2013-05-24T01:59:32-04:00 Gary Graham http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=gary-graham Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Gary Graham Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.931129 2011-08-19T07:52:18-04:00 2011-10-19T05:12:02-04:00

Gary Graham http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-graham/
He was astonished to discover that I had finally ended up working at a university. "Was it a recession choice?" he enquired.
"No" I replied (I have been employed since 1996 in the HE sector).
Robert continued, "you were so entrepreneurial in your teens, and you showed little or no interest in school, I had put you down as probably ending up running some kind of discount fashion business or a financial advisor but never a lecturer, I thought the priest Sean (a close mutual friend of ours) was a strange calling but this takes the biscuit!"
I told him on entering my 30s that I had gone about reinventing myself. I first did a degree and then a PhD. A failed business, a turbulent and doomed relationship, and the feeling that I had somehow missed out on the "special" student experience (which many a friend told me about) drove me along a new path, one not tread previously by anyone before in my family.
We discussed our old mates and our shared experiences, girls, the parties, the 80s music from two-tone, ska, the new romantics and then the raves and acid house. Then our lives went separate ways when he rode off, driven by his dad in the Mercedes convertible down the M1 on the way to Oxford.
That is until the social media revolution converged our life paths back together once again. Mid-life curiosity I guess ("whatever happened to that clever fool - Graham").
Interestingly it wasn't curiosity but he contacted me as he wanted someone to talk to for advice. His family life was in free fall. This perfect son (his mother used to boast continuously about him to my mum when they used to go to their local yoga class every Thursday night in the nearby community centre) was not so perfect after all. To cut a long story short, he had left his wife and teenage son for a work colleague, a young Malaysian around half his age. The curse of the mid-life crisis. The trips up Everest, the ultra-marathons, the gym junkies, the cosmetic surgery.... it manifests itself in many different forms. At least he hadn't changed his hair colour like two of my forty something colleagues here at Leeds have done - from brown to blonde or arrived to work in ripped jeans??
Robert could never see himself working at a university, the standards have dropped, too many students, too short a semester, too much technology and not enough resource.
In his words, "a mundane charitable profession full of people who can teach but cannot do. Students don't read like they used to or want a complex intellectual challenge".
"It is different" I replied.
"It is easier not like in our day when we had four hour exams and one-to-one tutorials," he remarked with a sarcastic smile.
I didn't rise to the bait. The complex array of assignment facing current students would have took too much explaining. This is the thing about universities everyone has a perception of them. Robert has his view, I have mine and you have yours. They helped me to reinvent myself, to understand the world better, to be more civilised to have a social conscious and to think carefully before making decisions. As a student I learnt to manage my money and to be responsible for my actions. I did things like help disabled students and learnt to work and appreciate other people. Also to stop distrusting people from other backgrounds and classes. Learning is as much about discussion and listening from your fellow students as well as the guy/lady lecturing to you at the front of the teaching room. Certainly you learnt very little from complaining? I have earned so much more culturally, intellectually and socially from the experience than I would ever earn financially. I can appreciate so much more about life than that youngish person who first entered the sector as a mature undergrad in 1990.
Universities have been radically restructured since the 1990s, streamlined and made more efficient, developed blended learning methodologies, have vast technology-support infrastructures, mercilessly driven the productivity of their staff and become more relevant to the business and industrial world. The architecture and rooms have been transformed. What was once old, decadent and tatty is now modern, comfortable with amazing visual aesthetics. Instead of a lectern, a chalkboard and a piece of chalk, the lecturer now stands in front of a "star-trek" cockpit equipped with all the latest technological wizardry. Instead of chalk and talk, the lecture is now often a "multi-media" experience choreographed as an artistic performance.
But one thing remains and that is they still offer a space and time for people to read, think, contemplate and develop their thoughts, knowledge and understanding of the world. For a civilised society to function we need people to be able to make intelligent and thoughtful decisions in an ever complex world.Well I went into my degree reading Steven King and came out reading Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck. A little progress I guess.
"For every profit there is a cost" an old professor remarked to me at Salford on my first academic appointment. His other educational ethos was one of "you shouldn't through fish at a hungry man you should throw him a fishing rod!" But that one's for another time and place.
After our hearty lunch in the Commonwealth Club, Robert confessed that he was a little worried about the future as shortly he would have a new boss, a recently qualified MBA graduate from Leeds.
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Gary Graham http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-graham/
The past three years has been a period of major upheaval in Britain. This spiked last week with the riots in London and several major provincial cities. We have been through one of the worst recessions this country has ever seen with dramatic consequences for businesses large and small across the nation. A coalition government has been formed and embarked upon a programme of public spending cuts designed to rebalance Britain's books and reduce the deficit. Recently the coalition government while acknowledging the need for more public accountability of universities have also stressed the vital role they need to begin to play in regenerating local economies and communities. They have begun to introduce a series of initiatives through HEFCE to stimulate and promote university engagement and economic impact intervention at the community level (www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/impact; www.rcuk.ac.uk/kei/maximising).

Historically universities have strategically focused their news media relations and communication resources at the national level for the associated prestige and esteem this achieves. Does really an appearance by a leading professor or academic expert on the Beeb or Sky have much influence at all on ground level community policy debates such as the rioting in London or Manchester. At a university level widening participation and community engagement are "Cinderella activities" with low gravitas in respect to an individual's presence, collegiate standing, peer reputation or career (promotion) prospects. A significant civil service and media criticism of universities is that although much of their work is publicly funded the scientific and technological outputs generated are frequently irrelevant and of limited value economically or socially to people living in the surrounding community. University media and communication policy (PR) resources and engagement strategies' have been criticized for not being orientated towards local news media or communities. It is apparent and highlighted in the recent public disorder and rioting in London, Salford and Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol that nearby universities need to have more involvement with their local communities. Huffington, community radio, local television, regional newspapers and news web services are often neglected by university public and press relations. How can national coverage of academics promulgating country-wide macro solutions ameloriate local and micro-level tensions/problems. Where relations do exist between universities and local news media these tend to be characterized by loose ties, informal social relations and fragmented knowledge networks. The result is that academic expertise, intellectual knowledge and technological contributions often fail to diffuse out to benefit their neighbouring communities.

It is my view in light of events last week that universities need to recaliberate their internal performance measures of staff and allocate resources to reward and encourage initiatvies that lead to tangible social and economic development/improvement of the local communities that they should be serving.
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Gary Graham http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-graham/
Individual media incorporates regional newspapers, community radio, local television, citizen journalism and news blogging. In Dresden and Leeds these individual media provide a comprehensive local news service in their respective communities without direct competition. However the global economic recession, declining circulations (the number of copies printed per day), classified advertising revenue migrating online, non-classified revenues threatened by online group discount models combined with the rise in social media, have resulted in changes to the way people live their lives, how they communicate with one another, and how they use different media. Doom laden warnings predicting the end of newspapers and public service journalism are prevalent. But an on-going study entitled: "Informing the Community" on local news media firms in Leeds and Dresden reveals a different reality. This is a major independent research study looking at the importance of the community and asking whether it has been affected by these events. It also looks at how local media, local newspapers and their companion websites, fit into this picture and assess the implications for advertisers.

I found that local news media remains highly relevant in the modern world and its unique engagement with audiences across print and digital platforms continues to deliver significant levels of action on advertising. Strong branding is vital in the "chaos" of the internet marketplace as it enables the news media firm to differentiate itself on the internet. Firms with a strong brand for high quality local news journalism are an authentic source to consumers and the consumer is more prepared to pay for this authenticity and quality.

In the German city of Dresden local newspaper Saechsische Zeitung with a circulation of 49,000 copies (population of 523,038) aimed in spite of the current economic climate to protect high quality journalism. The Digital Editor suggested: "we are aiming to have more reporters working throughout our city. We have plans to shortly launch iPhone and mobile applications of the newspaper and to offer free iPad's to our subscribers who pay a 12 month subscription. Circulation depends on having detailed knowledge and intelligence of your patch and knowing where your potential buyers are". The newspaper charged a weekly subscription rate of 7.50 Euros (£6.59). They now have over 2,000 online subscribers and 29,000 subscribers to their printed editions.

While in Leeds there was a clear message from the study that people value community even more highly than they used to and will consequently be more willing to engage with brands that get involved at a local level. Further that local media remains highly relevant in the modern world with its unique audience engagement across print and digital platforms. While some form of paid-for content remains vital for maintaining the brand identity of the regional newspaper. The segments identified to sustain paid on line content include: domestic (living out of the area)/overseas readers; corporates requiring archives; sport/business and (premium) customized services.

Local media is by far the most effective media source for helping people to integrate with their local surroundings. My study of 1000 randomly sampled by telephone and email of people living in Leeds and Dresden found that local media (73 per cent) is the most relevant media source for feeling part of the community ahead of the internet (22 per cent), TV (11 per cent) and national newspapers (five per cent). And local media (45 per cent) continues to be the most trusted source of content, ahead of television (37 per cent), national newspapers (33 per cent) and the internet (32 per cent).

Although printed newspaper circulations are in decline, opportunities to monetize content and attract new revenue sources are emerging from radical technological innovations such as digital printing, DIY/micro advertising, social media, foldable screens, iPads or Android Smartphone applications. While community radio and local television had good engagement with younger consumers the newspapers recognised that they needed to improve their participation levels.

Local news media firms have faced tough challenges in recent years but they can take heart from the findings of Informing the Community. Individual media is by far the most effective source for helping people to integrate with their community and the increased importance of local has a real impact on how readers perceive brands. Ironically in an era of globalization, community has become critically important to the development of a healthy local news media service.]]>