Limited sympathy for local papers hit by council freesheets

Journalists are angry that the Audit Commission’s review of spending on local authority newspapers will not look at the impact they have on traditional local papers.

The review was called for as part of the Government’s Digital Britain strategy, to look at the growing trend for local authorities to spend council money on free newspapers, some of which attract advertising that might otherwise go to local commercial titles.

The Chartered Institute of Journalists says the Audit Commission have told them they won’t be looking specifically at the impact on local newspaper revenues as they do not have the skills or expertise to do this.  This isn’t surprising – the commission is the public spending watchdog, not the guardian of big business.  Instead it will focus on whether these council produced titles offer value for money to the public purse.

It leaves local newspaper owners and journalists concerned that there will be no halt in the trend which, they say, is hurting local titles by taking away valuable advertising and damaging democracy by leaving the public without independent scrutiny of local authority actions.

It appears that the Digital Britain authors asked the wrong people to do the job, and it won’t be long until a body with more appropriate powers is asked to examine the issue.  As the Audit Commission points out, the Office of Fair Trading has already noted the adverse impact council titles are having on local commercial media.

Limited sympathy

I’m not without sympathy for the argument.  Advertising revenues are down and many local papers are already struggling to keep afloat.  Publically subsidised titles that eat into the advertising revenue can only do more harm, with a detrimental effect on the ability to hold local authorities to account.  Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard recently set out some examples which, if he’s right, suggest some council newspapers are well overstepping the mark. 

But my sympathy is limited.  Let’s not pretend that all local newspapers are the cornerstone of democracy.  Many are woefully under resourced and unable to cover the village fete accurately, let along hold a public body to account.  Others have clear agendas and run one-sided and biased campaigns that do nothing to promote democratic debate.

Local authorities have a massive agenda, organising and delivering a range of services for hundreds of thousands of people.  To do this they need to be able to explain their actions, engage local people and businesses, promote initiatives and lead genuine debate.  They can’t do this without effective local communications, and they certainly can’t do this through the prism of an adversarial press.  How truly democratic are some one-newspaper towns?

Outdated models

This debate seems to me to be missing the fundamental fact – and the point underpinning the whole Digital Britain report – that some traditional media models are becoming irrelevant.  So let’s have a debate about the future of local commercial media and how it sits alongside effective local government communications channels, rather than try to prop up outdated models of media production.