What is the point of free newspapers produced by local councils? These days, almost every council has one – but no one seems to know what they are for .
The argument you hear most frequently in favour of free newspapers is that they save councils money: without them, they would have to spend the money on advertising in local newspapers, and this works out more expensive than sending a out a free sheet via Royal Mail.
Another argument you hear is that sending free newspapers to every resident is the only way to deliver statutory notices to everyone. Leave it to the newspapers, the argument goes, and some people who don’t buy the paper might miss important news – such as (an example from my council newspaper I have in front of me) that the post of Independent Chair of the council’s Interim Standards Committee is up for grabs.
But let’s be honest – the real reason councils produce these newspapers is that they hate having an independent media that might, from time to time, draw the public’s attention to their shortcomings. What they really hate is having to spend (other people’s) money on newspaper advertising, only to then get criticised by those newspapers.
But as a strong advocate of a free press, allow me to make the argument against council newspapers in three succinct points.
1. They’re crap. No one wants to read 24 pages of council press releases, which is what all of them consist of. The photos are always dull: men in suits / council buildings / close-ups of staff on the phone. Any right thinking person who receives this through the letterbox will immediately shove it straight in the recycling, probably without even opening it. So this defeats the argument that councils are getting their messages out to “every resident”.
In one sense, Trafigura and its lawyers Carter Ruck behaved shamefully in attempting to gag newspapers from reporting on Parliamentary proceedings. But in another, more profound, sense we should be grateful. As a result of their cack-handed attempts to silence The Guardian, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people now know about the serious allegations against Trafigura. Quite simply, this would not have been possible without the active role played by Trafigura and Carter Ruck. 
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