Local Newspaper Feeds

Andrew
Posts: 330
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.18

I follow my local newspaper on Twitter, as do another 58,000 people, but the quality of the posts are absolutely dreadful, are all the local newspapers like this?

Awful click bait one liners “They didn’t expect this”, “Residents were not happy” etc
Stories about Covid cases increasing suggesting we are heading back into lockdown
Same story being tweeted slightly differently hourly for days on end
Strange obsessions about McDonalds or Greggs that is basically advertising
Stories outside the area but from the wider region, often with no mention until you click (Major road closed “Drivers were stuck for hours” - when clicking on it it’s a road 30 miles away)
Often National stories about The Chase being axed etc that have no place in a local paper

Pretty much all the replies they get criticise these practices

And that’s before you actually click through to the site and the pages struggle to load due to the amount of adverts on the page.

Surely they’d have more followers if they didn’t post rubbish 100 times a day?
User avatar
dosxuk
Posts: 673
Joined: Thu 07 Feb, 2008 21.37
Location: Sheffield

Some of them are also implementing paywalls, so you can only read five articles a month or the like. On the rare occasion the click bait works and I get told I've run out of free articles, I just shrug and go "fair enough, I was only procrastinating anyway". Nothing about those sites or their content has ever tempted me to even consider subscribing.

As for the adverts, your best bet is to disable JavaScript if you need to look at something on one of them. Stopping the three auto playing videos on every page comes as a bonus.
Alan de Robson
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 12.24

On a national level, the Express is shameless for clickbait headlines.

On a more local level, the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle is pretty shameless too, especially about the will-they won't-they saga of the as yet unconsummated relationship between Mike Ashley and the Saudi royal family.
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

Andrew wrote:Stories outside the area but from the wider region, often with no mention until you click (Major road closed “Drivers were stuck for hours” - when clicking on it it’s a road 30 miles away)
This. Since all the titles owned by Reach replaced their individual websites with the 'Live' sites this seems to have got worse.

I mean back in the day the Plymouth Herald at least used to try somehow to link the story to the area, even if in the most tenuous way possible ('Car broken into in Wigan - owner's best mate's sister's boyfriend's mother once went on a school trip to Plymouth' sort of thing was not uncommon). But these days they don't even seem to do that, they just shamelessly fill out the site with stories from other areas without even attempting to justify why.
JAS84
Posts: 585
Joined: Fri 12 Aug, 2011 10.23
Location: Hull, UK

Yeah, here's a few non-local stories from the Hull Daily Mail's site, Hull Live:

"Cast secret Emmerdale and Coronation Street fans can't believe" - this article is about April from Emmerdale and Hope from Coronation Street being sisters in real life. The family are from Leeds.
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/ce ... et-5734223

"Christmas photo prompts 18st 11lb mum to shed six-and-a-half stone during the pandemic" - the woman is in Ireland, so not even in the UK, let alone the Hull Daily Mail's area which is Hull and the East Riding.
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/uk ... lb-5720502

"Woman's boobs so big she burnt them on Nando's grill is denied NHS breast reduction" - this is in Wolverhampton.
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/uk ... os-5729444

None of those stories have any business being on Hull Live.
User avatar
WillPS
Posts: 2456
Joined: Tue 22 Apr, 2008 18.32
Location: Carlton
Contact:

Local journalism is just so abysmally poor now, even if you get something which is relevant. Stuff that gets in to the print edition of the Nottingham Post is often just gobbledegook, the website is somehow even worse. Is proof reading not a thing that happens any more?
Image
User avatar
Nick Harvey
God
Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
Contact:

The items which appear on the websites seem to be the raw typings of the journos, with no checking whatsoever. By the time the item gets into print, there's a chance a sub editor might have looked at it and corrected one or two things like the odd typo, but little more.

Those on here who also know me on Facebook will be familiar with my regular publication of the worst gaffs to appear in my local paper.
Laura-1
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue 06 Jul, 2021 22.08

Great topic @Andrew, this is something that has bugged me for a while,

My local newspaper used to be very good, well in my opinion it was but it deteriorated when it was taken over by Johnston Press,

The site is full of ads and when I view it with my phone - which these days most sites are made with mobile viewing prioritised - it's so damn slow that my phone gets hot and the battery starts to drain which as you point out is down to ads, it also makes my phone freeze and I have to wait 1 or 2 minutes for the page to actually close.

A lot of articles on there haven't been spell checked at all which I find is astonishing given most browsers stick a red line under a spelling mistake these days.

They have an appeal thing at the bottom of every article asking for donations to keep their local journalists providing such fine work - yet they often get street names wrong.


Something I've noticed lately is they seem to pick on women...

Every week they do a "who has been in court" article, you will have a list of names and things they've done, x has shoplifted, x has assaulted a police officer, x has been drunk, x has sent an abusive Facebook message, x has been dealing drugs, x has threatened someone, x has assaulted someone, x had images of children on their phone, x stole something, x has harassed someone,

They will then publish an article about one of the crimes mentioned which goes into more detail, which one do they choose? the girl who sent the abusive Facebook message and before that the girl whose fella cheated and she threatened the girl he cheated with,

I find it bizarre that rather than writing an article about someone assaulting a police officer or a drug dealer they choose to follow up on the girl sending an abusive Facebook message or the girl threatening the girl who her fella cheated with, these articles usually include pictures from the girls Facebook accounts, how many kids she has, where she works etc.

Why not post articles about all the crimes, why just choose the women, maybe it's just easy journalism but people most people aren't interested in someone who sent an abusive Facebook message, they are more interested in the serious crimes like assaults, persistent shoplifters.

I've emailed them about this on several occasions and they reply with excuses like they have lack of details about the case to write an article or that they tried to request more information but it was rejected - yet each persons name has their age and street they live on next to it and often my other local news site publishes more details on cases - so it seems they were able to get more info.

Hopefully one day it will change and start prioritising the serious crimes rather than women who commit one off offences.

I also follow my local police force on Twitter and check the news on their website - often it appears on my local newspaper site before it appears on the Police site which is something I find sad as I trust the details / appeals on the police site to be more accurate than those in the local paper.

Oh and to buy the paper it's once a week - so filled with last weeks news and I believe it was £1.50 last time I checked.
Andrew
Posts: 330
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.18

cwathen wrote: Mon 02 Aug, 2021 18.06
Andrew wrote:Stories outside the area but from the wider region, often with no mention until you click (Major road closed “Drivers were stuck for hours” - when clicking on it it’s a road 30 miles away)
This. Since all the titles owned by Reach replaced their individual websites with the 'Live' sites this seems to have got worse.

I mean back in the day the Plymouth Herald at least used to try somehow to link the story to the area, even if in the most tenuous way possible ('Car broken into in Wigan - owner's best mate's sister's boyfriend's mother once went on a school trip to Plymouth' sort of thing was not uncommon). But these days they don't even seem to do that, they just shamelessly fill out the site with stories from other areas without even attempting to justify why.
My local paper is tweeting frequent stories about the Bilsdale transmitter fire “TV channels to be cut off for weeks” etc

Nobody in the editorial area or indeed in the entire county gets their TV from Bilsdale, but of course they don’t say it’s Bilsdale or where it is located until you’ve clicked through
Andrew
Posts: 330
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.18

This is the big news in Huddersfield today



I say Huddersfield, it was actually up near Whitby about 60 miles away
bilky asko
Posts: 1400
Joined: Sat 08 Nov, 2008 19.48

Andrew wrote: Sat 14 Aug, 2021 12.07 This is the big news in Huddersfield today



I say Huddersfield, it was actually up near Whitby about 60 miles away
The story is, effectively, "customer doesn't understand Aldi packing system".
Image
Post Reply