Your Local News
Posted by David Wright on 2 May 2008 - 7:52am.
Can you do any better for local news stories? What breaking news is happening in your parish? Here are a couple of stories from my local Sacrborough paper in. Hang on to your seats, it's a roller coaster of a read. They appeared as follows, with the following headlines.
1)"SCRAMBLED TO EGGS"
FIREFIGHTERS were called to reports of a fire at a house in Ryndle Crescent. When the crew arrived, at 12.45pm on Monday, it was found to be a pan of eggs that had been left on the cooker and the fire had been extinguished.
2) "BANGERS SPARK FIRE"
A PAN of sausages triggered a kitchen blaze. When the fire crew arrived at Queen Street on Tuesday night, the fire had already been put out.
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It's hard to compete with
the apochryphal local headline "Bodies found in churchyard", but my local Hexham paper does now and again shock us with "Man was rowdy in street".
Dead Man Found In Graveyard
This was a genuine headline in one of my local Essex newspapers earlier this year, though it's hard to believe that the subs didn't know that readers would pick up on it. Of course readers on the 'have your say' board did and were then castigated by others for insensitivity.
A friend of mine who worked for a bank in Docklands used to take the local newspaper into work with her, where the London residents would pass it around for their collective amusement. They thought it was hilarious that the paper could find space for items like, 'Police are appealing for information following a break at a shed on the allotments where a lawmower worth £20 was stolen. If you have any information call ....'
I imagine the subs
knew exactly what they were doing. Believe me, they're laughing at the readers more than the readers are laughing at them.
My Mum and Dad's local paper in Devizes, Wiltshire...
one featured a headline along the lines of "Farmer has one of his sheep stolen."
You try...
...filling a local paper with news week after week when nothing happens, you're chronically understaffed, everyone hates you and you're getting paid a pittance. Grumble, grumble, ingrates, why do we bother, grumble, etc.
I would love
a local newspaper full of nothing happening. Living in a central London borough, mine is full of stabbings: five in one evening this week.
Headlines would be different then.
In an area where violence is rife, then I imagine something like "Granny's False Teeth cause Shock" would be a pleasant change.
It's easy to mock...
but it is pretty difficult to fill a local weekly paper, especially if the same area has a daily. The whole purpose of these papers is to focus on community based stories, as the bigger stories are already covered in the dailies.
Also, these papers tend to have 2 or 3 reporters to fill a whole paper, which isn't easy.
As you may have gathered, I work for one of these papers!
Us reporters do have an awareness of the ridiculousness of it all though.
I'm interested in the stuff that nobody regards as news
My brother in law is a fire officer on the south coast and I asked him what they had to deal with on the usual Saturday night shift. He said there were two things:
1. Fires started when drunken students attempted to cook upon returning home after a night clubbing and then fell asleep with the cooker on.
2. Yobs stealing cars, then driving them across town in order to set fire to them.
It's the monotony of it that tells you so much about how people live.
'Local Man Not Murdered'
A front page headline from a Saffron Waldon local paper. Funny, we were talking about this just last night.
Ipswich
It's been much maligned in these parts over recent weeks, but my favourite ever headline was from a couple of years ago. On top of a double page spread (pages 4 and 5 I think) were the words:
"Station not as busy as you may have thought"
Hard-hititng journalism at its best.
Welcome to Liverpool!
I know you shouldn't laugh but....
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_headline...
Who says
kids are getting too fat these days?
Local
I'm not knocking the local paper,I appeciate it's a hard job, these little stories brighten ones day. If you want more of these little amusing stories check out Scottish paper The Sunday Post. They pay well for articles, I quite often receive a cheque through the post for the grand total of £3.50 for TV comments. That mortgage deposit is still a little way off.......
This was a fun one...
http://www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/news/FRIDAY-13-IS-GNOME-JOKE.2708881.j...
Oh, and I blogged this one last year...
Apparently, the guy behind this is well known for bizarre pranks...
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=79525279...