NS Gives Evidence to Communities Select Committee on Council Newspapers

The NS gave evidence this week to a Parliamentary select committee inquiry into Government proposals to curb council newspapers, BBC Radio 4 reported. Simon Edgley of Trinity Mirror Southern and Lynne Anderson of the NS represented the local media industry, while councils were represented by the LGA, London Councils and NALC.

The Communities and Local Government Committee, chaired by former Sheffield Council leader Clive Betts MP, held the one-day hearing on Monday into proposed changes to the Local Authority Publicity Code. Local Government Minister Grant Shapps defended the government’s proposed changes to the code, which are due to come into place early next year.

Mr Shapps described council newspapers as nothing more than “propaganda on the rates.” But senior councillors Richard Kemp (Liverpool) and mayor of Hackney Jules Pipe said they had to publish them because local newspapers gave less coverage to council meetings.

Richard Kemp, vice chair of the LGA, said it was hypocritical of the Government to interfere in local government business while pushing the Localism agenda. He said local papers needed to “up their game” and added: “We need to consider how we use them… If they were more positive, we’d perhaps be more positive to them.”

Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Gilbert pointed to the vibrant local papers in his West Country constituency which regularly covered local council business. He also said he couldn’t find one critical story about the borough in his copy of the Hackney Today council newspaper. Hackney mayor Jules Pipe said it didn’t pretend to be anything other than a council publication.

Simon Edgley from publishers Trinity Mirror Southern said local authorities were competing with independent newspapers for advertising space without having to run a business on a commercial basis. “They are running these publications on a completely different model than commercial organisations are able to… they are competing on a basis that is totally unfair,” he said.

One of his newspapers, Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle, had to compete with the fortnightly council newspaper H&F News, which claims to take £400,000 a year in advertising out of the local market.

Lynne Anderson said that, according to the Audit Commission, 150 council publications took private advertising. “You don’t need your local council competing with you for scarce advertising revenues… those are the very ad revenues which keep journalists in their jobs. Councils should not be in the business of competing.”

She said 10,000 journalists worked in local newspapers and still covered councils as their bread and butter but pointed to the introduction of Cabinet style council meetings under the Local Government Act 2000 which had meant a lot of decisions were taken behind closed doors making it unproductive to have a reporter sitting in council meetings all day.

She said the way council meetings were covered had changed, readers’ tastes and attitudes had changed, but that local papers were still out there covering their local councils and, “they’re the only voices which can hold local authorities to account. Certainly council newspapers are not capable of doing that themselves.”

The minister Grant Shapps gave the example of Greenwich Time, a council newspaper which cost taxpayers more than £500,000 a year. “I think most residents would be pretty appalled to hear than half a million pounds is going to fund the local town hall Pravda.” He said local authorities now spent £430 million a year pumping themselves up in the eyes of residents. “We simply can’t carry on having propaganda published on the rates.”

Defending proposals to reduce publication to four times a year, Mr Shapps said it was a framework to stop local newspapers being snuffed out by state-sponsored so-called journalism.

The Government’s consultation on the new code closed on 10 November. The CLG committee’s report is not expected until January.

Witnesses giving evidence to the select committee were:

• Richard Kemp, Vice Chair, Local Government Association, Jules Pipe, Chair, London Councils, John Findlay, Chief Executive, NALC
• Lynne Anderson, Communications Director, The Newspaper Society, Simon Edgley, Managing Director, Trinity Mirror Southern, Jeremy Dear, General Secretary, NUJ, and Roy Greenslade, Commentator
• Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP, Minister for Housing and Local Government, Department for Communities and Local Government

Radio 4’s Today in Parliament report on the council newspapers inquiry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00wdflm/Today_in_Parliament_06_12_2010

Video footage of the hearing can be seen here.

Separately, the Croydon Advertiser reported that Croydon Council’s monthly £250,000-a-year Your Croydon magazine was being scaled down. It will have fewer pages and be published four to six times a year in a bid to reduce costs by at least £100,000.

For further information please contact Lynne Anderson on 020 763 274 21 or lynne_anderson@newspapersoc.org.uk.