PIP

PIP the pioneer

The Portsea Island Post is an online medium serving the community living on Portsea Island and the surrounding areas. It was lauched by APE-Agence Presse Européenne, a British media group, as part of a new national initiative to improve the relevance of national news coverage to local communities through higher quality and more analytical news coverage on the basis of independent editorial control.

National review

This initiative arose from a national media review undertaken during 2006 by APE to analyse the coverage of national events in local news media in Britain. In general national coverage was found to be extremely weak in terms of critical analysis reflecting the implications for local communities. Quite often local media simply issue verbatim or edited press releases supplied by the main political parties. Indeed, many British media have ended up being mouthpieces for specific political parties. The total membership of British political parties is less than 1% of the electorate and, as a result, the promotion of the views of such a non-representative segment of the population has introduced a severe distortion into news coverage making any analysis of little interest to local communities and the population in general. The overall outcome has been a dumbed down analysis and discussion simply because most issues raised, whilst aligning with political party interests, do not tend to align with people's own preferences or interests. This decadence in relevance, characterised by deficient quality and content scope, is exacerbated by the fact that most British local media are parts of larger centralised media organizations. These distribute the same content across the United Kingdom and add some local content to "localise" each medium largely through the most locally specific issues such as local football teams and scandal In some locations the discretion of editors and sometimes sub-editors concerning local candidate messages and party messages ends up with a selectively biased reporting. Given that the main British political parties have a total membership of less than 1% of the electorate it is regrettable that local media quite often ignore the often original messages coming from local independent candidates or local commentary at variance with the main party lines. There is a significant gap in such media services in relating community-relevant news to "national discussions" or even international issues. This is the result of there being very little editorial independence where it counts.

Improving local media

The APE Board therefore decided to initiate a strategy of introducing independent local media across Britain in an attempt to improve the quality and independence of analysis of largely political, economic and social issues in terms which are more relevant to local communities. Naturally, to achieve this aim all such media need to remain independent of political parties, religious organizations or commercial groups whilst providing impartial reporting on such organizations when they are referred to.

A pioneer

Portsea Island Post is the first local medium to be launched as part of this APE initiative.

Emphasis will be given to leading national issues involving politics, social concerns, the economy and constitution as well as other issues as they arise. PIP will also analyse local issues in terms of their community significance as well as any national implications of local needs.

The name, PIP

The name PIP was chosen since this was the name of a character in the novel, "Great Expectations" written by Charles Dickens and who was born on Portsea Island in 1812.