Thursday 16 September 2010

was this a good idea?

a comment on a previous post may not have been seen by all readers, so I reproduce it here: revealing in more than one sense, I think you will agree.

Hi Jane,







Adam at the Chronicle here!






For what it's worth, Mr Salter hadn't actually sent a press release, though I can't claim any great journalistic inquiry either.






It was a simple 'google alert' I still have set up from his time as MP, which flashed up for the first time in a few months at the weekend with the story on the Australian Fishing World website.






I saw your story on it a couple of days later, then that he had put something on his website.






kind regards,


Adam Hewitt






15 September 2010 18:26

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

From this, we can conclude that sub-editors are a rather good idea.

Anonymous said...

Whatever is the point? Is The Chronicle so bereft of news that it has to fill up space with some no-mark's holiday postcards?

janestheone said...

clearly so - and why the Google alert? and why decide to write a story on the basis of my blog post? makes you wonder.

Anonymous said...

I think you should write 'Adam' a charming reply with a sweet postcript - and my fee for providing you with this story is?

Fill in the noughts.

Anonymous said...

Charming!

Jane and anonymous 16.09 - I don't know if you missed my point, but what I said was that I'd seen the Aussie website story before seeing Jane's blogpost, so I didn't write a story on the basis of that at all.

I commented merely because I wanted to disabuse Jane of the notion that a) she was the only one who spotted it, b) that we did a story because Mr Salter told us to, or c) we did a story because we were copying her. None are true.

Sub-editors are a good idea; I'll never disagree with that!

On the point about news value - this wasn't the front page or even a page lead, but a couple of sentences tucked away somewhere. I thought it vaguely interesting that despite his 'political retirement', Mr Salter couldn't drag himself away, and thought some others might too. It obviously wasn't aimed at the typical reader of Jane's blog!

On why a google alert - why not? When Mr Salter was MP, it was occasionally useful to know if he'd made comments to some more obscure news outlet that may be worth chasing up. As I said originally, I simply hadn't cancelled it.

Adam Hewitt

Anonymous said...

Who is 'the typical reader of Jane's blog'?!!

Come on Jane! Start a competition! What would he or she be like?