Don't shoot the messenger
It would be fair to say that the Hastings Observer has come in for a bit of stick of late – not least for our coverage of the Miss Hastings story.
More then 70 comments were left on our website passing comment on that story – the majority claiming our story was unbalanced, unfair and un-newsworthy.
The fact that story had more than ten times the number of hits than one of our average and was subsequently followed up by both The Argus and The Daily Star would suggest it certainly was newsworthy.
Was it unfair? I don't think so. Some people criticised the tone of the story, saying it was too sensational and was tantamount to a character assassination. Regardless of my own opinions of the subject, this was a story which by its very nature invited a more tabloid approach – whether people like it or not.
Unbalanced? Efforts were made to contact Miss Hastings but without a contact number, email address and with the Hastings Old Town Carnival Committee unwilling to put us in touch it was nigh on impossible.
Then there is the argument about whether a story even needs balancing. The traditional job of a journalist is to find and report on the truth. Nick Davies, writing in his critically acclaimed expos on journalism: Flat Earth News, says people have got too preoccupied with the notion of balance – often at the expense of truth.
He gives the example of two farmers – one tells a journalist he has ploughed a field, the other says he has not. Today the temptation is often to write a story along the lines of 'A row has erupted between two farmers over whether or not a field has been ploughed.' This is balanced but it is not truth telling. It is fence-sitting.
In the instance of Miss Hastings the truth was clear. She did pose for a series of erotic pictures and she did post these on specialist websites touting for glamour modelling work. That is what we reported. That is what happened. Any conclusions a reader draws from reading that is down to them.
For the record I can't see anything wrong with any woman choosing to be a glamour model. People like Katie Price have used their looks and business sense to earn a fortune from the industry – an industry which feminists would have us wrongly believe exploits and endangers vulnerable young women.
Perhaps, just as people like Katie Price and Abi Titmuss have highlighted weakness in the archaic arguments of feminists, the Miss Hastings debate has shown weaknesses in people's criticism of journalists. Not least the age old whinge that we are too negative.
First of all, the facts: The Hastings Observer employs three full time reporters, one part time reporter and a news editor. That is four and a half people to write roughly 50 plus pages of news covering a town inhabited by more than 86,000 people. Bear that in mind.
Now try and think of the last time you phoned one of your friends up to tell them of something GOOD that happened to you. I bet you any money it was longer ago than the last time you moaned about something BAD happening. Have a good meal at a restaurant, get good service in a shop and chances are you won't tell anyone. But if you have a bad waiter or a miserable shop attendant and you will tell anyone who will listen.
If people like your local binman, councillor, policeman, postman etc do their job well you probably won't notice. If they do it badly you won't forget it.
Where am I going with this? Well, as The Observer's reporters are roughly each having to cover almost 20,000 residents each we have to rely largely on people phoning us up, popping into the office, sending us emails or writing us letters. The simple fact is we just don't have time to go out into the community in the same way journalists did 10 or 20 years ago.
Now put two and two together and it is easy to see the majority of calls we get are going to be from residents who have been wronged - people who have something to moan about.
A local newspaper relies on its readers to tip them off, point them in the right direction and contact them with stories. The reality is people rarely contact us with positive ones.
Even the police only tend to tell us about crimes they want witnesses for rather than arrests they have made, drug dealers they have stopped or criminals they have rounded up.
It is also worth bearing in mind The Observer is an independent newspaper and it not here to massage statistics to pretend our schools are doing well, our streets are getting safer and everything smells of roses in the south's most deprived town. It is to tell the truth and to sell papers. You may not approve with some of the things we write about but I can guarantee the ones most people complain about are the ones which sell the most papers, get the most hits and spark the most debate.
So next time you think The Observer has been unfair, next time you think your local newspapers is full of negative stories or you want to know why we haven't covered a story you think we should ask yourself this: have you told us your good news lately?
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Weather for Hastings
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South
