Friday moan

[BFR]

Well it is Friday morning again and I think it is time for a bit of a grumble.

 

I've read the local rags to see their coverage of the replay. One has done an excellent job (hat tip to Charles Watts) and captured the mood very well, the other seems to have taken every opportunity to focus on a Premier League team some 20 miles down the road.

 

Case in point

 

The last article from the Slob before the match on Tuesday did not focus on our club, the match or indeed the opposition. No, instead they ran a story saying that a Premier League footballer might attend the match. Given Gareth McCleary played for us many moons ago, I can just about see there may be an interest in this, though I note a similar story was not run about Mo Sharif, who definitely did turn up on the night.

 

Live coverage from the match - a nice touch. Not something that Slob usually do (but perhaps should for regular matches). Strange that the live updates stopped before the match was finished. Stranger still that they felt the need to mention that the Reading manager was in attendance no less than three times. Rather suggests they were spending their time looking at him rather than the match itself.

 

And then today's edition of the Observer. Are Slough featured on the back page? Of course not. Instead they run a story about Super Mac and how he is backing our case to get back into Slough. And run something similar on page 3 too. The story itself is fine, and given his connections with the club worthy of running it. But seriously, back page material? Apparently running a story about Windsor's lack of discipline apparently was more newsworthy for the Slob to run on the back page, rather than us.

 

We've just had the biggest match the club has played in for 8 years. How about the Slough Observer start focusing their attention on Slough Town, rather than feeling a constant need to big up our bigger county 'neighbours'? I'm pretty sure that the Reading papers cover the Royals already!

[Sue]

Oh my god Graham I am so with you, in actual fact I have just rang the Slough Observer and complained to the editor.

 

After all it is the SLOUGH Observer I believe.

 

[Graham Cox]

Maybe Brian McDermott will underline his keenness by promising that he will bring Reading first team to the new ground for the inaugural match.......whenever that turns out to be.

[the optimist]

if you type in reading chronicle you will see why the SLOB is so reading orientated

very similar .i can see a merger coming

[Bernie Gogan]

I believe it may be owned by the same group, and anyway the SLOB hasn't been the SLOB for a long while. It's endeavoured to either minimalise SLOUGH or remove reference altogether and make the parts of greater Slough bigger, e.g. SOUTH BUCKS Observer, Royal Borough Observer, Slough & LANGLEY Observer etc. The objective presumably is to cater for those parts of the catchment area that don't regard themselves as part of Slough. This fracturing of the common identity of the Observer with Slough has been the same for 10-15 years at least.

 

Bring back Rex Cooper, then we had proper reporting of STFC!

[Don Juan DeMarcus]

Haven't read either but if the McDermott calls for football ground in slough is the main article, I see that as a good thing surely? If they have done a Gareth mccleary watch ... Well that's just pathetic. I may be mis informed... As said I haven't read any of them...

[Kaiser Gibbs Batman (KGB)]

Ah! Rex Cooper and his trademark pair of glasses. As BG says, we really did get first rate coverage in the Slough Observer back in his day. And there was also his predecessor, Frank Keating, who wasn't with the Observer for long and later rose to commanding heights in ITV and the national newspapers, particularly "The Guardian". Undoubtedly one of the best English sports writers of my lifetime.

[Beano]

It sounds like your local paper has gone the same way as all of the ones around our way, and most of those I deal with for work.

 

Ten or fifteen years ago, each local paper was distinct and had a sports reporter specific to that title. So, to use an example from my neck of the woods, the Staines & Egham News would have a different sports journalist to the Staines & Ashford News, for instance, with a Group Sports Editor overseeing both, plus maybe the Walton and Chertsey papers.

 

There would be some news overlap between the two titles with "Staines" in the name, but you could buy both and read two demonstrably different papers.

 

Not any more. There has been a massive change in the local press and most titles are owned by major groups that also own national papers. For instance, our local paper is owned by Trinity Mirror Southern, who publish a total of 27 titles ranging from North London across to Surrey and Buckinghamshire. I'm not sure how many sports reporters are covering these papers, but I'll put money on it being 10 or less. It's a similar story in news, albeit with a higher number of reporters.

 

As a result, local papers are grouped into "series" where the only difference between one title and the next is the front two pages. This means Metropolitan Police FC get covered in the Staines & Ashford News (at Ashford's expense!) because that title is part of the Surrey Herald group, which also has an edition that is sold near Police's ground. But it also means Hayes & Yeading dominate coverage in the Northwood Gazette, because they're the highest-ranked club in the area covered by the Uxbridge Gazette series.

 

It makes life for difficult for small clubs at the expense of the bigger boys, because the professional clubs have a wider appeal and are easier to cover because you can share copy between papers with just minor tweaks.