A change in the rules now. Previously, this was a one paper per day thing and local papers were strictly out of the running. Now that we're in Phase 2, I'm going to throw those rules out and compare local two newspapers that are explicitly targeting the same market: The Leek Post & Times and Your Leek Paper. But first, a little history lesson.
The Leek Post & Times was formed in 1870 as the Leek Times, and was owned independently by the Hill Brothers Group from 1900 until 2003 when it was taken over by Northcliffe Media (also publisher of The Sentinel, and is in turn owned by Daily Mail and General Trust). Seven of the former Leek Post & Times staff did not like this, and left to form Your Leek Paper. Hence why a town of 18,768 (according to the 2001 census, probably somewhat higher than that by now) has two newspapers to its name.
But now to the newspapers themselves, and we'll start with the Leek Post & Times. The main frontpage headline is "Fears for state of park as gardeners lose their jobs", which is hardly thrilling. The story itself is fairly simple though, standards of park and cemetery maintenance have been in decline for some time now, a state of affairs that has been blamed on staff shortages, so the county council decided to solve this problem by laying off six gardeners. Sounds great, doesn't it?
The rest of the stories have a habit of focusing on semi-notable individuals, like a talented eight year-old golfer heading off to a tournament in Portugal, a woman who's lost a fair bit of weight (which I suppose should be encouraged, though the residents around here don't seem all that fat to me), HGV drivers who are paying no attention to 'no HGV' signs, the now-common sight of protests against government bonuses (this time for council executives) with Steve Povey (who I voted for, representing Leek on the town, district, and county councils) being rather vocal in his opposition to these bonuses, which I would agree are excessive given the council's performance and very poorly timed given the current sentiment.
In some good news, local attractions are doing well as people are tending to spend their holidays closer to home due to the recession, and mortgage arrears have fallen to remarkably low levels. There's also a classic monster mis-print, with one smaller headline reading "12pt Frutiger-Black ghghghghgh". Marvelous. Another screw-up is seen later on, but this one by the county council, who overestimated how many parking tickets they would issue this financial year, and are now facing a £218,000 shortfall. Maybe they can make that up by cutting into executive bonuses?
I expected to find some interest on the viewpoints and letters pages, but nothing of interest arose sadly. The Leek Post & Times publishes once a week on Wednesdays and was 64 pages long this week. It costs 40p.
Now on to Your Leek Paper. The frontpage immediately looks more sensationalist, with the main headline being "DRUGS BARON GETS 11 YEARS" (my dad immediately pointed out that this actually happened in Endon, not Leek, but both the Leek Post & Times and Your Leek Paper are sold in surrounding areas such as Endon as well). This headline also appears on page 9 of the Leek Post & Times as a smaller story under the headline "Car salesman jailed for drug trafficking". Both stories concern a second-hand car dealer from Endon who has been jailed for 11 years for conspiracy to supply cocaine, the amount being seized was nearly five kilograms, worth around £200,000, making it the biggest seizure of this type in the county. So Your Leek Paper certainly managed to find the more exciting frontpage story.
Many of the stories in Your Leek Paper are, of course, covering the same issues as the Leek Post & Times, but some only caught my eye when reading this newspaper. One being residents getting £3,000 from the town council for extra street lighting (why do council stories catch my eye so much?), more on the HGV drivers not paying any attention to 'no HGV' signs (the culprit being an over-reliance on satnav it seems), a few letters debating the wisdom of increasing university tuition fees, and vetting procedures for those working with children becoming increasingly invasive.
I think the most interesting story I found was about Charlotte Atkins (Labour MP for Staffordshire Moorlands) backing a bill for greater transparency into how taxpayers' money is spent in the district. Frankly, anything that makes it easier to see exactly where all that money is going has to be considered a good thing. It'll likely not help her much in the coming general election (Labour are likely to be completely demolished by a Conservative resurgence in this area) but I certainly appreciate it. The problem is that by voting for Charlotte Atkins, I would indirectly be voting for the current Labour government, and I see little point trying to prop it up any more.
That about does it for Your Leek Paper. Just like the Leek Post & Times, Your Leek Paper publishes once a week on Wednesdays. It's slightly cheaper than the Leek Post & Times at 35p, but also significantly shorter at 40 pages today.
Local news is still of little interest to me, though pushing myself to actually read these papers did at least make me learn some things about what's going on. I can't say I have any specific preference between the two papers at the moment though. The Leek Post & Times is a bit boring and stuffy while Your Leek Paper doesn't seem to drag as much. But Your Leek Paper also feels ever so slightly sensationalist and probably isn't as good value as the Leek Post & Times. So no conclusion yet, but I'll try to have one by the time I write the retrospective for this phase of the experiment.
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