Posted in News by Salford Youth Council - Mar 27, 2010
First published nearly five years ago as a printed publication the Salford Star has provided one of the only alternative sources of news and information to the people of Salford. This week it was announced the community-led magazine has been DENIED funding by the city council on the grounds that the magazine is “too controversial” and critical of the council due to it’s grass roots campaigns around a wide range of issues from corrupt politicians to school closures and the lack of adequate social housing. Since it costs to print and distribute the magazine to every household in the city the publication has recently had to become an “online-only” venture. This funding application would have meant the Salford Star could have restored it’s print operation. We recently exposed Salford Advertiser’s plans to scrap deliveries to large areas of the city, leaving many without a local paper.
The magazine has published the reasons for this decision here:
Salford Council Bans Community Funding from the Salford Star
Our committee was presented with an emergency motion this evening:
“SUPPORT THE SALFORD STAR”
Membership calls on the Youth Council Committee to:
1. Condemn the decision by the Budget Sub-Group of the East Salford Community Committee to turn down the funding application made by the Salford Star.
2. Boycott the city council’s “Life IN Salford” publication and no longer provide content to them via the youth service run youth local forums on the following grounds:
a. Unfairly biased in favour of the city council’s executive department and does not provide any form of representative outlet for local people to express their views on the services provided to them.
b. Produced at an obscenely high cost – which is passed on to the public at the expense of other public services which are currently being cut by the city council – including Children’s Services.
3. Petition local councillors in our respective wards to overturn the decision by the East Salford Community Committee.
4. Agree to support the continued work of the Salford Star by whatever means necessary.
This motion was PASSED unanimously.
In response Rachel Cavendish (Co-Chair of the Salford Youth Council committee) commented:
“The denial of such a minuscule sum of critical funding designated for independent community projects like the star has clearly been influenced by those who wish to censor freedom of speech. There are elected and unelected officials who represent the people of Salford who simply to do not wish the public to hear the truth about how the their local authority is failing them. It is crucial young people stand up to this type of censorship and are made aware of the actions of the city council. This is a disgrace.”
Posted in News by Rachel - Jan 22, 2010
Paper Crisis – the end of local news?
Exclusive: This week’s distrubition of the Salford Advertiser to homes is to be it’s last.
Owners – the M.E.N / Guardian Media Group claim it will still be available online, and in “quality newsagents”. As Salford Youth Council reported last September in our newsletter – many newsagents in Salford stopped selling the Advertiser months ago and many claim they weren’t even told why. Most, if not all of them continue to sell the Manchester Evening News.
As a city-wide newspaper, the Advertiser (and others it has merged with over the years) has always been delivered directly to people’s homes. Not every home gets a copy due to their geographic location or lack of rounds in their area, but it has always been a FREE and accessible way for many local people to hear about important developments that directly effect them.
It is estimated around one third of all homes in Salford do not have internet access, the availablity of digital tv news and radio is on the rise but free papers are often the only access to local news to so many, often disadvatanged people.
Job Losses for the Lowest Paid
Now many of the city’s most lowest-paid workers (many of them younger people and the elderly) are out of a job or any alternative income. Considering newspapers are legally allowed to pay them just £2.50 an hour it is surprising the lowest paid workers have been dropped with only one weeks notice. – Hence why, instead of the familiar paper-round staff delivering this week, you will may have witnessed Royal Mail staff delivering the Advertiser’s final edition to homes this week.
However unavoidable this decision may seem for the M.E.N media group considering the poor financial climate, - the almost end of the city’s free, weekly newspaper can only serve to make things worse.
Salford Youth Council believes this decision to end paper-rounds will be detrimental to ALL residents of Salford.
Perhaps the Salford Star will be resurrected soon as a printed edition and take it’s place?
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Update: 26th Jan 2010
Despite some confusion at first, it appears we were correct all along. It took until Tuesday to get an explanation. We did attempt to get more answers from M.E.N Media’s distribution office before this article was written, but no-one was available to comment. Over the weekend M.E.N employees were telling people to ignore our article as it “isn’t true”.
The long and short of it is… if your street/block/neighbourhood is POOR (apparently that means not attractive to advertisers) then you won’t get a free local newspaper… but lucky you if your home is “economically attractive” enough. If not, maybe you could move house?
Here is a statement issued 26/01/10 from the M.E.N Media Group:
“Every two years or so M.E.N Media takes a detailed look at its coverage maps and restructures the distribution pattern of its titles. In order to remain in the marketplace and attractive to advertisers we alter the households that receive a home delivered free newspaper.
“We have just completed the process of informing our readers of the small changes to our distribution giving them details of how they can receive their local news going forward.
“The changes affect a small number of homes across Greater Manchester and our household penetration remains amongst the highest in the UK.”
That’s an awful lot of homes…
