Should our local councils fund local news?

Should ratepayer money be used to fund all, or some, local news?
The QLDC mayor gets a ratepayer funded ODT subscription.
The CODC mayor - “The way we receive news is changing, and not every agency has kept pace.”

It now seems clear that the answer to NZ’s news media crisis is likely to be that readers have to pay for news - even local news.

Crux has had a sympathetic hearing from media Minister Paul Goldsmith on the problem of council money being used to prop up “friendly” print media through discretionary advertising. In parallel, the requirement for council notices to be published in print is being removed.

Minister Goldsmith even has an answer. It’s probably years off, if ever, but he likes the idea of councils paying for all local news coverage via a central contested fund (like NZ On Air) - using the money that currently is used selectively for council promotions and advertising/PR.

Show us an average ratepayer who does not want their local council held to account!

Advertising was never a natural fit for news. Maybe at a national level but locally you can’t bite then hand that feeds you.

That raises a whole new class of problems that we are now seeing in Queenstown, Wānaka and Cromwell.

One of the main problems is that elected councillors don’t get paid much and many can’t afford to have one digital news subscription, let alone two or three.