On 26 Jun 2009 at 8:53pm Roly Mo wrote:
It never ceases to amaze me as to how crap the Express is. Have their journalists taken lessons from John Eccles, and just spend their time in the pub?
They mentioned in the paper this week about the orange lights over the Stanley Turner ground, being for a memorial event. Did their reporter not wonder who it was for? And what had happened to that person, for it to warrant the sort of event that was being run? Also, in Ringmer about three weeks ago a young mum tragically died after being electrocuted. This is fairly big news, but NOTHING. Thank god that there was a story today about wildlife rescuers helping a chick during a gull fight, I like to be kept informed.
On 26 Jun 2009 at 9:05pm Spinster Of This Parish wrote:
But the Parish Pump is great - do some people still live like that? The rest though, as you say, is utter tosh!
On 26 Jun 2009 at 9:15pm Roly Mo wrote:
I particularly love hearing about Mavis Clark's ducks.
On 26 Jun 2009 at 9:59pm Piggles wrote:
Parish pump should details the shaggings of Lewesians this week.
On 26 Jun 2009 at 10:46pm LTR wrote:
I just glance at it, and don't buy it anymore. its a shame as I used to, and would like to be able to buy something local to read weekly, and to know more about what is going on other than stuff being promoted by single interest groups and politicians. Some Journalism might be a good start.
On 27 Jun 2009 at 8:43am Lord Landport wrote:
I used to Buy the paper also But Its 90% adverts 9% utter tosh and 1% actuall interest.
I bet they didnt even send a reporter to the plannning meeting.
Now for Lewes stuff I look on here
On 27 Jun 2009 at 9:23am geoff wrote:
Credit where credit is due, they do lazily go through crime reports and regularly update us on handbag thefts and car vandalism.
If they wrote decent impartial pieces about planning, including reporting some of the very naughty things the council have been up to (instead of worrying about Council advertising revenue) I suspect they would gain a reader or two. Councillor Gardiner could even have his own engineering column, we could have Marina Pepper on page three, and the Tories could run a Do It Yourself page, since they have been telling Lewesians this for years.
On 28 Jun 2009 at 1:55am expat two wrote:
The Sussex Express is the same as any other UK newspaper - its a business and it runs its business as ruthlessly economically as possible. The last couple of decades has seen a complete collapse in staffing levels across the entire fourth estate as international corporations buy out newspapers, even provincial titles, and strip them back to their minimum operational costs. It has a fraction of the reporters it needs to support what you and I would expect from a news gathering service - nobody to send to planning meetings and certainly no investigative journalism.
Instead, it generally regurgitates press releases and press agency copy without any kind of check on the truth, it just doesn't have the staffing to do that. (Press agencies don't even claim their stories to be true anyway, they merely guarantee their accuracy in relaying the story as recieved)
The press isn't a conspiracy to support the interests of its advertisers, but it does make it extremely vulnerable to exploitation by PR.
So whilst they'll repeat crime reports, there will not be any reporting of corrupt police officers - Sussex Constabularly aren't interested in letting that out.
Next time you pick up a copy, look at each story and try to figure out what the source is - who stands to gain from the story being printed, its surprisingly easy.
Of course its a much bigger problem in the Nationals - stories are written to keep people buying the title in a competitive market, its not about informing them of the news. Hence the Daily Mail will write sensational racist lies about asylum seekers simply because people buy newspapers that keep them informed of potential dangers and threats in the world. When truth interferes with a highly profitable business plan, guess who's going to win? (The government also have reasons to allow that to continue, much better the papers report their own PR rather than have them root out what's really going on.)
On 28 Jun 2009 at 8:47am Snoozepapers wrote:
We know we are in trouble, because The Guardian had a Micheal Jackson tribute pull out souvenir section., nad 3 pages of Wacko Jacko news, with the BBC headlining the autopsy story in front of the Northern Ireland commitment to abandon weapons.
S Exprss will probably run a story about how someone from lewes area onece saw/met/ had a poster of Jacko. and will fail to mention that the town has been hit by a meteor.
On 29 Jun 2009 at 1:41pm Ed Can Do wrote:
The Sussex Express stopped being interesting when they stopped printing the names of the people arrested for fighting on a friday night. These days it's just "A youth" or "Two men" or whatever.
I do love the Parish Pump though, Pauline Cherry's Rodmell and Southease section is some of the funniest stuff you can read most weeks, being full as it is of banal stories about her life, rather than anything about the actual villages. The letters page has just become an outlet for councillors to throw thinly veiled insults at each other and try to get their name in print with the occasional piece of tripe from some Daily Mail reader about how the whole town is soon to be swamped by Gypsy homosexuals or something.
So yeah, I don't buy it any more, I just read the Parish Pump when I'm in Tesco.
On 29 Jun 2009 at 7:37pm Rozzer wrote:
For LDC news the Express just prints council press releases, some times without even pretending to at least re-write them. Say what you like about John Eccles, but there was a time when council officers were genuinely frightened of his reporting. As someone has said above. the Express just doesn't seem to know what reporting and news is these days.