'Local paper makes headlines'

With the exaggerated death of local newspapers much in the news lately (William Perrin reflected on the histrionics here) the BBC news magazine has run a little series about local billboards.

Included is an entertaining "hack's view" from local journalist Mike Lockley, who puts forward this little gem - "Woman in owl attack dies of diarrhoea" - and notes:

'I may not have the new technology skills, but I have a contact book crammed with "curtain twitchers" and devoid of numbers for gushing PR gals... And I, like every other weekly journalist, can play a part in the community I work in. I've helped save schools, stopped telecommunication towers being erected and even put pink custard back on a school menu.'

One of the comments on Lockley's piece made me pause:

'Eroding communities and endangered toads are no joke. In my sleepy coastal village, I look forward to Wednesday and still howl with laughter at my local rag's headlines... The serious side is my local paper had its office closed and is now run from a larger regional office in Southport. Who will tell us as about the scout hut fire, the cat in the tree, the man who has just raised money for charity, or that my son scored a goal on Saturday for our local team? Sleepy newspapers being ditched for profit by the regionals so it can go online. I'm 41 and can use a Mac and a PC but I want to read a paper with a cup of tea.'

For sure, the days of neighbourhood online networks are not far off. Local nets will give you all this and better, more efficiently, less expensively, with genuine options for user-involvement and interaction - and by extension in my view, conversational democracy. But without the paper.

And I'm not sure about the mystery of the 50 year old parcel in the image above, but I note that elsewhere the Beeb is talking about Stanley Milgram's lost letter experiment.

Comments

[william perrin]

lovely

so for reasons too convlyted to explain my house got pelted with stones and apples by a gang of very young local kids. see

http://tinyurl.com/d7usr6

the islington gazette wrote up the board as at this link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/willperrin/3504629950/

but internal headline was priceless - 'apple rumble'

[Julian Dobson]

I rather liked the billboard I came across on the Isle of Mull last summer - there's a picture with a post on something (mainly) unrelated a couple of months back: http://livingwithrats.blogspot.com/2009/02/your-place-or-mine.html