Star date: 24th November 2009

COMMENT: Stephen Kingston

Salford Star editor, Stephen Kingston, responds to a column by a local newspaper editor who argued that the Guardian's George Monbiot was out of order when he wrote that the Salford Star was one of only two local publications in the country worth saving…

Full comment here…

A couple of weeks ago George Monbiot, top writer for the Guardian newspaper, wrote a column in which he basically said that all local newspapers were rubbish, and that there were only two worth saving in the country…

"I can think of only two local newspapers that consistently hold power to account: the West Highland Free Press and the Salford Star…"

The response was phenomenal but we didn't boast about it and didn't even put it on the website. Then, in this week's Salford Advertiser, editor Simon Keegan had a massive go back at both Monbiot and the Salford Star.

First he accuses Monbiot of `inaccuracies' and then comes up with a few of his own…like, "the blog the Salford Star which was funded by Salford Council…"

We're not a `blog' (since when did a blog have up to 100 volunteers helping out?) and never have been – we're an online magazine that wants to be in print but can't get funding because we haven't got the backing of a huge media monopoly monster called Guardian Media Group. And we have never, ever, been funded by Salford Council, never even had a penny in advertising from it (unlike the Advertiser).

What we did get, before we were in print with the first issue, was £1.5k off East Salford Community Committee – from funding devolved to the community by the Council for residents to spend on great local projects. Of course once we did get into print and applied again, the Council re-wrote its constitution for `devolved funding', back dated it six weeks and ripped up our application.

Writing that "this is not intended as a dig at the Salford Star" Simon Keegan then quotes a comment left on the Guardian's website by a so-called `journalist' that certainly has a dig and contains loads of inaccuracies…

Fortunately he didn't quote all of the crap that this guy wrote, only the bit that says we had "half a dozen issues (if that)…and has been online only for about the last two years" – nope, eight issues and been online for a year, incidentally, attracting almost 150,000 readers.

Yes, Monbiot wrote that the Salford Star was a `newspaper' which we never have been, but we get that all the time – nobody expects a `community' publication to be high quality, glossy and 100 pages thick.

Personally, I think that Simon Keegan is a bit peeved with Monbiot who… "praises the Salford Star but fails to mention the Salford Advertiser"…

Maybe he'd read the Salford Star article on the Salford Advertiser – the one about giving Hazel Blears her own column…the one about giving the police its own column next to a full page advert…

This comment isn't intended as a dig at the Salford Advertiser, they do what they do very well. But, to quote the Advertiser editor, "apples aren't oranges"…

PS. Would have written this response quicker but the Advertiser didn't get delivered again this week…