22 February 2013
Square Circular moves online and to a new community paper

Palmerston North City Council’s monthly community publication, the Square Circular will now appear in Palmerston North’s most read community newspaper, The Tribune, from next week.

With a circulation of 44,000, The Tribune is a free weekly paper. Its parent company is the Manawatu Standard within the Fairfax stable of publications.

Palmerston North City Council’s strategic communications manager Daniel O’Regan says motivation for the move is the exponential growth in the online world for both information and service provision.

Increasingly, Palmerston North residents are seeking their news and information online. This has been particularly noticeable since the introduction of smart phones. Therefore it makes sense for Council to communicate with residents through the mediums they use which in this case is online.

The Square Circular will now have its own dedicated page that is connected to, and similar layout to: http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/your-manawatu/tribune/. Online readers will be directed to the Square Circular from the Manawatu Standard’s homepage which now boasts an average over the last six months of 94,590 unique visitors a month and from the Manawatu Standard’s Facebook page which has over 2000 likes. The page will go live 27th February 2013.

Daniel O’Regan says the change will also increase readership of the printed version of Square Circular. Boundary Change residents will receive the Tribune only on the weeks in which the Square Circular is published, while rural residents within the City’s boundaries who are subscribers of the Manawatu Standard will for the first time receive the publication.

All delivery issues should be reported to The Tribune on 0800 835 323.

Earlier this month a trial print run was held. Manawatu Standard’s business development officer, Ken Callagher, says the test print went really well with the printer commenting that the technical aspects worked perfectly and commented further on the high quality look and feel of the product.

The Square Circular in the Tribune will be printed on a slightly thicker paper thereby improving the quality. It will be an insert inside the Tribune and on the days of publication it will be the only insert.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On Failures Of Care For Those With Mental Disabilities

Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The Ministry has found that the country’s only kaupapa Maori intellectual disability residential care provider has been “seriously dysfunctional.”

The ministry says the business has failed to recruit and retain quality staff – and says the kaimahi (caregivers) that have been employed are seriously unsuitable for the job, lacking basic knowledge. But Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau doesn’t get all the blame. The report says there’s a significant gap under disability laws to ensure there’s oversight by qualified clinical professionals. More>>