SalfordOnline

Salford Star spar with Council over £28k freesheet cost

by Tom Rodgers

The war of words over Life in Salford, the Council's free magazine, has intensified with neither side willing to back down.

We were contacted by Salford Council, who handed us the details of the Freedom of Information request which Council leader John Merry says shows that the Salford Star "has got its sums wrong".

However, editor of the Salford Star and award-winning investigative journalist Stephen Kingston, says otherwise.

According to Salford Council the breakdown of the average cost of a magazine, let's take October 2009 as an example, are as follows:

Print costs: £7,100, Delivery costs: £6,444.99, Council funding for each issue: £4,583

The Council funding for each issue comes directly from your council tax. A budget of £55,000 per year was agreed by Salford City Council to produce Life in Salford.

The Council also quote an "income" figure of £3,831 for the October 2009 issue from internal advertising revenue - however, this is money from their own budgets - again funded by your council tax - which they get back from the departments which advertise things like job adverts and public notices in Life in Salford. On average per monthly issue this figure is around £7,900.

The income received from external advertisers in the October 2009 issue was £1,500.

Sums wrong

Leader of the Council John Merry said: "The Salford Star has got its sums wrong, I’m afraid.

“While it does cost money to produce the magazine, this is the same money we would otherwise have been obliged to spend on public notices or recruitment advertising in newspapers.

“The net cost of producing a monthly publication like this is less than our previous bi-monthly schedule where we had the additional expense of newspaper advertising for notices and jobs.

“It is our duty to let people know about the council services and facilities available to them and as holders of the public purse strings we want to do that in as cost effective a way as possible.”

We stand by our figures

Never one to mince words, Stephen Kingston is standing by his report, which was picked up by the national media after its publication on 26th January.

"The response is that we stand by our figures 100%," he says

"Whichever way you look at it the Council is spending on average per issue £13.5k on print and production, plus £1.87k on staff, £7.9k on its own ads and a £4.6k subsidy - which adds up to around £28k.

"These are its own figures, we haven't made it up. John Merry might argue that there's savings in cutting ads to other publications (see death of the Advertiser etc) and we did quote the council on that - but he's also saying we've got our sums wrong - which we haven't because it's their figures!

The mag is costing in total around £28k per issue - unfortunately that's a fact, so they can **** off - and you can quote me on that!"

Steve quotes the following in his original article (see link below): "while the Council says that it 'does not hold records allocating staff costs to the publication', a report circulated to councillors as Life went monthly shows staff costs (writing, photography, layout, graphics etc) at £1,870 per issue."

The Council have denied that staff costs on the magazine per issue are those quoted by the Star, i.e. £1,870, saying that "there are no staff allocated to work on the magazine full time."

We asked the question - it's obvious to us at SalfordOnline that staff costs for the magazine can't be zero, some staff must take some time to produce the magazine, incurring costs, but the Council press office assured us that these costs are included in the £4,583 budget for each issue of Life in Salford.

As a parting shot Steve noted: "It's funny how they can respond to this story really quickly but we've got a question on Decent Homes in the city outstanding from November that they can't seem to find the time to respond to..."

Related Links

Comment by Guest  3rd February 2010 You tell 'em Stephen, Salford really misses the Salford Star, sadly not all of us have access to the internet, but your site and this one really speaks out and informs. Keepup the good work!..Fred the Red

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