Scottish newspapers launch joint ad campaign against council advertising plans

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Representatives of Scotland's newspaper industry have launched a joint advertising campaign to grow support against Scottish government plans to withdraw local authority announcements from newspapers.

The first advert in the campaign takes the form of an open letter and targets members of the Scottish parliament who have expressed concerns over the creation of a new website for local authority announcements.

Concerns have been raised by regional media groups over bespoke local authority sites carrying announcements and job advertising with news groups arguing that these sites stymie a traditional revenue stream for titles by taking away local government job listings. A deal was struck between some news groups and recruitment site myjobscotland.gov.uk in September, and proposals for a single website for announcements and ads was rejected by MSPs in a vote in Holyrood last month. But the Scottish government could put the plan up for debate as a parliamentary motion.

The advert, which according to The Drum has been placed in the Scotsman and Herald, is backed by 23 Scottish newspaper publishers including Scottish & Universal Newspapers, the Scotsman Publications and News International (Scotland).

"Given that nearly 10 times [source: Ofcam media tracker] as many people in Scotland use newspapers than they do the internet as their main source of information about their local area, we believe this proposal is flawed and will undoubtedly lead to greatly reduced scrutiny and therefore accountability for local government announcements and actions," the newspapers' advert reads.

"There will be the risk of less open, more secretive government and of many grass roots issues being decided without proper consultation and debate. In a democratic society, it is difficult to understand how the Scottish Government can contemplate disenfranchising large numbers of the public by resorting to less effective communication channels."