You may refer to it – with a variable mix of disdain and affection – as ‘the local rag’, but don’t call it a throwaway. Without community newspapers our local democracy is in peril.
Last week I spoke at the Community Newspapers Association conference and some of their publications, like media everywhere, are facing tough times. I expected as much, and admire the tenacity of these committed publishers and their staff who serve areas as varied as metropolitan suburbs and the hinterland of tiny rural towns.
There are about 78 community newspapers represented by the association and, leaving aside duplications, a further 52 (mostly owned by Stuff, or NZME) are part of the News Publishers Association. There has been some attrition but Community Newspapers Association president David MacKenzie says that start-ups have balanced out the casualties and membership has been stable for the past five years.
Their frequencies vary from five-days-a-week to monthly, the size from tabloid to quarter fold or less, and circulation from thousands to hundreds. Quality varies, too. Sometimes that reflects the experience of staff, but more often nowadays it is a reluctant reaction to making ends meet.
An example of the latter is such a lack of resources that a publication is reduced to reproducing council media releases rather than sending a reporter to cover local body activities.
During the conference that led me into conversations with community publishers and editors about their relationships with local authorities. What I heard was disturbing.
Many of our community newspapers continue to devote their resources to holding councils and their elected representatives to account. The Community Newspaper of the Year in last week’s Voyager Awards, Warkworth’s Mahurangi Matters, was commended for doing just that. Some publications, however, are in a battle of wits with local authority communications staff.
Comms staff must think they are in seventh heaven when their local paper is forced to reproduce their releases because it cannot afford to staff a newsroom. Some of their counterparts elsewhere act as if they are in some sort of holy war with their community newspapers.
I was told of one council which, when approached by a weekly community paper for comment on a story that a reporter has underway, will regularly gazump the paper by running a favourable ‘news’ item on the council website before the paper’s story can be published. The editor has now been forced to run stories first, then seek council comment for a subsequent edition. That paper is not alone in expressing a fraught relationship with council comms staff.
The situation reflects two things. First, there is an adversarial attitude on the part of communications staff that runs counter to the public information role they should fulfil. Secondly, it displays disdain for the democratic function of community newspapers.
Virtually every local authority has its own website. While the sites prioritise paying your rates and registering your dog, all carry news. On some sites the term ‘news’ is rather loose. Most of the content would be better described as public notices. On others, however, there are stories on various subjects, but they all have one thing in common – they invariably cast the council, the mayor, and councillors in the most positive light. None critically interrogates the work of the local authority.
So, if comms staff think their websites are a substitute for community newspapers, they are deluding themselves and selling short the people on whose behalf the councils exist. At best, these websites are unquestioning and, at worst, platforms for propaganda. Some (and Auckland City’s springs to mind) are labyrinths in which one can become hopelessly lost while seeking the simplest piece of information, or frustrated by the self-serving way in which councils present material.
Of course, keeping councils on their toes is not the sole function of community newspapers. They continue to run stories that have long since disappeared from many of their larger counterparts. These are the reports about what ordinary folk in the area are doing (not a role served by many council websites). They are stories of no great moment but which strike a chord because they are ‘about us’. I’ve written before in this column about my favourite American smalltown editor Al McIntosh and the columns about ordinary townsfolk that he wrote in the Rock County Star Herald in Luverne, Minnesota. Many of these stories remind me of him. I think of them as glue – the stuff that holds a community together.
So, too, does the advertising. If you want an electrician in Whangamata you can call Rusty Sparks or if you want to get rid of old tools in Waiuku, Dave’s your man. Local commerce relies on these papers, and residents rely on the papers for goods and services. The small advertisements are what keep many publications going and they are also indispensable to readers. One of my brothers lives in a rural community not far from Auckland and he tells me he always reaches for the local paper when he needs a tradesman or some supplies for his smallholding. I asked him why he didn’t look on the Internet and his response suggested it was both troublesome and somehow unpatriotic. He values his local paper and understand the economics.
Some publishers, however, struggle to justify the use of the term ‘local’. Stuff’s communities, particularly those in urban Auckland, carry large amounts of shared content and some have only token amounts of local news. I can see the financial benefit of this cost paring, but it risks making the publications less relevant to their target audiences. I am sure I am not alone in no longer seeking out my local paper for that reason. NZME’s communities also share content but the quantum does not seem as high as Stuff’s. Both groups, of course, share numerous pages among their metropolitan and regional mastheads.
Printing and distribution costs are ongoing issues for community newspapers. Inevitably print production will draw to a close. At that point the future of local news coverage will become problematic for at least some publishers. Scale, and the diminished return from digital versus print advertising, will render some no longer viable under their current structures. The game changes when ‘push’ (through the letterbox) becomes ‘pull’ (on a user-selected website).
At the Community Newspapers Association conference I raised two possibilities that were included in If Not Journalists Then Who?, the Koi Tū think tank’s position paper on media for which I was the principal author. If community news reaches the stage where it is no longer viable for commercial private enterprise, alternative structures need to be found if we are to avoid news deserts.
The position paper recommends the government designate certain types of journalism as directly eligible for tax-deductible philanthropy. This would assist community organisations set up specifically to support a local news outlet and solicit charitable donations. It further suggests New Zealand adopt a company structure designed for organisations that provide for public good. The Low Profit Limited Liability Company (L3C) structure was established in the United States to allow operations such as rest homes to make small profits but pay no tax in recognition of the public service they provide. Without that provision they would not be viable. Some community news providers will inevitably be in that precarious position in the future and charitable or L3C status could be the difference between survival or closure.
It would be a grave error to concentrate all of our efforts on the survival of our largest news outlets such as national broadcasters or metropolitan publications. Community-level news is, in its own way, as important to the democratic process as coverage of national politics. Arguably, we are more directly affected by the decision-making of our local and regional councils than by what is decided in Wellington.
Turnout in the 2022 local body elections was only a shade over 40 per cent. In rural areas it was close to 50 per cent. Allowing for a blip when the Auckland Council was established, turnout has been in decline since 1998. Community newspapers are the most effective way that trend can be reversed and, without them, the interrogation of candidates is hit and miss at best. Yet voter turnout is not the only measure by which to judge civic engagement. Between elections there is healthy engagement and debate over the decisions made on our behalf, much of it as a result of local news coverage.
A trawl through some of our far-flung community titles made me just a little envious. I live in central Auckland and my local community is subsumed by the Super City. Since the Blockhouse Bay Beacon closed last year, I don’t have much idea of what is happening in my direct environs. I’d be happy if we we had the equivalent of a modest little publication like the Twizel Update.
Issue 988 last week told me that the $124 million Tekapo hotel plan was dead in the water, ran through 14 project updates presented to the local community board (everything from the rabbit problem on Man Made Hill to what will happen the next time the Market Place public toilets are closed), gave me the layout of new carparks at Lake Ruataniwha, and showed me the mural the local kindergarten’s tamariki have made. But wait…there was more. It told me that, if I need Spider Proofing, Michael’s my man.