Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

nashwan you are WRONG

Severn Valley Railway receives £250,000 of National Lottery support https://t.co/TmerjjJGKa pic.twitter.com/HiHEU1e6dM

— SHROPSHIRE (@DailySHROPSHIRE) July 15, 2020

xp Four of the seven top location-based stories are about last night's Palace match which is stupid. A smarter version of this would I guess give you something more like the main BBC News page but with every story local (enough) so you don't see the same thing more than once.

i was going to go with this but it turns out it's an essex-based story in a shropshire paper, a para-local tale at best

Gull is freed from Covid-19 face mask https://t.co/nkPwFrVrvh pic.twitter.com/1Fe7tUnx4F

— SHROPSHIRE (@DailySHROPSHIRE) July 20, 2020

The system unworks

the only alternative print media in Hull i remember were run very haphazardly and mainly with style mag-ish aspirations, or they were just straight music or football zines. there's at least one online alternative to the Hull Daily but it focuses on positivity which is good and necessary but a bit bland and toothless

but it focuses on positivity which is good and necessary but a bit bland and toothless

I hate positivity lol, especially in my newspaper, but it's where the money is, all 'experts' on local media p much agree on. Light-hearted, more space for businesses etc (to cash in on). I get it, it's just not what I like, and it kind of takes away journalism out of it. Can it serve a community and still make money? Def. Many hyper-locals over here serving just one city get by that way.

Also this is why we'll be going down eventually. I'd rather go bust than wear a smile :D

Those hyper-locals "don't do" local politics either. The amount of local councils that are never visited by a journalist is rising rapidly here, I expect it to be the same in the UK.

positivity can be a broad church, you're right that all too often it isn't. personally i've got no time for crime beat name and shame stuff, it's evil and unnecessary imo. obv there's an ideal space for good journalism somewhere between puff pieces and lurid stories about your neighbours.

There's positivity in human interest stories and interviews w/ people who do something nice or good or interesting imo, or just... showing beauty, in photography or whatever. I took your 'positiviy' remark as meaning the kind of one-dimensional, superficial "everything's great!"-stuff about local businesses or whatever, ignoring problems or not holding local politics to account.

i actually think that "picture of councillors pointing at potholes lol" (while admittedly hard to avoid given how unphotogenic many of them are) is part of the problem as a reaction: there's a self-hating element to it of "anything glamorous can only happen in the metropolis" as much as an acknowledgment of the stripping out of any local control of resources. the people's soviet of cleobury mortimer is not going to last long if it fails to tackle the bins at least adequately -- and the moves were made to ensure failures along these lines decades ago (the mid-80s to be precise). but local is where radical movements do probably have to start -- and that means paying attention to accident blackspots and the prevention of flytipping and which property development schemes are approved and why, and whether fire prevention is properly seen to, ruthlessly unglamorous bureaucratic stuff mostly

Good post.

sure, my own amusement at the actual photos of pointing councillors is the sheer awkward mise en abyme propaganda of the pictures themselves. the business of local governance is way more important than that, probably more important than most of the telegenic national stuff.

Is it just SE London or does anywhere else have trendy start-up local papers with faux craft beer names (Peckham Peculiar, Dulwich Diverter)?

that is not a SE London thing, that is a Peckham and Dulwich thing lol

mind you I really ought to help the Woolwich Whatabout off the ground

my amusement at local councillors pointing at potholes is how corrupt and shite local councillors in Glasgow have historically been

when I was doing the journalism part of my undergrad degree we had an assignment to go attend a local council meeting for a purpose I can't really remember. Everyone in our class went to the same meeting because it was Glasgow City Council and meant a day out to the pub after it. I quickly realised we were all going to submit the same story so I went to one in my actual hometown. The GCC one was mid-afternoon and well-attended, my local one was at 7pm on a cold Wednesday night. A councillor actually fell asleep during the meeting. I sat at the back, took notes and ended up with two news stories in the local paper, one of which then ended up being reported in a national. All I had to do was turn up and sit for two hours - there was no attempt to mask what was quite obviously classic "waste of taxpayers money" situations. There's definitely scope for local press to improve.

Every municipality needs a reporter sitting in every city council meeting, really the main reason to still think the elevated mission of Journalism is even a thing imo

I didn't pursue news journalism at all in the end, all the people I know who stuck with it basically did 2-3 years doing deathknocks and then migrated to features or broadcasting and I don't recall anyone ever complaining about having to attend a council meeting the way they complained about attending a fire or car crash

Madchen makes a good point - the Lewisham Ledger is features not 'news', but it's actually remarkably good. Somehow they seem to have a proper staff and everything.

https://lewishamledger.tumblr.com/

is the Liverpool Echo any good?

Yes.

Camden New Journal is good and still has an opinion page reserved for a socialist in God’s waiting room.

was a good one in glasgowlive recently of councillors standing next to a bus stop
https://i2-prod.glasgowlive.co.uk/incoming/article18620289.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/2_JS214838692.jpg

Classic!

The Dulwich Diverter was tweeting this week about only having one advertising slot left, so that would imply they're doing OK.

Lol, that's not really what it's called is it?

they mainly campaign for ways to ensure ppl have to drive round dulwich not through it

Sister paper is Peckham Peculiar (see upthread)

The Lewisham one is well made but not 'trendy' in the sense of only featuring chic middle-class things -- it tends to highlight quite ordinary people, long-established businesses, etc, and FWIW its coverage is very ethnically diverse. I was very impressed when I first came across it, precisely because I couldn't believe that there was a business model for running such a thing anymore.

I don't think any other approach would work in Lewisham (as opposed to specific areas of the borough like Brockley or Deptford). I've never seen it but that sounds like it's actively serving the community in a way these things don't always, readable as they can be if you're killing time in the pub.

On-demand newspaper printing has become pretty cheap - there’s lots of overcapacity in the industry for obv reasons. So if you don’t need to extract 20% return like all the debt-incrusted corps there’s a nice small business in these things

the best local periodical in the uk:

https://scontent.fcxh3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/116103036_4378721398867388_4584950628621073141_o.jpg

oh fucked the link up. was the cover of Glasgow magazine "the digger"

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/9bzzg5/the-digger-glasgow-patrick-ferry-720

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-saturday-section-staff-say-proposal-to-close-mags-arrogant-anachronistic-and-wrong/

The Saturday section editors were forced to go into the office during lockdown because they were told their supplements were “absolutely crucial”, they claimed. They said they were later told the Saturday edition was the least hit by the coronavirus circulation slump

This is grim.

I have to confess that, despite maintaining a relatively strict lock down, I decided early on that the Saturday Guardian was "an essential purchase" - mostly for Alys Fowler and Rachel Roddy, mind.

"They also criticised the plan to cut 180 jobs when chief executive Annette Thomas, who joined the company in March, is on a base salary of £630,000 plus benefits."

Pretty much what I'm seeing in the discourse around uni redundancies too. Executives saving themselves and their pay to oversee cuts anywhere else.

Bet local councils and all manner of industries are similar but staff not owning or having a proper share and the rights that come with it is communism.

Cheaper than a cup of cappuccino.

Is Martin Kettle suggesting what I think he’s suggesting? https://t.co/MqLjftC1F2 pic.twitter.com/OBQDwW94XE

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) July 24, 2020

Buying five cappuccinos when I get up tomorrow.

Sorry to disappoint but this is not a 'gotcha' moment:
- The searches were authorised & legitimately carried out. The information used in the internal report into the handling of antisemitism complaints came to light when searches were undertaken in response to EHRC requests 1/2 https://t.co/kuAjqAClcX

— Jennie Formby (@Jennieformby1) July 24, 2020

Might just plunge what remains of my overdraft into the NotTheFuckingGraun coffee company shares

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/my-brother-and-i-tried-to-break-into-a-botanical-garden-and-memories-of-my-father-rushed-back

Sod what you want, Tom. pic.twitter.com/QK6g8KoAwC

— Angry People in Local Newspapers (@angrypiln) July 28, 2020

OT yet v relevant after our discussion: my new favourite twitter account, Angry People in Local Newspapers

I would give The Guardian the cost of a coffee they’re always asking for if it commissioned someone who a) knows how exam grades have been calculated this year and b) knows how exam grades are calculated in normal years but instead we get:

Ok, I just had a call, recorded voice, very plummy, saying "a tax fraud case has been registered in your name and if you do not press 1 straightaway, you will be arrested shortly." This has to be a hoax, doesn't it?

— (((Zoe Williams))) (@zoesqwilliams) August 10, 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/10/exam-results-inequality-private-state-students

In all the handwringing, there is an acceptance of one inevitable choice – either Ofqual extrapolated from precedent, and kept grades level, or they took teachers’ predictions, and accepted perhaps a significant amount of grade inflation. I would have been far happier with the latter: grade inflation, like any inflation, erodes inequality by shaving away pre-existing advantage in a relatively painless way.

!!!!

Are you commenting on ZW's tweet?

Not really, just the practice of getting people who don't properly understand complex issues outside their area of expertise to spout forth like authorities because they have a weekly column to fill.

Mr Simon Jenkins are you listening

I know we all know this but seeing this on paper is just...an awful way to live.

Sarah Ditum’s piece on journalism is being greeted with much chin-stroking by columnists, but all it does is expose the truth that people literally are just scanning twitter and news lines and then diving into firing off takes they have no expertise in pic.twitter.com/R8GJC4VKN2

— Joseph / йосиф сташко🇺🇦 (@JosephStash) August 27, 2020

Thank you, The Observer, for further contributing to the idiot-inveigling aura of France's de facto Covid Conspiracy Theorist in Chief:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/30/marseilles-maverick-covid-scientist-why-the-city-took-doctor-to-its-heart

Someone must have been asleep for this to be published.

The right's culture war is no longer a sideshow to our politics – it is our politics | Nesrine Malik https://t.co/NtRyFQEHmv

— The Guardian (@guardian) August 31, 2020

Good piece, yeah, albeit as depressing as you'd expect.