A South Wales editor has been called upon to reinstate a series of weekly columns written by local politicians.

MPs and Welsh Assembly members say that are “very disappointed” at the decision by Mike Hill to axe their weekly columns, for which they received no fee, when the free weekly Cardiff Post relaunched as the ‘Echo Extra’ last month.

Mike is editor of both the Cardiff-based daily the South Wales Echo and the Echo Extra.

A letter initiated by Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood has also been signed by fellow columnists Labour MP Julie Morgan, Conservative AM Jonathan Morgan, Lib-Dem AM Jenny Randerson and Lib-Dem MP Jenny Willott.

It said: “We are writing to you to express our concern at the decision not to include political columns in Echo Extra that previously appeared for many years in the Cardiff Post.

“We are very disappointed at that decision, particularly in the wake of growing concern that many members of the public are increasingly disillusioned by politics and recent revelations surrounding politicians’ expenses.

“The columns in the Cardiff Post were invaluable, providing a platform for local politicians to highlight issues of public interest while allowing members of the public to engage with their elected representatives.

“We believe that political columns play an important role in engaging people in politics, and the impact of decisions by politicians affects all our lives.”

A Media Wales spokesperson said: “We informed the AMs and MPs in question before we took this move and the editor will be responding to their letter in due course.”

Comments

Peter (30/09/2009 10:18:05)
The columns were just a PR ploy by the politicians and I can’t believe any reader trusted what they wrote to be the plain unvarnished truth. So if the political parties paid for the space they could not only still have their say but guarantee its publication, and also provide some much needed revenue for the papers.

the sentinel (30/09/2009 12:28:58)
surely it is a newspapers duty to reflect the varying views of politicians, especially in a “local.” the public need to judge politicians in their own words, without journalistic spin.

Mr Mobile (30/09/2009 14:26:18)
Afraid I’m inclined to agree with ‘the sentinel’ on this one. Isn’t the whole point of a “local” paper to engage with its “local” community and the important members of it, and that includes MPs, AMs and councillors. Surely there was enough variety of political opinions to suit any external agenda the editor or parent company may or may not have had, no???
PS – Why has HTFP turned off the comment facilities on some of today’s stories????

HoldtheFrontPage (30/09/2009 14:49:16)
We hadn’t switched them off, but there appears to have been a technical problem with them which has now been resolved.

Richard (30/09/2009 15:55:51)
The main reason I ditched the MPs’ columns I used to run was that all many of them did was copy and paste a party press release and stick a local area name in occasionally. It became a ‘merge mail’ column.
And none of the readers moaned when it went. So was it actually engaging them in the first place?