Guardian Media Group is considering starting news websites to serve local communities, just as existing local papers celebrate their BBC Local victory with impending job cuts and pay freezes. Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told paidContent:UK: “There’s plainly an interesting opportunity there… if the existing players don’t manage it.”

SEE ALSO: BBC Trust Rejects £68 Million Online Local Video Proposal

Before last week’s BBC ruling, How-Do reported the publisher is researching what opening there may be to launch a Guardian-branded “Guardian Cities” project to “connect you with your local community, cover local issues and provide you with information that was highly relevant to your area”. The feasibility study is supposedly being conducted in Manchester, where GMG already owns Manchester Evening News, but note the plural in “cities”. GMG also has 37 regional radio stations.

We understand a local plan is under consideration, though Rusbridger yesterday told me it’s “too early to say” whether the project will go ahead while what was once the Manchester Guardian focuses on overseas expansion: “If you’re trying to think about America, India and China and you’re also trying to think about north Wales; there is a danger you’re looking at too many things at once.”

The local newspaper industry claimed a big victory in defeating the BBC’s local video proposal, though questions remain over how well local publishers are serving their own markets online. What if the next challenge to their web plans came not from the publicly-funded BBC but from the Scott Trust, the GMG owner which has no shareholders to please and is freed from making profit for profit’s sake? Rusbridger said of BBC Local: “I’m sure some forms of local news coverage will replace it, whether it’s the current (print) players because they’re burdened down with debt, or not… “

Disclosure: paidContent:UK’s parent company ContentNext is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.