Revealed: How Hackney Today competes aggressively with local papers
Hackney Council has said Hackney Today does not compete aggressively with titles such as the Hackney Citizen
An arrangement under which personnel at Greenwich Council sold heavily discounted advertising space in Hackney Today on commission has been scrapped.
The strange set-up was ditched after the government put the screws on Hackney Council in a letter that could serve as a prelude to court action.
Whitehall is seeking to corral the Town Hall into complying with Parliament-approved rules stipulating freesheets like Hackney Today should not be published more often than quarterly. Most local authorities in London have now fallen into line but Hackney and a small number of others are continuing to disregard the rules.
The letter from the Department for Communities and Local Government also stated that the Secretary of State believes “it is possible that more or wider circulating local newspapers would be available in the borough if there were no council newspaper”.
Aggression?
The Town Hall’s press office appears to have been economical with the truth when assuring the public that it was not “going after” the traditional advertising base of local newspapers in the borough or undercutting them.
Its press office stated that Hackney Today “has always been run in way that does not aggressively compete with other local titles”.
But the Hackney Citizen has now been shown evidence which suggests the contrary.
A local business that advertises in both the Hackney Citizen and Hackney Gazette was contacted earlier this year by an ad sales executive working on the Hackney Today account.
It is claimed this salesperson, who was working for Greenwich Council at the behest of Hackney Council, said she had seen an advert in the Hackney Gazette, and that she asked if the local business would like to now advertise in Hackney Today.
The Hackney Citizen has been shown documentation revealing she then sold the business a quarter page advert for £175 plus VAT and asked them if they wanted to book in again for December.
A quarter page costs £656 on the Hackney Today rate card, so this was sold to at a discount of 73.32 per cent.
This appears to amount to “aggressive competition” since the price is well below the market rate for a quarter page ad in a publication with a print run of 108,000 copies, most of which are delivered door-to-door.
No commercial publisher would be able to compete with such an offer. Hackney Council is presumably only able to bear such discounted ad sales because its freesheet is subsidised by taxpayers.
‘Doing very well’
Last month Hackney Council’s press supremo Polly Cziok boasted in a tweet that Hackney Today was “doing very well re income”.
Budget monitoring done. Film location office, graphic design service and Hackney Today all doing very well re income. #OurDay
— Polly Cziok (@PollyCziok) November 15, 2016
Following several articles that have appeared in the Hackney Citizen online and in print about this issue, Mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville said: “I reiterate my support for the Hackney Citizen and have taken out a subscription to safeguard its future and would urge other residents to do the same.
“It’s clear the council and the Citizen disagree on a number of issues, but not on the importance of local journalism. I know the council look forward to discussing outstanding concerns at a meeting next week.
“Hackney has had an informal arrangement with RB [Royal Borough of] Greenwich since May this year, through which they have sold a small amount of advertising on our behalf.
“This arrangement has now come to an end. Hackney Today has always been careful to not to aggressively compete with the local independent press, and therefore we will not be using RB Greenwich or any other agent to sell advertising on our behalf in future.”