Simantics

Local v Hyperlocal

2012-02-28T17:23:00.002Z

WHAT do you mean when you say the word "local"?

That's what I've been wondering this week after a top media academic put it to me that the term "hyperlocal" has only been invented because "local", as a convenient catch-all, has completely lost its currency. Which, given that I work in the world of local newspapers, has got to be worth considering.

Said academic, former Times and Telegraph man turned internet entrepeneur Greg Hadfield, said at a very enlightening speech at MediaCity last week that what traditional media considered local had become too loosely defined. I know what he means; when I was a student in Carlisle, turning to BBC North East and Cumbria's "local" TV coverage - or ITV's Border News - was an exercise in patience, with most of the headlines coming in from Newcastle and Sunderland rather than where I was actually living at the time. For local news there was one place I turned and still do for the latest from our friends in the north; the excellent News and Star.

So how local should local be? A town? A council ward? A neighbourhood? Your street? That's the answer the traditional media and the newbie citizen journalists are battling it out between themselves for answers, and I guess a lot of it's down to what your audience considers as its local identity. All I can say is that The Champion's main experiment in hyperlocal news to date - the print rather than online ChampLocal newsletters - were scrapped because they weren't greeted with the same response The Champion itself does. Something which itself speaks volumes; arguably for local/hyperlocal news to really work, it has to be sustainable in the way all too many hyperlocal projects at the moment aren't. It can't just be money for nothing.

But what do you consider local? Is what you get in The Champion local enough? I'd love to know. Drop me a line at david.simister@champnews.com or give the newsdesk a call, because you, the readers, are at the heart of what we do.

A glimpse into the future of journalism, MediaCity style

2012-02-23T21:40:00.002Z

EVEN if the buildings weren’t from the near future, the prices at the Salford multi-storey were. A future where parking for just over four hours costs a scary £7.50.

It was the first time I’d travelled to MediaCity UK – the new and very shiny home for the region’s broadcasters and web whizzes – to get a glimpse into the way the UK’s digital media could be going from an assortment of experts from both sides of the Atlantic. Given I was brushing shoulders with BBC executives, university academics and iPad addicts in possibly the media-savvy place in the north west, there’s probably worse places to start.

The buzzwords for the day were Social, Local, and Mobile – or SoLoMo, if you speak fluent Journalese – with the experts’ emphasis very much on how to get today’s news out to the iPad/iPhone generation. Easier said than done if you want to make enough money out of it to make it a sustainable media business!

There were all sorts of smart ideas on how the media should stay relevant in an increasingly digital age, with everyone from Sky, Guardian Media Group and the University of Central Lancashire’s Journalism department coming up with their own ideas on how to crack the conundrum. While it was obvious there were lots of different ideas floating around I think there was one thing absolutely everyone could agree on; that the media as we know is evolving and changing faster than ever before.

How does it all affect The Champion and you, the reader? Well, I’m keen to embrace quite a few of the ideas I’ve learned about at MediaCity, particular with our website in mind, but what surprised quite a few of the experts I got chatting to is that The Champion as a printed title is actually bucking the trend on what most of them assumed was a given across the media.

Our print circulation is going up.

As I left the conference to pay my £7.50 parking charge, an analogy alluded to by speaker Francois Nel struck a particularly poignant note. He told us that a shoe company is not there to make money – it is there to make shoes, and the money is a result of it making shoes. To succeed, the product and the people come first.

No matter whether it’s a small company like The Champion or one as big as the BBC, media companies in that sense are exactly the same.

Journalist uses shorthand in media shocker!

2012-02-17T14:08:00.003Z

HAD a great phone call from one of our West Lancashire readers this morning.

The lady, evidently from the more traditional elements of our readership, had a church-related story she was keen to see in next week's edition of The Champion but had no time for a newfangled fax or email; she wanted to do it the old fashioned way, and relay the copy to me over the phone, word for word. Not a problem, I said.

But she wasn't terribly convinced. Could one of these modern day journalists, ensconced with Facebook and Twitter, really have the shorthand skills necessary to be able to take down a small essay, word for word?

I could tell, as she read out her carefully-written church event notice, that she had a quiver of doubt in her voice, nervous I was going to get a crucial element of the story wrong. In fact, she was so nervous she demanded I read it back to her, over the phone, just to check I hadn't missed any words out. It was like being back in my university shorthand classes.

So she was pleasantly surprised when I read her announcement back to her, word for word, fact for fact. The quiver in her voice shifted to a tone of slight surprise.

"Obviously you're good at your shorthand then," she commented. "Well done. It's good that journalists can still take a good note."

I didn't dare tell her my shameful secret; that none of it was taken in Teeline, the shorthand of choice if you're hoping to get yourself noticed as a qualified journo. It's not that I can't do it - I can - but over the years I've developed my own equally messy shorthand system which (for me at least) works even better.

I let her know I'd get cracking on the story for her and wished her every success with the event. Before immediately going back on Twitter...

A trip down The Champion memory lane

2012-02-10T11:50:00.003Z

THERE were so many copies of The Champion it took a forklift truck to move them.

As part of a little project I've been working on - more of that another time, I promise - I got treated to a rare visit to to the secretive archive where all of the old copies of our papers are kept, to have a nose through the thousands of newspapers which have been put together over the years. That might sound like a bit of a daunting task, I admit, but as someone who's grown up with The Champion it was something I'd secretly really been looking forward to.

I can think of few better insights into the world of local newspapers and how they've changed over the year.

Once I'd got my fingers blackened with decade-old printing ink I'd found plenty of copies of The Champion covering some of the bigger stories I half-remembered from my own childhood; the development of the Ocean Plaza in Southport, or more specifically the lack of it at the time, was a recurring theme through our Southport editions.

In the old Skelmersdale editions was a story that's been given a fresh airing over the past few months - the town's regeneration. The borough council are as keen as ever to get work going but I discovered on my trawl through the archives that there's nothing new under the sun - in fact, one front page from 1998 reported on plans to bring facilities including a new cinema to the town's Concourse shopping centre.

And then there were the things you just don't see in local newspapers any more; the monochrome pictures on the front page splashes, the enormous motoring supplements every time a new registration year arrived, banner plugs along the lines of "Your News + Your Views = The Champion" and Britpop puns in the picture captions (no, really). One particular irony was the presence of a Champ Extra, a printed column focusing on almost exactly the same additional news pieces as our online ChampXtra enewsletter!

Looking through The Champion archives was enlightening and - thanks to the amount of binders and piles of newspapers involved - absolutely shattering.

Why I object to the Revival Fellowship "autism cure" claims

2012-01-25T11:52:00.004Z

CHAMPION reporter David Simister is one of many north west residents who lives with Asperger syndrome, an autistic spectrum disorder. Here, he gives his reaction to claims that the Revival Fellowship could “cure” his condition...

What do Gary Numan, Dan Ackroyd, Julian Assange, Daryl Hannah and Paddy Considine all have in common?

That's right - they're all famous faces who have an autistic spectrum disorder and have, because of who they are and what they can do, gone on to do brilliant things. Last time I looked, none of them were “ill”.

I almost spat out my coffee when word of the Revival Fellowship's plan reached The Champion newsroom (and followed up today's Bootle and Crosby editions of the paper). I have lived with the effects of autism - or more specifically, Asperger syndrome in my case - for as long as I can remember, and a religious group have suddenly appeared from nowhere offering to cure me. I wasn't aware that something that, for better or worse, makes me who I am is something that needs to be cured, like a headache or the flu.

Will I be joining the queue outside the group's meetings in Netherton? No, because I am not ill or diseased in any way, and actually take offence at the implication that because I have an autistic spectrum disorder there is somehow something wrong with me.

I'm not saying that having an autism spectrum disorder is easy - most people, when I tell them, seem completely unaware of it, but it's taken years of battling to get to the stage I'm at now. To this day I'll still get confused by the simplest things; because I find almost all facial expressions impossible to understand, a completely trivial conversation can still completely flummox me. But I wouldn't change who I am for the world, which is what I'd be doing if I got cured of what isn't an illness.

Autism makes me different, not worse.

Too good to be true?

2012-01-17T15:07:00.003Z

ONE story you won't be seeing in tomorrow's Champion - frustratingly - is the one of an exasperated Southport shopkeeper I spoke to the other day.

She was one of several business owners who've been bitten by the same problem; they get a call from a publishing company asking them to buy an advert in some yet-to-be-launched magazine or newspaper, stump up the cash and then find the finished product fiendishly difficult to track down. Cue the call to us asking if said publication is genuine.

The problem is that without said shopkeepers wanting to go on the record and provide us with the proof we need to substantiate the claims of dodgy trading it becomes almost impossible to substantiate the story, which is why for all sorts of boring legal reasons I can't name the companies involved or the publications they're touting. No businessman wants to go on record in their local paper as admitting they got ripped off by an offer that sounds a bit too good to be true. Something I understand completely, but it's a shame because it means the people behind the offers aren't held to account.

One publication given out to traders - a dummy version of a glossy regional magazine - seemed at best to be a bizarre concoction free of any real editorial or production input, with poor graphics, almost nothing in the way of articles, and poor spelling, grammar and use of facts in the few pieces it did carry. It was bordering on back-to-back advertising throughout, which is a shame because not one of the advertisers I'd spoken to had ever seen any follow-up editions.

Another, a wafer-thin Eighties-style newspaper, did at least have a decent website with an e-version of the publication you could read online, but when one of my concerned correspondents asked its publishers where she could find a printed copy she was told to look in "a couple of golf clubs and hotels across Lancashire". I told her to ring me back when she tracked one down. The phone's been strangely silent so far.

Not that this is about a journalist at one publishing company knocking another; there are lots of different and very good media companies vying for the same advertising, and if anything it's got to be a good thing that businesses have more than one place to turn to when they want to get their message across. But by the same token you'd expect to be able to ask questions about distribution, rates, circulation and readership and get intelligent answers, whether it's from your friendly Champion sales rep or anyone else. All of the people I've spoken to said they'd been met with a temptingly low price but surprisingly coy answers to the important questions, and they've yet to see their business being plugged in the way they'd hoped.

The moral of the story is one I got not at The Champion, but at primary school. If something sounds a bit too good to be true, then it probably is.

The plea from the majority of journalists to Lord Leveson

2012-01-10T11:38:00.005Z

THE longer the Leveson Inquiry rattles on, the less convinced I am that its outcome will protect the work of the honest journalists while protecting us from the work of the unscrupulous ones.

While I don't deny the enormity of the task ahead - less than nine months to carry out an exhaustive review of the nation's media - it is at least a little comforting to know that Dominic Ponsford, editor of The Press Gazette, shares my views and feels strongly enough about them to write to Lord Leveson about it.

His letter, which I include in its entirety below, makes a lot of a very poignant points about the good things the press outside of News of the World did and still do:

Dear Lord Leveson,

I’m editor of Press Gazette, the UK’s only monthly magazine for journalists.
I don’t know any journalists who haven’t felt ashamed about the shabby practices which have been unearthed by your inquiry.

But at the same time, the picture of British journalism you have been presented with is unrecognisable to most journalists.

I hope you can take the time to look through the 12 pages of this month’s Press Gazette magazine which carry the ‘Proud to be a journalist’ logo.
This is just a tiny snapshot – but I can assure you it is indicative of the honest work in the public interest which the vast majority of Britain’s journalists are engaged in.

Last month Press Gazette asked its 24,000 Twitter followers for reasons why they are Proud to be a Journalist. Their responses are published across pages 16,17,18 and 19 and give you some insight into what motivates journalists working across national and regional newspapers, consumer magazines, business publishing and broadcasting.

The vast majority of Britain’s journalists work very hard for comparatively little money because, yes the job is fun, but also because they passionately believed in the ethical grounding for what they are doing.

Here are a couple of examples:

Antonia Hoyle, journalist: “Today a woman I interviewed said that the finished feature helped her come to terms with her illness.”

Carys Shepworth, Bridgend Reporter, Wales Online: “Exposing those who abuse power and giving a platform to those who have none.”

There are around 100 more of these.

On pages 20 and 21 former ‘paparazzo’ photographer Nick Stern talks about the ethical considerations which are made behind the lens of those in the press pack.

“We are there as impartial observers to record in a dignified manner and in a way that no reasonable celebrity or member of the public could have an issue with.”

Perhaps most powerfully, on pages 22-24, is the report from John Dale about the real journalism in the public interest which goes on at one of our best local weekly newspapers – the Essex Chronicle. You would find a similar story at hundreds of other newsrooms.

And finally, on page 26, we report on the investigation by Sun chief feature writer Oliver Harvey to track down former famine victim Birhan Woldu in Ethiopia, sparking a campaign which would help raise £3m for Africa.

In making your recommendations, please consider the vast majority of journalists who do work in the public interest in increasingly tough economic circumstances.

Thousands of British journalists have lost their jobs in recent years in the face of the economic downturn and technological change.

While crooked journalists should be shown no quarter, the vast majority of honest journalists need your support.

Ordinary journalists need stronger protection from pressure to behave unethically and for having the courage to blow the whistle on those who do break the rules.

And any reforms must not erode the competitive edge of an industry which is already under extreme commercial pressure.

Dominic Ponsford
editor
Press Gazette

I just wonder whether Lord Leveson is listening...

The answers to our Champion quiz of 2011

2012-01-03T14:58:00.001Z

IF YOU'VE been itching to find out how many of the answers you got right in then now's the time to find out how you got on.

In last week's edition we asked you to look back on the year of the Arab Spring, the phone hacking scandal and the wedding of William and Kate, and asked 50 questions about local, national and international news to put your knowledge to the test.

The answers are as follows:

1) The Royal Wedding

2) The Olympic Torch

3) Ryan Giggs

4) The space shuttle

5) News of The World

6) South Sudan

7) Amy Winehouse

8) The strikes over public sector pensions

9) Desperate Scousewives

10) The 2011 Census

11) Apple boss Steve Jobs

12) Kim Jong-Il

13) Skyfall is the name of the next Bond film, due out in late 2012.

14) Manchester City

15) The Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth

16) Jeremy Clarkson

17) Paul McCartney

18) The Queen

19) Mark Duggan

20) On the panel of the ITV show The X Factor

21) Fracking

22) The Southport Air Show

23) Dev and Sunita, played by Jimmi Harkishin and Shobna Gulati

24) A stretch over the railway bridge near Ainsdale was reduced to 40mph from 50mph

25) Southport

26) David Lonsdale

27) The Ribble Building on Lord Street in Southport was originally built to to operate as Southport Lord Street Railway Station.

28) The Becconsall Hotel

29) The Woodvale Rally

30) The Botanic Gardens Museum, in Churchtown

31) X Factor finalist Marcus Collins

32) The Iron Men, also known as Another Place

33) Jamie Carragher

34) Floodlights

35) Ian Brady

36) Ballabrigs

37) The Health and Safety Executive

38) Crosby, at the town's Christmas lights switch on

39) Tony Robertson

40) Sainsburys

41) Brighter Futures Workshop

42) Burscough Wharf

43) To host the Ormskirk MotorFest on August 28, 2011

44) Bill Taylor

45) The Queen's Duke of Lancaster Regiment, who marched to celebrate being granted the Freedom of the Borough of West Lancashire

46) Paul Griffiths

47) Marco Pierre White

48) Skelmersdale

49) The front counter at Ormskirk Police Station

50) Asda

The Champion ten years on

2011-12-29T20:14:00.003Z

SCHOOL seems so boring now!

Those were the wise words I left off with after writing my first ever article for The Champion, which appeared on these pages a decade ago. I still find it hard to believe that it's been ten years since I first walked into the paper's newsroom.

Yet while The Champion itself is still going strong, the pace of how quickly the world has evolved around it, particularly the technology, would be unrecognisable to the 15-year-old “cub reporter” who eight attempts to write a 500 word piece for that week's edition. In December 2001 a “face book”, I'm guessing, would have been some sort of photo album, tweeting was something still confined to Looney Tunes cartoons and the iPod - let alone the iPhone and iPad that would follow - was a project still in its infancy.

What's happened since has arguably been the biggest challenge yet for printed local papers, because since 2001 the regional press has come up against not only the internet, but social media - that's Facebook and Twitter to you and me - as well.

When I finally got that first job in journalism, in 2008, the world of local newspapers looked far bleaker than my first encounter, and it's not unfair to say that since the credit crunch every paper up and down the country has had more than its fair share of challenges to cope with.

Challenges, I reckon, that'll keep coming in the next decade ahead. The current favourite for any journalists with a crystal ball to hand is working out whether we'll all be reading The Champion on the likes of the iPad in ten years' time; tablets, which were seen as bit of a technological joke in 2001, are big business these days. What will the Leveson Inquiry, the Government's reaction to the phone-hacking scandal, hold? And how can any paper, when threatened with a superinjunction, compete with the millions with access to a Twitter account?

But journalism in the past ten years hasn't got worse; it's just changing to compete with a very different world. If, for example, you'd wanted to tell thousands what you'd had for breakfast for that morning, you'd need either the telephone number for the local news outlet of your choice or a voice as booming as Brian Blessed's. Now - as long as you can condense it into less than 140 characters - you can get the message out in a matter of seconds. Ten years ago you observed what the media did; now, thanks to the YouTube generation, you're actively taking part in it.

Ironically, the advice I'd give to any 15-year-olds wondering how to get into journalism is NOT to try and carve a niche, which is the opposite of what I got taught at university. With technology and the media changing at the pace it is the trick I've found is to make yourself ready to adapt to whatever changes are around the corner. Oh, and don't do it because you think journalism is glamourous and a chance to blag your way into gigs for free.

Do it, more than anything else, because you love to write.

Try our seriously challenging Champion quiz of 2011

2011-12-23T12:14:00.002Z

PUT your knowledge to the test this week by trying out our Champion quiz looking back at some of the biggest events to take place in 2011.

All of the questions relate to news, culture and sport from the past twelve months, with the final thirty of our fifty questions focusing on stories from the north of Sefton which have featured in the pages of The Champion. How many of them can you answer, and can you beat your friends and family in our quiz of the year?

See how many you know the answer to...

1) Why was Westminster Abbey closed to the general public on April 29th?

2) What will be passing through Sefton and West Lancashire next summer to get residents in the Olympic spirit?

3) Who was the footballer at the centre of the superinjunctions scandal?

4) What did NASA choose to retire earlier this year?

5) Which Sunday newspaper closed following widespread allegations it had been involved in illegal phone hacking?

6) Which new African nation did the world welcome this year?

7) Which soulful singer passed away at her home in Camden in July?

8) What did Prime Minister David Cameron dismiss as “a damp squib”?

9) What is the name of the E4 reality TV show focusing on the lives of a group of young Liverpudlians?

10) What document were residents across the region legally required to fill out?

11) Who did US President Barack Obama say was “among the greatest of American innovators”?

12) Which political leader died after suffering a heart attack on a train journey?

13) Skyfall, it was announced in the autumn, will be the name of what when it arrives next year?

14) Who were proclaimed as the FA Cup champions in 2011?

15) Liverpool welcomed which ocean liner for the first time in September?

16) Who was forced to apologise for comments made about striking workers after an appearance on The One Show?

17) Which Merseyside singer tied the knot for the third time earlier this year?

18) Who touched down in Dublin for the very first time?

19) What was the name of the man whose fatal shooting triggered a series of events in English cities?

20) Where wouldn't you have found Simon Cowell this year?

21) What is the nickname for the shale gas drilling technique which raised concerns in Banks this year?

22) What popular event took place in July this year, rather than September as it had in previous years?

23) Which Coronation Street couple headed to Southport in August to lend their support to the Flower Show?

24) What was the speed limit on part of the Coastal Road reduced to this year to help reduce the number of accidents?

25) Which town lost both of its courts earlier this year following cuts announced by the Ministry of Justice?

26) Which Southport actor helped turn on the Christmas Lights in Formby last month?

27) The Ribble Building on Lord Street in Southport has been linked to plans for a Travelodge Hotel, but for what was the site orginally built for?

28) Developers got permission to demolish which historic pub in Hesketh Bank earlier this year?

29) RAF Woodvale held what event for the 40th time in August?

30) Which museum closed its doors for the last time in April?

31) Who or what is nicknamed The Crosby Crimper?

32) Which tourist attraction got itself a lighthearted account on Twitter this year?

33) Which Bootle-born footballer helped us to launch a new newspaper?

34) What new ground addition are Marine Football Club currently trying to raise money for?

35) Which notorious Ashworth Hospital patient will appear in public for the first time in more than 20 years?

36) Which horse won the Grand National when it was held at Aintree Racecourse this year?

37) Which Bootle-based organisation had its health and safety failings highlighted?

38) Where did you have the chance to meet the actor David Morrissey?

39) Which Maghull councillor stood down from the position as leader of Sefton Council?

40) Which company has revived its plans for a supermarket in Crosby?

41) Which West Lancashire charity made it onto the BBC earlier this year during a National Lottery competition?

42) Which Burscough building reopened after an extensive refurbishment which included new shops?

43) Why was Ormskirk's one-way system temporarily closed on the August Bank Holiday?

44) What was the name of the West Lancashire council chief who announced his retirement this year?

45) Who marched through the streets of Ormskirk in October, and why?

46) Who took up the position of Skelmersdale United's new chairman in 2011?

47) Which celebrity chef announced they would be ending their association with an Aughton restaurant?

48) Which town hosted its 50th anniversary celebrations this year?

49) A public facility in Ormskirk was saved from closure after a campaign earlier this year. What was it?

50) Which supermarket giant had their plans for a new store in West Lancashire scuppered?

All the answers will be included in next week's Champion on Wednesday, January 4, 2012.

Santa's sleigh damaged in West Lancashire test flight

2011-12-20T14:27:00.003Z

SANTA'S sleigh should be in good working order for Christmas after it was given a pitstop service by supporters of a West Lancashire disability charity.

Brighter Futures Workshop said that its trainees carried out a quick repair on Father Christmas' ride of choice after it broke down on a test run over the Skelmersdale area, with workers at the charity's Skelmersdale base putting their expertise in reconditioning mobility equipment to good use.

A spokesperson for Brighter Futures said this week: “Our trainees worked tirelessly to ensure Santa’s Sleigh would be ready for Christmas Eve.”

The West Lancashire charity, which has won a string of awards over the past year, specialises in providing valuable work experience to the borough's residents, who help to rebuild and then re-sell mobility equipment.

A spokesperson for Father Christmas was unavailable for comment as this week's edition went to press but festive deliveries in the West Lancashire area are expected to take place overnight this Saturday (December 24).

Could this be the worst Christmas pun ever?

2011-12-09T13:07:00.003Z

AS SEEN on a press release from Ford this morning...

Method in the Western Mail madness?

2011-12-07T23:09:00.005Z

GREETINGS, comrade. This week's reflection is not on what's right for Britain's media, but what's left.

It's been a busy, soul-searching time for most of the nation's newspapers but I've been especially intrigued by the plight of one in particular; the Western Mail. Which - depending on how you look at it - is either the proud national title of Wales or a regional daily which is suffering the same slide in circulation as most of the other regional dailies.

While the Leveson Inquiry was busy becoming a hotbed of celebrity soundbites, members of the Welsh Assembly have been asking some far more poignant questions about a scenario that could be applied to any local newspaper. While operators Trinity Mirror are keen to stick to their guns and said it absolutely will not follow the Liverpool Daily Post in going weekly, one Plaid Cymru AM has dared to think the unthinkable and ask the boldest question of all.

Bethan Jenkins, who is the AM for South Wales West, said:

"The time has come where we need to start thinking radical – really radical.

"So let’s start with a suggestion – take the Western Mail into public ownership, reduce its cover price to little or nothing, and rebuild its circulation in."

I know, I know. I know the media's supposed to be free and independent and not-at-all-partisan. I know that what most people think of when they think of state newspapers is the Pravda. And I know that Trinity Mirror have already refused to dignify the idea of the Welsh Assembly nationalising the Western Mail with a comment. Clearly, it is a ridiculous idea.

But - and I'm taking a massive leap of journalistic faith here - is it?

Think about the current, almost entirely privately-funded status quo. In the past week alone Midland News Association are to be made redundant; the soon-to-be-shelved East Kent Gazette has published its final edition, and here in the north west six editorial jobs are being lost as a Liverpool daily paper goes to weekly. While I've seen firsthand that regional journalism is still going strong, arguably the big businesses which all too often sustain it are not.

While the last thing I'd want is a British Leyland style beast of a fully state-owned media, is there not some middle way which can support and encourage quality journalism? A media which gives the Government the accountability Eric Pickles has also said he's trying to encourage? Someone far cleverer than Yours Truly, I reckon, could come up with some state-backed but independently-controlled organisation to give local newspapers the support they need in these tricky times. The Welsh Assembly, as I've written before, could already be halfway there.

While it's an unashamedly left-wing solution to a complicated conumdrum that's existed for ages, I am thinking aloud because I reckon Plaid's idea might not be as mad as it sounds. Surely to come up with the possible, you have to at least consider the improbable.

If it (sort of) works for the BBC, why can't it work for local papers?

The saddest Christmas tree. Ever.

2011-11-30T14:27:00.005Z

LAST year our Christmas tree in the editorial department was, quite literally, rubbish. It was mounted on a bin that was tied to a concrete pillar.

This year, however, we've really got into the festive spirit, and gone one better when it comes to getting something to sit our Christmas tree in. This year we've got a bucket filled with gravel.

It's still rubbish, isn't it...

Lest we forget

2011-11-29T15:22:00.002Z

IMAGINE the scene. It's pitch black and you're flying over a foreign field at hundreds of miles an hour. Your plane, to deliver its target, is less than two hundred feet off the ground. And - although you're a proven fighter pilot with no less than 13 kills in the Battle of Britain to your name - there are still Nazi troops shooting at you.

That's the story of Harry Steere's final flight, which crashed in Nazi-occupied northern France just three days after D-Day in 1944, during one of the daring Pathfinder raids of the Second World War. It's a story which his son, Robin, spoke to me about this week as part of a great feature for tomorrow's edition of The Champion, following a poignant trip to France where he was given two pieces of the actual plane his father flew on the fateful mission.

The RAF's Pathfinder missions - dropping flares from Mosquito planes to light the way for a fleet of Lancaster bombers following your path - sound absolutely terrifying. Even for a Spitfire ace it proved a death sentence, with the Mosquito flown by Harry and his Australian co-pilot being shot of the sky just short of their target in Rennes. Not only is it an important reminder of the horrors of war but it's a gripping true story, which is why we were only too happy to put it in The Champion.

I just hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

For the full feature read tomorrow's edition of the Ormskirk and West Lancashire Champion, published Wednesday, November 30.

Trinity's decision to make the Liverpool Daily Post is unsurprising but sad

2011-11-24T22:50:00.004Z

NEWS today that Trinity Mirror intend to turn the Liverpool Daily Post into a weekly title hasn't really surprised me.

What it does make me feel, however, is sad.

The smart money's been on the LDP, sister paper to The Liverpool Echo, going weekly for a while now, as anyone familiar with its drop in circulation in the last ABC figures will testify.

Trinity say that the new title has been given the working tite of just The Liverpool Post, although the daily aspect of its coverage will continue on an enhanced website.

The media pundits agree the writing was on the wall, with Roy Greenslade writing that "its sales have been slipping steadily away for years" while earlier this year Steve Dyson predicted that it would follow fellow Trinity title The Birmingham Post to going weekly.

Another move announced simultaneously has a more immediate impact on what we do at The Champion, after Trinity announced that both The Maghull and Aintree Star and The Bootle Times will be replaced by community newspapers published within the Tuesday edition of The Liverpool Echo.

If you live in Maghull, Bootle or Liverpool it's been a sad day, with the fate of three long-established Merseyside papers now confirmed. Given that newspapers are part of the fabric of the communities they cover and something their readers have often grown up with, the loss of any title is a blow to those they serve. Sadder still is that six editorial jobs will be lost as a result of all the changes, so it really hasn't been a great day for journalism in the north west.

But the biggest shame of all is this; that the news has been completely overshadowed by The Leveson Inquiry, which so far still hasn't managed to distinguish between private investigators and paparazzi working for a handful of national titles and scores of regional papers which need all the help they can get right now. I'm not defending some of the things described today, which ought to be treated as acts of criminality rather than corruption, but at the moment a poorly provincial press is suffering just by association.

The titles serving Liverpool and Birmingham and every other community up and down the country might be facing troubled times, but they are not News Of The World.

Stop sniggering...

2011-11-17T09:04:00.005Z

ONE of the first things they taught me at journalism school was to read everything with a slightly filthy mind.

That's because no matter how innocently you write something, if you don't subject your words to a slightly smut-expectant second reading you leave yourself vulnerable to all sorts of unfortunate double entendres, as I discovered with this week's motoring column.

Specifically, the headline:

In my defence, the use of the word "seminal" in the headline to refer to my recently purchased MX-5 was with the following definition in mind, as highlighted in the Oxford English Dictionary:

1) strongly influencing later developments:
eg: "his seminal work on chaos theory"

If you read the column you'll learn exactly why I reckon the MX-5 is such a seminal car; it influenced the later development of a whole generation of sports car, which is part of the reason why I reckon it's such a classic. It's also why if any easily-amused teenagers or easily-offended pensioners ring up I won't be offering to "correct" the headline for next week's edition.

However, more than one of our readers sniggered more than a little when they read the headline and then came across the word again slightly further into the copy itself, and immediately went with the other definition offered up by the Oxford:

2) relating to or denoting semen:
eg: "the spermatozoa are washed to separate them from the seminal plasma"

So there you have it. This week's moral of the story; get an easily-amused schoolboy to read your copy before it goes to print. That or choose words which don't lead to unfortunate double entendres...

True grit

2011-11-15T16:11:00.004Z

I KNEW when the chaps turned the lights of their gritting machines on that they meant business. The impressive row of trucks and tractors looked like they'd be right at home on Blackpool Promenade.

In all seriousness Lancashire County Council need to look like they mean business, particularly after the harsh winters we've had over the last two years. They know as much as I do that the yearly Winter Is Cold story is fast approaching. That's why the local authority's highways department were more than happy for me to head down to Wrightington to dispel any notions that they haven't got any grit. I know they've got it, because I've seen it.

The list of roads newly added to the county's list of gritting routes is telling in itself; almost all of them are in and around Skelmersdale, the place where we got more calls than anywhere else from aggrieved readers annoyed that roads important to them hadn't been gritted. With Southport suffering its own icy nightmare last year getting to the town proved a tad tricky during the colder bits of last December but the readers told a sorry tale from their town; bus services, council services and everyday commuters had all ground to a halt during the worst of the winter weather.

If you read tomorrow's Champion then you can take comfort in what we now know; that, in response to what's happened over the last two years, Lancashire County Council has beefed up both its gritting stocks and the machines it uses to get it where it's needed. Yet even they admit the problem is what we don't know; whether the winter on its way will be even worse. For their sake, ours, and yours, I really hope it isn't.

In other news, some of you attempted the crossword I'd been roped into creating for The Champion last week. Such was its success that I've been asked to do another one, which you'll find below for your cerebral delectation.

The answers to last week's efforts are included...

The campaign for the Wall of Shame continues!

2011-11-10T16:36:00.001Z

REGULAR readers might recall my campaign for the Wall of Shame, which since its inglorious start this time last year has got pretty much nowhere at all.

The idea, in a bit of editorial brilliance I've borrowed from my old colleagues at The Rhyl Visiter, is to inspire journalists at The Champion by highlighting the weird and wonderful from the world of regional journalism, a sort of Hold The Front Page Funnies section in a giggle-friendly, wall-mounted format.

But now reader and former colleague David Rutland has made my day by sending me something which I haven't seen in at least two years - the obviously Photoshopped seagull swooping in on a disgruntled shopper on the High Street in Rhyl. The story goes that it was added digitally because no seagull was stupid enough to fly into the shot of their own accord, but it somehow the bird ended up looking bizarrey oversized.

I enclose the picture above for your own amusement...

And now for something completely different...

2011-11-08T16:31:00.005Z

EDITING the Champion crossword for the first time ever, I've decided, has been an enlightening experience.

As anyone who works at our offices will know, writing news stories is no pressure at all compared to the task that is compiling our crossword which - if you believe the reaction from readers when there's a mistake - is by far and away the single most important part of the week. People ring up to rant and rave if the crossword is wrong. Internet trolls email in their displeasure if the crossword is wrong. Angry readers send in satirical cartoons depicting your failure if you get the crossword wrong.

I therefore ventured not-at-all apprehensively into the bit of The Champion with the highest stakes of all this week when our usual crossword correspondent was out of the office, and I'll probably endure a sleepless night worrying about whether I've got it right. The Wednesday morning enjoyment of thousands of Champion readers, for the first time ever, rests with me.

Yet - for all the pressure of mucking it up - I actually enjoyed making this week's crossword. General consensus in the office from those who tested it out was that it was neither too easy nor too tricky, and had a pleasing amount of local references dropped into the answers to reassure readers that, as ever, the Champion crossword is a cosily local affair. So, as a treat for the six people who read this blog, I'm inviting you to have a go.

Click the picture above to get my creation in its full-size glory, print it out and spend the next ten minutes seeing whether you can guess all the answers correctly. The answers, in true Champion style, will be posted up here next week.

Oh, and don't moan too much if you spot a mistake...

UPDATE: In true crossword tradition there is one slight typo; eagle-eyed readers will have spotted, of course, that there is no 22 Down on the grid and that the clue should, in fact, read 21 Down. If it's any conselation it is, even bearing that in mind, an unbelievably easy one to get.

I await my lynching from The Champion crossword heavies...

I won an award!

2011-11-04T11:25:00.004Z

SURREAL. That's probably the best way to describe it.

After all, it's not every day you get to meet the broadcasting legend that is Gordon Burns, share jokes with a Nolan sister and - most publicly of all - get given a prestigious journalism award by the lovely Nikki Sanderson (aka Candice off Coronation Street). But then it's not every day you beat off stiff competition from the regional dailies to win Scoop of the Year at the O2 Media Awards.

A nine-strong party of us Champion types had made the drive over to Blackpool - always a delight, given I'm originally from there - for the bash at the Pleasure Beach, which saw journalists from across the region being recognised for their hard work and achievements over the past 12 months. My sea rescue scoop, which appeared back in The Champion in April, was up against two excellent entries from The Liverpool Echo and the Lancashire Evening Post, so I was surprised and delighted in equal measure when Nikki announced that The Champion actually was the champion!

An O2 spokesperson said of the award during the presentation at Blackpool Pleasure Beach:

"Judges said The Champion landed the scoop every print and broadcast organisation wanted when reporter David Simister broke the story of how an elderly grandmother was dropped into icy seas while being lifted from a Norwegian cruise ship into a lifeboat after being taken ill on board.

"The exclusive was later used extensively across national newspapers and television. One judge said ‘a scoop we all wished we'd had!'"

What particularly inspired me on the night was not how well we at The Champ had done with our story but at the sheer strength and quality of the stories which proved to be winners; Liverpool Echo reporter Ben Rossington, who was also up for the scoop award, deservedly went home with the News Reporter of the Year award, while Visiter reporter Tom Bristow, who's gone on to work for a paper in Norwich, picked up the Young Journalist of the Year (Weekly) prize. And the Lancashire Evening Post? Well, they got Daily Newspaper of the Year, which is another great achievement.

But by far the best moment of the night was the Outstanding Contribution award, for which there was only ever going to be one candidate.... Gordon Burns. The BBC North West Tonight anchor, who'd been told he was going to be giving an award to Gee Walker, but he was given a standing ovation when he discovered that in fact she was giving him the award. It was a moving moment in a night packed with good news, and I feel priveliged to have met someone who is a household name.

The media's had a lot of bad press this year, but as a now award-winning journalist I'm delighted to say that the north west's journalists are still able to come up with some brilliant publications and some world-beating stories.

The winners, in full:

O2 Business Journalist of the Year

Adam Jupp – Manchester Evening News

Runners Up

Peter Elson – Liverpool Daily Post

Alistair Houghton - Liverpool Daily Post & Liverpool Echo

Shelina Begum - Manchester Evening News

O2 Digital Journalist of the Year

Adam McClean – Granada Reports

Runners Up

Dan Kay – Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Jo Kelly - Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Peter Bainbridge – Manchester Evening News

O2 Young Journalist of the Year – Daily

Miranda Newey – Bolton News

Runners Up

Will Metcalfe – Northwest Evening Mail

Katie Robinson – Northwest Evening Mail

David Pickthall – Northwest Evening Mail

O2 Young Journalist of the Year – Weekly

Tom Bristow – Southport Visiter

Runners Up

Ellie Cullen – Crewe Chronicle

Natalie Banks - Chorley and Leyland Guardian

Matthew Hobbs – Warrington Guardian

O2 Feature Writer of the Year

Sarah Newstead – Cumberland News

Runners Up

Roger Lytollis – Cumberland News

Alistair Houghton – Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Paddy Shennan - Liverpool Echo

O2 News Reporter of the Year

Ben Rossington – Liverpool Echo

Runners Up

Neal Keeling – Manchester Evening News

Liza Williams – Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Vanessa Cornall – Lancashire Telegraph

O2 Photographer of the Year

Colin Lane – Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Runners Up

Paul Heyes – Manchester Evening News

Vincent Cole - Manchester Evening News (Rochdale Observer)

Sean Hansford - Manchester Evening News (Rochdale Observer)

O2 Radio Broadcast Journalist of the Year

Janine Bolton – Rock FM

Runners Up

Michelle Ponting – Key 103

Jimmy McCracken – BBC Radio Merseyside

O2 Scoop of the Year

Champion Newspapers

Runners Up

Liverpool Echo

Lancashire Evening Post

O2 Sports Journalist of the Year

Jon Colman – Cumberland News

Runners Up

Amanda Little – Cumberland News

Chris Hall – Granada Reports

Kelly O’Donnell – Tower and Wish FM

O2 TV Broadcast Journalist of the Year

Matt O’Donoghue – Granada Reports

Runners Up

Andy Gill – BBC North West Tonight

Jacey Normand – BBC Inside Out

O2 Editorial Team of the Year

Key 103

Runners Up

Granada Reports

Saddleworth Independent

The Leader

O2 Daily Newspaper of the Year

Lancashire Evening Post

Runners Up

Bolton News

Lancashire Telegraph

Liverpool Echo

O2 Weekly Newspaper of the Year

Cumberland News

Runners Up

Chester Chronicle

Crosby Herald

Rossendale Free Press

Warrington Guardian

O2 Newspaper of the Year

Cumberland news

Outstanding ContributionAward

Gordon Burns – BBC North West Tonight

For more on the O2 Media Awards see next Wednesday's Champion, published November 9, 2011.

The highs (and lows) of work experience

2011-11-01T15:17:00.004Z

BE WARNED: work experience at your local paper can be seriously addictive!

Last Friday I was lucky enough to get taken for a flight in a microlight in the skies above Seaforth, for a feature you'll be able to read about in The Champion in the very near future. The pictures you see here do a sterling job of showing both the scenery and the predictable grin my face gained upon seeing it, but it was only thanks to someone on work experience showing a bit of willing that they happened at all.

The date for the flight was supposed to be tomorrow but with the wintry weather becoming increasingly unpredictable, the microlight men offered to make hay while the sun shone last Friday and move everything forward. The only problem was that meant neither of our photographers were free to take the pictures.

That's where Peter Charles, who was doing a week's worth of work experience at our offices, stepped in and offered his photography experience to help quite literally get the feature off the ground. He'd already shown a bit of a nose for a story with a great piece he'd done on a Southport building society being haunted, so I didn't really hesitate to let him give me a hand with the feature. Which is how someone who'd been in the office for less than a week ended up at the helm of a microlight, hundreds of feet up, taking photos of Yours Truly.

That's not to say every work experience student gets a free white knuckle ride; I did work experience no less than four times at The Champion before I actually joined as a reporter, and I got to enjoy instead the thrills of sitting in on magistrates' court hearings and keying in readers' letters. But then that's what I love most of all about journalism - it's the variety and never knowing quite what you're going to get. The work experiencer the week before got an open evening at Southport College; you just never know what stories might be on the way.

I have been sailing, hot air ballooning, skiing, gliding, canoeing in my time as a journalist so far, and I've been lucky enough to interview a Bond villain and a Prime Minister, but getting into journalism is definitely not about the glamour. I do it because I love writing articles and because I enjoy talking to people.

So working on a newspaper's very much a mixed bag. You could end up soaring through the skies on a feature about microlighting. You probably won't. But the important thing is that - if you show a bit of willing and are prepared to put the effort in to find a story - you could.

Pictures by Peter Charles

Thousands pack the streets of Ormskirk for Freedom of the Borough parade

2011-10-25T17:34:00.004+01:00

AS I GOT escorted down a closed off street in the centre of Ormskirk hundreds of people, packed behind steel safety barriers on either side, cheered and clapped and shouted messages of support.

Of course it wasn't me they were cheering; that honour instead went to the fantastically brave men of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, who were marching through the middle of the market town to commemorate being given the Freedom of the Borough of West Lancashire. I was just a journalist covering what really was their day in the sun.

As stories go this was one that required - and I apologise for the shockingly bad pun - military precision, simply because there were so many people involved and so many different parades and presentations involved in the space of a single morning. I knew it was going to be a popular event but I genuinely didn't expect so many thousands of people to come along and show their support on what was a slightly chilly October morning, but I know the soldiers themselves really did appreciate it. Hopefully tomorrow's lead in The Ormskirk Champion will do it justice, but the whirlwind nature of the big day is one that'll stick out the memory.

I have, for instance, never sat through an entire church service before in the interests of covering a story, but it was being rushed along by the Army's press officers along the parade route itself to the best vantage points that it'll always stay with me. One of the priveliges you get being a reporter is that you'll often get to venture into the places the rest of the public can't, and I was determined to use beating the crowds to some of the best views of the parade and the presentation ceremony in the best way I could.

So I made a video. Hope you like it...

Do a reunited Stone Roses deserve this much media coverage?

2011-10-20T11:36:00.002+01:00

AFTER many years of rumours and wishful thinking they've finally got back together. A band best known for a series of seminal records, legendary gigs and a cult following. Their reunion is What The World Is Waiting For.

Yes, Steps, the creators of the anthemic 5, 6, 7, 8 and One For Sorrow, have got back together. Britain's pop pickers rejoice!

What you're probably more interested in, I suspect, is the second Second Coming of The Stone Roses, whose reunion this week transcended their usual domain of the NME front cover and climbed up the news agendas of decidely non-showbiz outlets like BBC News and The Guardian. Every pundit up and down the land was wheeled out to give their take on whether they liked the idea of Ian, John, Mani and Reni putting aside their differences. Some loved it. Some hated it. Some wondered whether it was news at all.

I have a special fondness for Stone Roses coverage because one of my first published articles, in The Voice, the in-house magazine of King George V College in Southport, was a piece extolling the virtues of their then-new Greatest Hits and waxing lyrically about what a wonderfully brilliant band they were. How amazingly awesome were the Stone Roses, I asked at the time. Unfortunately nobody at the time cared and went back to listening to Limp Bizkit on MP3. Time hasn't treated them - or the band, for that matter - all that kindly.

In the meantime I've been treated to ever more people who agree with me about how brilliant The Stone Roses were, and now with the reunion they've all come out of the woodwork and been given lots of media exposure. I suspect the glossy magazines which come with the Sunday broadsheets this weekend will be packed with pieces discussing the intricate drumwork on Fools' Gold, how beautifully decorated John Squire's guitar was and just how legendary that gig at Spike Island really was.

But will I be seeing them live? Not a chance.

Seeing old bands live is always rubbish because the expecation created by your memory is almost always better than the gig itself; have you seen ever seen my other favourite Madchester band, The Happy Mondays, playing live? Loose Fit is one of my favourite tunes and Pills 'n' Thrills one of the my top albums, but Bez definitely can't dance and Shaun Ryder definitely doesn't have the poetic edge he used to. Given the choice between seeing them in Preston and New Young Pony Club, one of the newfangled indie bands a few years back, I went with NYPC. And I still would.

I will however leave the last word on band reunions to John Squire, who I thought gave his thoughts on any prospects of the Roses reuniting when he unveiled an artwork two years ago.

"I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses."

Champion report shortlisted for an O2 Award

2011-10-19T12:36:00.007+01:00

AFTER 25-and-a-bit years I can still count the things I've won with one hand.

They include a prize for the best fancy dress at a Sunday school competition, circa 1990, a certificate I got for a short story which impressed the judges of a national competition at the turn of the milennium, and a bottle of wine I jointly won last week after ending up on a victorious pub quiz team last week. That's the sum total of the awards I've won to date.

However, I might be slightly closer to winning something after I discovered last Friday that an exclusive I wrote for The Ormskirk Champion back in April has been shortlisted for an award at this year's O2 Awards.

I am hopeful that I'll be able to go along to the awards ceremony in Blackpool next month and bring back a certificate and a cheesy picture for the paper, but in the interests of fairness I should point out I'm up against two great entries from The Liverpool Echo and the Lancashire Evening Post, and that fellow journalists from across the region have been nominated for a string of other gongs on the night.

The nominees are, in full:

Young Journalist of the Year (Weekly Newspapers)

Ellie Cullen, Crewe Chronicle
Natalie Banks, Chorley and Leyland Guardian
Tom Bristow, Southport Visiter
Matthew Hobbs, Warrington Guardian

Young Journalist of the Year (Daily Newspapers)

Will Metcalfe, North West Evening Mail
David Pickthall, North West Evening Mail
Katie Robinson, North West Evening Mail
Miranda Newey, Bolton News

Scoop of the Year

Ormskirk Champion
Lancashire Evening Post
Liverpool Echo

Radio Broadcast Journalist of the Year

Jimmy McCracken, BBC Radio Merseyside
Janine Bolton , Rock FM
Michelle Ponting, Key 103

Digital Journalist of the Year

Liverpool Echo, Jo Kelly
Granada Reports, Adam McClean
Liverpool Echo, Dan Kay
Manchester Evening News, Peter Bainbridge

TV Broadcast Journalist of the Year

Matt O’Donoghue, Granada Reports
Andy Gill, BBC North West Tonight
Jacey Normand, BBC Inside Out

Business Reporter of the Year

Alistair Houghton, Daily Post and Echo
Peter Elson, Daily Post and Echo
Shelina Begum, Manchester Evening News
Adam Jupp, Manchester Evening News

Feature Writer of the Year

Alistair Houghton, Daily Post and Echo
Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo
Roger Lytollis, Cumberland News
Sarah Newstead, Cumberland News

Photographer of the Year

Colin Lane, Daily Post and Echo
Paul Heyes, Manchester Evening News
Sean Hansford, Manchester Evening News/Rochdale Observer
Vincent Cole, Manchester Evening News/Rochdale Observer

Sports Reporter of the Year

Chris Hall, Granada Reports
Jon Colman, Cumberland News
Kelly O’Donnell, Tower FM/Wish FM
Amanda Little, Cumberland News

News Reporter of the Year

Liza Williams, Daily Post and Echo
Ben Rossington, Liverpool Echo
Neal Keeling, Manchester Evening News
Vanessa Cornall, Lancashire Telegraph

Editorial Team of the Year

Saddleworth Independent
Evening Leader (Chester/Wrexham)
Key 103
Granada Reports

Weekly Newspaper of the Year

Warrington Guardian
Chester Chronicle
Cumberland News
Crosby Herald
Rossendale Free Press

Daily Newspaper of the Year

Lancashire Evening Post
Bolton News
Liverpool Echo
Lancashire Telegraph

The news that The Champion had been shortlisted meant that not only was there a little piece on this morning's front pages about the nomination but also a bit of a headache for the subs, who apparently discovered every picture featuring Yours Truly in The Champion photo archive also features either pyjamas, an embarrassing lifejacket or - most prominently of all - a car of some sort...

The results of the O2 Awards will be announced on Thursday, November 3.

A rubbish story

2011-10-12T14:52:00.005+01:00

TOP marks to the Ainsdale councillor who spotted the Champion connection in our Southport splash this week. Yes, the Dr David Simister mentioned in the story is my dad!

Naturally, I was expecting at least one reader to point it out, particularly as you can find my own "By David Simister" byline throughout the motoring section of the same paper, and up in the news sections of the West Lancashire editions I write for. It's awkward but it does raise a very valid point; just because someone's a friend or relative of a reporter doesn't make their story any less valid.

I'm sure all sorts of armchair analyists will say we led with that particular story because of the family connection but it was in the end the combination of a controversial subject (waste collection), the fact it's topical at the moment thanks to Coalition calls to resume weekly collections, and the "one in a million" nature of Sefton Council's response (apparently, they've never had a problem with a collection bin being too heavy before) that made it newsworthy. I recognised that but I also knew there would've been an obvious conflict of interest if I'd written it, which is why I haven't.

This week's Southport lead has been followed up, researched and written by Natasha Young, my colleague who covers that area. Rightly so, I reckon.

I've written before about there being a bit of a journalistic deficit when a story affects a reporter and a reporter only - like the nightmare I encountered with a couple of chickens earlier this year - but friends, family and colleagues are perfectly valid subjects for an article as long as it's done fairly and impartially. One of the best stories I remember The Rhyl Visitor covering when I worked there was a grandmother whose home was mistakenly subjected to a police dawn raid; that said grandmother worked as a receptionist at The Rhyl Visitor was irrelevant.

A story, at the end of the day, is a story, no matter who makes it and who breaks it.

Subtle but different

2011-10-11T16:18:00.003+01:00

EAGLE-EYED readers might have spotted a few changes at The Champion over the past few weeks, but here they are again in case you've missed them.

The main thing you'll notice is the blurb box which has been given a revamp to give it a slightly fresher look, with the cutouts in particular breathing a bit more liveliness onto the front pages.

Just in case you forgot, here's The Champion looked like up until about two weeks ago...

What do you think? Let us know by sending your thoughts to david.simister@champnews.com or leave a comment below.

Readers - why so coy?

2011-10-06T14:24:00.003+01:00

SKELMERSDALE'S buses are old, smelly, out of date and don't run on time.

That's according to quite a lot of you, who got in touch after a story last week claiming that the New Town - happy birthday, by the way - is being served entirely by buses at least a decade old. The only problem was that every single person, without exception, didn't want their name going in the paper under any circumstances.

This defeats the whole point of standing up and being counted, so I had to hold off following up the story in yesterday's Champion.

The Skelmersdale bus story seemed particularly problematic but it's an ongoing pain for any reporter trying to get the public to share their thoughts on a contentious issue. The classic scenario is that the phone will ring, the caller will - usually before we've had time to say "Good morning, Editorial" - go in all guns blazing and launch into a rant about a given subject, and then end abruptly with "I don't want my name going in the paper, so you're not having it".

The problem is that when an issue's even mildly controversial, everybody expects their name to be kept anonymous. I'd never go against a request for anonymity but usually I try and persuade said reader that it's not only unecessary, but actually counterproductive because it's unlikely we'll actually use it anyway. If we did, every comment in every story would be attributed to "a reader" or "a resident, who asked not be named". Which might as well be some unscrupulous journalist making it up, for all you know.

It's the same with our Maghull splash this week, about claims JD Wetherspoon has its eye on one of the town's pubs. There are plenty of people happy to share their views on the subject, but only if they're credited as "a Maghull reader, who did not wish to be named". Unfortunately, a newspaper report based entirely on the quotes of half a dozen anonymously angry readers doesn't really cut it as hard news, but that's the reaction we've had so far.

Anonymity, used correctly, can actually add to a story's impact, as the immortal "did not wish to be named due to fear of reprisals" line shows. Anonymity is way for victims to speak out against their oppressors, a means for mistreated employees to take those in charge to task and the opportunity for controversial claims to come to light.

Being annoyed with your local bus service isn't really any of those things.

Why Twitter was on track throughout the Merseyrail commuter misery

2011-09-27T16:47:00.004+01:00

THE one place I'm fairly certain you didn't want to be last Friday morning was on a Merseyrail train.

You've probably read by now about the chaos a disrupted power cable had on the electric rail network, which - for all sorts of boring technical reasons - managed to bring almost every train in Sefton and West Lancashire to a standstill. Two of our reporters, who commute in every morning from Liverpool, were among the thousands affected by the rush-hour bungle and eventually got into the office at around 11am.

For them it wasn't much fun - I suppose you can only look at the same stretch of golf course just outside Hillside Station for so long - but from the newsroom it was fascinating to watch how quickly it developed. Stories like these are exactly where digital journalism scores over its printed counterpart. People don't want to read about delays to their commute in next week's Champion. They want to read about it there and then, in real time.

This is where Twitter came into its own. Merseyrail, to their credit, are masters of using the social networking site to keep people updated, and used it brilliantly to keep anyone who had access to a computer or (more likely on a train) a smartphone instantly updated. Twitter's also the place where Merseyrail boss Bart Schmeink attacked Network Rail, who said he was dissapointed with their "careless actions". It was also - thanks to our 600 followers and the ability to update them and their friends as it happened - the ideal means to keep Champion-reading commuters up to date, and to find out out how frustrated they were.

In fact, the only place you probably didn't want to get stuck was in the underground section of Merseyrail's network beneath Liverpool city centre, where - for practical reasons - you can't access the world of smartphone internet goodness yet. I'm sure, with this sort of scenario in mind through, they're probably working on it.

Twitter and Facebook can easily lead you down the journalistic garden path if you're not too careful, as our experiences during last month's riots proved, but with more and more organisations realising its potential, it's surprisingly easy to use it to stay updated and accurate.

Which is the whole point of news, really.

The Champion has given its Facebook account a bit of a revamp! Visit www.facebook.com/champnews to find out more...

Being young and a car nut doesn't make me a speed freak

2011-09-20T21:32:00.002+01:00

NOT long ago, an angry man came into The Champion office and argued I was a speed freak.

I mention this because lots of people have asked why we gave so much coverage to the issue of the Parbold Hill speed camera, which last week was left obscured to oncoming motorists after being involved in a bit of selective hedge trimming. Lots of you were outraged. For very different reasons.

For every reader who rang us to accuse Lancashire County Council of trying to catch drivers out, there was another who angrily accused us of overdoing the coverage, because - let's face it - no matter how covered up the contentious camera is, you shouldn't be doing over the speed limit anyway and therefore it doesn't matter if a speed camera's hidden from view.

One reader I spoke to this morning even said those complaining about the camera were the younger generation, "of which you're a part", who wanted to use Parbold Hill as some sort of racetrack. Plenty of others who reckoned the speed camera being hidden by hedges was a problem felt the need to remain anonymous and to insist they hadn't been caught out by it.

It's as if there's some sort of veiled assumption that you're automatically a hardened speeder if you query anything to do with road safety cameras.

That's why I feel like I ought to do something I rarely do with stories; lay my own cards on the table, for all of West Lancashire's motorists to see. There's no point in me pretending that I don't like fast cars - I do, after all, write a column which features little else. It's also no secret that I actively enjoy driving and actually go out of my way to seek out a rewarding road, as I've just done on a wonderful weekend on the mountain passes of Snowdonia.

But I can also reveal that in my three years of driving I've never been booked for speeding, my driving licence is as clean as the day I got it and I'm on my way to earning my third year of No Claims Bonus. I am, I admit, one of those outcasts who drives because it's fun but I firmly believe better driving isn't faster driving. It's good observations, training and experience which work behind the wheel. Contrary to the angry man's assertions, I am not a speed freak.

For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of speed cameras being hidden behind hedges but it's not because I like to drive too fast; it's because I believe speeding deterrants should be, well, deterring people. Isn't that why they're painted bright yellow?

I am, without any shadow of doubt, a petrolhead, but more importantly I'm a journalist, and recognise the speed camera story was newsworthy primarily because so many people felt so strongly about it.

That, more than anything else, is why we gave it the coverage we did.

Press Association boss checks out The Champion

2011-09-16T10:06:00.004+01:00

AN INFLUENTIAL media expert who began his career in Southport returned to the resort this week to check out The Champion - and catch up with a former colleague!

Clive Marshall, chief executive of the Press Association Group, paid a visit to our offices on Lord Street to speak to Phil Lilley, editorial director at Champion Media Group, and to offer his views on The Champion series of newspapers.

Mr Marshall, who grew up in Ainsdale but heads up the PA from its offices in London, said of The Champion:

"I think it's great, and it's great to see newspapers thriving. So much of the coverage at the moment about newspapers is that there's no future, but there clearly is a future, not just at The Champion but at lots of newspaper groups, and that's good to see.

"One of the biggest changes I've seen is that when I started there was just newspapers and a few radio stations, whereas now it's almost limitless, with internet and mobiles and iPads. People can get their news in just about every way imaginable, so the potential now for news and content is greater than it's ever been."

Mr Marshall begun working in regional newspapers in the late 1970s and has gone on to hold a string of influential roles, including heading up the Australian Associated Press before returning to the UK in February last year to take up his current role, which sees him overseeing one of the UK's largest news organisations.

Champion editorial director Phil Lilley, who worked alongside Mr Marshall in Southport in the late seventies, said:

"It was wonderful catching up with Clive after more than thirty years. We started our advertising careers together in Southport and I often wondered what became of the flame haired young ‘go getter' after we both went our separate ways in the industry.

“The success Clive has achieved in heading up the Press Association and previously its equivalent in Australia is no surprise to those who worked alongside him when he was a precocious 19-year-old.”

While Clive Marshall was at The Champion offices he also gave his views on where the UK's media industry is heading. Click below to hear my interview with him...

Embargoes are stupid and ought to be banned forever

2011-09-12T21:18:00.004+01:00

ROBBIE WILLIAMS, so the song goes, has no regrets.

I, on the other hand have a few. One of them being that earlier today I took down a tweet off The Champion's Twitter feed about something we're not supposed to tell you until midnight tonight. Something, it transpires, that you all know about anyway.

Yep, it's the everyday irritation that is the embargo, except that it's not every time they end up winding up the national media the wrong way. For this you've got the Boundaries Commission to blame, who sent all us nasty journalists an email detailing changes to parliamentary constituencies.

In fact, the first we got of it was a message from one of our local MPs, who told us that courtesy of the Boundaries Commission he now knows that his seat is going to [strictly embargoed until midnight, September 13, 2011]. The problem is that I got a bit too excited, missed the bit saying it was strictly embargoed until midnight, September 13, 2011, and immediately bypassed The Champion website to get it onto that most immediate of media formats. Twitter.

It was about two minutes later I realised I'd broken an embargo and - largely because it affected somewhere I didn't cover anyway - decided to remove it off the social networking site before it got retweeted by one of 595 followers (including the MP concerned, as it happened).

As it soon became obvious, there was no point bothering.

Sure, most of the traditional media - including the likes of The Guardian - had respected the embargo, but the Twitter users and the likes of Southport GB hadn't bothered, which makes a mockery of there being a restriction on reporting it in the first place. Embargoes are just as pointless as superinjunctions - in fact they're worse, because they carry no legal weight whatsoever.

Sending anything out that's "strictly embargoed until..." makes a mockery of the traditional media and hands it to anonymousblogger123 on a plate, because they don't give a monkey's ear about whether Whitehall wants them to report it or not. Don't get me wrong, it's not just faceless Government departments; local councils, big business and even - ironically - PR firms are just as guilty. I've said it before and I'll say it again; either send us the story, or don't. It's that simple.

Embargos might even end up becoming self-defeating, if the omnipotent abilities of Nautilus, the news-predicting supercomputer are anything to go by. News pre-predicted by a number-crunching, media-sentient machine redolent of The Matrix needs not an embargo.

"MILLONS KILLED IN STAMPEDE TO BUY FINAL ROBBIE WILLIAMS ALBUM," it would utter in a monotonous babble, having meticulously pre-assessed the mood of millions of Take That fans to successfully fortell their reaction to Stoke's most famous man calling it a day.

"Strictly embargoed until..."

Review: We Will Rock You

2011-09-09T10:25:00.004+01:00

ROCK bands come and go. Inevitably, they also split opinion, but I've yet to meet someone who doesn't like at least one of Queen's songs.

That's the legacy We Will Rock You, currently on at the Liverpool Empire has to live up to, particularly as it couldn't have opened at a more poignant time. Had Freddie Mercury still been alive, he would have just celebrated his 65th birthday.

The show, the result of One Vision shared by the band's members and comedian Ben Elton, comes to Merseyside in the form of a jukebox musical packed with wry pop references, amid a group of rebellious central characters struggling to overcome a dystopian backdrop.

Let's get one thing straight; this isn't a Queen biopic and nor is Noel Sullivan, who plays the lead male singer, a Freddie Mercury, so if you go along expecting either you're going to be dissapointed. Play The Game with the show's premise - the struggle of Galileo Figaro and female sidekick Scaramouche, played by Amanda Cutts, who are Under Pressure to overthrow a regime that's banned rock music - and you'll be stunned by the effort that's gone into this show.

Not only does the plot move seemlessly through Queen's back catalogue (the key antagonist, helpfully, is called the Killer Queen) but it also makes more than a tongue-in-cheek reference not only to every rock band from U2 to the Rolling Stones, but also to the likes of Britney Spears and Bob the Builder!

Blurring the lines between a musical and a gig, We Will Rock You is a show that's not only a real Bohemian Rhapsody in its own right, but also reminds you what a timeless and genre-defying band always Queen always were.

Spending an evening with We Will Rock You is far more entertaining than A Day At The Races or A Night At The Opera.

GR8Life: The new edition

2011-09-08T16:00:00.004+01:00

WHAT links a helicopter, a hot hatchback, a slightly leaky yacht and a world record set more than 80 years ago?

Yep, they're all things I've got up close to for the new edition of GR8Life magazine, which goes out to homes across Sefton and West Lancashire later this month. In fact, it's been a busier edition than usual for me, with not only the usual road test (Suzuki Swift Sport, in case you're interested) making it in, but also pieces on the Crosby Lakeside Adventure Centre, a cruelly forgotten piece of Southport's history and the North West Air Ambulance.

For more information on the new edition of GR8Life magazine visit the website.

Open publication - Free publishing - More champion

Kicking off The Bootle Champion

2011-09-06T15:07:00.003+01:00

YES, that really is Jamie Carragher reading a copy of The Champion.

The Bootle-born Liverpool FC star is leafing through an edition of our paper because we're launching a new edition in his hometown tomorrow, in the form of - wait for it - The Bootle Champion.

As of tomorrow The Champion comes in no less than seven editions, with the new arrival joining the titles covering Southport, Formby, Aintree and Maghull, Ormskirk and West Lancashire, Skelmersdale and Crosby and Litherland.

Admittedly, I haven't had as much involvement in it as you'd think - my speciality's still covering West Lancashire for our other editions and flying The Champion flag on the likes of YouTube and Twitter - but having seen the pages of the launch edition before it goes to press I reckon you're in for more than a good read if you're a Bootle resident.

I was going to tell you all about it but it seems my colleagues looking after the Bootle paper have done a much better job than I'd manage, so in their words:

"The launch into the Bootle area is an indication of Champion Newspapers commitment to readers and advertisers alike to deliver the best news service to the widest audience. But our success in Bootle can only grow with YOUR support and we welcome both readers and advertisers to join us in making our new title an absolute must read each and every week."

"So give us your stories and your community news; tell our reporters what is going on in Bootle and the surrounding areas; send us your letters for our postbag; and all your sports news."

So yes, we're launching a paper in Bootle tomorrow which can count Jamie Carragher among its fans. It's not every day you can say that.

The first ever edition of The Bootle Champion will be available around Bootle from tomorrow (Wednesday, September 7).

August bank holiday at The Champion office

2011-08-30T16:38:00.003+01:00

SOUTHPORT town centre was deserted, like a scene from The Omega Man. Nobody in their right mind is up at 8.30am on a bank holiday Monday.

Except journalists who have newspapers which go to press the following day, come rain or shine, whether it's after a bank holiday or not. That's why - when you were asleep - I'd driven down the eerily empty streets, past the rows of shutters on the shop fronts, to fire up the computer at The Champion offices. Working bank holidays is weird.

The main thing I always notice are the phones; on a Monday morning they're usually abuzz with activity, but I think I could count the number of calls with one hand. The press releases from fatuous PR companies based in slick offices in London and Manchester, most of which are completely irrelevant anyway, weren't coming through.

Yet - and I know this is going to sound odd - I quite like working bank holidays for several reasons. First off, it means I don't have to spend my day off at precisely the same time as everyone else, which means I don't have to sit in either a) a traffic jam on the M6 or b) in front of the television watching reruns of Top Gear on Dave. Everything is rubbish on bank holiday Monday because everyone else is already doing it.

The other thing is that it means I can actually get through a surprising amount of stories, because the phone isn't ringing every five minutes. Unfortunately, I'm male and therefore can't multitask, meaning that - as hard as I try, I can't take notes over the phone and type up a story simultaneously. This means I get more stories done when Dog and Bone PR isn't on the blower.

This is particularly brilliant when you've got a big story to crack on with, which in this case was the write up of the Ormskirk MotorFest from a day earlier. All the bank holiday quietness meant I had time not only to get the story ready for this week's edition, but also to polish off some filming I'd done of all the Jags and Ferraris and make into a video for our website, which you can see below. Enjoy.

But the best bit about working a bank holiday Monday, of course, is that you still get your time off eventually, which is why I'm off to the countryside this Friday.

Yorkshire, here I come...

Ormskirk's high octane motoring spectacular

2011-08-23T15:23:00.004+01:00

IT'S not an idea that had even crossed my mind before; Ormskirk's one-way system as a motorsport venue.

I have, in my time as a reporter for The Ormskirk Champion, done many “laps” of this unlikeliest of circuits, being as it is the string of streets which link the various bits of the West Lancashire market town with one another. At rush hour on a busy Friday, it couldn't be further from the high octane world of historic motorsport.

Yet it's been a year since I had the phone call from one of the town's councillors, who rang to let me know of exciting plans to close the roads off and unleash some of motorsport's most mouthwatering machines on them, with the full blessing of the local council. Plans that became the first ever Ormskirk Motorfest.

Since then I've closely followed Aintree Circuit Club and the work that's gone behind the scenes to put this full-throttle spectacular together, and I've been amazed every step of the way. I've been impressed by the organisation that's gone onto it from both the club and from West Lancashire Borough Council, and by the support it's had from businesses based both in and around West Lancashire. I've been stunned by the response it's had so far from the north west's petrolheads, whether they prefer being on two wheels or four.

Most of all, i've been stunned by some machinery that's been promised for the event - I've seen the entry list, and it reads like an anthology of motoring's greatest hits. There's everything from a 1915 Model T Ford to the fearsome 2002 Ferrari Enzo, and just about every car, bike and racing machine in between.

The best bit is, the people of Ormskirk seem to agree, or at least the ones shopping at the town's market did when West Lancashire town crier Don Evans did his bit to promote the event with a rather loud speech last Thursday. Even though some escaped inmate kept repeatedly asking me if I worked for The Ormskirk Advertiser throughout the speech (sorry about that) I've managed to record the best bits, which you can listen to yourself by clicking the link below. You could just sort of sense the excitement people had about the event.

I'd never thought of Ormskirk as being West Lancashire's answer to Monaco or Spa, but I'm glad someone's had the idea. Then again, I would say that, because I'm one of its 250 entrants.

Skelmersdale: The Musical!

2011-08-16T16:13:00.004+01:00

THERE were, when I last counted, just three musicals that I've truly enjoyed watching. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Blues Brothers, and Quadrophenia.

That count could, however, be about to stretch to four, after plans for Skelmersdale: The Musical were announced this week. I'm not making it up; it is, as you'll read in tomorrow's Champion, a performance that's being written to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the area being designated a New Town. Forget the plans for the revived railway link and the renaissance of the town centre; you know you've arrived when you get a musical named after you. Just look at Chicago. And Oklahoma. And Blackpool, for that matter.

I love the idea, even if it does raise a simple question; what story do you tell with Skelmersdale? Certainly, I couldn't come up with any plot devices, not unless I wanted to be accused of being rude about the number of roundabouts in the town. The idea of the protagonist being a motorist from say, Ormskirk, who gets lost after getting its many roundabouts mixed up and runs out petrol would be brilliantly convenient. Probably not that far-fetched, either.

Skelmersdale: The Musical won't be the first time the New Town has been featured in a musical, either; it famously featured as one of the key locations in Willy Russell's hit play Blood Brothers, which is still being performed at venues across the country. That, though, merely featured Skem as a backdrop to a complicated nature/nuture drama with a comical twist, whereas I suspect Skelmersdale: The Musical will be a tad trickier to pull off. It must be, through the medium of drama, the essence of Skelmersdale.

I don't envy award-winning playwright Elizabeth Boorman's job of encapsulating the New Town in musical, show-stopping form, but I can't wait to see it.

2011 riots: What didn't happen in Southport

2011-08-11T16:28:00.003+01:00

THE ATMOSPHERE was a tense one as I fired up the car and headed into High Park. Word was that the riots, which had already taken their toll on Liverpool a night earlier, had reached Southport.

This was, of course, via Twitter, and in the end of not one of the places in the resort alleged to have been "kicking off" saw any sort of public disorder, looting or general criminality on Tuesday night. The thing with rumours on Twitter is that they are usually just that... rumours.

Twitter's response to the riots was one of the weirdest social media phenomena I've ever encountered, with millions of individuals tweeting en-masse about riots that weren't happening. In Southport's case several users got in touch with us via our @champnews account to report disturbances in the suburb of High Park, at the Central 12 shopping centre and in Marshside. We investigated further and found none of them to be true, so it won't be something you'll be reading about in next week's Champion.

What particularly amazed me was that - by asking fellow tweeters what they'd heard - we got accused of "fueling the fire".

Writing on the social networking site, David Stanbrook asked us:

"Why are you fueling the fire ? Another rumour that'll spread and lead to people on the streets."

A very good point, but the last thing we'd want to do is spread rumours. As a local newspaper, it's our job to find out what is - or isn't - happening locally, which is why we investigated further to discover the truth behind the rumours. It's a just a shame that in trying to find out more, our online appeal for more information got misinterpreted as rumours themselves.

There were, on what was a tense night for Twitter and for the north west, just two Twitter users you wanted to follow for genuine information; @lancspolice and @merseypolice, the official accounts for the two police forces covering our circulation area. That's why we pointed our 550 followers in their direction for the facts - and not the fiction - about the riots.

The Twitter rumours about riots in Southport were, like so many others, completely untrue. Something I'm glad about, to be honest.

Video: Woodvale Rally 2011

2011-08-08T21:26:00.002+01:00

FOR anyone who didn't go to the event, held last weekend...

Journalism doesn't need to be reined in, it needs to be equal

2011-08-06T00:27:00.004+01:00

QUITE how I've lasted this long without sounding off is anyone's guess. I'm hacked off with hacking.

Like most journalists, I haven't been getting my stories by tapping into peoples' private lives but the actions of News International - and now, it's being alleged, The Mirror too - hasn't stopped the blogging world for calling for the newspaper industry to have a long, hard look at itself in, ahem, the mirror.

Of course I'm not going to try and defend anything that's clearly illegal or an unecessary intrusion of privacy that's not in the public interest, but what really winds me up is the holier-than-thou attitude bloggers commenting on traditional newspapers seem all to happy to take.

Certainly, a story that appeared on a poorly-edited community news blog earlier this week knocking one of The Champion's page leads was priceless. I know I'm biased on this one, but the trained journalists at a regional paper read by 140,000 people were accused of "churnalism" by a website which copies and pastes press releases word for word.

As a "news" - and I use the term loosely - piece it highlighted exactly why I think bloggers and the traditional media are on a completely uneven playing field. Whereas I, or indeed any other journalist I can think of, would be taken to task by the subs, the editor and our readers if we even dreamed of mindlessly copying and pasting a press release without any further investigation, the bloggers don't need to worry because they're not bound by the same rules as the printed press.

Like most people in the media in 2011, I fully appreciate that blogs and social networking are here to stay; if you're reading these words, you'll know it's a world I'm embracing in the hope that, in a tough climate for the media, it might make a difference.

I also agree with the sentiment that Britain's as a whole does need looking at, although I'm not sure the current climate of phone hacking public outrage is the right climate to conduct, a cool, clear and impartial review. There are lessons to be learned, but Britain would be a poorer place if it meant cutting back the hard-earned freedoms of all the journalists who didn't break the law.

Surely what we need is a media which is tougher on lawbreakers and more tightly-regulated, but more importantly fairer, with laws that establish what properly accountable journalists can do and what people pretending to be journalists, hiding behind the Internet, can't.

Come to think of it, if we are going to replace the Press Complaints Commission we should move towards a wider Journalism Commission with a far wider-ranging code of conduct, which covers not only newspapers, but all journalism and anyone purporting to do journalistic work. It wouldn't just be a body with the remit to investigate wrongdoings, but a mark of quality and excellence anyone serious about journalism, newspaper reporters, broadcasters and bloggers alike, could sign up to as a sign they abide they ethical, fair and impartial reporting.

Roger that?

At a time when confidence in journalism is at an all-time low, a mark of quality which gives all journalists - no matter who they work for - the same set of guiding rules on ethics and conduct has got to be a good thing. It would give genuine bloggers and online journalists a deserved boost to their credibility, bolster a print and broadcast media in already troubled times and show up the rest, for all their self-congratulatory fluff masquerading as news, for what they actually are.

Pretenders.

You're nicked!

2011-08-02T16:50:00.004+01:00

IS THIS the sneakiest speed camera in the whole of Lancashire?

That's the question we're asking in tomorrow's West Lancashire editions of The Champion after dozens of you got in touch to attack the Gatso camera on Parbold Hill, which figures reveal is the fourth most lucrative speed camera in the whole of Lancashire. It nicks more people than all the other speed cameras in West Lancashire put together. Amazing, but true.

Our readers - none of whom had been clocked by the camera themselves, of course - were furious. My email inbox groaned under the digital weight of angry responses. One of them even called on me to "make a name" for myself and the paper by looking into it further and doing a follow up, investigating the numerous claims that it's not entirely legal.

So I have.

A story about a speed camera on a blind bend on a steep hill getting a lot of reaction doesn't surprise me - the figures speak for themselves - but what stuns me more is the reaction we haven't had over proposals to close several police stations across the borough.

I honestly thought, with all the best news sense I have, that by now we'd be buried under letters of complaint from readers angry about the cuts to frontline policing, but the honest truth is that we've barely had any. The ones we have had have tended to be the party-political ones, particularly from local councillors, but the reaction from the readers in general seems to have been strangely muted.

Given it's a fairly substantial cut to West Lancashire's frontline policing that's being consulted on at the moment, I can't help wondering why. Have you read the reports in the local press with a sense of sad resignation? Do you, unlike the members of West Lancashire Borough Council, believe that the closure of the police stations is necessary in these troubled, cost-conscious times? Or do you genuinely think it's a fair cop?

I would love to know. Send me your thoughts by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com and I'll promise I'll read it, once I've got through all the speed camera ones.

A local argument for local people

2011-07-28T22:42:00.004+01:00

A LETTER, written by one of our West Lancashire readers with next week's Champion in mind, is knocking the local councillors for not being quite local enough for his liking.

I understand the argument, but it's one I couldn't agree with less, and means I can finally get a burning issue of working in local newspapers off my chest. Attacking something - or indeed, someone - on the basis of not being local enough shows only that you can't think of anything better to base your attack on.

I know the feeling of not being local enough all too well because - shock, horror - I don't actually live in West Lancashire. My house is a half mile walk from a sign that says "Welcome to West Lancashire", I cross over the border into the borough all the time through work, I drink in its pubs, I drive along its roads, I buy things from its businesses and I visit friends who live there, but don't let that convince you I'm at all local in any way.

Apparently, in order to truly understand what makes West Lancashire tick, I have to be born and bred there. It's a local shop, for local people.

Experience of working in Wales for two years - somewhere I'm emphatically not local to - proves the local-is-best theory to be utter tosh. The reason why I could cover two very different corners of Wales wasn't because I'd been brought up on Max Boyce and male voice choirs; it was because I'd trained as a journalist.

Even though I know West Lancashire far, far better than I do Denbighshire and Conwy, the principles are the same. Living in Ormskirk does not automatically qualify you as the town's best journalist.

It's the same, I'd argue with councillors and politicians, which is why I never vote for the ones whose manifestos open with "Born and raised in...". I don't want background, I want credentials. West Lancashire, like everywhere, has some great representatives, but whether they went to a school in their ward has nothing to do with it.

The hippy generation nailed it with a phrase. It's not where you're from, it's where you're at.

My ace idea for a Southport Bus Station

2011-07-25T23:59:00.003+01:00

I AM, as you'll know if you've ever read my other blog, not someone who really "does" public transport.

Trains I can sort of understand; Virgin can get you from Liverpool to London in a little over two hours these days, and that's something you just can't do in the car. But buses, despite the best efforts of my colleague Jim Sharpe to persuade me in his various eulogies in One Man And His Dog in The Champion, just don't do it for me. Why would I stand around in the cold and wet waiting for Arriva's finest when I drive to work in speed and comfort, with Oasis on the CD player, for less? Buses are beyond me.

Yet even I couldn't fail to notice how one man's calls for a Southport Bus Station, the front page of our edition in the town last week, really seemed to capture the public imagination. We have in the past week been innundated with calls, emails and letters from readers wanting to lend their support to Maurice Tudor, who would love to see a bus and coach station set up somewhere in the resort.

Naturally, I reckon I've found the ideal spot, and it can't be any worse than the suggestion I gave for a train station last year. It isn't anywhere near Southport Railway Station, which is where the smart money for a bus station would go. Nor, a bit bizarrely, is it anywhere near any of the existing bus or coach routes.

It is - drum roll please - the Ocean Plaza.

If you know Southport, you'll know that the Ocean Plaza is the shiny bit full of shops and restaurants they built on the seafront a couple of years ago. It is at the heart of modern Southport, somewhere where thousands of people go to watch films and have dinner and get cheap and easy parking for the beach itself. Yet while it has a bus stop, I can't think of a single service that actually stops there.

There is, right at the front of the Ocean Plaza, a large plot of grass which never got developed at the end of the Nineties with the rest of the site. It is in the middle of one of the busiest sites in Southport and nobody uses it. It has "bus station", I honestly reckon, written all over it.

Mr Tudor is free to use my brilliant idea, completely free of charge, even though I know absolutely nothing about public transport. But I might actually use the David Simister Interchange if it ever opened. Just for the novelty, I guess.

The reader who wrote to champion The Champion

2011-07-19T16:51:00.008+01:00

IN the wake of everything that's happening at News International there are plenty of people lining up to give journalists a kicking right now, as I've already mentioned.

So it's nice when you get a letter - even when it's one signed off from "Appreciative in Aughton" - praising the local paper and pointing out it couldn't be further from the phone hacking, cosy relationships and scandals which are dogging News International this afternoon:

Dear Editor,

I am writing to express my thanks to yourself and your dedicated team of journalists. Every week I look forward to your paper dropping through my letter box. I love reading the local news, gossip, sports news and of course the irrepressible views of One Man and His Dog, by Jim Sharpe.

Whilst the phone hacking scandal continues to unravel and paper after paper is being implicated in the scandal, the Champion is retaining its unblemished reputation. My friends were discussing if your paper would be the next paper to be implicated in this sorry scandal. No chance I told them, the Champion has too much integrity, too much class for that.

The West Lancashire patch gives you your share of famous people and the big scoops that accompany them. The Champion however, deals with these people and stories in an ethical, sensitive yet incisive manner. You continue to deliver quality journalism but without indulging in the dark arts that other papers did.

I'm glad Henry James and David Simister rely on journalistic skills like a nose for a story and a sharp pencil. A stark contrast to private investigators and phone hacking.

Thank you, you truly are a champion Champion!

Kind words indeed, and happy to be of service...

The News International scandal? Nein danke...

2011-07-16T17:50:00.004+01:00

YOU can't get BBC World in the flat I'm staying in this week.

This means all the coverage of the unfolding News International scandal, which seems to be getting more explosive by the day, is coming via CNN*, the only English language channel on offer during the trip to Germany I'm on at the moment (given my visits to the net have largely been confined to Facebook, I haven't been reading the minute-by-minute updates from The Guardian).

While CNN's been concentrating largely on how the scandal is now affecting US citizens, what's been interesting is that it's the only channel over here which seems to be giving it any coverage. More tellingly, a story about the global media has been conspicuous by its absence in the German papers, and ask someone on the streets about it and they'll give you a blank look. News Corp? Over here, nobody cares.

That's because - unlike Britain, the US and Rupert Murdoch's native Australia - the media's done differently over here. Not only is there no German equivalent of News International cosying up to the political establishment, but nor are there any Johnstons, any Newsquests or any Trinity Mirrors in the regional media either. The local press, almost without exception, is owned by local enterprise. And it works.

Your national news comes not from your national paper, but from a page in your regional daily of choice. And there's never any question of editorial operations being scaled down and moved to a centralised hub, because nearly all of the regional titles are based, written, researched, printed, distributed and read in the same city. It's refreshingly efficient (and profitable). And very German.

Being in a different country, far away from what Rebekah Brooks has been up to, makes it strangely difficult to gauge how outraged the British public actually are over News International, but having an outsider's view makes me wonder whether we should be learning from our continental counterparts on this one.

If the politicians are seriously on about shaking up the UK press, maybe the answer could come from a foreign field. What do you think?

*Being stuck with CNN has given me the chance to finally watch Piers Morgan's imaginatively titled Tonight With Piers Morgan. I still don't like him.

Don't blame "the press" for what happened at News of the World

2011-07-08T23:10:00.004+01:00

ONE OF the first rules of journalism: take any time off and you just know something dramatic is going to happen.

What I couldn't have imagined, as I sat on a windy campsite in Cornwall, was that this week's big news was the news itself. The News of The World has been axed after a series of increasingly outrageous allegations of phone hacking. David Cameron's former press chief has been arrested. Media pundits, as my colleague David Raven has already pointed out, are putting the smart money on a Sun on Sunday being launched to fill the gap. All this while I was trying not to be sick on the Isles of Scilly ferry.

But what bothers me most is where the blame's now being pointed by the politicians; the Press Complaints Commission, which all three of the main party leaders are now saying should be scrapped. Labour leader Ed Milliband - a man who, judging by a certain interview he gave last week, isn't all that media-savvy anyway - has called it "a toothless poodle", while the PCC itself has put its foot in it and used the NOTW scandal as a catchall for slating the entire newspaper industry, calling it "a terrible time for British journalism".

I agree partly; it is a terrible time for British journalism, but not because of what News International are doing. It's a terrible time because all three of the major political parties have clearly gone mad, using the (alleged) failings of one national tabloid as an excuse to call for the PCC to be scrapped, on the basis that journalists sit on its board, and journalists are all nasty people who'd sell their own mothers for a good story. A new body, free of those pesky journalist types, should be set up to take its place.

This, I honestly reckon, is giving the entire class detention because one boy kicked a football through the school window, and it's not fair on the thousands of journalists - journalists like me, incidentally - who can do their jobs without resorting to hacking people's phone lines. Any kneejerk reactions to "the press" because of what happened at News of the World will have a knock-on effect for every newspaper, including The Champion. Scrapping the PCC will affect every title, regional or national, up and down the land.

I'll leave the last line to Society of Editors chief Bob Satchwell, a lone voice of media sanity in these troubled times.

"The idea that this is a total failure of ethics across the press and of the PCC is absolute nonsense."

The Class of 1990

2011-07-01T13:22:00.001+01:00

WHAT were you up to in the summer of 1990?

If you lived in Southport and weren't watching Twin Peaks, complaining bitterly about the Poll Tax or listening to the Stone Roses then there's a good chance you might have been flicking through a newspaper a bit like the one in the picture above. In the course of researching an article on something that happened 21 years ago, a lady I visited in Bolton handed me a 21-year-old copy of The Southport Visiter.

I think it's fascinating because leafing through it gives you an idea of what a typical weekly newspaper would have looked like long before the likes of Twitter and Facebook arrived, and even though for older readers that won't have been that long ago for a twentysomething like me it almost feels like ancient history. Particularly when you check out the fairly primitive two-colour scheme throughout, the black and white pictures and the sheer size - too big for the scanner, which is why the right hand side of it's been cut off from the picture - of the thing.

But I think there's something endearingly quaint but useful about things like having the births, deaths and marriages section all the way up on page six, the community news on page three and acres of specialist pages like local history, a weekly guide to local pubs and even a double page spread specifically dedicated to women readers. It also shoots the myth that local newspapers used to be much thicker affairs down in flames; while this week's Visiter boasts 88 pages, the class of 1990 has 84.

The difference lies in how those pages are used, and with the way the media works having changed so much in two decades I reckon it'd be difficult to put together the 1990 paper today. Not that you'd need to, because since then the local newspaper industry's been through - for better or worse - the web revolution. Facebook is today's Community Pages.

They're both great papers, but they feel an entire generation apart.

The capital of West Lancashire?

2011-06-29T13:01:00.004+01:00

THE capital of France, a slightly dimwitted contestant said in one of the best answers ever to a question on a quiz show, is F.

What, though, is the capital of West Lancashire? That's the question two rival councillors - one representing Ormskirk, the other Skelmersdale - sounded off over in last week's edition, and in today's Champion lots of readers have had the chance to have their say. Some say that it's Ormskirk that's the deserving candidate of capital status, while others reckon Skelmersdale's been run down by its more westerly neighbour. Then there's the stack of letters, emails and phone calls we got suggesting that the two councillors should be focusing on the bigger issues, and that we, as a local newspaper, should stop encouraging them.

Maybe it could be argued it's a trivial issue - don't worry, we've got all the latest on the school strikes and the proposals to sell off the police stations too - but it's had more response from Champion readers than almost any West Lancashire story we've run in the past few months. Particularly as West Lancashire, as several readers have rightly pointed out, doesn't actually have any official focal point in the way a county town or even an actual capital city might be.

Ormskirk and Skelmersdale are of course both important, but for completely different reasons. One is a traditional market town with a university. The other is an important commercial base with excellent links to the nation's motorway network. They are - at least from what I've seen covering both for the paper - chalk and cheese, so debating which one you'd call capital is missing the point.

Still, it's nice to see that so many of you actually got in touch to say where the capital of West Lancashire wasn't, which does at least mean there's a good chance you're reading the really important stuff, like the not-at-all-controversial plans to close several of the borough's police stations. Which, ironically, is where the comments about there being a capital in West Lancashire originated from in the first place.

So the important thing to remember, whether you live in Ormskirk, Skelmersdale or anywhere else in the green and pleasant borough is that West Lancashire has two capitals.

W and L.

Proof that reporters are getting younger

2011-06-23T16:47:00.003+01:00

IT'S a brave editor who decides to carry a story about job cuts at his own newspaper on the front page.

That's the case today's South Yorkshire Times, which according to Hold The Front Page is going to be affected by as many as 18 job cuts, including journalistic ones. The decision to run the story about the cuts as a front page sidebar is one I applaud because it keeps the readers informed about what's going on with their local newspaper.

But what worried me was what appears to be a cunning plan to recruit new, younger reporters, just inches away on the same front page.

Yes, the banner really does say:

"Kids! Be a Times reporter and win an £800 holiday."

I know newspaper reporters generally tend to be younger than they used to be, but child reporters rewarded with holidays?

Start 'em young, I guess...

Blogs are a part of our history we shouldn't just delete

2011-06-14T14:06:00.004+01:00

IT'S summer and you're probably thinking of going away somewhere. That's why I thought I'd post this lovely and not-at-all-fluffy video of the Llangollen Railway, which I filmed three years ago.

This is also the only place outside of YouTube you're likely to find it, given the website which hosted it originally has quietly vanished. The Day to Day blog, an online spinoff of Trinity Mirror's old weeklies covering the delightful Welsh county of Denbighshire, has bitten the dust.

Deleting an online product, in some ways, is actually worse than getting rid of a printed one, because at least when a newspaper or magazine ceases publication its legacy carries on through the back copies lingering in local libraries and people's attics (well, mine anyway). To this day I can still read articles which appeared in The Southport Advertiser, even though as a paper it hasn't existed for over a decade. But hit the delete button on an online news website and blog and - as long as you remember to clear out the cached files too - there are no back copies. It is gone. Finitum. The end.

Which means nobody, trawling through the dusty back alleys of cyberspace, will ever get to read in years to come about what happened when I went gliding in the skies above Ruthin or why dogs chained to lamposts on Rhyl's high street wound my first editor up. All you see now when you follow the links to The Day To Day are what you see above - a vacant page with no trace of the stories and the anecdotes which existed before.

The Llangollen Railway piece - something which I reckon is still relevant even today - is one of the few things left. Yes, I know that 2008 isn't really that long ago, but (obviously) it will be eventually.

I'd hope what I write on here, on Life On Cars and for The Champion website, can still be discovered in 20 years' time, because it might prove useful to someone for reasons that will only be obvious in 20 years' time. Old newspapers are part of our history, and so, I reckon, are old websites.

You heard it here first: old newspaper websites are the new steam trains.

The red ink is out

2011-06-08T17:18:00.004+01:00

I WAS about to do a piece on the death of one of Britain's great institutions - the apostrophe - through people increasingly misusing them when this arrived in the newsroom this morning. Teapot, kettle, black if you get what I mean.

I'm all for people taking journalists to task but would you really get your red pen out, circle and highlight a mistake and then send it back, anonymously, to your local paper? Before you ask, it's not one of my articles and I know exactly what the difference between fewer and less is. But seeing it still took me back to my Year Five maths classes, where I'd routinely get a cross "SEE ME" scrawled angrily in red ink across my homework because I'd made a mistake.

As someone who loves the English language and cringes if a mistake creeps into The Champion I'd like to apologise, but I can't because whoever sent it didn't leave any details.

But it's always nice to get some constructive feedback and hopefully by taking it on board we'll get less gripes about our grammar.

Sorry, fewer...

The only other way is Southport

2011-06-07T16:59:00.004+01:00

ONE of my favourite stories from this week is the one where West Lancashire's MP got ranked 610th out of 648 in terms of sex appeal, thanks to a newly-launched website which has proven a massive hit.

Unfortunately - due to it being created by Francis Boulle - it's also meant having to acknowledge the existence of Made In Chelsea.

I have only question to ask about the E4 show; what is it? Normally, in the interests of impartial and objective journalism, I would force myself in front of the television to watch at least one episode, just as I did with Big Brother, Celebrity Love Island and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. But the plot - irritatingly real rich people being put in scripted situations - just sounds too unbearable. Can I really bring myself to watch something which I'm absolutely certain is going to be rubbish?

It gets worse. I spent months blissfully unaware that TOWIE is in fact an acronym of The Only Way Is Essex, and not one of the tanned, annoying and omnipresent irks who make up its cast. But the only way isn't Essex, as I discovered through one of the local businesses The Champion follows on Twitter. The way is Southport as well.

Like wasps the cast of Made In Chelsea and The Only Way Is Essex are everywhere and don't actually seem to do anything useful (actually I'll take that back, because wasps are apparently a useful pest killer for the farming community and the cast of TOWIE and Made In Chelsea aren't). Despite doing little other than falling out of nightclubs and turning up at events, I challenge you to find a day when these people aren't in the news.

But in order to understand why I keep hearing Champion employees humming the theme tune every other time they make a cup of tea and to fathom who Francis Boulle is, I think I'm going to have to make myself watch these shows. But just the once. And I can't promise I'll like it.

Francis, you've made a genuinely useful contribution to Britain by ranking the sex appeal of our members of Parliament. Can we leave it at that?

Thorry if you can't understand me. I've got a mouth ulther...

2011-05-31T16:35:00.004+01:00

I'D like to welcome you this week to a world where the most appetising thing on offer is a medicinal vinegar spray, some Bonjela, and crisps that taste like razor blades.

One of the great things about working in The Champion office is the amount of people you get to speak to, both in person and over the phone, and 99.9% of the time I absolutely love it. Unless of course, I have a mouth ulcer. Or "mouth ulther", as I've painfully discovered it's now pronounced.

I've also put a generic Champion logo as the picture on this blog entry, on the basis that you probably already know what a mouth ulcer looks like, and therefore know that despite appearing small and innocuous is actually ruddy painful and unpleasant. If you don't, I'm not going to put you off your tea by offering you an illustrated guide.

It's not like having a cold, where you can at least sound sufficently sore-throated and pitiful to elicit some sympathy from your fellow speaker. Instead I've ended up in the situation where I can speak absolutely perfectly unless I have to use the right hand side of my tongue, which most people who've mastered the art of conversation use roughly every three femtoseconds. The result is that I'll end up tripping on my tongue and coming out with utter nonsense, which makes me sound as though I've spent the morning in the pub nursing a few pints of Guinness rather than writing stories.

It's no fun working for The Thampion with a mouth ulther becauth I can't thpeak properly over the terryphone and aww the things I've bought from behind the counter at Boots don't theem to make any differenth. All of whith means that until my mouth's working properly again, I'm going to sound really thupid if you ring me up at work. I'd help if I could, but I can't.

I'm thorry.

The full text of my speech on the future on journalism

2011-05-25T16:01:00.004+01:00

EARLIER today I joined a couple of other journalists at Edge Hill University, in Ormskirk, to answer the question facing the nation's newspapers. What is the future of journalism?

It was nice to see a few familiar faces among the audience, including Chris Morley, the NUJ's Northern and Midlands Secretary, former West Lancashire Labour leader Paul Cotterill, West Lancs Pensioners' Forum representative Alan Lenton and journalist-turned-councillor David Sudworth, but really the audience were the journalists of the future in the shape of Edge Hill's students.

Over a whopping hour and fifty minutes I took part in a debate that touched on everything from community newspapers, the Internet, how the media in other countries operates and whether newspaper publishers have trimmed back too much on their editorial operations, but the thrust of it came from a speech I'd handily written before the event itself.

So, for the sake of helping anyone even vaguely interested in the future of papers like The Champion, here it is:

“For decades, local newspapers have faced fierce competition. First there was the radio, then television, now of course, the internet. But despite all these challenges, they continue to play a vital role and that’s testament to the extraordinary creativity and versatility of all those people who work in local media."

These words aren't mine, but those of the Prime Minister, who gave traditional newspapers his vote during Local Newspaper Week just a fortnight ago. I don't agree with everything David Cameron's done but on traditional papers he's got a point; yes, as an industry we've been through some tough times, but we're still here and we've still got a future.

As a journalist for The Champion I've come across lots of stories but I don't believe the one about the Internet killing local papers off is as true as some people would like you to think. The web has been a part of everyday life for at least a decade now but despite that local newspapers are still here, giving residents with and without Internet access invaluable information. In The Champion's case we're not only still here but we're actually expanding, and last year opened a new edition in the Crosby and Litherland area, which is going from strength to strength.

Yes, it's true that a lot of newspapers have shut down, and I've seen first hand the effect it has on the communities they serve, but not once have I come across a publisher which has laid the blame for a newspaper's closure on online competition. The single worst year I've ever seen in journalism was in 2008, when a lot of people lost their jobs as the recession took hold. It was a tough time, but it was something experience not just by the media, but by the country as a whole.

But guess what; statistics show that even in an Internet age, the place 60% of people go for their local stories is their local newspaper, where the news comes to you not from people who fancy themselves as journalists with online pseudonyms, but from proper professionally-trained journalists who have trained hard to achieve the highest standards to make sure they get the stories right. If we don't, it's easy to hold us to account, because we abide by both the NUJ's code of conduct, and the the rules of the Press Complaints Commission. With local newspapers, you know that the news you're getting is coming from reporters who aren't afraid to give you their real name, and are always a phone call away.

In West Lancashire we are in fact very lucky to still have two very good newspapers brought to you by two very different companies, who in competing with one another to bring you the best stories also bring you a plurality in local news coverage, and that's good not only for keeping you informed, but it's good for democracy and honesty. It's good for any group or individual getting their message across, and it's a message that goes out to many thousands of you through your letterboxes, in the shops and supermarkets, and online on our websites.

The idea that local newspapers are a dying breed comes to you from the citizen journalists, who reckon they can go further with their stories, but aren't party to the rulings of the Press Complaints Commission, or indeed any independent organisation to hold them to account. They reckon their following is unbeatable, but with no ABC figures or any kind of impartial auditing you'll have to take their word for it.

They reckon local newspapers are nothing more than what they'd call "churnalism", but I can show you plenty of citizen journalists who simply copy and paste their press releases, word for word, without even stopping to check whether the stories contained within them are correct or even relevant. Would you let a citizen mechanic mend the brakes on your car? Or would you let a citizen surgeon carry out an operation? Of course you wouldn't, and nor would you trust a citizen journalist to give you an accountable, independent report on local events.

Don't get me wrong - the people who produce your local newspapers know just how much of an Internet age we're living in, but it's something we embrace rather than fear. I'm not only one of The Champion's reporters, but also its web coordinator, and I've seen first-hand that online media is not a threat but a way we can add a whole new dimension to the stories we cover. In the past year we've taken up Twitter, which has been used at events including this month's local elections to keep people updated on stories as they happen, and we've also launched a new website to help keep our readers informed beyond the news of our printed newspapers. With a trusted media brand and the same journalistic standards behind it, a local newspaper is perfecly placed to give you digital news and media you can actually trust.

In fact, I'd go even further than that. because I reckon that technology isn't the threat to the newspaper industry, but is actually going to end up saving it, with the ever-better broadband, mobile media devices like the iPad, and the growth of augmented reality actually making it increasingly easy for journalists to spend less time chained to their desks and more time in their local communities, where the stories are happening.

Britain cut back its railways in the Sixties because we couldn't see how much we'd need them in years to come, and communities still suffer today as a result. I reckon it's the same with local newspapers; a lot of them have fallen victim to cost cutting and the recession in recent years, but they're a vital resource that, with the right nurturing, will be ever more important in the future.

I began with a quote and I'd like to end with another, this time from the founder of The Guardian, another newspaper which has not only survived to this day in print but also embraced the Internet age and spawned one of the world's most popular media websites.

Charles Prestwich Scott might have passed away more than seventy years ago but, judging by his famous mantra, he would know exactly where online babble and speculation stops and properly-researched journalism starts.

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred."

A full transcript of the entire debate will be uploaded later this week.

A contender for the shortest blog entry ever

2011-05-24T16:21:00.005+01:00

JUST a reminder that Champion reporter David Simister will be taking part in a debate on the future of journalism at Edge Hill University tomorrow (Wednesday, May 25).

The event is free to attend and is open to members of the public. It takes place in room M46 in the Main Building on the Ormskirk campus, on St Helens Road in Ormskirk, and starts at 1pm. Anyone who would like more information can contact Marc Stanton on 01695 584726 or email stantonm@edgehill.ac.uk.

That is all.

Super injunctions show up our Roxy Music laws for what they are

2011-05-23T00:01:00.005+01:00

HEADING home from a job I'd done at Blackpool Airport - more on that another time - I finally got asked the question. You know, the one that's had the media, the Government, the judges and a whole host of cringeworthy celebs stumped.

It's a brilliant story with some great characters you already know; Imogen Thomas, Jemima Khan, Andrew Marr, Jeremy Clarkson and Sir Fred Goodwin for starters. But it's the people we don't know - or at least we're not supposed to, anyway - that make it hot stuff for the tabloids. It's like having a film with an all-star cast, but with half of them only allegedly taking part.

Why is that the papers can't report something everyone on Twitter already knows?

I am of course talking super injunctions and the answer, officially at least, is simple: you can't. Contrary to everyone thinks, the law on court injunctions doesn't just apply to newspapers, it applies to everyone, so if you go around telling everyone which footballer slept with which Big Brother star, you're in contempt of court. My mate made a fabulous joke about it on Facebook today, but if I repeated it on here I could land both myself and The Champion in hot water. It's the law.

The truth is that court injunctions have existed for ages, but it's only now that the red-tops can't get their way with "CBT" that the mess that it is media law in this country has caught the public eye. In America it's easy; you'd just recite the First Amendment and that'd be that. But over here, we've got a complicated cobweb of court rulings that mean you aren't supposed to reveal something everybody knows anyway.

While the court injunctions themselves come from relatively modern European legislation, the boring bits of the law which cover sticking two fingers up at the judges and reporting the gossip anyway date back to 1981, a time when MySpace was something you'd say you needed when you broke up with someone, and a PC was someone who'd arrest you. If you wanted to tell the nation something you weren't supposed to, you'd have to do something like write to your local newspaper, where the letters editor would spot something slightly illegal and ignore you. If they didn't, it was their fault for being stupid enough to publish it. That's why the papers - even the ones with top lawyers on their payroll - won't reveal who's behind the superinjunctions.

Nowadays you can do it all by yourself; just log into Twitter, get typing and you can tell millions your secrets in a matter of seconds. It's like taping stuff off the telly; strictly speaking it's illegal, but everybody knows that everybody does it anyway. That's why "CBT" is sueing Twitter itself rather than the millions of users. It's easier.

If you're reading this you're either on my blog or on Facebook, which means you know papers like The Champion are very much of the Katy Perry generation, where people chat to their mates online and watch their favourite shows on iPlayer, and share all sorts of gossip between themselves almost instantly.

It's the courts that are still listening to Roxy Music on vinyl and refusing to catch up.

Are the Coalition a media-savvy government?

2011-05-11T16:18:00.005+01:00

WHAT links the Prime Minister, TV presenter and fellwalkers' pin-up Julia Bradbury, and a former editor of The Guardian?

Nope, it's got nothing to do with superinjunctions, although I do love the nationals' frenzied coverage of the issue which turns our outdated privacy laws into a nationwide, online version of Guess Who. This unlikely trio have in fact - as you'll discover in today's Champion - giving their backing to Local Newspaper Week, which celebrates everything that's good about the regional media.

In fact, it's the support from David Cameron which got me most interested, because it confirmed something I've long suspected. At the risk of coming across all political, I reckon the current Government's the most media-friendly we've ever had.

Sure, Vince Cable might have got a bloodied nose after the Murdoch/BSkyB issue (courtesy of us nasty media types, ironically), but think of all the other ways the Coalition's come out in support of journalists. Just to recap, they've said journalists should be allowed to record council meetings, they agree that local authorities using taxpayers' money to make their own newspapers isn't really on and they're not terribly happy about rich people gagging the press with superinjunctions either. All things which raised smiles in newsrooms across the nation.

Some of their other ideas, like creating a nationwide TV channel for local news coverage, and appointing newspapers to decide which community groups get cash grants, aren't so brilliant, but the message is clear. I don't know whether this is The Big Society in action, but he wants the PR departments and the local councils to have less power and for the independent press to have more.

So does this mean we're all big supporters of Cameron and Clegg? Not really; there are, as lots of you keep telling us, plenty of other Coalition policies you're not happy with it, and it's our job as journalists to tell it like it is. For the record, and to make sure we satisfy Rule One, Clause Three of the PCC's Code of Conduct, our stance is simple.

We hate all the political parties equally.

The heated debate about how good Twitter is

2011-05-06T19:36:00.003+01:00

THE battle for council seats was, quite literally, hotting up.

I've spent most of today at the West Lancashire local election counts in Ormskirk, of which my abiding memory won't be seeing the Tories bucking the regional trend, seeing a student and a former journalist going head to head or seeing a Lib Dem candidate getting just 46 votes. Nope, what I'll always remember was how hot and stuffy Ormskirk Civic Hall was after hundreds of political types packed into it, and how tired some of the faces were.

I went not so much to report on the results - we're a weekly paper, and it's not out until next Wednesday anyway - but to tweet them, more as an experiment to see whether the followers of our Champion Twitter feed would benefit from having live updates on their local elections. I'm pleased to report that they did.

The great thing with Twitter, teamed up with my trusty smartphone, is that you can let hundreds of people know individual results as they happen. Sure, people will still happily wait for their local newspaper for the full follow-up and analysis, but a lot of them - especially those directly connected to local politics - wanted to know there and then. Both Yours Truly, for The Champion, and The Ormskirk Advertiser's Rob Pattinson, were more than happy to oblige.

After spending most of this week annoyed at Twitter for the stupid and unhelpful comments some of our followers come up with, I was cheered up when one of our more politically-connected readers replied to the coverage by saying:

"You're miles ahead of the council's election results website. no results listed there yet!"

What did I learn? Certainly that you can't trust even the smartest of smartphones when it comes to battery life - my Nokia N97, despite being fully charged from the off, died with two results left to go, and wouldn't come on even after attempts to charge it up - but more importantly that things like Twitter aren't gimmicks, but genuinely useful things to have at things like local elections.

I still could have used a fan though.

What does the future hold for local newspapers?

2011-05-05T10:58:00.003+01:00

From Champion Newspapers

ONE of The Champion's reporters will be putting forward the case for the future of printed newspapers at an Edge Hill debate later this month.

David Simister, one of our West Lancashire reporters, will be joining three other members of the north west's media at the Ormskirk university on May 25 to discuss how technology and the economy are affecting the media and what the future might hold.

"Journalism is not only the profession I work in, but it also something that runs in my blood and so the future of the media, and particularly the longstanding British tradition of weekly and daily newspapers is something I take a great interest in. I've no doubt it's going to be an interesting debate, which I hope will get more people interested in journalism and why newspapers matter," he said.

"There's no doubt that a lot of newspapers have fallen victim to the difficult economic conditions of the last few years, so I'm glad that The Champion's not only managed to survive, but thrive and expand into new areas, and has embraced rather than feared the growth of digital media. If we nurture our newspapers rather than cutting them back, I think we'll continue to thrive into the future.”

Mr Simister will be joined by a number of local and regional journalists from print and digital media come together to give their own personal views and experiences as part of the topical presentation entitled “What is the Future of Journalism?”, organised by Marc Stanton, Edge Hill's senior lecturer in journalism.

He explained: "Although traditional forms of print media have suffered some major changes in recent years, seeing the unfortunate demise of some of the world's leading sources, the digital age has allowed new platforms to emerge for the dissemination of news and information, such as video, podcasts and the web. These platforms also provide experienced journalists with new opportunities to continue thriving in their careers and to showcase their work to a global audience.

"Rather than print journalism being dead, I believe that there is room for everything. As practitioners, we have to embrace the new opportunities without abandoning the best of the values and culture that have shaped journalism over many decades. We have four journalists attending Edge Hill for this event who will be able to give their own perspectives on its future. I hope that their views will stimulate debate and show how this very dynamic profession is constantly evolving, not dying."

The event is free to attend and is open to members of the public. It takes place in room M46 in the Main Building on the Ormskirk campus and starts at 1pm. Anyone who would like more information can contact Marc on 01695 584726 or email stantonm@edgehill.ac.uk.

Champion readers the stars in our Royal Wedding video

2011-05-03T16:11:00.002+01:00

UNION flags, glasses of bubbly, some smiling children and Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance.

Those are the ingredients, I reckon, you'd need for a perfect video depicting all the street parties and school events which Champion readers across Sefton and West Lancashire held on April 29, when a certain couple got married. So that's exactly what I've used in the montage of pictures you can see by clicking the YouTube clip above.

Lots of you held street parties, school events and gatherings to celebrate Prince William marrying Kate Middleton last Friday (April 29) and - along with extensive coverage in our six editions of The Champion tomorrow - we thought this would be the perfect way to show off what you've all been doing, accompanied naturally by some rousing and patriotic music.

It will, I hope, be going on our stylish new website soon. Enjoy...

Our Royal Wedding day

2011-04-29T13:41:00.002+01:00

WE at The Champion might be working on Royal Wedding day, but that doesn't mean we're not enjoying it too.

This is how we've decorated the newsroom in honour of the happy couple, and we know that right across Sefton and West Lancashire, lots of you are marking the occasion in style with street parties, community gatherings and specially-themed bashes.

What you probably didn't know though was that almost every company in the country's tried to get in on the act, meaning weeks of press releases and emails with increasingly tenuous ties to the big day itself. Here's some of our favourites:

"Kate Middleton may not be revealing the designer of her wedding dress, but if you’re planning a bbq to celebrate her big day then one of the best kept secrets for success is FryLight. Besides it’s healthy benefits – no cholesterol and one-calorie-per-spray - it is non-stick. All you have to do is lightly spray your meat and fish before frying or grilling. "

"With the Royal Wedding only a few weeks away, Britain’s most recognised car manufacturer will be celebrating the momentous occasion with 16 great offers over 16 days!"

"As the country prepares for a month of religious, royal and family celebrations, school vacations and two four day weekends, the CLA in the North is asking visitors to the countryside to remember that they are entering a working environment where they should respect the land, livestock and their owners, as well as wildlife and the environment."

"The secret has not yet been officially revealed. What seems to be coming is that the wedding dress will be rented by the Royal couple from the 3rd of May 2011 on the website eRentmarket at a price of £2000 per day."

"As bride-to-be Kate Middleton kicks off wedding season with her much anticipated wedding, NHS Central Lancashire and Smokefree North West are urging Lancashire brides-to-be to ditch the cigarettes in order to look better and feel healthier in time for their big day."

"To mark the Royal Wedding on Friday we have commissioned research which has found that there is a growing trend for people using PowerPoint to aid their best man speeches which 75% of respondents saying they had seen a best man deliver a speech using PowerPoint in the last five years. To cement the occasion we have re-created our own version of Harry’s best man speech, see link below."

The Champion sends its wishes to the happy couple, and alongside our Royal Wedding events coverage in our editions next week we'll also be creating a special online gallery of all your best pictures. If you've got any, get in touch with us by calling 01704 392400 or send an email to editorial@champnews.com

Everyone else is wrong, I've just decided

2011-04-26T17:30:00.004+01:00

DEMOCRACY, I've decided this week, is rubbish.

Obviously not the political sort, although with all the arguments for and against AV you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Nor do I mean the sort of democracy they're fighting for in Libya at the moment, or even the parochial, pokey variety practised at parish councils up and down the land. No, I mean the sort of creative democracy when you ask someone for an opinion on something and their choice isn't the one you're secretly hoping they'll make.

Take the mockup front cover I've created for the next issue of the Life On Cars magazine, an online, feature-led spinoff of the motoring column Yours Truly writes for The Champion. I already know that a feature I've done on the Lotus Elise, a bright red sports car, is going to be the lead, and what you see above is what I was hoping was going to be the front cover. Well, at least it was a dead cert until I got cold feet, picked another picture, and created another cover, which you can see below:

Unfortunately, neither jumped off the page at me as a clear, First Past The Post-style winner. After a lot of to-ing, fro-ing, tweaking and deliberation, I decided I'd liked the first cover better, but only ever so slightly. What I needed were some people to look at both of them and tell me my first effort was the best one all along.

So I put it to the people.

First, I asked some car enthusiasts, who without exception said the second one, showing the car from the rear, was the one they'd pick, if only because they like looking at cars and the more car they see, the more they like. Then I asked some fellow journalists - including a couple who actually know a thing or two about page design - what they thought, who also said, without exception, that they liked the second one better. They gave the slightly more technical reason that the use of colour and contrast was of a higher quality throughout the image, whereas the stronger detailing of the car in the first shot came at the expense of a slightly blurred background.

In the end, I went with the second cover shot anyway, but only because the first one looked suspiciously similar to the cover of the last magazine I did, rather than a clear majority of people picking that as the one they'd go for.

They were right, of course, but - simply because I'm an idiot and they disagreed with what I'd already decided - they were also wrong.

The next edition of the Life On Cars magazine will be published on The Champion website next month

RIP Janet Richardson

2011-04-23T23:59:00.002+01:00

A STORY we've been following for almost a month now has today come to a tragic end.

The draft of an article I'd written for next Wednesday's edition of The Champion updating our readers on Janet Richardson, the lady whose horrendously bungled rescue in the freezing waters of the Norwegian Sea two Burscough residents managed to capture, was going to be signed off with the line "The Champion wishes Mrs Richardson a speedy recovery".

Sadly, after reading this article earlier today (April 23), I now know that's no longer appropriate.

Even though I learned from the nationwide media frenzy over the incident just two days ago that Mrs Richardson was in an intensive care ward in Carlisle, having been transferred by air from Norway, my understanding - and, of course, hope - was that the 73-year-old grandmother from Penrith was on the mend, having survived both the horrendous incident which left her floating in the freezing ocean waters and the serious illness which had necessitated the emergency transfer in the the first place.

To learn that she passed away earlier today is not only a tragic and sudden end to a story I was really hoping would have a happy ending for everyone involved, but is also tremendously sad.

While the media coverage of the incident, I hope, will bring the subsequent investigation into whether any mistakes were made that day to the wider public attention, right now I just feel sad that there's a family up there in Cumbria who have lost someone after a shocking series of events nobody should have to go through.

Champion sea rescue scoop followed up by the nationals

2011-04-21T20:23:00.004+01:00

A shocking sea rescue accident exclusively reported by a Lancashire weekly a fortnight ago is today making headlines around the world.

The Ormskirk Champion first revealed the horrific case of a British woman taken ill on a cruise ship who was dropped into the sea during an attempted rescue mission.

The story led its 6 April edition and was followed up on 13 April but has only now been picked up by the nationals

This morning’s Sun led with the story of the incident which has also now been followed up by the Mail, Guardian, and BBC New s among others.

The Champion originally landed the scoop thanks to a local couple who had taken pictures of the rescue attempt, which took place as the liner was cruising along the coast of Norway.

Grandmother Janet Richardson, from Cumbria, was dropped into the sea while being carried off the ship on a stretcher by paramedics.

It is believed that the 73-year-old was submerged in sub zero temperatures for several minutes before she was rescued.

She is currently being treated at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary.

Champion group editor Malcolm Hindle, said: “For all the talk about the demise of local papers, which we don’t go along with at all here at The Champion, this story shows just how powerful local newspapers can be.

“The Champion ran the ‘cruise ship granny rescue’ scoop three weeks ago and the nationals, TV and radio, and publications across the globe, have trailed in our wake.

“Let it never be said that local newspapers and, indeed, free quality local newspapers, can’t produce sensational front pages like this. A case of… where The Champion leads, others follow.”

As published by Paul Linford at Hold The Front Page

How to lose friends and alienate journalists

2011-04-19T14:59:00.004+01:00

THE big day is almost upon us. I've had lots of phone calls about it from people just as keen to see it as I am, wondering what our coverage is going to be. The time, finally, has come.

Nope, it's not the Royal Wedding, which despite having already been exhausted from every angle imaginable by the nationals is still more than a week away. The real big day is tomorrow, when a press release sent to us by a PR company gets followed up in The Champion. Trust me, it's a momentous occasion, because it means I'll finally stop getting the phone calls.

It's a sorry story that began about two weeks ago, when a publicity firm - let's call them Dog and Bone PR, because almost all these big agencies have silly, fatuous names - rang to ask whether we'd be interested in a story connected to West Lancashire. Naturally, I was, so I asked them to send over whatever they had, and said I'd have a look at it. This, a mate in PR has since told me, was my first mistake. Show them even the remotest sign of being interested and you're on their list as a target publication.

Sure enough, the release came over but (predictably) it wasn't a story in the hard-hitting, newsy sense, but the usual sort of flim-flam which has a hint of information and an awful lot of promotion for a business which convenientally happens to be one of Dog and Bone's clients. For that reason, it got turned around into something closer to a news story, put in our Champion newsbasket and then missed at the final cut when it got beaten onto the pages by the bigger, meatier bits of breaking news. This happens at every newspaper up and down the country on a daily basis but it didn't make Dog and Bone very happy, because they've got targets to meet. So they rang us. Repeatedly.

They rang to see if we'd got it into The Champion. They rang us again to ask us why we hadn't got it into The Champion. They rang us two days later to ask if it'd be going into the following week's edition. They rang us on deadline day to ask us how we were getting on with it. Then they rang us again to make sure we hadn't forgotten about it. This, I'm told, is what they call "closing" in the world of sales and marketing, but given that I never make any promises, I wasn't about to lose any sleep over it. Well, until it got held back from the paper by bigger, more immediately important stories. Again.

So the pattern continued, with the Dog and Bone PR lady ringing us roughly every two days about it, sounding slightly more aggressive and forceful about it with every call. Believe it or not, despite all the media doom mongers suggesting that all regional news reporters do these days is rewrite press releases, we do actually do proper stories with actual news which say newsworthy things about local people and places, and they'll always come before a tenuously-connected company trying to get a plug in the papers for free. That's why proper journalism came first and the barking PR woman came second.

Anyway, the story is on a page in tomorrow's edition, which I'm sure Dog and Bone will take as an eventual victory because they got the release into the paper for their client and ticked off another box on their target list. However, they also succeeded in annoying a room full of reporters with a string of aggressively targeted phone calls in the process. It does, however, mean I can breathe a sigh of relief and focus on the thing most important to us media types.

The Royal Wedding.

Feral chickens? I've not a cock-a-doodle-clue

2011-04-12T17:04:00.006+01:00

AS MUCH as I love getting up every morning to go to work at The Champion, I am one of the millions of Britons who don't really 'do' mornings.

My new alarm clock, then, should be a good idea. It is clean and eco-friendly in a sort of Good Life way, doesn't use any electricity at all and hasn't cost me a penny. Best of all it wakes me up, without fail, every single morning. The only problem is you never know when that time in the morning is.

Yep, the new arrivals into the quiet corner of Crossens I call home are a pair of chickens, and they do a damned good job of waking everyone up, even if it's 3.44am on a Saturday. The rooster in particular, I feel, is on commission for every decibal higher he manages to crow every time he gets woken up by any kind of light, which means more than just the rays of the sunrise. My neighbour's got a motion detector that can cast shadows on the moon, which means every time an insect crawls across his back yard the entire neighbourhood is treated to an ear-shattering reenactment of a Kellogg's Corn Flakes advert.

Clearly, the cockerel has got to go, but how do you get rid of a rooster which is not only incredibly annoying but doesn't belong to anyone? The RSPCA, when my neighbours rang, weren't interested, and the council say I have to keep a diary to officially record it being a pain in the backside before anyone will come out and collect it. Someone else suggested shooting it but that would instantly incur the wrath of every animal lover in The Champion office. Besides, we have laws in Britain against this sort of thing. Nor can I do the caring thing and drive it to the nearest animal sanctuary, because technically that involve breaking into one of my neighbours' gardens.

Then someone else suggested something particularly pointless; why not ring up the local paper with my plight? They'd clearly forgotten that I already write for The Champion, meaning I can't really use it to highlight the problem. I also doubt The Southport Visiter are going to be interested in covering a human interest story from someone who just happens to work as a reporter for a rival paper.

So my problem ends up here, hidden away on a Champion blog (although chances are you're probably reading this either on Facebook or via Twitter), and in handy hen-shaped form in a nearby back garden. If anyone has any ideas on how to deal with a noisy feral bird, for the sake of the sanity of an entire street, by all means let me know.

Answers on a postcard....

The one with the bungled ship rescue

2011-04-08T09:41:00.005+01:00

FROM the icy waters off the coast of Norway to a taxi rank in the middle of Ormskirk, it's been a busy week.

With two people away from The Champion office this week it really has been all hands on deck to get the six editions of the paper finished in time, so I'm eternally grateful to our subeditors for making this week's West Lancashire lead - the story of the Burscough couple who watched an emergency rescue go horribly wrong - look as powerful as it did.

Without wanting to sound too big-headed I honestly think it's one of the best front pages I've had while working at The Champion, and obviously The Mirror agreed because they've picked the story up (with a link back to our paper) for their website. And before you ask, yes, it was an exclusive.

Yet it's often the smaller stories further back in the paper which prompt the biggest reaction, as I've discovered this week with a report I wrote that hackney cab fares in West Lancashire are about to rise by 9%.

Stephen Alexander wrote in to say:

"We are not happy the way you worded your article in the Champion, you failed to say it is 3 years since our last increase, therefore the 9% figure works out at 3% per year,we know it will hit the public but with diesel,insurance,crb,mot,badge and even air to blow up our tyres have all gone up in price,the time has come to increase our prices, we apolagise to the customers but most will understand.

"I must also add that from 380 councils we are 367th in the price table,we try our best to keep our prices as low as possible,but unfortunatley the time has come for us to ask for a small increase. Our thanks to the public of West Lancs for using us and we hope you understand our plight."

Fair point, but I think the numbers speak for themselves: 3% over 3 years is still a 9% increase, whichever way you cut it, and even though I sympathise entirely with taxi firms hit hard by rocketing fuel costs, it's still a cost that's going to get passed on to West Lancashire residents.

Feel free to disagree though.

Were you April fooled?

2011-04-01T16:22:00.003+01:00

WERE you April Fooled by our exclusive story on the Champion website earlier today?

The Champ report revealed details of a leaked report which proposed running a road tunnel under the River Ribble to link Southport and Blackpool - but the name of the study's author, Prof. Alid Loyas, is an anagram of April Fools' Day, and the fictitious Southport Regional Strategies Ambassador was the cryptically named Joe King.

But our report, which mooted the possibility of the Blackpool tram system being extended to run through the tunnel and onto Southport's seafront, wasn't the only practical joke originating from organisations in Sefton and West Lancashire.

Among the pranks being played across the region were:

• Merseyrail's announcement that it would be trialling edible train tickets to help cut down on litter.

• Edge Hill University revealing it had taken on several new animals - including several deer and an eagle - to join the ducks at its campus in Ormskirk

• United Utilities releasing footage of a monster running amok in the region's sewer system, which more than 60 phone calls from concerned customers and more than 1,500 hits on its website

• The Vincent Hotel in Southport revealing that Royal couple Prince William and Kate Middleton would be staying in their penthouse suite on their honeymoon

• Merseyrail promising a new buffet service in its first class carriages

Just in case you missed it, here's the story in its entirety:

EXCLUSIVE: Report recommends Ribble tunnel to link Southport and Blackpool

By David Sinister

Southport could be linked to Blackpool by a road tunnel running underneath the River Ribble, an academic study has suggested this week.

A regional feasibility study drawn up by Prof. Alid Loyas leaked to The Champion suggests that a subterranean tunnel, similar to the Mersey Tunnels which link Liverpool with the Wirral, would be the best way to improve links between the two rival resorts and to stimulate the region's economy by creating additional transport links for residents and businesses.

"A tunnel system, although an expensive project initially, is definitely feasible and would help to strengthen Southport's already strong ties with Blackpool by creating a direct link between them, which would have a knock-on effect for the economies of both Lancashire and the Merseyside area," he told The Champion.

"Although the report suggests a road link as the cheapest and most politically viable option there is no reason why other uses for the project couldn't be considered, such as extending Blackpool's world famous tramway to run into the tunnel and right the way under the Ribble to Southport. The possibilities are endless."

The report, which is due to be published for the first time later today (April 1, 2011) proposes creating a new road which would run from a newly-created junction at the Coast Road at Marshside, into a tunnel which runs beneath the estuary of the River Ribble, and emerging at Clifton Drive in Lytham St Annes, where motorists will be able to follow existing road routes to Blackpool and Fleetwood.

If created, the nine mile tunnel would be significantly longer than any of the tunnels used to link Merseyside to the Wirral, but shorter than the undersea tunnel used to link England and France, which is only used by rail services.

The proposals have been given a warm reception by Joe King, Southport Regional Strategies Ambassador, who said that it could herald the dawn of a new era of Blackpool and Southport taking a share in increased tourism income.

"There have been many attempts to link Southport with the Fylde peninsula before, including the long-gone hovercraft service, but here is a genuinely realistic proposal which I think will prove a massive boost to the wider regional economy," he said.

"I can see Southport and Blackpool residents welcoming warmly the idea that they'll be able to visit each others' towns by simply driving through a tunnel, and will pave the way for a revival of the traditional British seaside holiday."

The current drive to Blackpool takes over an hour to complete over a 35 mile route, due to there being no other crossings over the River Ribble to link the two towns.

When is an exclusive story exclusive?

2011-03-31T12:14:00.006+01:00

FOLLOWING last week's fun trying to define what "baking" means here's another word which has caused a lot of contention. Exclusive.

I ask because this morning's Skelmersdale Advertiser has this story on its front page, which is being sold as an exclusive:

Or rather, it would be had my colleague Henry James not written a strangely similar story, which appeared on the front page of this week's Skelmersdale Champion - without the word "exclusive" appearing anywhere - yesterday, as you can see from the screenshot below:

I don't know whether the word "exclusive" has been redefined in the past week or so, but evidently its new usage has caught on outside of West Lancashire. Witness this "exclusive" on yesterday's Midweek Visiter, about new funds being granted to restore Rotten Row, in Southport, to its former glory:

And here's The Champion coverage of the same story, even if it is back on page 19:

The second story on The Midweek Visiter front, in case you're interested, is also in The Southport Champion which was published on the same day, on page 5.

This isn't about sour grapes - as the front of this week's Ormskirk Advertiser shows, our friends do get some genuinely good exclusives, and full credit to them when they do - but can you really put the word exclusive on your front page when another paper's run the same story a day earlier, or even if there's the remotest chance both papers will publish it on the same day?

I'll let you make your own mind up.

Opening our local shops longer will rescue the economy

2011-03-29T16:06:00.004+01:00

A VISIT to the charming village of Croston, right on the raggedy edges of our West Lancashire circulation, last weekend confirmed it. I've worked out how to resue the nation's recession-ravaged economy.

Croston, in case you've never been, is one of those quaint country villages you thought only existed in episodes of Heartbeat, filled with rows of neatly-decorated houses, a church and - more importantly - the Lord Nelson, a proper pub with real ale on tap and lots of traditional wooden furnishings. Certainly, Croston is quiet. A little too quiet, I reckon.

Admittedly, it was a Sunday when I visited but with the pubs being the only places of any kind which seemed to be open, the place was silent, deserted like a scene from 28 Days Later, only without the bloodthirsty infected people running towards you. But then so is just about every small town and village I can care to think of, and not just on Sundays. Finish work at half five and everything is shut.

This is why whenever I need a haircut, I always go in a lunch break to the barber's shop across the street from The Champion; finding a barbers' shop open after office hours is hard work. It's also why I do my shopping at the supermarket and not the corner shop, because Tesco is still open when I finish work and Ye Olde Corner Shoppe isn't. It's not that I don't support local shops. It's just that they're never open.

Our friends at the Lancashire Evening Post have this week, though, reported on traders in Preston tackling the problem head on with what I think is the obvious answer. Opening longer. It's actually an ingeniously simple plan; entice all the office workers with cheap deals at the eateries at roughly half five - meaning they don't have to drive home for tea - and then get them to hit the local shops afterwards. Everybody wins and the economy gets a handy boost.

Yes, I know that towns in Sefton and West Lancashire already have a similar scheme, but it tends to run at Christmas rather than in the lighter evenings we're now getting, which is when I'd actually enjoy doing a bit of shopping in Southport or Ormskirk after work. And no, I'm not a businessman, but I reckon if I'd happily go to my local shops if they were open outside of office hours, so would a lot of other likeminded people.

The nation's office workers, freed from their time-induced obligations to go to the supermarket, would flock to small shops across the land, buying stamps and newspapers from their local newsagents having stuffed themselves silly at the Chinese restaurant, sending cash registers into a collective frenzy. The economy will suddenly shift up a gear, and hopefully David Cameron will thank me, for writing about it in a Champion column, for a marvellous idea he'd absolutely not read about in the Lancashire Evening Post several hours earlier.

Go on. You know it makes sense...

Baking up a complaint

2011-03-24T23:30:00.003Z

THE voice at the other end of the line sounded very annoyed. There'd been an enormous error in yesterday's Champion, and I, the person responsible, was a disgrace.

Was it the ongoing controversy over the county council's decision to scrap funding for Dial A Ride? Was it the claims that three town hall executives took home more than £100,000 in the last financial year? Or the one where an Ormskirk residents' group had accused councillors of appearing to nod off altogether in meetings? Certainly, there were a few hard-hitting claims flying about, so I was expecting a call.

But not, as it turned out, over a caption for a Comic Relief picture, showing two NHS staff with the cakes they were selling for Red Nose Day. My crime, as it turns out, was to use the word "cooking" in a story about baking cakes.

"You can't say cooking when the story's about baking," the reader angrily insisted. "They're two completely different disciplines!"

I was going to, for the sake of argument, point out that for the sake of not boring our readers solid with repetition that we do occasionally vary the words we use in The Champion. Certainly, I could have pointed out that, according to the highly dubious source that is the Oxford English Dictionary that baking can be defined as:

"To cook (food) by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame, typically in an oven".

Or Wikipedia's effort, which explains:

"Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food"

So baking is a form of cooking. I could also have pointed out that - although I'm no Gordon Ramsey - that nobody cares. Arguing that baking and cooking are two completely different disciplines is like arguing that Cumbria and the Lake District are totally seperate places.

I eagerly await the letter from Greggs' lawyers to tell me I'm wrong.

Elect us to tweet your campaign for you!

2011-03-23T17:17:00.002Z

DO YOU remember what you were doing this time last year?

Nope, me neither. But what I do remember was the distinctly weird political climate at the time, which saw Nick Clegg suddenly lifted to near-Sainthood status as Cleggmania took hold, the Conservatives genuinely confident they could take Labour out of power after 13 years and Gordon Brown worried that there'd be a double dip recession if they did.

Whether you think the Coalition Government that's come out of it is any good is your call, but one thing that did work quite well last year was the launch of our Champion Twitter feed to chronicle what went on as the candidates battled it out in five seperate constituencies. It was great because we could cover the really politicised stuff local papers, by convention, can't touch in the heated run up to an election. And now we're going to use it again for the local elections.

This year, though, I'm using The Champion website itself so we can put the party-political stuff out to anyone who's into that sort of thing and - just so you don't confuse it with our normally impartial and completely non-political news reports - we've even put them in the party colours for you. Hence all Tory election news is blue, Labour is red, Lib Dems orange and Greens...well, you get the picture.

If you're in a political party, let us know what you think, and get in touch if you've got any hot election gossip to get off your chest.

A right Royal affair

2011-03-17T21:53:00.004Z

I'VE decided I don't like Nick Clegg.

Not because of his policies or whether I like the Coalition Government or not. No, because I was going to write a clever article about libel law and how it affects us in the media. And then he beat me to it. Which means I've got to think of something else instead.

Instead, it's far easier to take inspiration from the upcoming Royal Wedding, which has actually amazed in that I must be one of, ooh, four people in the British media who isn't overwhelmingly ecstatic about the wondrous things that will happen on April 29 in Westminster Abbey. And in bunting-bound streets up and down the land. And on TV screens covering it every step of the way and in newspapers, covering it from angles you didn't think existed.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against William or Catherine (she hates being called Kate, apparently), but more that I'm utterly apathetic about every wedding that's ever existed, particularly ones that aren't your own. Being asked to watch the BBC's rolling coverage of the big day, to my mind, is no better than dusting down your Auntie Hilda's VHS collection and watching her wedding. I'm similarly indifferent about the reception, which I'm sure being a Royal one will be a grand affair but I still can't remove the mental images of drunken relatives dancing to Come On Eileen in a hotel function room.

Naturally, then, I'm bored rigid with reading blanket Royal Wedding preview pieces in the national media in my attempts to make sense of the bigger, more important stories, and wish people could put their minds to something more important, like helping the people of Japan or trying to sort out Britain's still knackered economy. I sense, too, that there are lots of people who actually agree with me, if the good people of Hull are anything to go by.

But the worst, single most depressing bit of coverage was from a BBC News reporter, who was analysing news that the dress which first set Will's eyes on his wife-to-be has been flogged for £78,000. In his piece he writes:

"The dress has already entered the mythology which surrounds the couple."

This is exactly the sort of media-led cobblers that put me off the Royal Wedding from roughly day two of the big countdown. Please, for the sake of Britain's collective sanity, stop it!

Oh, and for reasons of impartality I'm going to have to retract my earlier comment about the Liberal Democrat leader. I hate them all...equally.

Look who's 17 today!

2011-03-09T11:56:00.003Z

IF a week is a long time in politics, it's a blink of an eye in the world of local newspapers.

That's the way I felt after being involved in a bumper birthday edition of The Champion this week, which if you live in Sefton or West Lancashire will see is a much chunkier edition than usual, which means a lot pages for us, the journalists, to be getting on filling with stories.

I missed most of last week because I booked some days off with a Lotus Elise to celebrate my own birthday (I'm 25, which makes me eight years older than the paper I write for) so in all honesty I took a long overdue break off from the news end of the paper, but with a much larger-than-usual Motors section it was all hands on deck yesterday to make sure the pages got filled. I think everyone involved in editorial was a little bit shattered after it, but looking at this morning's six 17th Birthday special editions it's obviously been worth it.

It's also a double celebration, because the latest ABC figures show that The Champion is up, compared to this time last year, 27.2%, or - as the paper's front page points out - more than 90% up from when the first-ever Champion was launched way back in 1994.

In fact the only downer was having to have a slightly cringeworthy picture of Yours Truly as part of a special birthday feature outlining what everyone does at our offices in Southport. It is, if anything, a reminder that I still have a gym membership and an ongoing health mission to take up (more on that later this week). But that aside, this week's edition has a nice, weighty feel to it and it's as much a joy to read as it was to help write.

I know that giving the regional press a kicking is very much in vogue these days, but it's nice to be working for a feisty media group.

One Man and His Blog

2011-02-24T13:33:00.004Z

IT'S always nice when someone compliments one of your articles.

But an entire column, by a fellow writer? For that I hand you over to Champion columnist and Maghull reporter Jim Sharpe, who was moved to write after reading my piece on the Jaguar E-Type last week. And no, I didn't pay him to write it.

So take it away Mr Sharpe, with the full text of this week's One Man And His Dog:

TWO things even a hopeless cynic such as myself wholeheartedly support are local newspapers (well he would, wouldn't he), and parish councils.

I'll leave parish councils for now, but something caught my eye in last week's Champion which reminded me of why I like reading local newspapers in general - they can bring back memories.

You know, what the Scouts or the Brownies have been up to, the school play, grandad winning the horticultural show with his prize marrow - even tales from the comparatively recent past about your own childhood.

Unusually though, the item that caught my eye was a motoring piece by my colleague David Simister.

Now believe it or not, I have a considerable interest in cars (though mainly ones I certainly can't afford), but rarely are roadtests et al the grist of my nostalgia mill.

But David's encounter with the Jaguar E-Type certainly took me back at high speed.
It must have been in the mid 1960s that I was offered a lift in a bloke's then almost new E-Type from Maghull to Ormskirk.

I can't remember who he was, or why the lift was offered, but what I do remember was that this particular gent has left his leg in plaster (I don't think it was the result of a motoring accident) and the car itself.

A gleaming, dark blue open E-Type with its hood down.

Now one thing David didn't mention was that the E-Type is not the easiest car in the world to clamber into - particularly if you have a broken leg. Easy enough for a 20-year-old me, though, and we were soon blasting down the A59 Northway towards Ormskirk.

Remember, this was way before compulsory seatbelts, 70mph speed limits (just as well as the needle certainly went well past the magic 100mph point rather quickly) and the various mini islands and various other bits of road furniture designed to drive Mr Toad off the road. Oh poop poop!

Anyway, the ups and downs of it was that I was thrilled with a journey I'll never forget and always reminds me of the long forgotten joys of the open road.
A couple of years ago, I was offered another lift to Ormskirk in another Jag. It was a lovely XK8 and even as I lapped up its comfort and speed (in so far as you're allowed to speed these days), I remembered my earlier Jag sports car experience.

Mind you, I reckon the present Jag sports car to be about the best looking Grand Touring car there is as well as being among the quickest - but this time the equally unattainable cat was more a symbol of luxury and speed than fun and speed.

Actually, for one whose motoring history is well in the past - and liable to remain there if I don't win the Lottery - it is perhaps surprising how many memories of mine are connected to cars.

Like good old ‘Kettle', a 1955 Austin A50, bought for £50 (complete with MOT, though heaven knows how it got it), sold for £45 a year later.

But it never actually let me down as long as the heater was kept on fully, so that when it started to boil (Kettle, see) the heater ran cold and you stopped to pour water in.

Or my Rover 3 Litre, sold to me for fluppance by my former boss and which turned out to be nearly as much filler as metal.

Or my encounter with the long and rude arm of the law in my Alfa Romeo on the M6 early one morning - but that's another story.

Anyway, thank you Mr Simister for your tale of an E-Type.

Like you, I never got to drive one (though I reckon a 3.8 MK2 probably gave me an inkling) - but I did manage to experience some of the thrill of what the most famous of big cats can do.

You're welcome...

Why I don't agree with West Lancashire's cut on communication

2011-02-23T10:04:00.004Z

I LOVED the headline on the front page of today's Ormskirk Champion, even though it wasn't my idea. Short, sweet, and attention-grabbing enough to ask a poignant question. Does too much tweeting make a twit?

Members of West Lancashire Borough Council are at a meeting tonight expected to change their constitution to bring about a ban on any of their meetings being recorded electronically in any way, shape or form, be it a dictaphone, a video camera, or using a Smartphone to get the latest announcements out on Twitter. I really hope they don't, because it's a stupid idea that attacks the idea of open democracy.

Regular readers will already know I love using gadgets to get stories, and when I'm not chained to my computer I've usually got a dictaphone, camcorder or smartphone somewhere nearby. I have - shock horror - even used it to my advantage at council meetings, because the beautiful blend that is Twitter and mobile Internet means I can get details of important decisions that affect a lot of people out into the open as they happen. Something that'll no longer be possible if West Lancashire give their plans the green light.

The discussion's been brought up after another journalist fell foul of the Conservative-controlled council's members after attempting to record the meeting on her mobile phone, because it apparently disrupted the meeting. I wasn't at that meeting so it's hard to know whether it did (the Conservative councillors' view) or didn't (how the Labour opposition saw it), but the resulting MP3s meant you could hear the quotes that made the story.

Don't get me wrong, because it isn't a complete ban. You'll be able to record meetings with whatever electrical trickery you want - as long as you get the local authority's permission first. That's like telling the protesters in the Middle East that they can't tweet or upload their videos to YouTube unless they ask their leaders' permission first, if they really wouldn't mind. Admittedly a planning committee meeting in West Lancashire is nowhere near as urgent, but the basic principle's the same.

Of course, as a journalist, I'll grudgingly respect the ban if it's brought into existence, but that doesn't mean I agree with what is an attack on the principle of open democracy.

So call me a twit but I'll carry on tweeting.

Notes from a small railway station

2011-02-22T14:56:00.003Z

A BESTSELLING travel author's latest nationwide campaign is a load of rubbish, a group of Ainsdale residents who help maintain the village's railway station say.

Ainsdale Civic Society, who help maintain the village's station on the Merseyrail network, quite rightly got annoyed when the Campaign to Protect Rural England - headed up a certain Bill Bryson - issued a press statement last week saying it would be targeting Ainsdale Station as part of a countrywide campaign to clear litter from the rail network.

The campaign, to get the technical details out of the way, is to serve something a Litter Abatement Order against Network Rail, which is reponsible for the land alongside the railways, so that the company is forced to clear up litter for legal reasons. It's also highlighted a few places where it thinks the litter situation is particularly bad, including:

" London Bridge station (London) and its approaches, St Austell (Cornwall), Hersham (Surrey), Ainsdale Station (Merseyside), Clacton-on-Sea (Essex) and Gravesend (Kent)"

It's just a shame, then, that when it said Ainsdale Station, it didn't actually mean Ainsdale Station.

Joan Major, the society's secretary, said the following in a letter to the CPRE after reading their statement, which we reported in last week's Champion:

"I read in amazement this week an article in our local paper regarding comments [the CPRE] made about the railway station in our village. I have to tell you that this has caused great concern and anger amongst our residents. You say that our station has been identified as one of those targeted in a legal battle to clear litter from the nation’s rail network.

"Where, I must ask do you get your information from? Our station has recently been refurbished at a cost of £130,000 so that waiting rooms are enhanced for the traveler, whilst the station retains some of the Edwardian features and it is regularly cleaned and there is very little litter in evidence."

Quite right, I thought. I grew up in Ainsdale and to this day still use the station regularly, and I know how clean it is, so I'd be annoyed if a nationwide group had highlighted in a list of railway litter grotspots.

What the CPRE actually meant to say was that it was the land near to the stations they were targeting, and thanks to some digging, I knew it too. But it didn't mean I could correct and rewrite their press release for them, which says, in bold highlighted text, that they'll be targeting:

"Ainsdale Station"

Just to add to the confusion, they also list "London Bridge station (London) and its approaches" as one of their targets in the capital, making it even less clear as to whether its the train stations themselves or a spot of land nearby that they're actually targeting.

Following the fuore no less than two CPRE representatives have actually rung up our offices to try and work out what went wrong, saying in a statement that they're "very sorry" the original press release made people think they were targeting Ainsdale Station.

Confused? You've every right to be if you're trying to make sense of a statement where a group says it's looking to clean up Ainsdale Station and then admits several days later that it isn't and actually means somewhere near by.

Presumably Bill himself, one of the wittiest and most talented travel writers of his generation, wasn't involved in writing it.

Because pobody's nerfect

2011-02-15T17:01:00.004Z

AND I thought Id begin my first entry on this blog in a fornithg with the story of a man who pulled into The Champion car park last Friday to talk to me.

His name is Nigel Spry and he's a thoroughly nice chap, and from what I could tell from our meeting he has two passions in life. The first is the beautiful old E-Type Jaguar he brought with him, which you can read all about in tomorrow's Champion in one of those wonderfully fluffy "dream come true" features. But that's a very different entry for a very different blog.

His other passion is the English language, and his other gift - alongside a thrilling ride in the Jag - was a copy of last week's Southport edition, with all the "mistakes" highlighted in red ink. The first paragraph of the article you're reading right now has been written in his honour; if you're clever you'll come across two clangers, but if you're a real enthusiast of English grammar you'll spot a third. And here it is again, just in case you missed it.

Most of the ones he'd highlighted in my articles were in the features rather than the straightforward hard news articles because - as his red ink points out - you should "never begin a sentence with 'And' or 'Because'".

Naturally, I beg to differ and argue instead that English is a constantly changing language, with the use of grammar and the choice of words always evolving fluidly depending on the context, the audience and - more often than not - the writer. You could for instance, say the same about the works of Anthony Burgess or Irvine Welsh, but to this date I haven't seen A Clockwork Orange or Trainspotting being held up as poorly-written because they embrace non-standard English for creative effect.

And - oops, there we go again - yes, some of the mistakes were clumsy typos that should have been picked up before the paper went to press. In exactly the same way you'll spot the following clumsy typo in this morning's Daily Mail:

"The case had been due to come before a civil court yesterday, but father-of-two Mr Cremer said he could not risk the expense involved in a full hearing where he could potentially have faced a much higher payout.

"Instead he reluctantly paid Gilbert an out-of-court settlement rather than fight the case a be saddled with high legal bills."

The Mail does it. The Mirror does it. Even The Grauniad goes it. No, it doesn't make it acceptable and yes, we'll try harder to spot more glitches on the 120 (and often more) pages we check in a very short space of time as The Champion goes to press. But I wouldn't hold your breath for a completely and utterly mistake-free newspaper, because I don't think in the history of the printing press one's ever existed. It's regrettable, but it's also human nature.

Fellwalking guru Alfred Wainwright, who I've always reckoned is the best writer the media never had, had it nailed by aiming for work that was "full of imperfections but free from inaccuracies". It should be right, but not so much that it detracts from the character and creativity to make it wrong.

A lot like a certain old car, funnily enough.

The brilliant crime website that doesn't work yet

2011-02-01T13:16:00.003Z

HARROWING details of crimes committed yards from my house, mobile phone numbers to put me straight in touch with friendly local bobbies, and the chance to compare and contrast with other parts of the country.

These are just some of the things I haven't been able to do with the Government's brandspanking new nationwide crime site, which was launched last night and promises to put reams of crime statistics on your computer screen at the touch of a button. As ideas go, it's brilliant.

Problem is, it's proven so popular that despite trying what must be at least a dozen times since it went live, it hasn't loaded once without completely crashing altogether.

The picture you see above is the best result I've got so far; a handy hint, highlighted in red, that the Home Office doesn't seem to think our postcode here at The Champion exists. It covers the main shopping street in one of the north west's major towns, but it doesn't exist because the computer says no. Either that or Lord Street, despite what you might read in the papers, has no crime at all.

More likely is that some Government press guru or web whizz in Whitehall has screwed up their PR slightly, by launching a website with a frankly brilliant idea behind it, but then leaking it to every national and local newspaper, television broadcaster, radio station and news website, and for some reason not preparing it for the inevitable deluge of attention (75,000 visits a minute at the time of writing) it'll attract. Cue embarrassing story in the nationals.

I still think it'll be brilliant, and - if you're even remotely interested in what goes on where you live - so will you, and I'd love to know what you think if you go onto www.police.uk and enter your postcode.

Provided it actually works, of course.

Don't quote me on this one

2011-01-27T15:04:00.001Z

ANYONE who's worked in the media will already know the love/hate relationship we journos have with subeditors.

They are the crucial barrier between unfortunate errors and the printed page, and the ones who have the important duty of kicking us into touch when our writing's not quite up to scratch. And - as I found out after this week's edition went to print - they've told me that I apparently don't do quotes properly.

I, for instance, am a fan of listing the speaker after the first quote, as I've done with a story on a car showroom for our Southport edition next week:

“These three dealerships fit into our core market area of the north-west, but key to the appeal is the chance to represent the Honda brand. It’s a premium business with exciting new products to come in the future,” said Ian Rutter, Managing Director of Clare James Automotive.

“A key element of the way we do business is outstanding customer service. I’d invite existing and new customers to come along to any of the dealerships and experience the changes that we’re making. We have introductory offers on parts, service and sales.”

But despite having written quotes into stories in this exact style for at least three years of working in regional newspapers - and the three of studying at university before that - it is, apparently, wrong and not in line with ye olde conventions of writing hard news stories. Mr Subeditor would much rather I do it, from now on, like this:

Ian Rutter, Managing Director of Clare James Automotive, said: “These three dealerships fit into our core market area of the north-west, but key to the appeal is the chance to represent the Honda brand. It’s a premium business with exciting new products to come in the future.

“A key element of the way we do business is outstanding customer service. I’d invite existing and new customers to come along to any of the dealerships and experience the changes that we’re making. We have introductory offers on parts, service and sales.”

Now I've looked at the online leads from today's Guardian, Telegraph, and Daily Mail, who all use variations of both the styles above in their opening quotes, although in all cases they introduce the speaker in the paragraph beforehand so you know who's commenting from the off. But it begs the question: in today's ever-changing English language, where you're increasingly likely to end your sentences with LOL, is there a right or wrong way to write something that's grammatically correct and concise, however you word it?

English teachers of the world unite, I need an answer...

Readers to the rescue

2011-01-25T17:19:00.003Z

I KNOW it's a tired, boring cliche but it's true; the most important part of making a paper is the readers.

A story I've just put on our website carrying details of a bridge strike on Marine Drive, on Southport's seafront, reminded me of this, because thanks to a quick-thinking reader we've managed to get the story out there to the town's residents despite being right on deadline for tomorrow's papers.

Working on the basis that news is, well, new I'm always chuffed if we can get a story out to our readers before anyone else, and in this case we were able to put the story out on our website not only before our friends at The Southport Visiter, but also ahead of the snappers at Southport GB, who haven't got the production of a newspaper to think about on a Tuesday afternoon.

But really the credit's got to go to a reader so far only known as "Sam", who not only tipped us off, but also provided some self-taken pictures and a brief but very useful description.

Readers, we can't thank you enough.

Seperated at birth?

2011-01-19T12:28:00.003Z

DURING one of the quieter moments in The Champion office we got talking about blogs, including a very concise and frequently updated one from Manor ward Conservative councillor Martyn Barber.

But a closer inspection of his blog profile picture seems to indicate he's a dead ringer for George Lazenby, the Australian actor best known for his outing as 007 in the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

We'll get back to work now...

A crisp morning in The Champion office

2011-01-18T16:47:00.004Z

WHAT links four of the country's finest stand up comics with a factory putting together packets of crisps on the outskirts of Skelmersdale?

The answer, despite what you might have read in other parts of the media this week, is nothing.

The story, in case you're wondering, is about Walkers scoring a small publicity coup by getting QI mastermind Stephen Fry, master of one-liners Jimmy Carr, pub landlord Al Murray and Three Lions co-creator Frank Skinner together to endorse special editions of the nation's favourite brand of crisps, with a sales battle predictably overseen by Gary Linekar. Oh and Comic Relief get a share of the profits, so it's all for a good cause.

"They will fight to win the hearts of the British public to raise money by making their flavour the bestseller, and reign above their fellow funny-men! The rules of combat are simple - for every special flavour pack sold Walkers will donate 5p to Comic Relief and the comedian whose flavour raises the most will win," a Walkers spokesperson said of their moment of PR genius.

"The losing three will face the torturous forfeit of being waxed by a mystery ‘beautician’ and the triumphant winner will be announced on 18th March."

Naturally the regional press leapt on any localised angles they could claw out of the story, the Islington Gazette going for their links to Jimmy Carr, and the Leicester Mercury pouncing on Walkers' links to the nearby town of Beaumont Leys. In our case, we'd read another report saying it was great news for the people of West Lancashire, because all the crisps would, it was being being reported, be produced at the company's factory in Skelmersdale.

A quick five minutes on the phone and a follow up email to the Walkers Crisps press office prompted the following response:

"I have just enquired as to where the crisps are made and I’m afraid they are only being produced in Bursom and Leycroft in Leicester and Peterlee."

So no links to Skelmersdale, then, and a result no story for The Champion. Cheer up though; at least with Stephen Fry Up, Jimmy Con Carne, Frank Roast Dinner and Steak and Al Pie as flavours to choose from, there's plenty of smiles to be raised from the bad puns on each packet.

The hosepipe ban that wasn't

2011-01-11T12:33:00.006Z

SNOW, ice, freezing temperatures, gales, rain and frost - they're all included in the media's annual Winter is cold coverage. But hosepipe bans?

That's the incredible claim carried in The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express over the past 24 hours; that despite all the wintry weather we've put up with, we now face the prospect of the second hosepipe ban in the space of a year. You couldn't make it up.

Actually you could, as a sternly worded email from United Utilities to journalists across the land revealed this morning. The story was, in the water provider's words, “entirely false and inaccurate”.

It turns out the three papers had based their story on this piece in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, which according to the water company “appears to be a hotch-potch of old information taken from our website, and misquotes from a brief conversation with the journalist”.

What amazes me isn't that a Lancashire evening paper somehow got the claims mixed up in print, but that no less than three national newspapers managed to regurgitate the claims across the entire nation without checking whether it was true with United Utilities first. By the time I'd got word of the story, the Google news alerts had done their work with the original claims and the damage had been done.

We debated in The Champion office whether to mention it at all, and after weighing up the pros and cons decided it would be in the interests of Champion readers who might have read the Mail, Telegraph and Express and incorrectly come to the impression a hosepipe ban was on the way. But we've kept our story short and sweet so as not to compound the problems caused by the original claims.

So no, they're aren't any hosepipe bans on the way. But you'd hope a clarification from three national newspapers might be.

UPDATE: Actually the story's here, in its new, updated form. Since the original draft of this article United Utilities have issued a new statement, focusing less on who reported what and more on the fact that there's no hosepipe ban on the way. Happy to keep the readers up to date...

The first phone call I've ever had to hang up

2011-01-05T14:32:00.003Z

SOMETHING all journalists know: you don't go into the world of reporting on regional newspapers because you want people to like you.

I have, in my years of writing of all sorts of different papers and websites, found that it's only on rare occasions that someone will ring you up for a verbal pat on the back, to say congratulations on doing a good job. It's the same with all reporters, be it broadcast, online, print or whatever, and no matter who or what it is covering. People just don't ring up to praise very often.

What they love to do, however, is complain, and although I've never been the thick-skinned type I'll listen carefully to each and every one of them. Sometimes I'll admit I've made a complete Horlicks of it and got it wrong, in which case you'll read a promptly-written clarification in the next edition. Sometimes I'll happily do a follow-up from the complainant's point of view. And yes, sometimes I'll tell them I've done nothing wrong, explain why and get on with the job in hand.

But what I've never done, until today, is actually hang up on someone.

This is the last resort, something which I'll only ever use if a caller is swearing, racist, threatening or just generally offensive (and I am very patient). In this case it was an anonymous and very irate caller complaining about this story about a dog attack in Ormskirk, which we ran on the front page of today's paper. It's an emotive issue and I've already had quite a few calls on the subject....but none where I've been called a four letter word.

The story had been relayed to me by several eyewitnesses, but with huge, gaping discrepancies, so it's clear all the callers - most of whom chose not to share their details - were never going to agree on absolutely everything. In the end I went with the most official details I could find; those of Lancashire Constabulary, who attended the incident.

Unfortunately this wasn't good enough for the lady caller, who despite several polite requests and the offer of my help to go over the details again, refused to stop swearing at me. So I hung up.

We welcome comments and complaints - it keeps us on our toes - but effing and blinding at people you've never met is simply not on.

You wouldn't go up to someone in the street who you don't agree with and call them a ****, with no provocation whatsoever.

What makes it acceptable to ring up your local reporter and do the same?

Battle of the bulge: Part III

2011-01-02T21:56:00.003Z

READERS, I'm sorry. The festive season has ruined my ongoing journalistic mission.

You might remember that way back in the distant past of 2010 I put myself up as a guinea pig for a feature on health and getting fit for GR8Life, our upmarket glossy magazine. The idea was simple; putting The Champion's resident Chris Moyles up for the challenge would be a health feature that would actually be relevant, because it'd actually detail the difficulties of getting healthy and staying that way rather than just patronising readers who'd overdone it over Christmas with pictures of Keira Knightley and the girl from the Special K adverts. And it was going well.

I had, for instance, taken on the tips of top dietitian Amy Dunne, who showed me what was worth taking off my shopping list and - more surprisingly - what wasn't. I joined a gym and mended my long-abandoned bicycle. I even went scuba diving. All of which I've now ruined with a Christmas break in Germany where I drank far too much Kölsch and Glühwein, ate too many moreish continental meats and did almost no exercise at all.

I should point out in the interests of making feeble excuses that in the picture above - taking in Cologne, when it was well below freezing - I was wearing several layers under my coat to stay warm. But even I admit I need to get back on track.

To make matters worse, I then followed it all up with a New Year's party back in Blighty where I almost certainly overdid things slightly. In short, I did what everyone else does over the festive period.

The bad news is that a week-and-a-bit of generally feasting and being merry has put me back to where I was more than a month ago, when I first agreed to doing the feature. The good news is that I've got a gym membership, a bicycle and a dietitian's phone number for a reason, so I'm not going to give up. I'm going to carry on and let you know exactly how difficult losing the flab is if - like me - you actually live in the real world.

Nobody said it would be easy!

The spring edition of GR8Life Magazine with the finished feature will be published early next year.

Same weather, no drama

2010-12-25T15:06:00.000Z

THE radio news bulletin in the car on the way into Solingen was entirely in German, but I knew it was about the snowy conditions. I understood just two words; “London Heathrow”.

What you see above is a residential street in downtown Solingen, a German city where I'm currently on holiday, in the middle of the same snowy winter we Brits are going through. Don't be fooled by the massive mounds of the white stuff surrounding the parked cars; both the roads and the pavements have not only been gritted, but cleared as well. Something we don't seem to be able to manage in Sefton or West Lancashire.

When it snows in Germany the roads are cleared, the pavements gritted and shoppers put their gloves on and carry on. In Britain the public transport system is paralysed, entire airports shut down, cars crash on icy roads and pensioners slip on the frozen pavements. It’s bizarre, but we Brits as a nation just can’t cope with snow!

Last year I saw first hand how the entire region was caught out by an unusually high amount of snow. Searching questions were asked of the Government and the local councils, who promised that the scenario where entire towns were left ungritted wouldn’t happen again. It just has!

In England I’ve seen buses and trains cancelled, roads which look more like ice rinks, and even milk deliveries being carried out by tractor. Here, the most dramatic things I've seen are a Smart buried nose-deep into the snow, and a very elderly Citroen 2CV going about its business on snow chains.

The way everyone in Germany gets the roads cleared and just carries on, completely unfazed, never ceases to amaze me.

Compared to the chaos we’ve got, the Germans don’t know how lucky they are.

The big freeze in pictures

2010-12-21T14:07:00.001Z

SO we're snowed under. With phone calls, emails, and letters that is.

The moment the flakes starting falling last Friday afternoon, I knew this week - the week of our combined Christmas Champion - was going to be a busy one. The only thing I didn't know was just how busy.

Trying to condense dozens of phone calls and emails from angry residents furious with a lack of gritting where they lived, press statements from local authorities doing their best to explain why and updates on a public transport system crippled by the cold conditions into just 700 words is pretty much impossible. But I tried anyway.

Everyone's got their own story of how they've been affected by the snow and ice, but among the worst cases we've heard are:

* Milk deliveries in Parbold being carried out by tractor, due to the roads being impassable for milk floats

* Taxi drivers in Skelmersdale being forced to abandon their routes over the weekend for health and safety reasons, losing around £500 each in the process

* Ormskirk's traditional market being reduced to a single stall last Saturday due to traders not being able to make it into the town centre

* Crosby recording temperatures as low as -17 degrees celsius over the weekend

* Traffic in Crossens, on the outskirts of Southport, grinding to a halt after a Sainsbury's delivery lorry lost control and skidded near the Plough roundabout

* Police officers in Ormskirk digging the snow to enable elderly and disabled residents trapped by heavy snowfall to leave their homes safely

* Major train disruptions on the Merseyrail network, including a train fire in Freshfield on the Northern Line

* Ongoing cancellations of Arriva's bus services in parts of Sefton and West Lancashire

But despite the best efforts of the politicians, the local councils and the public transport companies the real stars we've seen so far are in fact you, the readers. For every story from a resident infuriated about how bad the situation's been, we've heard another from stricken residents who've had their bacon saved by kind-hearted neighbours.

And you've sent us all your pictures in, just to let us know what Sefton and West Lancashire looks like. If you believe in the old adage of every picture says a thousand words, just click the link above and see just some of the scores of pictures we've been sent in.

For keeping us in the loop, we can't thank you enough.

When I'm not writing for The Champion...

2010-12-19T23:53:00.005Z

YOU might remember that earlier this year I had a go at creating my own car magazine.

Life On Cars, in magazine form, was a sort of celebration for my motoring stuff surviving a year in one of the rearmost sections of The Champion, being the bit you reach if you've survived news, features and entertainment and not decided to head straight for the sports section.

Despite only one copy of that first edition ever being printed off (which now lives under lock and key in my portfolio) it got such a good response off petrolheads who read it that I decided leaving it a year would be easy. So I did another.

And now, another two months after the follow-up, I've done the difficult third issue.

Aside from giving me another opportunity to do something I love - rabbiting on about cars - I think the Life On Cars magazine is actually a genuinely useful editorial exercise, because not only does it give me a chance to keep my page designing skills up to scratch, it's also a great way to improve our Champion online content. It is, after all, something you can't get in The Champion newspaper and so you have to go online to read it.

I've just one sad admission to make; although a lot of the content's written up either for The Champion motors section or for GR8Life Magazine, the page layouts are all done outside the office, in my own time. As much as I hate to admit it, the magazine is created simply because I like doing it.

Hopefully, you'll enjoy reading it then:

Open publication - Free publishing - More automotive

P.S: Like everyone else, I'm aware that the entire region's covered in snow as I write, but I haven't forgotten about it. More on www.champnews.com and in the paper next Wednesday (December 22, 2010

Step into Christmas

2010-12-17T18:16:00.003Z

WITHOUT further ado, I'd like to introduce the latest addition to The Champion newsroom.

As you've probably already noticed, it's coming up to Christmas and - in between working on stories for our special Christmas Champion, due out next Wednesday - we spent a carefully considered few minutes putting up and decorating a tree for the newsroom.

Unfortunately, unlike the beautiful creation our colleagues downstairs at Linedancer Magazine came up with, our tree came without anything to stand it on, meaning we've had to use typical editorial ingenuity instead.

Look carefully at the shot above and you'll spot that not only is the base a cunningly-disguised waste paper bin - that single strand of tinsel has everyone fooled - but that it's stood in front of a concrete pillar because tying the two together using the Christmas lights was the only way to stop it from falling over. Health and safety people look away now; in a way, The Champion building itself is somehow structurally integral to our tree!

One of the kinder members of our production team described the result of our efforts as "having all the elegance of a car crash". Personally, I actually think it's quite arty, in the same way that Tracey Emin's unmade bed was considered art. Everyone enjoyed a celebratory mince pie in its honour, with the notable exception of me, because I'm working on a feature on the joys of not eating mince pies.

Merry Christmas.

P.S: A special mention should go to Edge Hill University lecturer Marc Stanton, who not only read my article about how disagreed with his views on the future of local newspapers, but actually went to the trouble of ringing me up about it.

In the interests of fair play, I ought to point out that he was keen to stress he believes in quality regional journalism, agrees that newspapers and websites can and should compliment one another and that I should pop over to Edge Hill in Ormskirk for a friendly natter and a coffee.

Consider my cap doffed.

Local newspapers are doing just fine, but thanks for asking

2010-12-13T22:49:00.005Z

I COULDN'T not respond to a fine bit of local newspaper coffin-nailing carried out by an Ormskirk media academic the other day.

Although I've had the weekend to mull over comments made by Edge Hill lecturer Marc Stanton in which he says that the days of traditional paid-for newspapers are numbered and that the future of free newspapers - papers, don't forget, like The Champion - are "in the balance", I'm still struggling to understand them.

Let's get the things he and I both agree on out of the way first; crucially that the ye olde idea of there being print, broadcast and radio journalists is gradually dying out, because all these mediums now cross over, particularly via that newfangled Internet I'm always going on about. I trained as a print reporter but really I think of myself as working in Convergance Media, simply because I'll be expected to write for a newspaper one moment, coordinate our website the next, and then either record a Podcast or shoot some video footage.

It's also no secret that The Champion is launching a radio station in January, which will add another string to our bows. All these things working together, I have absolutely no doubt, is a good thing.

But then Marc - a man who, I should point out, I haven't had the privelige of meeting yet - start to head off in completely different directions. While I fully respect his years of experience in the media, I just can't agree from my own experiences with his assertion that our days are numbered.

Marc's views on the media would have been entirely appropriate had he been speaking in 2008, a torrid time when titles across the land were abandoned, scores of journalists found themselves shut out and - worst of all - communities suddenly found themselves without a voice. It was, however, in the middle of a particularly nasty recession and while I know that even today lots of journalists are having a tough time, the industry is slowly fighting back.

Consider this: in the past year more newspapers have been created than killed off, so much so that a now-infamous analyis by Clare Enders that half of the country's titles would be gone within five years has now been scaled back.

Why aren't we covering the parish councils? Apart from the none-too-small problem of there being so many of them, the industry as a whole has had to slice back its operations, often to the point where sending reporters out for the afternoon would compromise stronger stories. But the fact is the proper newspapers will, in most cases, still beat the so called 'citizen journalists' to the real stories.

Journalism lecturers are, naturally, lecturers and therefore clever enough to know exactly the problems being faced by local newspapers, but also about how bright ideas can be used to help tackle them. The idea that the Internet will kill newspapers is about stupid as watching MTV for the first time and deciding that radio has had it.

Local newspapers aren't dying. They're just changing for the better.

I am ill

2010-12-09T15:39:00.005Z

NOT the dreaded manflu - though its devastating effects were proven by a leading panel of men some years ago - but something, I fear, with symptoms far worse.

Currently my sentences are punctuated with coughs which sound like a rusty chainsaw being started up, which are in turn bookended by sneezes which feel as though England's entire supply of phlegm has been stockpiled up my nostrils, mixed with a touch of gunpowder and then detonated at random intervals. 'Tis, readers, a particularly unpleasant bug.

Naturally, being a bloke, the worst part isn't the illness itself, but the sheer boredom of not knowing how long it's going to last. I made the mistake of Facebooking my plight last night and openly wondering how long it's going to be before I get better, which one particularly tactless mate either completely misunderstood or saw as a perfect opportunity for a spot of piss-taking.

"You don't lose weight over night," came the slightly cruel reply.

Anyhow, the upshot of all this is that - as much I don't want to be - I'm off work for the second day on the trot, partly because I know I'm too ill to be of any use there and partly because I don't want to infect anyone else, lest Sefton and West Lancashire loses its entire stock of Champion reporters to the snots.

I've done my best to make myself useful by doing what updates on champnews I can from here, at my bedside, but it does beg a question I hadn't thought of; what about when I go on holiday?

The next time I know I'm going to be away is the couple of days either side of Christmas, when I head over to Germany in what's becoming an annual melee of mulled wine and conversations I don't understand. Despite the web being a worldwide thing, I'm going to find getting access to the Internet - not least the stories in The Champion newspapers - particularly tricky from an bar in Düsseldorf, which means living up to the With Daily Updates bit you might have spotted on the site might be a bit difficult.

It's depressing to think that Julian Assange can be arrested in London after winding up the US Government and being wanted by the Swedish police and yet still manage to upload pretty much every major news story from around 50 countries on a daily basis, yet I'm finding the logistics of updating a regional website on a daily basis over the festive break a tad tricky, and all because I'm going on holiday to another EU country an hour's flying time away.

So far I've had neither the intelligence nor the insight to work this one out. Then again, I am ill.