I’d suggest that this is what councils should be encouraging, rather than – as Paul points out – the shoring up of outdated edifices which are in practice monopolies deciding what voices get heard locally.

My central point is that commercial publishing is very inefficient in this country. It makes a lot of money and doesn’t give much back – and this is because a near-monopoly situation has been allowed to grow up in the UK. Politicians are a bit shy of regulating media groups – and this is something that needs to change.

The idea that London can only sustain one London-wide paid-for daily along with sister morning and evening free-sheets is just laughable. A title has been allowed to abuse its monopoly position to keep others out of the market and politicians are unwilling to get tangled up in this one. The same is true elsewhere.

There are plenty of examples of local papers swallowing the TPA’s garbage wholesale – in my line of work, I speak to local government press officers quite a bit, and it’s a common concern that the TPA will write some incredible horseshit and local papers will recycle it unquestioned.

There’s just a reporting bias: No-one collates the way that local papers pick up TPA stories. These guys – http://taxpayersalliance.org/ – only really monitor the nationals – they don’t have huge donations from non-taxpayers to sustain them y’see…

I disagree here. Writing as an enthusiast for politically engaged local sites (I’m building a directory), I’m not sure that your evidence fully supports your argument.

The Doncaster Councillor is not “damned if he does or doesn’t”; in his own area he is damned by his council having run a paper which by his own argument is not necessary, since the Northern Echo does the job he expects of it.

I’d suggest that creative Councils could perhaps be exploring the idea of putting a percentage of their proposed “newspaper” budget (say 50%) into a co-operative programme with their local paper – such as an informational insert combined with a partially free issue when that is done. Perhaps that would be a win-win. This was noticeably missing from Council Responses in the LGA survey a few months ago (small pdf – last table).

Given the amounts that Council’s can spend on these publications (Bristol City spend £216k on a bimonthly 16 page mag for example), it could make a big difference.

Can I also question your Tax Payers Alliance point? The piece you link to by Mark Thompson links to 8 examples of ‘media swallowing TPA press releases’. Of those, 7 are national media and one is a London suburb (Richmond).

In any terms that is not a case against the local press. Are there perhaps other examples you can quote?

Rgds

I’ve noted Swedish newspapers doing this – http://twitzap.com/u/c38 – ironically via a Greenslade HT!