Posts
Exclusive: Could We Soon Be Seeing patkarney.blogspot.com?
Evening News Blogger David Ottewell has made a valiant attempt at explaining quite how Councillor Pat Karney gets to be in the Manchester papers quite so very often.
I'm not sure Karney watchers in and around Manchester Town Hall will swallow all this. Pat does have a bit of a reputation for having a big X in the publicity box. Surely that nice Mr Ottewell hasn't been got at?
But I've some exclusive news for him. Cllr Karney was today spotted attending a Blogging Seminar in the very heart of the Town Hall. Paying close attention. If he buys in to the idea we could be hearing a lot more - live and direct.
In fact if he simply scanned and blogged his cuttings as they came in he would quickly become one of the more prolific bloggers on the planet!
Pat is Labour's City Centre spokesman and in a tragedy come farce residents there don't seem to have cottoned on to the fact that Manchester is a Labour City and have elected Maverick Marc and His Marionettes. I'm sure it will be very much shoulders to the wheel in the months up to May 1 to finally send this great pretender packing.
CAPTION: Pat Karney is refusing to confirm or deny rumours on the design of the new Town Hall Santa.
6 comments:
If Karney starts blogging he could single handedly put the M.E.N. regional and local papers out of business. Hallelujah! Perhaps confidential will cut him some slack.
Confidential are fans of Pat I think? Don't get your drift. Though the bit about putting the mEN out of business did seem quite exciting.
They could employ some more editorial staff and freelancers and they might yet save themselves.
Chris,
What does being "got at" involve? I hope I get a new car out of it, at least.
I hope Pat does start blogging. The more media in Manchester the better, I reckon. I'm not one of those oddballs who think it's healthy for democracy for sources of information to be shut down.
I do think, though, that at least some of a city's journalists should be trained, know and respect laws (libel etc.) and work to established professional standards of fairness. But then I did spend a year being BRAINWASHED by the MSM ELDERS...
Nice Santa, btw.
David
I did spend five years "in the job" myself, though I may have forgotten some of the niceties. there is a desperate shortage IMO of journalists and time for those journalists to develop stories.
And as I think we may well have discussed in the past with reference to flyposting councillor and job suspension stories there does seem to be some reluctance to run anything at all edgy.
Don't get me started on the suburban titles ... SMR being head and shoulders above the rest for bias and cant ... in my ever so humble opinion.
They even allow John Leech to control whose letters are printed in their postbag. Allegedly.
Assuming Mr Dodson won't run to any staff jobs he could do worse than start paying some mroe stringers with attitude. Hint hint.
Chris,
We will - and do, on a daily basis - publish "edgy" stories... provided they stand up and work out when all information has been gathered. We still, as reporters, spend an awful lot of time trying to expose those things that many people would rather were kept hidden. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We keep trying.
That said, it certainly true that in newspapers in general these days there's an expectation that reporters will have to do more things at once than they used to. It's a challenging time for the whole industry.
The SMR letter page thing isn't correct - have you put the accusation to the editor?
Anyway, all the best & keep up the good work...
D
Thanks David.
I tend to disagree about the edgy stories. Or at least I think there are edgier ones out there that could be stood up. And I worry at some of the flip flopping too. But hey ho.
The editor and the star reporter of the SMR more or less told me so themselves. But the editor has failed to provide an explanation in writing for a very definite pattern of non publication.
They did however print several letters from Simon Ashley pointing out that X Y or Z was not on the electoral register. Basically this is an accusation that nom de plumes are being used - which of course the MEN Postbag do allow - but it is also an abuse of the possession of electoral registers for which a fine of up to £5,000 can be imposed.
One of Angela Gallagher's specific complaints when she defected back to Labour was that the South Manchester Lib Dems had been submitting letters over her name which she had not written and in some cases had not even seen.
But as I say there has been a pattern of non publication of letters pointing out some of the issues with Mr Leech's performance and claims.
How can you be so sure this pattern is not as a result of the pressure that staff appear to have indicated verbally is present?
I shall tell the people who believe their letters are being systematically spiked to resume their activity and expect to see their labours published at least as often as in olden days.
Good to have some feedback and a different insider perspective on the regional press.
Best w
Chris P
Post a Comment