Setting the record straight

9:36am Monday 30th June 2008

THIS is my tenth year as editor of The Northern Echo and there have been plenty of changes to manage during that time.

As reported in the paper last week, changes to the Echo's editionising structure take effect next Monday and the decision has generated a fair amount of interest in media circles.

What has disappointed me most is the lack of decent journalism surrounding the way the changes have been reported, both on regional television and in the trade press.

We all make mistakes and this column has always acknowledged the reality that The Northern Echo is no exception. But the cavalier failure to check basic facts, the sloppy reliance on hearsay and the unwillingness to put it right, have all been quite sad.

For example, the trade magazine Press Gazette not only managed to publish that ten journalists' jobs are going, but also declared that the paper's deadline would go from 1.30pm to 10.30am.

Brilliant. The equivalent of four full-time journalists' jobs are being lost - none of them compulsorily - and everyone knows we're a morning paper, so having a 1.30pm deadline would be a bit silly.

Even media commentator Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism at London's City University and former Daily Mirror editor, trotted out the "ten jobs" line on his Guardian blog.

The truth is this: instead of the current five editions - divided into Darlington, South West Durham, Teesside, Durham North and North Yorkshire - the paper's local, regional and national content will be consolidated into two editions with more pages.

The deadline will be 10.30pm - the same as it is for the first edition now - but there will be the flexibility to publish later editions as and when they are needed.

The two core editions will be split into "north" and "south" areas. The north edition will be in line with boundaries of the new County Durham unitary authority, while the south edition will focus on Darlington, the wider Tees Valley and North Yorkshire.

The digital age has brought unprecedented financial challenges for local newspapers as well as huge opportunities and changes in the way people want their news.

My job is to ensure that readers of The Northern Echo - in print and online - are given a balance of local, regional and national news that isn't available anywhere else.

In that respect, nothing has changed. And, when we get things wrong, we'll correct them and apologise. Unlike some.

AS a consequence of my impatience to get a job on a newspaper, I didn't go to university.

But last week, I lived the life of a university student in Oxford, as part of an innovation project, looking at how new ideas are generated.

I ate in the student restaurant, drank at the student bar, and slept in the halls of residence which, to my horror, don't have televisions in the rooms.

On the way back, I stopped in a motorway service station. As I sat there, drinking my coffee, my mind was still focused on innovations and inventions. It struck me that in all the motorway service stations I've ever visited, I've never seen anyone buy one of those chewable tooth brushes.

And has anyone ever seen someone use one of those massage chairs which always seem to be positioned in the most public place imaginable?

Why on earth would anyone want to spend money to sit in the aisle outside Burger King, vibrating in public?

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