12 sites were picked to give the widest geographical spread across the city. The portals are not competition for the Evening Times website, she points out, but offer a home for the kind of community news and announcements the physical newspaper doesn't have space for.

She reports a "tremendous response" from readers since the websites opened last Monday.

"There are loads of things going on in Glasgow that are perfectly worthy of reporting but there simply isn't space for them all in the paper. On the internet the space is infinite." Each Evening Times site contains a noticeboard for community announcements, a selection of local news stories, community information such as the location of doctors in the area and other local information, including historical photographs.

Over a year in the planning, the first 12 sites, says Smith, are merely the "first phase" with more to go live in the coming weeks and months until every part of Glasgow is covered. Smith says a lot of this will be based on reader demand, with sites springing up wherever they are required.

"We are really throwing these sites out to the community. We've set them up but they are there for readers to make of them what they will and that goes to the heart of the community aspect of the Evening Times." Is Smith not worried about a dryingup of the sort of enagaging news that would keep the readers coming back?