Council newspapers: serious threat or red herring?

The Newspaper Society and the National Union of Journalists are at loggerheads over the impact of council funded newspapers.
Yesterday the NS wrote to new Secretary of State for Communities Eric Pickles asking for a meeting about local authority papers and government advertising practices.
In the letter, NS communications director Lynne Anderson wrote: ‘We would like to arrange a meeting with you as soon as possible to brief you on our members’ specific concerns and to discuss the steps the government plans to take, the type of rules, their likely effectiveness and how quickly these will be imposed, to help ensure that this unfair competition, which has been allowed to develop unchecked and continues to cause real damage to independent local newspapers across the country, can be stopped as a matter of urgency.’
She added that the NS hoped councils would be encouraged to use local media rather than undermine it.
The letter came in response to the new coalition government’s pledge to ‘impose together rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers’.
But, responding to the Queen’s Speech, NUJ president Pete Murray called the opposition to council papers, ‘a dogmatic adherence to a false belief’.
He said: “We are concerned about the new government’s lack of clarity on definitions of so called ‘responsible journalism’ and the dogmatic adherence to the false belief that local authority newspapers represent unfair competition.”

State of Play: What do you think? Council newspapers – a serious threat or a red herring?
Love to hear your views.

Don’t be afraid to upset advertisers: Sir Harold Evans

A good local newspaper will not be afraid to upset its advertisers.

That was the view of  Sir Harold Evans, the former editor of The Times and Sunday Times, in an article championing the Newspaper Society’s Local Newspaper Week.

He reveals how angry Ahston-under-Lyne residents besieged the newsdesk over an error he made as a junior reporter for the town’s Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter newspaper.

‘I had an early taste as a 16-year-old beginner on the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter in Lancashire when I erred in compiling the winners of a dog show, and again as editor of the regional morning daily, The Northern Echo, when a Home Page article I published had angry fruit and veg retailers besieging the office,’ he writes.

‘These were altogether good responses because the offended readers regarded the local paper I worked for in each instance as their newspaper. They expected their newspaper to get their names right, of course, but crucially to respect and reflect the community’s best values, to fight against delinquencies, big and small, blatant and concealed, and to provide a platform – a megaphone – for individuals and groups.’

He added: ‘I must stress that the relationship between a local newspaper and its community has to be robust. If the relationship is be based on mutual respect, the local newspaper may have to puncture local pride, risk offending advertisers as well as authority; mere boosterism is no substitute for honest, thorough reporting ‘.

Source: The Newspaper Society

State of Play: Therapeutic

NS survey should not be taken at face value

If you received a press release from The Jam Association saying jam is twice as popular as marmalade would you carelessly copy and paste it or would you dismiss it as propaganda?
Hopefully, churnalism aside, the answer would be the latter.
So how come so many press sites – Press Gazette, HoldtheFrontPage and Jon Slattery for example – have simply regurgitated the results of a Newspaper Society survey saying independent media is more trustworthy than councils?
NS President David Fordham, chief executive of Iliffe News & Media, and his team have the avowed aim of championing the needs of local and regional newspapers.
So is it really a wise move to accept at face value the results of a survey which suggest 63 per cent of people believe independent media is more trustworthy than local councils.
The survey, conducted by TNS-RI Omnibus, only took in 1,000 correspondents – a very small sample – and was carried out as part of Local Newspaper Week.
It is part of a long-standing NS campaign to champion local press and belittle council publications.
A cynic might say the ultimate aim of Fordham and his fellow media bosses is to rid themselves of a competitor and increase the revenues of their own publications.
Would they have so prominently published the results of this survey if the correspondents had favoured council newspapers?
At this point The Blog would like to point out that our own personal view is that local papers are far more trustworthy than Pravda style council productions, but that does not mean we should all hang on the results of a survey that took in such a low proportion of the population and was produced by an organisation with an invested interest in the result.

State of Play: All that glitters is not gold

Press Awards shame – part two

Those overly expensive awards nights on which the newspaper industry gorged itself in previous years have taken further hits.

Earlier this month The Blog commented on how impoverished regional bosses couldn’t afford to take part in the Regional Press Awards, forcing them to be scrapped for 2010.

Now more of these lavish bashes, which after all do nothing more than celebrate the achievements of those insignificant little people who lovingly write and produce the regional press, have been axed.

The latest to go are the Newspaper Society’s three annual awards: The Circulation, Editorial and Promotions Awards, which aim to reward the best journalists and newspapers as well as circulation and advertising initiatives, the prestigious Weekly Newspaper Awards and the Advertising and Digital Media Awards.

The awards were withdrawn last year due to poor trading conditions and this week the Newspaper Society revealed it wouldn’t be going ahead in 2010 either.

It’s no surprise really with entry fees for such events costing £39 per journo and ticket prices for the Regional Press Awards ceremony costing around £130 each. Just think how many estate agents you could wine and dine with that amount of money?

With neither competition running it seems there will be no national recognition for the top journalists in the country – but at least the starving shareholders will still have their custards creams.

Sources: Press Gazette, HoldtheFrontPage

State of Play: Unloved and uncared for II