The Mail

[Inspector Knacker]

From being a must buy every evening to find out what's going on in the town for years, it's fall from grace is a real shame. Oh, it's still here, but after buying one for the first time in a couple of years, the content was underwhelming. The main piece of news appeared to be the vandalism of two statues in a park....which turned out to be Hardwick Country park at Sedgefield! Seriously? There was nothing seriously news worthy, tons of advertising and meaningless froth and fillers that could have been any town anywhere. I fail to see how this is still even classed as a local paper, it isn't even a shadow of it's former self, just meaningless pages of nothing. The local insight and knowledge has gone, without that there really is no point.

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

No longer fit for purpose.

[Inspector Knacker]

I get the feeling the only local input is the name, every phone number is 0191 and it's cringingly obvious it's a 'local' newspaper without meaningful news. 

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

Is it correct that the editor (Joy Yates?) is/was also in charge of the South Shields Gazette?

[Inspector Knacker]

Apparently she's been editor of the The Sunderland Echo, Shields Gazette and Hartlepool Mail for the past 8 years. How you do that is a mystery to me, but reading the Mail it certainly explains a lot.
However, two dedicated editors have now been appointed for the Mail and Shields Gazette as a result of a new decentralisation policy of the parent company.
All well and good you might say, but I know of no Hartlepool Mail office in town, so if the new Editors office is up the road at Sunderland what's the point...?

[The Great Dictator]

   If there is no reporters what will they have to edit ?

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

   If there is no reporters what will they have to edit ?

Generic stuff?

[Inspector Knacker]

   If there is no reporters what will they have to edit ?

Good point. In fact with no local infrastructure what is the point....?
The Mail was part of the structure of the town  and despite social media I would buy it just as an additional source of local news. Trouble is it's a shell like those Hollywood back lots of cowboy towns of all false fronts and nothing of substance behind. It looks the part, but don't look too closely. It doesn't have a local presence, the paper is just a paper without local people in the know to make it work.
I know we have to find jobs for all those holders of Degrees in 'Meeeja Studies' , but a real journalist beats the over qualified cheap option every time.

[eddy]

People dont buy local newspapers in sufficient numbers to pay for local jurnos on the ground, its harsh economics.  Most people would rather be lied to on Facebook these days than in hard copy.

[Inspector Knacker]

The Echo's ok, even the Gazette. My gripe is the Mail has lost touch.
One of my favourites was the Isle of Wight County Press, a good weekly read which I picked up if I popped over on the passenger ferry from Pompey, a good example of a paper embedded in every part of the community.

[eddy]

The gazette seem to be constantly searching for the next child with an incurable terminal illness so they can take us all on their journey to their tragic and untimely death.  Its a curious fascination.  That said they do still have local reporters who report on local issues.  People in town may be conned into thinking nothing is actually happening in the town by reading the mail

[Inspector Knacker]

People in town may be conned into thinking nothing is actually happening in the town by reading the mail

It's parish pump bunkum at 'best', featuring people who are world famous in Hartlepool doing mundane things smiling glibly. This is the trouble, it's a front for a paid advertising sheet, a thin veneer of 'local' news about sweet F A and even then you can blatantly tell there's no local input, ..... because it's not local anymore!

[diSme]

I remember back in my early school days when a special event of some kind would happen, a local mail reporter and cameraman would turn up and take pictures of us kids at school, or at the swimming club etc etc. That doesn't really seem to happen much, if at all, these days, except perhaps the occasional story.

It seems that journalism is very much an office-based occupation now. The google street images they use plethorically annoy the **** out of me. Not to mention the numerous spelling and grammatical errors you see so frequently in their articles.

[Inspector Knacker]

Their ignorance of the town shouts out at you. Most of the wilderness years under the dumpling dictator and his travelling circus would have been a rich hunting ground to a proper local paper, but no, there was never any questioning of anything, as though they were conducting their local reporting from a call centre in Bombay.