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Bailey lays into council 'mini Pravdas'

Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey has launched another outspoken attack on taxpayer-funded local authority newspapers.

Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention yesterday, she described the publications as “mini Pravdas” and “propaganda dressed up as journalism”.

Ms Bailey said it was “bizarre” that council newspapers carrying news, sport and entertainment were the biggest competitor for local advertising to newspapers in her group.

“They should be stopped,” she said, singling out the controversial paper run by the Tory-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham council in west London for special mention.

The conference also heard a speech from shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt in which he pledged to scrap regional TV news pilots if the Tories won the the election.

The Tories want to see a network of smaller local TV stations, some of which could be owned and operated by individual newspapers.

Comments

toby (22/01/2010 10:20:18)
If she’s so fussed about these mini pravdas why doesn’t she stop taking hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from them for print contracts with Trinity Mirror?

ex hack (22/01/2010 10:29:29)
I don’t agree with councils producing full weekly newspapers but maybe Sly would be less worried about the competition if her regional papers were better equipped to produce quality publications, instead of all the redundancies and bare-bones staff trying to scrape together the news.

Realist (22/01/2010 11:16:07)
You miss the point, ex-hack. At least one of the reasons why Trinity Mirror and everyone else is struggling is the commercial landscape we’re all operating on. Councils don’t operate on a commercial landscape – they are guaranteed revenue from taxpayers without lifting a finger.
For that revenue then to be used in a manner which risks worsening the commercial landscape and putting some of those taxpayers out of work borders on the criminal.
As anyone wo has been unfortunate enough toe xeprience reputation management knows, they also have a track record of being thoroughly unreliable sources of information.
Bad management of newspapers during the boom hasn’t helped, but actively kicking a profession when it’s down suggests local government would much rather save its own skin rather than those of the people it’s paid to serve.

Ross (22/01/2010 11:25:31)
Couldn’t agree more with Toby. What appalling hypocrisy from Sly.

Del (22/01/2010 12:04:45)
It is surely time to stop blaming the BBC, local councils, Google, Citizen journalists and whoever the scapegoat of the month is.
The newspaper industry has to start looking inwards about what it can do to improve, the blame game is getting boring.

Journo (22/01/2010 12:14:38)
Perhaps Bailey might consider investing in Trinity Mirror’s workforce? The councils don’t seem to have qualms about investing into new papers – maybe she could learn something from them.

happyjack (22/01/2010 12:29:12)
I’m no fan of council newspapers but I wonder how Sly reflects on the ethics of the golden age of regional newspaper profits largely founded on a conspiracy between the big evening papers and agencies to charge everybody, including those same local authorities, sky high rates for recruitment ads. These rates were way in excess of what was being charged for the rest of the advertising, while also exploiting the same monopoly to ensure smaller free papers didn’t get a slice of their very lucrative action. Those revenues built the big empires we have today but now that gold rush has largely gone, the emperors are still trying to make the old way work.

outofit (22/01/2010 14:28:34)
It’s not only Trinity Mirror who should be worried by council publications – every newspapoer group min the country who has embarked on a massive programme of cost cutting, redundancies and the emasculation of their papers must share the blame.
They have all colluded in the destruction of local democracy whereby the regional press stood up for the citizen against bureaucratic blundering. By pulling the teeth of their papers they have handed the reins over the the councils. And what does Sly Bailey expect them to do? A page one lead of corrption in the council! Get real
The day when journalists lost control of their newspapers to the advertising numpties was a bad day for Britain.

Hannah (22/01/2010 16:16:17)
I made my peace with the fact that Sly was only ever after money a long time ago. She gets paid ridiculous amounts to satisfy share-holders, and there’s nothing anyone can do about the fact that she is not bothered about anything else. So the fact that she’s now being righteous about “propaganda dressed up as journalism” is shockingly-hypocritical. Since when does she care about quality on-the-ground journalism? She cares about advertising revenues, that’s it. I disagree with council newspapers for a whole raft of reasons, but there is just no point taking anything Sly says seriously – she’ll change her argument depending on what suits the money rolling in.