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All council newspapers should go says daily editor

A regional daily editor has called for all council newspapers to be scrapped – after a councillor claimed they were “treasured” by local residents.

South Wales Argus chief Kevin Ward, left, hit out after a Newport city councillor said everyone looked forward to its freesheet ‘Newport Matters’ arriving through their door.

In a blog post Kevin responded that most people actually treat it as junk mail and said of the councillor’s remarks:  “I’ll have a pint of whatever he’s drinking.”

He then challenged any Argus readers who “treasured” the publication to contact him, and called for all council newspapers to be scrapped.

Wrote Kevin:  “It is absolutely right that local councils have direct lines of communication to their residents.

“And there are now a host of ways in which that can happen – websites, social media, text messages, leaflet drops. Most of these methods are relatively low cost, particularly those that use new technology.

“But whether councils producing their own newspapers is a good idea is a matter for huge debate.

“I make no apologies for being a long-standing and vociferous opponent of council newspapers.  At best they are propaganda sheets, at worst they are town hall Pravdas – publications that masquerade as newspapers and sell advertising at discounted rates; using public money to undercut real newspapers.”

The post followed a Newport council budget debate over the future of the freesheet with the opposition Tories saying it should be axed.

Kevin said of the debate: “Some of the supporting statements for retaining the council newspaper were laughable.

“One councillor said Newport Matters was ‘treasured’ by the people of Newport and that ‘everyone’ looks forward to it going through their doors. I’ll have a pint of whatever he’s drinking.

“All council newspapers should go. It would save the nation a fortune, free money for vital services, and seriously reduce recycling bills.”

15 comments

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  • March 4, 2014 at 10:36 am
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    I find all this criticism of council newspapers very silly – councils have a right to print whatever they want so long as they can justify the cost and need. Local newspapers can always try to trounce them by wheeling out a superior product, but let’s not get too carried away…

    Editors need to bear in mind a few issues:

    1: Local newspapers no longer have a monopoly on press releases and stories. People can simply look at council/government reports on line, free of charge, and in full, and see what is happening;

    2: The myth that local newspapers serve the community is unravelling fast. Newspapers are businesses – simple as that: the problem is that they are producing a product that people no longer need to pay for as 90% of the content can be accessed free of charge before the paper even comes out.

    3: Newspapers rely on adverts to drive profits: if council newspapers are selling advertising, at least it goes back into public coffers.

    I’m not a fan of council freesheets, but to say they must be axed to preserve the profits of equally laughable local newspapers is desperate.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 12:06 pm
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    I look forward to my council freesheet and so do my neighbours (yes, I have asked them).
    I don’t work for the council in any publishing department, I can recognise propaganda when I see it, and I like to make up my own mind about municipal affairs. So do my neighbours.
    There should be room in the media for more than one point of view. The fact is that the vast bulk of British newspapers are published by a tiny handful of media monopolies. The editors don’t have to be told to be Conservative in outlook, they know instinctively that it comes with such a prestige post. It is significant in Kevin Ward’s report that it is the Tories who are calling for the axe to fall.
    Reporters, straight out of uni and often very wet behind the ears, are trained to be aggressive little snapper dogs. They treat democratically elected officials with disdain, assuming that everybody is “in it for themselves”, and are only interested in destroying people in local government. Journalists don’t even bother reporting council meetings any more.
    Newspapers accept adverts from councils and adverts from government departments, which in the case of the latter is indirect taxpayer subsidy.
    If newspapers were worth reading, circulations wouldn’t be dropping and advertisers would be attracted. The fact is that people now have the Internet to express opinions that don’t necessarily agree with the establishment.
    The Daily Star approach to current affairs is well past is sell by date.
    There are just too many newspaper cliches for me to list here, but I have one local paper before me which has swallowed hook, line, and sinker, an Army recruiting story about how good life is in the forces for today’s ambitious youngsters. Newspapers print those by the thousand without question. Is that not a form of propaganda which is never questioned?

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  • March 4, 2014 at 12:58 pm
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    I bet most people couldn’t care less about their council paper.

    It’s just a thing that comes through the door. Meh.

    But if the latest ABCs are anything to go by, most of them couldn’t care less about their “proper” papers either.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 1:34 pm
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    Yet more empty rhetoric of another desperate man in a dying industry.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 1:37 pm
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    I’ve been fighting these publications for years. They’re nothing but councils using press officers in an attempt to manage the news by bigging themselves up and distracting people from the more pressing issues concerning how their councils are run. It’s playing at journalism and they’re using public money to do it, which is morally reprehensible. They should close the lot down and prosecute any council that refuses.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 1:54 pm
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    The above commenters both miss the point spectacularly.

    A state-funded (council tax) newspaper in direct competition (audience and ad revenues) to an independent newspaper is anti-competitive, bad for democracy and bad for open governance.

    Let me walk you through it simply:
    1. A council rag has none of the risks of a commercial paper.
    2. By its very nature it will portray the council in the best light possible.
    3. It will never hold the council to account properly.
    4. By taking away audience and ad revenues, it also harms the newspaper which can do all those things.

    Why is that so hard to understand?
    By all means produce a newsletter telling people about services, successes and all the press releases that the papers won’t carry for whatever reason.

    But don’t disguise it as a newspaper.
    Whatever the problems with individual newspapers, ownership etc, it it can never be acceptable for a local authority to mislead the public (using their own money) with a pretend “newspaper”.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 3:59 pm
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    The greatest problem to overcome with this issue is that everyone who has commented above – no matter which side of the fence they’re on – is actually right.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 4:21 pm
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    Imagine the furore if local authorities were run by absentee councillors – who lived in, I don’t know – the US?
    And they moved departments to the other side of the country – or even to other countries?
    Or they treated their hard-working, loyal staff shabbily.
    Or did not respond quickly, or at all, to comment or criticism of their actions?

    Thank goodness for independent, locally-based, locally focussed newspaper groups not afraid of competition from whatever quarter, confident in the quality of their product.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 5:10 pm
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    If a traditional media organisation can’t engage with its community, it should focus on its own shortcomings. Joe Public isn’t bothered abiut staffing levels and how difficult times are for the local rag – those who are interested in their community want quality news and insight. If you can’t provide that, don’t go bleating and shifting the blame.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 8:34 pm
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    I have worked on both sides of the fence and I’m amazed by the hypocrisy here. I have worked for several local newspapers which subbed and printed the county council magazines and there was certainly no outcry about ‘wasting taxpayer’s cash’ then. Now the local councils have worked out that they can do cheaper themselves, editors like Mr Ward suddenly take the moral high ground.
    Mr Ward’s rather flippant remark about recycling bills at the end demonstrates that this is simply a point-scoring exercise against his local council. Desperate times if you think that’ll sell more newspapers!
    Having said all that, I still think that they genuinely are a waste of taxpayers’ money and I can guarantee that we will see them all slowly disappear over the next few years.

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  • March 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm
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    I guess it also deflects from the recently posted 32.2% sales decline for the SWA too. Ouch! At least your recycling programme must be going well!

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  • March 4, 2014 at 10:30 pm
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    And its a word you really do Love if the truth be known Mr Ward, and thats the word FREE………. As in Free Pics and Free Words for your paper…..

    I make no apologies for being a long-standing and vociferous opponent of newspapers that trawl the internet looking for “free” photos and encourage the general public to send them FREE content and the complete disregard and disrespect you show to Freelance Photographers by your actions….and at least councils commission photographers at a decent rate to supply high quality content for their free papers not like the rates which you keep decreasing to your paid suppliers…….

    Her endeth my winge……

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  • March 5, 2014 at 10:26 am
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    Oh come on, surely the actual reason that newspapers are anti council publications is because it takes advertising away from them? I’ve worked on both sides and in the public sector we have to so careful about how we spend our money. If direct marketing via newsletters, social media and emails is cheaper and more effective than paying for advertising in newspapers then of course councils will choose that platform. It isn’t helped by the inflated prices that newspapers charge for public sector advertising. My first job after switching to public sector PR was to check the advertising rates we were being charged by the paper I had just come from. Lo and behold we were being charged double the rates that I knew private companies were paying. Yes, the team I joined should have been more canny and negotiated but they naively believed that the newspapers would not rip them off. Besides, why would we advertise in newspapers with ever-decreasing circulations that barely reach the audience we are trying to connect with?

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  • March 5, 2014 at 12:58 pm
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    It’s one thing criticising council freesheets for failing to hold the local council to account but most local papers don’t even bother attending council meetings these days in any case.

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  • March 7, 2014 at 11:44 am
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    Couldn’t agree more with the comment about Army press releases being treated as if they were news. In a former life I was a government press officer and these things are sent to every newspaper on every new recruit’s home patch, with the same invented quotes and only the details changed. And have, of course, rocketed in number since the forces started getting rid of expensive and experienced veterans and replacing them with 17-year-olds who’ve watched too much Call of Duty and will happily kill for minimum wage.

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