Laws fires volley at Chronicle | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws delivered a fierce broadside against the Wanganui Chronicle during discussions on the Wanganui District Council's communications strategy.

At yesterday's finance and infrastructure committee meeting, councillors discussed whether to pull the weekly Community Link page from the Wanganui Chronicle and Wanganui Midweek, in favour of advertising in the River City Press and using online and social media.

After a lengthy and sometimes heated debate, councillors voted against the motion to adopt the strategy and instead agreed to send the discussion to the annual plan deliberations next week.

Mr Laws took the opportunity to accuse the Chronicle of editorial bias and poor reporting: "The Chronicle has deteriorated as a newspaper in the past 12 months, and markedly so."

Mr Laws said the  Chronicle's threat of legal action against the council over the proposal to subsidise the River City Press to distribute more widely, was pointless.

"The chief executive and I had a discussion with the Office of the Auditor-General and they say there is nothing wrong with the policy.

"Let's be honest - the Wanganui Chronicle doesn't like this strategy because it takes $100,000 in advertising away from them."

Other councillors agreed that while it was useful to discuss the best way to get the council's message to the public, attacking the Chronicle was not to the council's advantage.

Cr Rob Vinsen said his concern was with what was best for the ratepayer: "The Mayor has waxed eloquent about why he doesn't like the Chronicle, but I'm concerned about what the cost is to the ratepayer."

Other councillors expressed dismay that they had no input into the Community Link page. Cr Sue Westwood said she had no idea what would be in the page until she opened the newspaper and read it each week. She also said the council needed  a responsible attitude.

"This is ratepayer money, not ours, and we need to be responsible with it."

Wanganui Chronicle manager Andy Jarden was not at the meeting but later said the key issue, from the Chronicle's point of view, was that the council's communications strategy appeared to suggest the council would subsidise the River City Press to the tune of $677 per week.

POLITICAL HOARDINGS BANNED, P3