Staffordshire Newsletter

P

PPPPPP

Well-Known Forumite
John Marwood said:
Forgive me if this is a topic that's already been done to death, but does anyone have any clue why the local paper is so dire?

Money

Outdated business model

No budget for talent

Few means of income

Rising cost of production

Death by a thousand cliches
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You forgot to mention that the Snooze of the World would never publish anything that might offend Stafford's version of big brother. Why the paper didn't move offices to Scaffold Place or one of the Beaconside business parks is beyond me.
 
Goldilox

Goldilox

How do I edit this?
Myself and @juice-comedy were discussing a while back how much harder it has got to get local events in, since so much of its content has become centrally produced by Trinity-Mirror and dressed up as local. These days they would rather recycle a plug for a show in Burton on their entertainment section than get one of the four people who still work there to write up one actually happening in Stafford.
 
Andreas Rex

Andreas Rex

Banned for smiling
I read it every week...mainly to laugh at the glaring errors. You'd hope that the articles would, at the very least, have been put through a spell checker. Here's my favourite from the last few weeks...

Freemadon.jpg


Thursday 4th Sept 2014. 40% of the words in the headline aren't actually words. Excellent effort.
 
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Tants

Tants

Well-Known Forumite
Anybody taken the time to feed back to them what they'd want to see more of? I'm sure they'd value some feedback.
 
John Marwood

John Marwood

I ♥ cryptic crosswords
Goldilox said:
Myself and @juice-comedy were discussing a while back how much harder it has got to get local events in, since so much of its content has become centrally produced by Trinity-Mirror and dressed up as local. These days they would rather recycle a plug for a show in Burton on their entertainment section than get one of the four people who still work there to write up one actually happening in Stafford.
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The Newsletter aint owned by Trinity- Mirror

The Newsletter is owned by Local World ( was Northcliffe )

But the point remains the same, central 'news hubs' without local knowledge turning out reams of drivel

If you don't print things like the Crib League Tables you lose the loyal older readership and that is what they have done
 
Maryland

Maryland

Well-Known Forumite
Tants said:
Anybody taken the time to feed back to them what they'd want to see more of? I'm sure they'd value some feedback.
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Hmmm. Tricky, faced with a box of chocs like that.
Oh, go on then:
literacy;
a glimmer of curiosity about the world;
some indication of professional pride;
ditto re conscience about serving up tripe week in week out;
removal of forelocks before addressing any issue involving any local official, elected representative, landowner, possessor of privilege or considerably-richer-than-yow-type personage, so as to forestall the inevitable reflex tugging of said forelocks;
perhaps a bicycle they could use to get to a local shopping centre iot take an actual pic when somebody's parked their car in a wall;
a teeny bit of respect for the intelligence of their target readership;
a ban on cliches both verbal and visual (in particular, no more stupid posed pantomime photographs, such as of a citizen standing by a road sign looking all frowny, or a woman - sorry, 'mum' - with a child holding a lettuce leaf, looking I dunno, tragic about some pet-related mishap). The last with apologies to any who may have been affected recently by pet-related issues, of course.

However, the listings of goings-on at local groups are good. And they always seem to find space for lots of stuff about local school or pub sporting encounters, c/w bad phot of grubby but triumphant runners-about, ideally with a trophy of some sort. And the agricultural sales reports are sometimes diverting. But mostly, it's utter drivel and adverts. There's more, and better-informed, discussion of local issues in this forum.

The cockatiel has the right idea.
 
Maryland

Maryland

Well-Known Forumite
PPPP. Is that an actual fact, or a jest? Because I could well believe that an individual with certain of the reverend father's characteristics - chiefly not getting out much and being unaware of what's going on - might go some way towards an explanation for some of the junk that gets published.
But that wouldn't account for the awful writing and the laziness. Unless Father Jack is always pissed by lunchtime and physically unable to read the efforts of the latest intern with inflated grades working for nothing on Daddy's money. I mean, what do they DO all day? Is it seven hours flogging ad space to estate agents and only 30 minutes to look at Twitter and run any local gossip through whatever app they use - 'LocalRagCrapCopyBot', probably - pausing briefly to wonder whether to leave the cliche content lever stuck on max again? And it can't have all been outsourced to Bangalore, because the standard of English would be much higher. I am genuinely baffled by the awfulness of the Newsletter.
 
P

PPPPPP

Well-Known Forumite
Tants said:
Anybody taken the time to feed back to them what they'd want to see more of? I'm sure they'd value some feedback.
Click to expand...

How about getting the Lois Lanes to conduct a full investigation into the local freemasons, asking questions like why it is that Stafford BC councillors don't have to declare membership, whereas they do everywhere else, including other parts of Staffs local government?
 
Prawn cocktail

Prawn cocktail

Well-Known Forumite
I find the levels of adverts on their website really annoying. I don't mind small ads at the bottom of a page or down the side of a page, but when the entire page is dominated by them, it's a bit much.
 
db

db

#chaplife
the newsletter website is ridiculous.. i follow them on facebook, and any time there is a story of interest i click the link, but i can never actually get to the story because it is hidden behind so many pop-ups and adverts :angry:
 
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