Councils v local newspapers?

A few weeks ago, Roy Greenslade picked up on a growing opposition to Council-run free newspapers.

As he notes, the opposition comes both from smaller political parties locally, and from commercial rivals that are being edged out – as they see it.

Elsewhere, we are seeing growing demands for a journalistic ‘bail-out’ – and not just from bug-eyed Marxist fanatics either. Certainly, a lot of the clearly drawn ethical lines that have protected the near-monopolies of some local newspapers are being challenged from many quarters.

On the one hand, a strong local democracy requires a powerful independent journalistic voice, and if the Council does anything to damage this ecology, then it would be difficult to defend.

However, I think that there is an opportunity here. The National Union of Journalists are firmly of the view that some local newspapers are cutting back on journalists – not because they can’t afford them, but because their current business model allows them to make sufficient advertising revenues without much investment in original content.

At a very simple level, the boundaries that newspapers market themselves at are often different from the administrative boundaries of local government. As a result, councils have the choice of spending hefty advertising budgets across a range of titles in order to publish statutory notices or job vacancies.

On this level alone, it is often quite simply cheaper to print a newspaper every now and again, than to spend the expected advertising ratecard costs.

We have to add this consideration into the mix of the democratic arguments: one of the biggest causes of political centralisation has been the retreat from a responsible and energetic standard of coverage of local government.

Under these circumstances, surely councils are within their rights to ask for evidence that papers are employing experienced and competent journalists, and that these journalists are giving a fair coverage of the council?

There’s a fine line between ‘fair’ and ‘soft’ and councils need to think about how this is brokered. But simply only employing cub reporters and providing superficial coverage of local issues – and it’s widely accepted now that many local newspapers do this – is very damaging to local democracy, and if councils are to be asked to resist the temptation to go into this space, they should ask for something in return.

Councils could – and in my opinion, should – be challenging local newspapers saying that ‘we won’t compete with you if we think that you are providing a public good’.

Councils can also stay out of that space in return for free / cheap advertising of essential services. Local newspapers could provide citizenship information to local residents. Councils can put pressure upon them to do so.

It’s time to start thinking this through – from a political, journalistic and administrative perspective.The kind of free-market arguments that have traditionally been made against this kind of approach are unlikely to continue to be the staple of any British political party for much longer.