Penniless Salford Star on hold, as Kingston slams LIFE - North West Media Features

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Penniless Salford Star on hold, as Kingston slams LIFE

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Monday, 24 November 2008

Community magazine, and How-Do award winner, The Salford Star has been forced to cancel its Christmas edition due to a lack of funds. However, Stephen Kingston, the editor and founder of the title, has made clear to How-Do that “there’s no way that the title’s dead.”

“I’ll stack shelves in Tesco to get the money to print it if I have to,” he told us.

In a candid and typically passionate interview, Kingston admitted that the magazine was effectively “penniless” but then explained that that was normal operating procedure for the Star.

Christmas coming late this year

“We just don’t have the money to print the Christmas issue,” he stated, “but then it’s always a struggle.

Double trouble, in terms of print cost

“We usually get the advertisers to pay up front to fund the print run, but this time I had to basically hock the advertising for this issue to pay for the summer edition, which was a double issue.

“But we will get it out eventually, even if we have to raise ten quid at a time. It might be at the end of January, it might be February… but then we’re always late anyway,” he laughed.

Kingston strongly rebuked any suggestion that this could be the end of the line for the Star, imparting that he and his band of community volunteers – numbering around 100 in total – are totally committed to its future.

“There’s been some suggestions about changing the format to a newspaper, or online, and saving money. But I’m against that.

“The Star has a glossy format and I think Salford deserves that kind of quality.

“As far as just putting it online,” he continued, “that might work for something like How-Do, but it wouldn’t work for us."

Community first

“We want pensioners to read it, little kids to pick it up – we want to get this magazine into people’s hands, get it out there and into the community.

Community spirit

“You also have to remember that we’re going into some of the most deprived areas in Europe, let alone in England. Not everyone has access to the internet, in fact it’s only 20% of the people in Salford.

“This is a community title, so it has to be relevant for that community.”

In terms of raising the funds to continue, Kingston sees only one realistic revenue stream (apart from Tesco’s) where he can turn – advertising.

The problem is, he says, there’s no dedicated advertising sales person for the title (“volunteers are very welcome”), there’s not a great deal of businesses actually in Salford that have the means to advertise and – regular How-Do’ers won’t be surprised to hear – the council aren’t really all that keen to stick their own ads in there.

“We’re a community magazine, we need to be publicly funded,” he stressed.

LIFE's a bitch

“But we can’t get funding – our application for devolved funding last year was ripped up by the council – and meanwhile they can award themselves £175k for their own propaganda sheet.

Kingston doesn't get LIFE

“It’s the lack of equality of funding that gets me. It’s simply not fair.”

Talk of the Council’s LIFE plans is like a red rag to the bullshit free Kingston, who goes on at blunt yet impassioned length about the advertising revenues (he says about £100k) that will now be taken away from the local press (“not from us though, we’ve never seen a cent”) and the jobs that will be affected as a result.

“It’s bonkers, just bonkers,” is the way he finally, breathlessly sums it up.

As for the Star itself, it will shine again, he stresses and re-stresses, but it will also have to sit in alongside his freelance journalism – “I’ve got to live too you know” – although hopefully not a job at Tesco’s.

“We have something special here,’ Kingston concluded.

“The demand always outstrips the supply – I mean we’d double the print run if we could - and there are an army of local volunteers that get involved because this is their magazine.

“It’s important. And it has a future. It’s a genuine community project for a genuine community.

“Simple as that.”

www.salfordstar.com

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Comments (16)

1 By Realist, on 24-11-2008 10:35
The Star is to be commended on many, many fronts - but it can't go on like this without public funding (which it deserves, but probably won't get as it's way too much of a loose cannon).

Stephen you may have to compromise somewhere down the line if you're ever going to get public money. Sad, but true.

Good luck.