UK: Doncaster and Cornwall say goodbye to their council papers

Posted by Christie Silk on August 6, 2009 at 10:10 AM

The new Mayor of Doncaster has closed the city's council paper, deeming it no more than a platform for "council propaganda" and "an exercise in distorting unpalatable truths". A similar move was made by local authorities in Cornwall, who have pulled the plug on the costly state paper, Your Cornwall.

The Mayor of the Yorkshire town, Peter Davies, scrapped the paper on his first day in the job. He told the Doncaster Free Press that he plans to keep citizens informed about local government activity through local news organisations, including the Free Press.

The decision has reportedly saved the Council £67,000, without necessitating the making of any redundancies. The monthly publication, which began in 2002, was delivered to every home in the town. The ambiguous purpose of a council paper had caused some problems in this area. In 2005, it was mooted by a town councillor that the word "news" should be dropped from the paper's title, as this gave a misleading impression of what the paper served to provide. Critics claimed that the paper presented a glossed, "sunny" vision of town activity, rather than accurate, un-manicured local information. Yet the change was never actually enacted.

The Cornwall council decided last month to put an end to its publication, under a year after it first appeared as a free monthly. A spending review found that the paper was costing the council £400,000 per year, which no doubt aided the decision to stop publication.

Last year, Boris Johnson put to bed the London Assembly's newspaper, The Londoner, as Staffordshire Moorlands District Council did to its equivalent.

The short, troubled lives of the Doncaster News and Your Cornwall are representative of the general state of council ran papers, which have been greatly extended over recent years and attracted considerable controversy.

Sources: Doncaster Free Press
Press Gazette