Time for jaw, jaw not war, war in council paper furore

I am genuinely upset by this whole pathetic tirade over council newspapers.

It appears we’re on the way to openly branding councils as Stalinist regimes, churning out twisted propaganda and hell bent on the destruction of an oppressed local media.

At the same time we have the chairman of the Local Government Association claiming that council newspapers do not operate as rivals. Utter tosh – she should read the stated objectives of council publications on her own members’ websites. You’d have to be on a flight with fairies to think that pulling advertising from a local paper and publishing your own 100,000-distribution freesheet wouldn’t have some effect. (more…)

How the Culture Secretary can turn his attack on council newspapers into real help for local media

Good to see Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, pictured, choose a local newspaper interview to spell out his concern over the amount of public money spent by local authorities on their own newspapers. “There has to be a balance and councils are overstepping that,” he told the Scarborough Evening News.

I nailed my colours to the mast in this post following a Commons motion calling on the Government to support local newspapers. But consider these two points:

Councils can SAVE taxpayers’ cash by publishing their own newspapers or magazines. How? By pulling the plug on sky-high recruitment and public notice advertising with local newspapers, whose paid-for circulations are falling while their free titles miss out deprived households that local authorities rightly want to reach. So why should councils just hand over the money? (more…)

So MPs are backing local journalism … Here are THREE things they can do for starters

It’s good news that 70 MPs are today calling on the Government to support local journalism.

The motion calls on the Government to: “Explore innovative solutions to preserve local journalism and to ensure that state support, either in the form of deregulatory measures or financial help, is given only where firm guarantees on investment in local journalism are secured.”

So while the innovation squad, whoever they may be, gets into gear and media chiefs conjure with the notion of ‘firm guarantees’, here’s three ideas to get the ball rolling: (more…)