Provincial Blues (cont.)
Straight off the back of my recent post about the London-only nature of much of the media in this country, the ever reliable Harry hits the nail on the head in a way I could never hope to do:
I'm not optimistic. Every single national newspaper in Britain has it's editors and main staff at headquarters in London. Every single television channel has it's news operations run from London by people who live in London. The vast majority of national media journalists live and work in London. If you are a decent journalist from the North who wants to enjoy a successful career you know that means you will have to move to London eventually - those who, for various reasons, choose to stay in the North have to accept that they will always be paid a fraction of what their collegues in the capital earn and will never receive the same recognition and are condemned to work at underfunded outlets which despite their local title and focus are often controlled by London based companies.
To most people this seems perfectly normal but it really isn't. Take two of the biggest media markets in the world -the USA and Germany. American and German newspapers and television stations are spread out across the country. There is no way that Germans or Americans would accept their main media being produced entirely by people living in Washington or Berlin.
Of course there are a number of explanations for the differences between German and American media and the centralised British model but I would suggest the fact that both the US and Germany are federal republics is a pretty major one.
It is a terrible state of affairs. As long as London remains the perceived honeypot financially, politically and culturally the flys will continue to swarm around it.
-posted by Adam
