Sound Communication

A SPOOF story about the fugitive Raoul Moat has been reproduced as reality by the previously ‘respected’ AolNews website.

Liverpool-based Robin Brown penned the article ‘”Nation ‘can’t wait’ for Moat shoot-out” for the satirical news web site The News Grind.

Brown waxed lyrical about how 800 schools nationwide had closed in readiness for a bloody shoot-out, while the CBI confirmed that many companies would stop work to watch a potential bloodbath live on their TV screens. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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THE Daily Mail has struck yet another blow for jingoism and anti-Europe sentiment with its latest ‘exclusive’.

The ‘EU is to ban selling a dozen eggs from our shops’, its headlines screamed at the weekend, starting a firestorm of protest all over the internet. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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A RAY of hope for local newspapers this week as five redundant journalists team up to start their own publication.

The five were all employed by the Manchester-based MEN Media before their papers were either shut-down or centralised miles away from their readers, in the wave of cost-cutting prompted by the recession and growth of the internet.

Some doom and gloom merchants have already been quick to give their pessimistic verdict on the venture at the North West media web-site, How Do.

But all those with an interest in local journalism and vibrant, questioning local papers, will welcome the team’s initiative and bravery in setting up PIP Media. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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WHAT next for local newspapers struggling to cope with the impact of the internet and the loss of advertising revenue due to the recession?

One answer comes from politicians in Wales who are calling for public funding for new community newspapers.

They believe, with some justification, that the widespread closures and redundancies amongst local newspapers have had a direct effect on the quality of information provided to local communities. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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SOUND Communication today proudly announces its (slightly intermittent) Annual Media Awards….

And already the nominations are flowing in.

Step forward the Manchester Evening News, the first print publication to win a prized gong.

For the most crass, offensive and distasteful contribution to the subject of mental health awareness, we have no hesitation in nominating the MEN’s Business Matters column of  Thursday 27th August 2009, written by Employment Law Consultant, Paul Davidge, for this shocking headline:

“Is the issue of mental health driving employers mad?”

Whilst this headline was, no doubt, the product of an exodus of journalistic sub-editing talent caused by the Guardian Media Group’s swingeing cuts, we do not think there is any excuse for this kind of glib, ignorant and insensitive description of an incredibly serious subject.

It’s not funny. And it’s not clever.

We hope the writer, Mr Davidge dissassociates himself from this kind of drivel. Perhaps he should seek a public apology?

The Manchester Evening News – once one of Britain’s great regional newspapers – should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

• Interestingly, the on-line version of the column does not contain the offending headline. Thankfully.

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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SHADOW Home Secretary Chris Grayling has been rightly castigated for his intemperate remarks which compared Liverpool and Manchester with the American city of Baltimore depicted in TV’s cult series, The Wire.

Grayling suggested that the level of lawlessness in the two Northern cities was comparable to the fictional bloody, drug-ridden slums of the US city.

Although it may suit Grayling’s political purposes – and attract easy media headlines – to launch such an outburst, it is so way off-beam as to be faintly ridiculous.

So we shall move on.

However, one aspect of The Wire, currently showing on BBC2, which does stand comparison is in its depiction of the current state of  the media.

The fictional Baltimore Sun is closing offices, losing gifted, connected staff and missing important stories as the money men in charge grapple with the onset of the internet.

Swap Baltimore for Bury, Birmingham, or Basildon and the story is the same. Same pressures, same environment, same profane language.

The Wire’s depiction of frustrated but ambitious reporters itching to get out, supine management, declining editorial standards and a supremely cynical City editor, Gus Haynes (pictured above) is strikingly authentic – even for Britain.

As one senior North West journalist commented the other day: “It’s so accurate, it’s almost uncanny. Completely spot on.”

So if you want to find out what life is really like on your local newspaper, tune into The Wire next Monday night. You won’t regret it.

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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THE presses will roll for the last time at the Liverpool Echo on Saturday morning as printing is transferred 40 miles outside the city, to Oldham.

More than 100 jobs have been axed in the cost-cutting move by owners Trinity Mirror, which on Thursday announced half-year profits of £49.1million.

The closure of the Old Hall Street plant brings to an end 154 years of printing in Liverpool.

Both the Liverpool Echo and its stable-mate, the Daily Post will now be printed on presses at Trinity Mirror’s huge plant at Hollinwood Drive in Chadderton, Oldham, in Greater Manchester.

Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, say that the move out of Liverpool will mean “a better, brighter Echo for readers and better long-term prospects for the staff and the business.”

But union leaders accuse the Echo of “hypocrisy” and say it is betraying Liverpool by taking jobs out of the city and harming the Merseyside community which the paper serves. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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CONGRATULATIONS  to journalists at Trinity Mirror in the Midlands for averting threatened compulsory redundancies at their newspapers.

The threat of a one-day strike by journalists this Thursday, seems to have brought Trinity bosses to their senses.

The strike has now been called off after Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, agreed to withdraw compulsory job losses in an effort to maintain the company’s massive profits.

But the closure of a series of Trinity weekly titles in the Midlands has still gone ahead -  just like at other Trinity regional and local newspapers nationwide.

The Birmingham victory is a small but important step forward in the campaign to stand up for local newspapers, which are often the lifeblood of local communities.

Unfortunately, we cannot find any report of the NUJ’s victory in the Trinity titles, the Birmingham Post and Mail.

However, it is to be hoped that the news that  job losses are not inevitable in the recession will spread further afield and help encourage other union members to unite and campaign against the cuts in local newspapers.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, Trinity Mirror will next week switch daily printing of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo from the city, along the M62 and past the centre of Manchester to Oldham, as another cost-cutting measure in a series which have already included job losses, pay freezes and newspaper closures on Merseyside.

• Trinity Mirror made a £196million profit in 2007 and  has paid out £520million to shareholders in the last ten years.

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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A FASCINATING insight into the workings of Government is provided by the right-wing Spectator magazine in its blog ‘Coffee House’.

It tells how Cabinet Minister Ed Balls, a close confidante of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, rang up the magazine’s political editor, Fraser Nelson, to complain about an earlier article which had branded the Children’s Secretary “a liar”.

It is not for us to pronounce on the rights and wrongs of the complex dispute over debt between the pair. Readers can make up their own minds.

But it is quite astonishing that Labour’s Mr Balls, who is in charge of the nation’s schools after all, should take the time and trouble to phone up a Conservative journalist and angrily demand that a blog post be withdrawn. Allegedly.

[Read more →]

Tags: Digital communications, Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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THE Pope’s outburst about condoms and AIDS has understandably caused a firestorm of controversy.

An online petition protesting at the Pontiff’s position has now been started by the excellent global campaigning organisation, Avaaz.

It is clear about what Pope Benedict actually said about condoms on his flight to Africa, where 22 million people are infected with HIV.

As the controversy raged, both the BBC and the Times also seemed fairly categoric.

But then a familiar phenomenon took place. It became a process story: about the Vatican’s press office. [Read more →]

Tags: Media relations by Matthew Finnegan
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