The scrapping of a council newspaper has saved local taxpayers £67,000 a year, it has emerged.

The new mayor of Doncaster Peter Davies, who was elected last month, took the decision to abandon the seven-year-old ‘Doncaster News’ on his first day in office.

The Doncaster Free Press reports that no jobs had been lost as a result of calling time on the monthly newsletter.

Mr Davies told the Free Press: “It is simply council propaganda and an exercise in distorting unpalatable truths.”

He added that he planned to keep local residents informed of news in the borough through local news organisations.

In 2005 councillors passed a motion calling for the word ‘News’ to be removed from its title but this was never carried out.

Last month we reported how Cornwall Council had decided to close its monthly newspaper ‘Your Cornwall’ just eleven months after its inception and spending almost £700,000 on it.

Ironically, the Royal Mail classified Your Cornwall as “junk” soon after it began publication with householders requesting that no unaddressed mail be put through their letterboxes.

Comments

loco (06/08/2009 09:58:39)
I think councils started these publications because coverage of local councils (for all sorts of reasons including shortage of reporters) became so poor.
On the other hand the days when papers can keep the readers happy by filling their papers with loads of tedious council crap from handouts are long gone, though some editors rooted in the 1960-70s persist in believing otherwise.