Can the BBC do local news?

Last week, Pete Clifton admitted of BBC News, “We don’t do local news very well”.

The Head of BBC News Interactive said they were trying to improve this, and that the personalisation of the UK front page on the site was one of the most popular changes they had made to it.

This Media Guardian article reports another BBC executive questioning the BBC’s current success in representing the voice of the people and their need to get more involved in local news in order to do this better.

Sarah Radford of Newbury Today was asked what she thought of the BBC’s plans to move closer to local news. She said, “The Newbury Weekly has a whole newsroom of journalists who are the eyes and ears of the area. The BBC just can’t do the grass roots stuff – not without a huge increase in numbers of staff.” It remains to be seen whether or not the BBC really can authenticate it’s claim to being ‘of the people’.