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Dyson at Large: Child porn, school governors and miracle escapes

Consider the basic facts: 12 counts of downloading child pornography and a local defendant who’s a former school governor.

He’s also an ex-district councillor, so his pictures are on file, and yes – all this information is exclusive on a weekly’s deadline.

What a great, no-brainer splash that will sell newspapers.

And that’s exactly the treatment that editor Gerry Sammon and his team gave to this worrying but important story in their Rochdale Observer on Saturday 24 September.

rochdale_observer

A straight ‘FORMER SCHOOL GOVERNOR FACES CHILD PORN CHARGES’ was all that was needed for the headline.

Given that the case had only just reached magistrates, reporter Katie Storey had done a good job on the content too, squeezing out a very readable 12-pars of detail.

What I also liked about the front page was the calm way this story was contained: yes, a big splash, but carefully retaining six hard news boosts.

‘Slash attack animal won’t ruin my life’ and ‘Tribute to Second World War hero’ both pulled me inside, and that was before I got to the chunky, varied news write-offs down the side panel.

It felt worth the 60p cover price before you’d even turned inside.

Once you had, you quickly realised there would have been plenty of other options if the porn splash hadn’t been around.

‘Fire-hit family’s fury after police reject arson probe’ was the picture lead on page three, with that telling pull-out quote from a detective making it a must-read: “No evidence of a crime.”

The picture leads on pages four and five were no less enticing.

‘Sex assault newsagent walks free from court’ on page four would have got local tongues wagging.

And the page one-boosted ‘slash attack’ that led page five, with a photo of the pretty student victim, was even more readable.

The hard news continued, with other tales that caught my eye including:

• ‘£10m cuts put health centre in the firing line’ on page 7;
• the page one-boosted ‘war hero’ obituary taking up page 15, with a well-selected package of five pictures; and
• ‘Bakery shutdown threatens 170 jobs’ on page 17.

This was a newsy paper obviously desked by a team that knows its marbles and a Manchester-based design pool that happily pays quality attention to weeklies – a rarity in these days of stretched resources.

The Observer – part of MEN Media, owned by Trinity Mirror – had 139 tales on 34 news and features pages, not too bad when the ad ratio meant several pages only contained one or two stories.

The count was helped by several pages of community information, school and faith news, a service that can be undervalued but was taken seriously by the Observer.

Just 22 tales on five sports pages was disappointing, but what was there included good local angles and decent interviews that suggested a dedicated, if small, sports team.

With a 16-page property pull-out, the overall book was 96-pages for the bi-weekly Observer, which sells 16,637 on Saturdays according to the latest ABCs. It sells another 10,965 on Wednesdays.

STOP PRESS
Passing through York on Tuesday 20 September, The Press leapt off newsstands at me. Given that my review of this paper in February last year criticised the front page, editor Steve Hughes and his team deserve applause for the sheer power of this ‘MIRACLE ESCAPE’ picture splash.

york_press

2 comments

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  • October 20, 2011 at 10:52 am
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    Re: the York Press story. Unfortunate Wimbourne with the bottom ad strap, though!

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  • October 20, 2011 at 10:52 am
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    What about the 2 for 1 pizza offer on the top!

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