Sitting Ducks
Watch out for those buses, man! You could like fall in the road and they'd run right over you.
I know local newspapers are an easy target. In my formative years we couldn't wait for Thursday when the Surrey Mirror (known locally as the Surrey Error) hit the streets, and all the hilarity that ensued. The Error is still responsible for my favourite sandwich-board headline of all time, and I've quoted it so often I'm now not sure whether it actually existed or whether it was just a figment of my imagination. Anyway.
Tragic Steamroller man dies a hero
will take some surpassing. Although the one on the left comes a close second.
But I digress. I came here to moan about the Islington Gazette. Two subheadings from this weeks issue caught my eye.
Baby Unit Faces Axe - The Whittington Hospital's maternity unit – where Islington's X Factor winner Alexandra Burke was born – could be axed.
I mean, I know we live in a society obsessed with celebrity, but perhaps the fact that 'The City Of London Maternity Hospital' was founded on that site in 1750 and has been supporting the pregnant of London for the last 260 years would perhaps stir the outrage slightly more than the loss of an amateur crooner's birthplace?
(Actually, it wasn't called 'The City Of London Maternity Hospital' until 1918. When it was founded in 1750 it was called 'Hospital for Married Women in the City of London and parts adjacent and also for sick and lame outpatients'. Snappy.)
This morning's second headline of annoyance reads:
Campaigners have won their battle to stop strippers and naked table dancers from performing at the former headquarters of Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
I know that the Islington Gazette and its owners Archant (formerly Eastern Counties Newspapers but obviously in need of a rebrand into something insipid and pointless) are big blue flag-wavers, which is perhaps a foolish approach in an area so staunchly socialist, but this sort of guff is just hastening the rapid demise of the local newspaper industry, which is already on its knees and gasping for breath. The Islington Gazette itself managed to shed over a quarter of its readers between 2008 and 2009 and is now flogging just over 6,000 copies a week. In an area with a potential readership in the hundreds of thousands, it's a bit pathetic. These feeble attempts at sleight-of-hand digs at local politicians and drawing obscure celebrity connections show the local newspaper for what it is - desperately out of touch with its area and the people that live in it.
(Incidentally, I can't check the links to the stories above, as the website is down.)