Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Ending the relationship

It saves £3 million a year, and that money will go into planting 10,000 trees in residential areas by 2012 (fitting nicely with the Conservative's new green ethos), but will the axing of the Mayor's personal Newspaper 'The Londoner' have a negative impact? Direct mail and direct communication is argued to be able to build a relationship of trust between sender and receiver. Receivers feel informed, and that someone cares about informing them, and also get a sense of transparency in what is happening. Livingstone's version of The Londoner was often criticised as being is propaganda tool (Pravda), but if this was true it did not have to have that function. While Boris Johnson's team pursue cost cutting, could the death of The Londoner be a saving he regrets later when the Evening Standard begins to criticise him and he is unable to directly communicate to the majority of Londoners? It is a question, and it is being debated on an Urban75 forum; interesting comments on both sides, and interesting example of the online public sphere in action.

2 comments:

Praguetory said...

No to free sheets on the taxpayer.

Dr Darren G Lilleker said...

It is a problem, research shows that citizens value direct communication that informs them of the actions of their representatives (The LibDems Focus paper is hugely popular), but ask them to pay for it in any way and its a big no. I never read 'Pravda' so not sure how close it was to propaganda, but then what political communication isn't in some form or another, but still there is a role for this sort of thing. Damned if you don't....