Hackney Today – here tomorrow?

Hackney Today: Pipe and Pickles clash again over council's 'propaganda' paper. Photograph: Hackney Citizen

The future of Hackney Today hangs in the balance as the Government plans measures to crack down on local authority publications.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced at a recent Newspaper Conference lunch in Westminster that legislation would be introduced in the next session of parliament to prevent  councils like Hackney from publishing frequent ‘newspapers’, which he has referred to as “town hall Pravdas”.

Hackney is one of a handful of councils that have defied the Government’s unofficial ban on publications which come out more than once every three months.

According to the Newspaper Society, Pickles is keen to “stop a bunch of hard core authorities” that continue to publish more often.

Hackney Today is brought out fortnightly by the council and distributed at taxpayers’ expense to 108,000 households and businesses in the borough. The council argues that it provides value for money, as it is an effective means of communicating important information to local residents.

In December 2010 Mayor Jules Pipe defended the role of Hackney Today, telling the Parliamentary Communities and Local Government Select Committee that part of the job of the publication is counter negative depictions of the area in the local press, and that it “is not meant to be reflective of the generality of life in Hackney”.

The opposition parties on Hackney council have long lamented what they see as the one-sided coverage of the freesheet, however. Cllr Simche Steinberger of the Hackney Conservatives welcomed the move by Eric Pickles: “Hackney Today is a propaganda paper and a waste of taxpayers’ money. We’ll shed no tears to see the back of it.”

Commenting on Pickles’ latest proposal, Jules Pipe, Mayor of Hackney, said: “I have made it very clear to Government Ministers, several times in person, that the Council will reduce the frequency of Hackney Today if they will change the ridiculously out-dated legal requirements that force Councils across the country into handing over millions of pounds each year to advertise planning and traffic notices in hard-copy printed newspapers.

“Publishing our own fortnightly paper is the most cost effective way we have of meeting those legal requirements, and as well as that, Hackney Today ensures that we can get vital public service information to all our residents, including those who do not have access to the Internet.

“If Mr Pickles insists on draconian and nonsensical legislation to try to control how often councils can communicate with residents, I can guarantee that residents will be less informed about council services and that it will end up costing Hackney’s taxpayers more money, unless he allows Councils to publish traffic and planning notices on-line instead of in printed newspapers.

“A cross-party Select Committee challenged the Secretary of State to provide hard evidence that council newspapers have damaged the local newspaper industry.  I would be very interested to see that evidence, if Mr Pickles can ever produce it.”

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