Is there any point in 'local press' websites any more?

[yorkie]

Here in York the so-called York Press has a terrible reputation for clickbait/cryptic headlines and posting news articles that are not related to York and/or are misleading in relation to the situation in York.

For example headlines are typically cryptic, such as:

• 'Fire in popular York suburb'
• 'Girl trapped in popular York park'
• 'Firefighter call to popular York suburb is ‘malicious’'
• 'New £1.9 million upgrade completed at popular York school'

Occasionally the word 'popular' is omitted, inevitably leading to tongue-in-cheek comments asking if the suburb/park/school/whatever is not popular. For example 'Residents 'distraught' as crash damages wall and houses in York suburb'

This latest article is particularly useless and misleading; for example the following article appears as 'Full list of school holidays for England and Wales in 2023' but when you click on it, the title changes to 'When are school holidays in England and Wales 2023?'

Full list of school holidays for England and Wales in 2023

A list of holiday periods for schools in England and Wales for 2023

www.yorkpress.co.uk

With the New Year now having arrived many families might be preparing for when school holidays are taking place, so any trips away can be planned accordingly.

If you want to start preparing for your family’s spring, summer and winter breaks then you’re going to need to know when those windows of opportunity are.
That’s why we’ve gathered together all of the key dates for when youngsters will be off school, including bank holidays, just in case you want to squeeze in a sneaky long weekend somewhere.

However the dates given are inaccurate for York!

They do give the following caveat, at the end of the article:

Exact school holiday dates vary slightly from council to council, so check your local council website for that.

In other words, what is ostensibly a local York media outlet gives a 'full list' of 'all the key dates' but these don't actually apply to York.

The comments section reads:

york_mummy 2nd January 7:22 pm
User ID: 373594
York has the week after you said for October half term. Its w/c 30th October not w/c 23rd.

foggytwoshoes 2nd January 6:16 pm
User ID: 339867
This article is misleading, as each Local Authority sets its own dates. The dates you have given for the summer holiday in 2023 do not fit with the dates on City of York website. This could lead to a really expensive mistake for some families if they choose to book a holiday when the dates given are not correct..

Mr Pinky 2nd January 9:00 pm
User ID: 842724
Always worth remembering - dont pay attention to these filler articles on this website. They arent localised in any way.

I understand someone did actually email the author of the article about the inaccuracy and their response was:

The article was meant to be a general overview of when school holiday dates could fall. I'm aware that there are likely to be differences between counties so I do state in the article: "Exact school holiday dates vary slightly from council to council, so check your local council website for that.."

I would have to question the intelligence of anyone who thinks that is an acceptable response.

The site is also only accessible if you block cookies and adverts, otherwise it's pretty much unusable.

Is this the norm across the UK now? Or are we just unlucky?

 

[GusB]

My local rag is the Northern Scot (https://www.northern-scot.co.uk/) and its website isn't actually too bad. Most of the content I can see is local, although the further you scroll down the more "regional" it becomes. Many of the local titles have been merged into a bigger group and I think this is what has prevented them turning into "Live" clones with all the clickbait that goes along with such sites.

I agree that those local papers that have succumbed to the larger publishers should probably just give up. I suspect that many of them were in denial about the drive to go digital and probably thought that everyone would still continue to buy their print copy faithfully. My local paper was no exception and I used to find it immensely frustrating to click on a headline, only to be given a couple of sentences followed by "read the full story in this week's Northern Scot".

They could still go much further, though. They might not have the funds to pay for as many reporters these days, but there are plenty of people out there who are skilled in presenting and media production; why not get them to report on the really local stuff? Obviously they'd need to ensure the accuracy of any amateur content, but isn't that what an editor is for anyway? Pay a reasonable amount for a report. If you want local, get local people involved.

 

[Andy Pacer]

In my experience it takes so long to get past the adverts on local press websites that is the initial problem.

 

[Yew]

The Nottingham post is similarly awful. Long articles are drawn out of even minor events, with significant levels of padding to make you scroll past more "adverts".

Bu "adverts" I don't mean legitimate advertising, I mean spammy "one weird trick to lose fat NOW". or "Eat THIS to cleanse your colon IMMEDIETELY". Quite simply, about 5 years ago if I saw a website like most news sites (and even YouTube), I would have clicked off as it would have looked like a scam.

 

[Andy Pacer]

The Nottingham post is similarly awful. Long articles are drawn out of even minor events, with significant levels of padding to make you scroll past more "adverts".

Bu "adverts" I don't mean legitimate advertising, I mean spammy "one weird trick to lose fat NOW". or "Eat THIS to cleanse your colon IMMEDIETELY". Quite simply, about 5 years ago if I saw a website like most news sites (and even YouTube), I would have clicked off as it would have looked like a scam.

I think its also floored that you already know before attempting to read something that looks interesting that you'll be put off by the adverts.

 

[jfollows]

No, the ones I've seen are consistently awful.

The headline deliberately doesn't tell the story.
When you click on it (as intended) you find out it's nothing to do with the local area.
Every car crash is a "horror" crash.
Every under-30 male is a "thug".
Don't get me started on "train station".
The quality of grammar is appalling, there are no sub-editors to correct the howling mistakes.
The final experience is that the reader hasn't actually managed to read any "local news" in the end.

Even the Manchester Evening News, which has some good reporters, falls into the same traps.

It's a shame because most of the "quality" press is isolated inside a London/Westminster bubble, if there's a story about bad weather it'll be a good guess it's because of flooding in Twickenham or somewhere similar, not Yorkshire. But then so much of our national life is directed from London that it's not surprising.

 

[duncanp]

The Birmingham Mail is just as bad.

Today's headlines include+

• Brit personal trainer, 33, shot dead at luxury villa while on holiday in Jamaica
• All kids set to study maths until age 18 as Rishi Sunak announces shake-up

None of which have any relevance to Birmingham or the West Midlands specifically.

If it is a slow news day, they usually have headlines such as "...Mum slams pub for poor service...", where they just lift the story from Trip Advisor or Reddit.

And then when you do find a story that is vaguely of interest to you, a lot of the screen is filled with clickbait adverts.

 

[Bread & cheese]

Rather than use local news websites, I use my local library's Press Reader app to read the weekly print edition of Wokingham Today. This is quite a good local paper. It's about ⅓ advertising, but this isn't too intrusive, and some of the adverts are even quite interesting.
Sample page shows various local news stories and an advert for Siren Craft Brew.

 

[DelayRepay]

They could still go much further, though. They might not have the funds to pay for as many reporters these days, but there are plenty of people out there who are skilled in presenting and media production; why not get them to report on the really local stuff? Obviously they'd need to ensure the accuracy of any amateur content, but isn't that what an editor is for anyway? Pay a reasonable amount for a report. If you want local, get local people involved.

That's not even a new idea - years ago (probably the late 1960s or early 70s) my dad was a 'local reporter' for the local paper. It was a part time job which paid a very small sum. He was expected to report on things happening in his very local area - like the Parish Council meeting, bits from local schools and churches etc. He didn't cover 'real' news - the full time reporters did that although he was expected to tip them off if he heard of anything interesting.

But do we need newspapers to do this? The village where I live has a very active Facebook group which serves the same purpose - all the local events are posted there, the sports teams post their results, the parish council post updates and residents share interesting information (along with the 100s of 'what day are the binmen are coming?' and 'has anyone seen my parcel?' rubbish).

When I was a kid we had a daily evening local paper which was very popular, not just for news but for people looking for jobs, wanting to buy a car, or looking for a new home. On a Saturday they used to publish an evening edition with reports from the day's football matches. Nowadays all of this is done online, so I think local papers, either in printed form or online, have really had their day.

 

[GusB]

Reach news sites are truly abysmal!

We had a thread in the buses section earlier this year that quoted an article from the Stoke Sentinel/Stoke on Trent live. It highlighted the case if a 10 year old girl being refused travel because her pass didn't work. As it turned out, the incident occurred nowhere near Stoke, but in Edinburgh!

The thread link is here:

Driver refuses 10 year old on a bus

Girl, 10, abandoned in dark by bus driver left waiting in cold for 40 minutes https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/girl-10-abandoned-dark-bus-6597213#ICID=Android_StokeSentinelNewApp_AppShare A young schoolgirl was abandoned in the dark after a bus driver wouldn't allow...

www.railforums.co.uk

Caution! If you value your sanity and are using a mobile device, don't click on the link to Stoke Live or you'll be stuck there forever while the adverts load. Is there nobody within this organisation who actually checks that their sites actually function properly? Surely you can't raise revenue from advertising if none of it ever appears!

 

[birchesgreen]

Yes the sites are unbearable, unfortunately the only actual source of local news unless you have a good hyperlocal blogger and they seem to die out in the end.

 

[LampPete]

I get updates from Manchester evening news and most of the stories are just from twitter posts about someone complaining! They add a headline that over hypes what happened then they try and write a story with the only source being a tweet about the price of a coffee at a soft play area or something lame like that. When did that become news?!
And as for all the “live” ones! What a joke! Non news from nowhere near you should be their tag line!

 

[LowLevel]

Angry People in Local Newspapers. That is all.

 

[Mojo]

For some reason I often get “stories”
for Birmingham Live and Manchester Evening News in my Facebook feed despite not following either page or living in either city.

These are normally the ultimate click bait stories such as “Major supermarket issues warning to shoppers” but includes details about some minor insignificant change, I think the last one I saw was about Asda not playing music or making PAs for an hour as part of an autism friendly initiative.

These Reach plc. websites are the worst, often publishing headlines that use the English language in an unusual and misleading way to trick people. They used to every week publish an article along the lines of “all the London Underground lines closed this weekend” and the comments were full of people sharing with their friends and panicking the whole network was closed, whereas in fact it was just a list of services affected by engineering work.

 

[birchesgreen]

These days the angry people are mostly in the comments asking why the latest piece of social media derived drivel is "news".

 

[70014IronDuke]

My local rag is the Northern Scot (https://www.northern-scot.co.uk/) and its website isn't actually too bad. ........ They might not have the funds to pay for as many reporters these days, but there are plenty of people out there who are skilled in presenting and media production; why not get them to report on the really local stuff? Obviously they'd need to ensure the accuracy of any amateur content, but isn't that what an editor is for anyway? Pay a reasonable amount for a report. If you want local, get local people involved.

Yes and no. An editor - at least one who has decent ethical standards - expects to work with trained journalists who should work to the same standards of accuracy and fairness. An editor can't question every facet of a reporter's story - if the reporter says there was a "crowd of 50 people watching the police attend to the accident" he has to assume that's a reasonable estimate.

(Of course, if the reporter knows that the editor is happy to exaggerate to attract readership, he/she will write accordingly.)

One of the advantages of a newsroom was the interaction between reporters and editor - and an experienced editor had a decent chance of both a) leading by example, thereby 'straightening out' any reporter willing to sensationalise a story and b) identifying any who wouldn't toe the line. So much is now done remotely, and often without proper editorial oversight things get out of hand more easily.

But the bottom line is really that so many publishers are pushing editors to get site visits as high as possible and s*d the quality, accuracry and fairness of the writing. We have seen many examples on this forum of "Passenger hounded by rail company for fine even though he/she had ticket" - only to find he/she had no such ticket.

 

[OuterDistant]

Yes, there is a point to them: as graphic examples of what the phrase "race to the bottom" means.

 

[Howardh]

Reach news sites are truly abysmal!

We had a thread in the buses section earlier this year that quoted an article from the Stoke Sentinel/Stoke on Trent live. It highlighted the case if a 10 year old girl being refused travel because her pass didn't work. As it turned out, the incident occurred nowhere near Stoke, but in Edinburgh!

The thread link is here:

Driver refuses 10 year old on a bus

Girl, 10, abandoned in dark by bus driver left waiting in cold for 40 minutes https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/girl-10-abandoned-dark-bus-6597213#ICID=Android_StokeSentinelNewApp_AppShare A young schoolgirl was abandoned in the dark after a bus driver wouldn't allow...

www.railforums.co.uk

Caution! If you value your sanity and are using a mobile device, don't click on the link to Stoke Live or you'll be stuck there forever while the adverts load. Is there nobody within this organisation who actually checks that their sites actually function properly? Surely you can't raise revenue from advertising if none of it ever appears!

Even on mobile there are ad-block browsers which eliminate most of the ads/popups etc. I expect most of those "checking" their own websites do so using adblock, otherwise they'd go insane!

As for the papers themselves, I hate it when a name is accompanied by an adjective; eg "Boy, 14, stuck in park fence" which is OK, but "Schoolboy, 14....". Totally obvious and irrelevant....he's 14, he goes to school...for gawds sake. Also when there's a story about folks on a night out they are always "revellers". What???

"Hi, Bob, lets pop out tonight and do a bit of revelling...."

 

[nlogax]

I agree that local online news media is usually dreadful. Worst culprits are within the sweaty mitts of Reach, though it's a dual-edged sword. In order to access the terrible copy / editing you have to make it through their barely usable websites first. Reason enough not to bother trying.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Also when there's a story about folks on a night out they are always "revellers". What???

Any other stereotypically hackneyed newspaper clichéd phrases out there?

Some possible examples...

"Breaking news..."

"Eyewitnesses said..."

"Last ditch efforts..."

"Shrouded in secrecy..."

"Tongues wagging..."

"Hotly contested..."

"Sparked debate..."

"Stinging rebuke..."

Must be any number of others...

 

[J-2739]

Any other stereotypically hackneyed newspaper clichéd phrases out there?

Some possible examples...

"Breaking news..."

"Eyewitnesses said..."

"Last ditch efforts..."

"Shrouded in secrecy..."

"Tongues wagging..."

"Hotly contested..."

"Sparked debate..."

"Stinging rebuke..."

Must be any number of others...

"Puts on a leggy display..."

 

[birchesgreen]

Any other stereotypically hackneyed newspaper clichéd phrases out there?

Boffins

 

[infobleep]

Get Surrey isn't always great and posts stuff on Facebook that is more national than local.

To be fair to them though the issue is people don't buy local newspapers and they probably wouldn't be able to make their Web Sites subscription only.

Some of their archive photographs end up being shared with the Guildford Past and Present Facebook group though, which is independent of them.

There is one good independent News site covering Guildford, Guildford Dragon News but it isn't mobile-friendly so I don't read it

Guildford Dragon - The online newspaper for Guildford

Guildford News

guildford-dragon.com

 

[dakta]

I used to read huddersfield examiner, then online it became yorkshire live and it is just horrible.

Even if you don't mind ads themselves, the site is so chock full of them you have this experience, particularly on a mobile device where the page takes an age to load, finally displays but because the ads are still loading will give you enough chance to get a bit into it before the page suddenly re-arranges itself, with adverts popping up over the text with cryptic closure icons, videos autoplaying that you don't want. It is a usability trainwreck.

And that's before we go into the content, articles actually used to be reasonable for a local rag but you can get news from as far as the south coast, every other article is yorkshire farm amanda this and some of the articles are just downright wrong.

I only access it these days out of habbit as it really is awful. Tell you what it is good for though, if you need any stock photos of 'arms crossed angry people' - you know the type, I shaved my sons head really short and dyed what was left orange now the school is asking questions type

 

[jfollows]

As for the papers themselves, I hate it when a name is accompanied by an adjective; eg "Boy, 14, stuck in park fence" which is OK, but "Schoolboy, 14....". Totally obvious and irrelevant....he's 14, he goes to school...for gawds sake. Also when there's a story about folks on a night out they are always "revellers". What???

You're right, people can't simply be people in this sort of press.
Older people have to be "pensioners", or "grandmothers" or whatever. It's irrelevant to the story and I feel that it's quite demeaning also. I don't work and I take a pension so I guess I'm a "pensioner" in their terms, but I can't be a "grandfather" because I don't have any children. But I wouldn't like to be described in a newspaper in either way, assuming they were both true of course.

 

[duncanp]

You're right, people can't simply be people in this sort of press.
Older people have to be "pensioners", or "grandmothers" or whatever. It's irrelevant to the story and I feel that it's quite demeaning also. I don't work and I take a pension so I guess I'm a "pensioner" in their terms, but I can't be a "grandfather" because I don't have any children. But I wouldn't like to be described in a newspaper in either way, assuming they were both true of course.

And rail travellers are always "commuters"

 

[DarloRich]

Is this the norm across the UK now? Or are we just unlucky?

Sadly, I think it is fairly standard and a symptom of regional papers being consumed by nation publishing groups with centralised "new rooms", eliminated sub editors, vastly reduced pools of reporters & snappers, standard web formats across all titles and a reliance on picking up cheap "citizen reportage".

Also, I don't think the Newsquest sites are the worst out there. The Northern Echo and York Press have what is basically the same website with the banners changed and are much easier to use than the Reach ones. The MK citizen site ( which i now my local paper) is really hard to use due the number of ads.

I look at what the Northern Echo used to be when I was growing up and feel so sad.

 

[Parjon]

Is this the norm across the UK now? Or are we just unlucky?

Our city's paper somehow managed to miss 10 years worth of serious municipal wrong doing happening under their noses, only finally printing something when senior council staff were arrested and the government had to step in. Despite people repeatedly blowing the whistle and even an ex MP running a blow by blow blog, they still managed to fill the paper with guff just liked yours, amongst thinly disguised advertorials and a sartorial summary of each morning's breakfast tv show.

As you can imagine it's 100 times better now after it's all come out in the wash...

There's definitely a point to local news sites. They're vital. There's just no point to the local news sites we've currently got.

There are quite a few upstarts getting going at the moment. One in Liverpool, another in Manchester. I hear they've got the monopoly worried. Good. If one springs up in your area make sure you support it!!

 

[telstarbox]

IMO it's about money, or the lack of it. The BBC or ITV websites tend to pick up the bigger stories and football reports which you can read for free. You can get hyperlocal 'news' on a local Facebook group or Nextdoor. That leaves the clickbait and intrusive ads on the likes of Reach and presumably people will only access such poor quality content when it's free.

I have seen that some areas have good quality local blogs such as 853 in Greenwich which run on voluntary contributions from readers.

 

[Parjon]

I disagree. It's about maximising profit.