How Naff is the Leicester Mercury?

[Pegosteve]

Bit like Radio Leicester, put that on this morning and the City news was that Jamie Vardy was trying to avoid getting booked for fear of suspension, well that interview was done after the game Tuesday. Suppose they don't get enough from the club to make new, news everyday. But going back to the Mercury report it was poor.

[5waller5]

The difficulty is that:

 

"everything's really good down at LCFC. Playing good football at the top of the league with no turmoil"

 

Is great news for fans but a pretty dull story for the papers day after day!!!! 

[Freeman's Wharfer]

The difficulty is that:

 

"everything's really good down at LCFC. Playing good football at the top of the league with no turmoil"

 

Is great news for fans but a pretty dull story for the papers day after day!!!! 

 

So why not get down to the training ground and conduct an in-depth interview with Vardy about his rise from non-league to top of The Championship? Or with Anthony Knockaert on how he's made the transition to English football to France? Or with Konchesky about his tough period at Liverpool and how he wants to get back to that level?!

 

You could even interview a groundsman, a physio, a sports scientist to get a real insight into what goes on behind the scenes. Henry Winter popped in and probably spent about an hour with Pearson, possibly the first hour they've ever shared together - the result was that an article which gave the whole nation an insight into Pearson that had never been seen before. If Winter can do it by breezing past one day in a year, why can't Tanner get something approaching even half as good when he has weekly meetings at the training ground?

 

Yes, there's certainly a difference in the readership between The Guardian and The Leicester Mercury but that doesn't stop them actually serving up something a bit better than what they currently do.

[davieG]

Circulation slide continues for regional evening papers

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/29/circulation-slide-continues-regional-evening-papers

I used to buy it but found I was only doingvthe cryptic crossword so now just buy a book of them.

As for the website thats full of traffic reports.

Oh and it now costs 50p.

[5waller5]

So why not get down to the training ground and conduct an in-depth interview with Vardy about his rise from non-league to top of The Championship? Or with Anthony Knockaert on how he's made the transition to English football to France? Or with Konchesky about his tough period at Liverpool and how he wants to get back to that level?!

 

You could even interview a groundsman, a physio, a sports scientist to get a real insight into what goes on behind the scenes. Henry Winter popped in and probably spent about an hour with Pearson, possibly the first hour they've ever shared together - the result was that an article which gave the whole nation an insight into Pearson that had never been seen before. If Winter can do it by breezing past one day in a year, why can't Tanner get something approaching even half as good when he has weekly meetings at the training ground?

 

Yes, there's certainly a difference in the readership between The Guardian and The Leicester Mercury but that doesn't stop them actually serving up something a bit better than what they currently do.

 

Good point.

 

I did wonder why on Stringer's pre match interview last game instead of asking the same rubbish he didn't ask "is it harder to motivate a team at the top of the table ... how is it different to motivating a team surrounded by everyone" .... I often wonder how the really elite sportspeople that are miles better than anyone else keep up their focus to be even better.

 

You're right .... no excuse for their lazy recycling of "no let up", It's not over til it's over" dross.

[Super_horns]

They'll be all over you coverage wise once you go up though...

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

I can tell you for a fact their circulation is fine, not great but by no means small either, Bill Anderson was shit, Tanner is better than him but not much cop either

I thought Bill Anderson gave very balanced reporting.

[midland_red]

all local papers are declining and the Mockery is no exception. Caught in a vicious cycle of

-- declining circulation due to internet (It used to be the fifth largest local evening in the country BTW)

-- loss of advertising - especially job adverts, due both  to internet and Thatcher shutting down  most of Leicester's industry

leading to

--less money to spend on journalism, and on the part of the bean-counters, muchless inclination to do so anyway.

Unfortunately decent journalism is expensive, it means putting someone to work on a story which may in the end not stand up, it means reporters having the space to get out and talk to people and get the stories (Good stories don't come in on a press release - you have to work for them)  and for management it means being willing to face legal threats too

 

This inst just about local papers BTW - why do you think the bean counters love Big Brother and hated This Week, World in Action, or First Tuesday??

 

(I used to work on a national paper BTW so I know what I'm talking about here)

[Guest MattP]

Agree with everything you have said there.

Well apart from the bizarre claim Thatcher was the one who shut down Leicestes industry.

[davieG]

all local papers are declining and the Mockery is no exception. Caught in a vicious cycle of

-- declining circulation due to internet (It used to be the fifth largest local evening in the country BTW)

-- loss of advertising - especially job adverts, due both  to internet and Thatcher shutting down  most of Leicester's industry

leading to

--less money to spend on journalism, and on the part of the bean-counters, muchless inclination to do so anyway.

Unfortunately decent journalism is expensive, it means putting someone to work on a story which may in the end not stand up, it means reporters having the space to get out and talk to people and get the stories (Good stories don't come in on a press release - you have to work for them)  and for management it means being willing to face legal threats too

 

This inst just about local papers BTW - why do you think the bean counters love Big Brother and hated This Week, World in Action, or First Tuesday??

 

(I used to work on a national paper BTW so I know what I'm talking about here)

Can't argue with most of that but I'm not sure how that excuses the point made in the OP. You don't have to be some budding Woodward or Bernstein to report on a football match or provide some half interesting editorial on the club and it's players. Just a decent command of English and imagination

[Bob Weasel Fox]

I still buy it, most days, out of habit these days admittedly but hey ho

[Unabomber]

I buy it most days, not the best but not that bad either IMO

 

 

I still buy it, most days, out of habit these days admittedly but hey ho

 

Nice to see you're still buying it, let us know tomorrow if you buy it. 

[Bob Weasel Fox]

Nice to see you're still buying it, let us know tomorrow if you buy it.

will do

[Jimmy]

eh? You had 45,000 copies?

 

 

Over the last 20 years of course, even the last 10, the impact of rolling news channels probably killed them, but the decline isn't as great as people like to think over the last few years, certainly not to the 75-80% decline the Merc has suffered over that time since 2008.

 

in fact the Times and I's circulation actually improved from 2012 to 2013, two papers who generally get it right with what people want (good reporting, columnists, excellent coverage with a different angle that the news often gives).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation

 

I don't like judging circulation by websites, anyone can click on it, the Mail website gets something like 100million+ hits a day but that can't be counted as circulation.

I work at Smiths News and we supply every shop n the county

[foxgas]

When I was a paperboy in the 60's I delivered the Mercury on a Saturday afternoon then went back and delivered the mercury buff later in the evening with full match reports on city and results of all national and local games of the day. I suppose with the advent of the internet everything is old news nowadays before it is printed hence the ads and pop ups on the Mercury website to pay for it.

[Fox Ulike]

To be fair, the Mercury has always been a bit naff… but I can’t imagine it’s any more naff (‘naffer’?) than any other local newspaper.

 

Considering that you can access every single Mercury story on the internet for FREE, I think criticism is a bit harsh…

 

There is an appetite for footy news that football itself can’t really satisfy. I mean, LCFC play once a week. How do you stretch news stories to cover 6 days a week for something that only happens once a week? This has been especially true since the transfer windows made transfer speculation a thing of the past.

 

Do we really want to know what the groundsman thinks?? Even if you do, you can’t ask him his views on the pitch every week!

 

Also, in terms of the Guardian interview – it’s likely that Pearson got paid for his time.  Probably not something that the poor old LM has a budget for.

[Thracian]

Was reading that today in sunny Hunstanton..

 

 

The Mercury's circulation is almost certainly less than 50,000 judging by the last figures I saw compared with the audited 180,000 daily sales at the time I worked for them at the start of my career in the 60s.

 

Furthermore it is no longer published in Leicester, has a much earlier deadline than in those days and has far fewer full time journalists and some you'd call little more than village correspondents.

 

Working in Leicester demonstrates every day the lack of awareness within today's Mercury, their seeming inability to either recognise or act on stories around  them and what seems to be an almost total disinterest in doing any kind of campaigning journalism.

 

This is not a reflection of any kind of bitterness. I was proud to work for the Mercury and privileged to operate among some truly outstanding journalists - people who've gone on to be household names as top television presenters or respected front-line reporters and notable authors, in the case of Barbara Jones.

 

Now - and like the industry generally in the wake of internet competition - what's offered is nothing more than going-through-the-motions journalistically and, sadly,  I can't see that changing for the better.

 

Even the city council, and it's various authorities, seems to get a ridiculously easy ride given the number of things that ought to be looked into - including its scandalous waste of money - plus the real hardships that people are suffering because of arbitrary but unfair/ill-considered decisions, employee incompetence or simple mistakes/indifference depending who you believe.