OT: press standards

[Bill Wright]

For reasons irrelevant to the point I'm going to make, I've been studying a range of local newspapers from 1951. I mean studying them closely, dissecting individual items. It's mostly little local stories of 200 to 800 words.

The yellowing pages reveal that the standards of journalism were much higher than they are now. Each story has an informative headline, then a concise introduction that contains most of the important points, then details of the occurrence in diminishing order of importance. There's no flannel or padding. Relevant names are given accurately. Photographs are only used where pertinent. The items appear to be as long as they need to be; no longer or shorter. There are no punctuation, spelling, or grammar mistakes.

Turning to equivalent newspapers of the modern age the standards are much lower.

Bill

[Clive George]

For a very simple reason : people aren't prepared to pay for that level of quality any more. Sub editors are too expensive.

[Norman Wells]

I couldn't disagree more. See if you can find anything at all to carp about in this:

[Brian Gaff]

Very true. We being a talking newspaper lament such things. The current crop are often firstly written for the web site and simply transplanted into the paper copy. I do often feel there is too much use of spell checkers, no sign of a proof reader and little time to go back to it and check it yourself any more. Indeed the local paper is a dying breed and seems to more or less look like tweets and photos from the public maybe followed up by some phone calls for quotes to fill some space.

This results in biased reporting and no style at all, not even facts as the spin doctors are at work with the press releases dressing up cuts as an improvement due to cost savings which are invested in services waffle. Brian

[Martin]

Almost all local newspapers in England are owned by Johnson which also owns what's left of the Indy i News

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Most newspapers aren't profitable these days. Unlike years ago. And therefore have to cut costs.

Thought everyone knew this?

[Bill Wright]

For a start they put 'on internet' when they should have put 'on t'internet'.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Actually it had me roaring!

Bill

[S Viemeister]

The more they cut costs (good, experienced writers, editors, etc) the fewer reasons people find to buy the paper. So more cost cutting ensues, followed by further decreases in readers...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I really can't remember when I last bought a newpaper. And at one time, I bought one every day.

On the odd occasion I see a 'tabloid' these days, it looks like people don't buy them for what I'd call news at all. More just gossip and sport coverage.

[Scott M]

And this is what Wright fails to grasp in his paranoid anti-media obsessesion. The world has moved on and people don't go to newspapers for news. They've had it 418 times from the telly or their phone long before its been typed out and duplicated.

Vacuous comment replaced news well over 10 years ago. The media don't pretend otherwise.

[Chris Youlden]

I am pleased to note that the film "Manhole Covers Britannia" will be shown on BBC Radio 4. There are some people who claim the bit-rate of the channel isn't high enough.

[Martin]

It was filmed totally in the dark.

Interesting stuff in the small ads.