My local paper and the reporting of council matters

After responses to the debate about council “newspapers” prompted so many comments (Roy Greenslade’s blog and HTFP among them) about local papers dumbing down and failing to cover civic issues at the expense of celebrity trivia, I suggested on this blog carrying out some sort of a survey to see whether that was truly the case.

This alleged withdrawal of bread-and-butter reporting hasn’t been my experience of working on regional papers in northern England and Scotland, but, maybe times have changed or other regions have different stories to tell?

Today I’ve taken a look at one local paper – the Darlington & Stockton Times – in an attempt to quantify what level of service is offered in this respect.

The D&S, as it’s known locally, is considered something of a bible in these parts and it could be used as a lesson in hyperlocal journalism.

All of life is there – weddings, school sports days, parish correspondents, letters, horse shows, and everything from mansion houses to ferrets for sale.

Using a crude measure of a page lead as one page and smaller pieces as quarters or halves, I calculate that at least one third of the space available for general news, has its basis in the coverage of local councils.

The splash story itself originates from a discussion about North Yorkshire County Council’s external contracts policy i.e. what/who local taxpayers’ money is spent on.

Here’s how today’s paper breaks down;

It’s a whopping 87 page read of which seven pages are dedicated to local sport, 16 pages of classified ads, two business, five farming, 11 weekend (leisure,shows,reviews etc) and 16 property.

Of the 20 remaining pages,two are for letters and comment, three for town & village parish correspondents, six for agricultural show results and one for weddings.

Leaving eight pages, one of which is a full page ad.

So of the seven, a total of two look at local council stories – one lead, one half page and two quarter pages.

And barely a celebrity in sight! The only mentions of such things are the court case of chef Clarissa Dickson-Wright and TV’s Antiques Roadshow. Both justifiable local news stories seeing as they happened on the patch.

A very different picture indeed to this oft-quoted view;

“The big newspaper groups aren’t interested in democracy, only the bottom line. (Then again are most local newspaper reporters, really interested?)” mentioned here .

Is this level of coverage enough? too much? not even touching the surface? More examples are going to be needed to establish any sort of benchmark but surely having such scrutiny of public bodies demonstrated by this one example would make justifying the expenditure of public money on funding any other form of publication a difficult case to put at the town hall.

So what’s happening in your area? How does your local paper compare? If you want to blog about this as well, the measure I used was that a page lead=1page, a picture story or large hamper = 1/2; briefs or single columns= 1/4.  Please link back to this blog so that I can flag it up too.