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Council publications axed days after restrictions agreed by parliament

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Two councils have axed publications, less than a week after a new code was approved by parliament which limits councils to publishing a maximum of four newspapers a year.

Hammersmith and Fulham’s H&F News has announced it is publishing its last newspaper today, due to the new revised Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity and, as Jon Slattery had reports, Hull City Council has axed its monthly magazine Hull in print in a cost saving move and, in an on the council’s website, says the way forward is online.

Hammersmith and Fullham council reports “an agreement was approved with Trinity Mirror Southern to publish future council advertising” which will see “public notices and other display advertisements published in the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle every week”. Simon Edgley, managing director of Trinity Mirror Southern, welcomed the development. “We are not only absolutely delighted to sign this agreement, but also that our titles and websites will play such a significant part in ensuring that residents of Hammersmith & Fulham remain appropriately informed,” Edgerly said in a statement on the council’s website.

H&F News was first published as a monthly paper in 2006, and went fortnightly in 2008.

Councils have no legal obligation to follow the new code, which comes in to effect shortly. Last week Tower Hamlets Borough Council’s newspaper East End Life said it is continuing to publish weekly while a review is carried out.

New code for council newspapers being ‘considered’ in review of East End Life

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A council newspaper currently under review, will continue to be published weekly while the local authority considers a revised code of practice passed by parliament last night.

Tower Hamlets Borough Council, which publishes East End Life, said the code would “be considered as part of the review” due to go before the council’s cabinet on 11 May.

The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity – of which there is no legal obligation for councils to follow – was put forward in an attempt to crack down on “wasteful” use of council resources. It was passed by parliament last night.

Tower Hamlets’ review, which was launched in January, will “fully take into account the views of residents, businesses, schools and anyone else with an interest in the paper”, the council said in a statement. In February Jon Slattery reported that the Conservative opposition leader at Tower Hamlets said the council is ‘fighting to the death’ to preserve East End Life.

Commercial newspaper for Tower Hamlets, the Archant-owned East London Advertiser, today welcomed the revised code.

“The problems that we face, not just in the East End but across other areas too, are that the councils are out to control the papers by starving them of revenue in some cases and also being able to control messages they are putting out,” group editor Malcolm Starbrook told Journalism.co.uk.

The Newspaper Society has also welcomed the new code, highlighting the importance of ensuring the new rules are effectively enforced.

“We hope that all local authorities will be encouraged to use the local media, which remain the best-read and most trusted form of local news and information,” Lynne Anderson of the Newspaper Society said in a statement.

The National Union of Journalists, which had called for an independent review to establish the impact free council newspapers have on commercial titles, dismissed allegations of blame placed on local authority publications.

We reject the assertion – made by the Communities and Local Government Secretary, that local authority publications are responsible for the decline in local newspaper sales. We believe that attempts to maintain profit margins by cutting overheads, rather than by investing in quality journalism lies at the heart of the current decline in circulation amongst many local and regional newspapers.

The union also pointed out that some commercial newspaper groups such as Trinity Mirror have “lucrative printing contacts” for several London borough publications.

The NUJ does not recognise the Communities and Local Government Secretary’s description of biased, politically motivated local government publications, lacking editorial integrity, which he claims are so prevalent. The day-to-day reality for journalistic staff working on these publications is one of habitual struggles to resist attempts by local authority cabinet members and chief executives to dictate content. Indeed, NUJ members working in Press and PR – both in and outside of local authorities, are bound by both defamation law and the union’s ethical code.

Jon Slattery: Tower Hamlets scraps press table but fights to save East End Life paper

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Jon Slattery reports that the Tory group leader at Tower Hamlets claims the council has removed the press table from its council chamber and is ‘fighting to the death’ to preserve its controversial newspaper, East End Life.

The future of East End Life is currently “under review” and a new code being proposed by Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles would ban local authority newspapers being published more often than four times a year.

Full post on Jon Slattery’s blog at this link.

 

Council news round-up: ad revenue shortage for East End Life and plans for new council TV

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There’s been much debate amongst regional and local newspaper representatives in the UK about the impact of local authority ‘newspapers’ or freesheets on their advertising revenue, role in the community and news coverage.

Yet much of this debate has been difficult to frame, with exact details of staffing numbers, cost and output of these publications varying between authority.

In London, Andrew Gilligan suggested that local authorities in the city employed more staff writers than the capital’s newspapers.

This week some more stats can be added to the picture:

Press Gazette reports that Tower Hamlets’ Borough Council paper, East End Life, will need an extra £400,000 of tax payers’ money to keep it going.

According to a mid-year budget report from the authority, the freesheet is suffering from a £396,000 shortfall in advertising for the current financial year.

Deputy leader of the council, Joshua Peck, reportedly told the East London Advertiser that this lack of ad revenue would be made up for with cuts to the authority’s communications budget.

Add to this HoldtheFrontPage’s report on the cost of East End Life, which states:

“A previous investigation by the Advertiser showed that public-sector organisations paid a total of £980,000 to advertise in East End Life, making the true cost to the public purse £1.1 million a year.

“An alternative budget put forward by Tory councillor Tim Archer earlier in the year suggested the council could save £670,000 or 1pc off the average council tax, by scrapping the paper and taking out advertising with the Advertiser instead.”

Elsewhere, plans for a new TV station launched by Carmarthenshire Council (link spotted via Jon Slattery’s blog) have come under criticism.

According to a report on thisissouthwales.co.uk, the station would cost £30,000 a year to run. In a move to fund the new station, the authority is planning to drop one of its bi-monthly news magazines, which currently costs more than £114,000 to produce and distribute.

Industry groups have called on the Audit Commission to investigate the impact of local council newspapers on the regional media industry, as part of the government’s recommendations to the commission in the Digital Britain report. But the commission said such an assessment should be made by the Office of Fair Trading.

The commission will however review all aspects of council communications including press offices, publications, websites and expenditure on advertising jobs.

FleetStreetBlues: A letter in defence of council-run newspapers

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FleetStreetBlues has reproduced this letter in defence of council-run newspapers from the latest issue of the NUJ Journalist magazine: not yet online.

“Helen Watson, Claire Rudd and 14 other NUJ members who write for Tower Hamlets Council’s weekly newspaper East End Life, write:

“We ‘jumped ship’ because the papers we worked on did not pay ‘grown-up’ wages – try paying a mortgage and bringing up kids on less than £20,000 a year for a 45-hour week, especially in London. It might be feasible if you’ve just left uni or have benefactors who can help you pay the rent while you struggle through on poverty wages. But those options are not open to most.””

Full post at this link…