Local Rags

[shoddycollins]

It's been announced today that our local media group CN Group is subject to a takeover by a national company that produce local papers up and down the country. We must have just about the last remaining independent local media outside the big cities and my experience with these national groups comes mainly from reading football reports in the opposition's local rag with occasional clicking on other articles that pique my interest. The impression I get is that most of these are cookie-cutter publications that must only maintain a skeleton staff in the local area but get most of their stories sent from head office and generally only print the basic facts with little in the way of punditry. A lot of the football news may well just be copied and pasted from the club's website and at worst a handful of the ones I've looked at seem to produce no journalism locally at all only inserting locally relevant details into national stories.

I would say we tend to get very good quality journalism, particularly relating to football and given our ownership situation at the moment, the local media constantly trying to hold the owners to account is welcome.

I wondered what people's opinions were of their local rags where these are part of a newsgroup, particularly those below which cover league two towns and are part of the same newsgroup that is poised to take over CN, and whether my worst fears are about to be realised.

Crewe and Nantwich Guardian
Lancashire Telegraph
Essex County Standard
Colchester Gazette
Bucks Free Press
South Bucks Star
Stroud Gazette
Swindon Advertiser
Swindon Star
Barnet & Potters Bar Times
South Wales Argus
Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard

 

[Indian Dan]

The club, or rather Lee Power, has ostracised the local paper. The stories they do run are gleaned from other media. They aren’t even invited to attend post or pre match press conferences.

He’s a knob and their reporting is piss poor anyway.

 

[PuB]

Doesn't sound so bad, the local newspaper round here was banned from entering the ground for a few years because Paul Scally didn't like the tone of an article. Very similar thing happened with Radio Kent too.

 

[AdamStag]

We've the Mansfield Chad.

As no longer local, I'm not sure, the website is pretty crap though.

They do write some food articles on Mansfield when readable

 

[mowgli]

The Bucks Free Press is pretty good for Wycombe fans,it's only since Wasps fucked off to Coventry whereas before we barely got a mention as the sports section was all about them and even carried on reporting about Wasps 6 months after they moved but now Wycombe are doing well they are more supportive with interviews,videos and extensive match reports.

 

[The Jovial Forester]

It's the Stroud News and Journal really, think the Gazette is Newsquest's rebrand for Wilts or somewhere. One journo Ash Loveridge AFAICT who does actually get to the games and interview the backroom staff etc, plus interacts on our forum. Two or three sizable pieces in a print edition in the week and tries out social media stuff (liveblogged our deadline day which I hope he got paid for feet on the desk ) Seems a decent bloke to me but don't expect he'll be in a position to do some big expose on DV or anything. Citizen used to be OK too but they've really fallen out with the club, accusations flying back and forth and the coverage is only negative these days, but like lots of locals they're one step up from a freesheet anyway so not a big loss as it stands.

 

[LongEatonPie]

Internet > Newspapers
The only problem with this is the “local” papers websites have stupid surveys and moving ads! Even with pop up blockers they are so annoying.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Edit.
Scrap that. I was thinking of the Crewe Chronicle. Crewe and Nantwich Guardian is crap.

 

[gijsbert_bos]

Seems the Lincs Echo (lincolnshirelive.co.uk) isn't part of that group - it's owned by Local Wold (Trinity Mirror). Like with our BBC coverage, we do pretty well for a lower-league side, but then we are the biggest team in the County. There's a journalist who covers sport for the county and attends games, press conferences and does live video but like all the local media they;re very friendly with the club and never ask any remotely difficult questions because their livelihood relies on them having access to the club.

 

[Luke Imp]

As above, we've always had good coverage in the Lincolnshire Echo and across BBC Radio Lincolnshire because we're the main side. Gainsborough Trinity get covered along with Lincoln United and a couple of other small sides but Boston have their own paper (but get covered on Radio Lincs). Used to get 4 or 5 pages every day in the Echo, but that changed when it went weekly. Instead they now drip feed the stories over the week on t'interweb and throw them all into Thursday's paper.

Radio Lincs do a Friday Football show and cover all our games, live-steam pre and post match press conferences (as do the Lincs Echo). They also used to do Facebook Live shows from Sincil Bank with a player on a Thursday but I think they ran out of players!

There's also LincSport, who are the University's paper, who do their bit as well. With them, too, we can end up with 3 or so discussion shows a week on us.

 

[dedwardp]

We get decent enough coverage from the Colchester Gazette. It's still the same local journalist (Jon Waldron) who used to do it before they were taken over at one point, he still goes to every game and every press conference and we typically have the back page every single day. You can see the sort of articles they do each day from his twitter feed: https://twitter.com/JonWaldron1

 

[Indian Dan]

Our Swindon Advertiser, only a couple of weeks ago, had a headline after the away game at Lincoln

‘Flitcroft crushed by late defeat’

We actually drew

 

[Davidimp]

Our Swindon Advertiser, only a couple of weeks ago, had a headline after the away game at Lincoln

‘Flitcroft crushed by late defeat’

We actually drew

Did they think that shot Bostwick had after the leveller went in???!!!!!

 

[Si Robin]

We have the Gloucestershire Echo, which is the Cheltenham side of Gloucestershire Live (the Citizen covers Gloucester and Stroud, etc...). Both papers are now weekly and all social media from the local journos is aimed at creating traffic on the God-awful website (they're owned by the Trinity Group).

The main Cheltenham journo is Jon Palmer, he's a genuine Cheltenham fan and by and large writes as such. This leads to a lot of FGR thinking he's made the whole setup anti-FGR - failing to take into account that it's DV's actions against the paper following a report of a proposed sale that has soured the relations.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[BeesKnees]

Nothing. Barely mentioned in either Barnet or Harrow press and all of them have done away with any reporters covering the club so its pretty much a match report after each game in a newspaper that doesn't cover the area the club plays in.

 

[MrGloverLover]

Trinity Mirror have turned their back on the printed versions of any local news publications that they own as they just aren't interested. It's been announced that the website of my local paper the Burton Mail will disappear to be absorbed by Derbyshire Live. Our local MP is up in arms about this mainly because it's a Staffordshire newspaper moving to a Derbyshire website. The printed version of the Burton Mail will continue but will just have content drawn from online. This is what is happening all over the country and will continue to do so. The local paper to Yeovil, the Western Gazette, hasn't had a website for quite a while as it's all part of Somerset Live.

 

[Richard Cranium]

Our Swindon Advertiser, only a couple of weeks ago, had a headline after the away game at Lincoln

‘Flitcroft crushed by late defeat’

We actually drew

Our local radio station were tweeting about live match updates for our game on Saturday morning. It got called off Friday.

 

[jacobncfc]

Ours get hammered for not giving us as much coverage as Forest (what do people expect!?!), but I think they’re actually pretty good. Certainly try and do different things with podcasts and the like, although without a decent ad blocker the website is completely unusable.

Could perhaps be criticised for being a bit too chummy with people at the club and shying away from different questions, but it’s a fine balance because they’ve got to maintain those relationships to be able to do their job.

 

[GodsGift]

Could perhaps be criticised for being a bit too chummy with people at the club and shying away from different questions

I like Curtis, but he was definitely guilty of that during his time covering Lincoln. He used to go fishing with the players!

 

[FGR Stroud]

We have the Gloucestershire Echo, which is the Cheltenham side of Gloucestershire Live (the Citizen covers Gloucester and Stroud, etc...). Both papers are now weekly and all social media from the local journos is aimed at creating traffic on the God-awful website (they're owned by the Trinity Group).

The main Cheltenham journo is Jon Palmer, he's a genuine Cheltenham fan and by and large writes as such. This leads to a lot of FGR thinking he's made the whole setup anti-FGR - failing to take into account that it's DV's actions against the paper following a report of a proposed sale that has soured the relations.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Si Robin, a lot wrong in your post.
Gloucestershire Live is the one newspaper for whole county - not just Cheltenhamshire. But they no longer have a dedicated FGR reporter after the two newspapers merged.
Jon Palmer, as you mention is a Cheltenham fan who when he writes about FGR fails to get his reports verified at TNL. He has made countless errors when writing about FGR. And unfortunately for the Cheltenham fans, such as yourself, he has completely duped you guys hook line and sinker into believing his fantasy reports. For instance that proposed sale of Elliot Frear story he wrote about [which you refer to] was completely wrong.
Elliot Frear was never at any time under consideration for sale to Cheltenham.
That is why his newspaper was banned from TNL for a game because Palmer's unverified reports were unsettling a FGR player.
He is not welcome at TNL and Cheltenham are very welcome to him.
Besides FGR have probably one of best local reporters in Ash Loveridge of the SNJ.

 

[Chris FGR]

Very petty lot, they only cover us if there's a negative story to report on, even if they have to dig one up from months ago or twist figures to back their story. Poor.

Their recent reporting of our accounts in comparison to the way Cheltenham's were covered was a good example of their biased approach. Luckily DV shot them down.

 

[Laker]

Ours is just “Cambridge News”. It used to be “Cambridge Evening News” but they then got all brave and started delivering news all day long.

The website has so many pop ups on it it’s practically unusable. The reporting doesn’t tell you anything you can’t find anywhere else either, I understand it’s pretty much a skeleton team these days.

People don’t want to pay for their news anymore. *shrug*

 

[Si Robin]

Si Robin, a lot wrong in your post.
Gloucestershire Live is the one newspaper for whole county - not just Cheltenhamshire. But they no longer have a dedicated FGR reporter after the two newspapers merged.
Jon Palmer, as you mention is a Cheltenham fan who when he writes about FGR fails to get his reports verified at TNL. He has made countless errors when writing about FGR. And unfortunately for the Cheltenham fans, such as yourself, he has completely duped you guys hook line and sinker into believing his fantasy reports. For instance that proposed sale of Elliot Frear story he wrote about [which you refer to] was completely wrong.
Elliot Frear was never at any time under consideration for sale to Cheltenham.
That is why his newspaper was banned from TNL for a game because Palmer's unverified reports were unsettling a FGR player.
He is not welcome at TNL and Cheltenham are very welcome to him.
Besides FGR have probably one of best local reporters in Ash Loveridge of the SNJ.

Funny, just been to my local Co-op, couldn't buy a Gloucestershire Live, but they had loads of Echos on sale - as Laker says, people don't want to buy their news anymore. As I said in my post, the papers are still the Echo and the Citizen, but they are effectively Gloucestershire Live, run by Local World, which in turn is owned by the Trinity Group.

As for Jon, he hasn't duped me at all. I do know him on a personal level and I have no cause to doubt what he writes - his contacts within the club are second to none (he worked for the club for a time in our relegation season) and he was far from wrong on the Frear story - and this has been confirmed by our chairman (who you will not doubt call a liar now as well) in a live webchat.

When clubs start banning reporters, I find it says more about the clubs than it does the publications - but I won't expect you to agree with me on that either.

As for the reporting of finances - there's bound to be a difference, Cheltenham posted a profit of £178k for the period up to May 2017 whereas FGR posted a £2.1m loss in the same period - they're hardly going to be the same reports are they? Then again, maybe it's because it talks of Cheltenham having a consolidated profit after we made a £128k loss in our promotion season, alas I checked and the report on FGR's loss mentions the season before as well when they lost just under £2.5m.

 

[FGR Stroud]

As for Jon, he hasn't duped me at all. I do know him on a personal level and I have no cause to doubt what he writes - his contacts within the club are second to none (he worked for the club for a time in our relegation season) and he was far from wrong on the Frear story - and this has been confirmed by our chairman (who you will not doubt call a liar now as well) in a live webchat.

Huge difference between making an offer for player [which you allege Cheltenham did] and same player being under offer for sale by club.
That is where Jon Palmer failed to do his job by not speaking to FGR. Basically he is a lazy and
incompetent journalist.
And my sources at FGR are better than those of Jon Palmer because I actually know and speak to senior members of the FGR staff. I don't think he would recognise any of them even if they walked into his local pub.

 

[redjed]

The best paper covering Forest Green is the Cirencester paper, Wilts and Glos Standard, the reporter is John Light, follows the team home and away. gives in depth reports on new players, pre-match and post match interviews with Mark Cooper.
Looking on line, you will find all the Forest Green action , reaction you can ever want.

 

[Si Robin]

Huge difference between making an offer for player [which you allege Cheltenham did] and same player being under offer for sale by club.
That is where Jon Palmer failed to do his job by not speaking to FGR. Basically he is a lazy and
incompetent journalist.
And my sources at FGR are better than those of Jon Palmer because I actually know and speak to senior members of the FGR staff. I don't think he would recognise any of them even if they walked into his local pub.

We made an offer, said offer was accepted - as confirmed by Paul Baker. We then pulled out of the deal because we decided to save the money and bring in two loanees instead (a poor decision as it happens), Again, confirmed by Paul Baker.

I know who I'll believe thanks.

 

[FGR Stroud]

We made an offer, said offer was accepted - as confirmed by Paul Baker. We then pulled out of the deal because we decided to save the money and bring in two loanees instead (a poor decision as it happens), Again, confirmed by Paul Baker.

I know who I'll believe thanks.

Robin, you'll find that Cheltenham used the services of a rogue agent who misled [lied to] your club and chairman.
That basically was the cause of the bad feeling between the two clubs concerning Frear.
Like at said at start, Jon Palmer should have contracted TNL at start of Frear saga for clarification of that transfer fiasco. If he had done so he would have got a lot of credit and a very good story .

Anyway best to finish this particular thread even if neither of us agree with each other. Otherwise we will be rambling around in Gloucestershire-based circles on a general football forum.

 

[Habbinalan]

Ours is just “Cambridge News”. It used to be “Cambridge Evening News” but they then got all brave and started delivering news all day long.

The website has so many pop ups on it it’s practically unusable. The reporting doesn’t tell you anything you can’t find anywhere else either, I understand it’s pretty much a skeleton team these days.

People don’t want to pay for their news anymore. *shrug*

Plenty of coverage all bland. Recycle messageboard moans if they want a bit of click bait.

Adblocker deals with the pop-ups fine for me but it's 90% recycled rubbish anyway.

They do know how to get the max out of re-jigging a pre or post match manager or player quote.

 

[dog]

Si Robin, a lot wrong in your post.
Gloucestershire Live is the one newspaper for whole county - not just Cheltenhamshire. But they no longer have a dedicated FGR reporter after the two newspapers merged.
Jon Palmer, as you mention is a Cheltenham fan who when he writes about FGR fails to get his reports verified at TNL. He has made countless errors when writing about FGR. And unfortunately for the Cheltenham fans, such as yourself, he has completely duped you guys hook line and sinker into believing his fantasy reports. For instance that proposed sale of Elliot Frear story he wrote about [which you refer to] was completely wrong.
Elliot Frear was never at any time under consideration for sale to Cheltenham.
That is why his newspaper was banned from TNL for a game because Palmer's unverified reports were unsettling a FGR player.
He is not welcome at TNL and Cheltenham are very welcome to him.
Besides FGR have probably one of best local reporters in Ash Loveridge of the SNJ.

You were still on the terraces at Whaddon Road when Elliot Frear played for FGR. That was before you switched sides.

It's always interesting how you seem to buy what's in the papers. Take the time to speak to the players involved and you often find it's a completely different story.

Btw, Gloucestershirelive is a website for the county. The same media company own The Citizen, Gloucestershire Echo, The Forester and Stroud Life.

 

[FGR Stroud]

You were still on the terraces at Whaddon Road when Elliot Frear played for FGR. That was before you switched sides.

It's always interesting how you seem to buy what's in the papers. Take the time to speak to the players involved and you often find it's a completely different story.

Btw, Gloucestershirelive is a website for the county. The same media company own The Citizen, Gloucestershire Echo, The Forester and Stroud Life.

WTF????