AddThis SmartLayers

Dyson at Large: Moving scoop from twins’ grieving mum

The tragic tale of Matthew Goodman, allegedly killed by twin brother Ryan at the family’s new Spanish home, was one of Northampton’s biggest stories of the year.

I’d read the breaking court story in the national tabloids and wondered how the new daily-turned-weekly Northampton Chronicle & Echo would try to take the story forward in its Thursday 28 June edition.

In what must have been a deadline-chasing follow-up, the paper’s news editor Daniel Owens appeared to have landed an exclusive chat with the twins’ mother that made for an emotive read.

With the story already big news, the simple headline of ‘Mum: I’ll stand by accused son’ was strong and would have been a pull for local readers looking for a new angle.

That said, the huge ‘Exclusive’ tag in red looked a little odd misplaced on the sub-heading beneath the picture – the chat with mum was supposed to be the exclusive, not the alleged killing story itself.

The rest of the splash design was also a little confusing – the caption, sub-headings and blob presented a staccato attempt at telling the story when a classier three par write-off would have been much better.

These lay-out stumbles aside, the story itself worked for me on page three, written with an appropriate dropped-intro under ‘A new life in Spain results in tragedy’, with more than 150 words of mum’s heartache.

I say “appeared to have landed an exclusive” above because a search of the internet shows similar ‘exclusive’ quotes in a report by Sophie Scott in the competing Northants Herald & Post under the same dateline, so there may be counter claims as to who got the chat first.

Personally, I’m happy to let Johnston Press, owners of the Chronicle & Echo, batter that one out with Iliffe, owners of the Herald & Post, as the main thing for me was that local readers were served up with a new story, various nationals lifting these regional quotes later that night.

The twin killing was certainly a gripping start for that week’s Chronicle & Echo, giving the paper a dose of hard news quality that I thought was a little lacking on other early pages.

Page two was a complex mish-mash of content boosts, contact panels and weather; pages four, five, six and seven contained two fairly soft and stretched Olympic torch prelim spreads; and pages eight and nine were largely filled with a ‘Week in pictures’ spread, (although the main shot of a local bikini-wearing beauty sitting in beans for charity was an eye-popper!).

It wasn’t until page 13 that I came across another story worthy of a page lead, with ‘Guilty, at 91, of harassment’ telling how Ernest Thallon became Northamptonshire’s oldest person ever convicted of a criminal offence after harassing his wife. Other well-written hard news stories included:

  • ‘Racist man’s mosque row’ on page 18, telling how Nigel Marshall was banned from going within 100 yards of a mosque after abusing Muslims attending Friday prayers;
  • ‘Man-powered plane takes to the skies’ on page 25;
  • ‘Woman denies attack on child in phone box’ on page 35; and
  • ‘Balloon pilot ignored pylon danger advice’ on page 39.

Overall, I thought the new weekly used too many columns and features to fill voluminous space – 136-pages for the main book and Motors, and another 120-pages for ‘The Guide’ leisure package and ‘Property’ pull-outs.

Examples of features that were worth a page but looked weak as spreads included one on youth awards for stamping out hate crime on pages 16 and 17, and another on horse welfare on pages 20 and 21.

And as for columns, there were five in the front end, and most simply took up too much space, like ‘Aufona’, by Richard Edmondson, which had six snippets of local gossip that read well enough but looked windy over most of a page.

Three ‘columns’ together on pages 30 and 31 had a similar affect on my attention – a page of ‘Opinion’ from Steve Scoles, two-thirds of a page from the local BBC’s John Griff and (at last) a column-shaped column from John Gardiner.

By the time I got to ‘Behind the Headlines’ on page 32 I’d lost the will to read, (sorry, Daniel Owens, as the splash writer you deserved more attention, so tell them that four opinions on the trot is too much).

I’m afraid I’m one of those traditionalists who believes that a column should generally be just that – tall, thin and adding zest and colour, not obese and trying but failing to dominate news hungry readers.

A sixth ‘column’ just after the fold was again the majority of a page, but at least ‘County Tales’ was in the context of a ‘Looking Back’ spread and so was nicely broken up with archive pictures and historical cuttings.

Four ‘columns’ also appeared in sport, but these appeared in more restrained sizes of third or, at the most, half pages and were better spread out.

Space-fillers aside, there was still value for money in the £1 Chronicle & Echo, with 200+ stories on 49 news and features pages in the main book, and another 100+ reports on 21 sports pages – and that’s without counting any tales in the leisure, motors and property guide.

And given that life as a weekly is still new, I’m sure the team will quickly improve the flow and reshape the opinion pieces to develop an even better read for a circulation that Johnston claims is growing.

4 comments

You can follow all replies to this entry through the comments feed.
  • July 18, 2012 at 9:45 am
    Permalink

    Dyson writes: ‘…various nationals lifting these regional quotes later that night…’ Why is it the nationals feel they can get away with this – simply ‘lifting’ another reporter’s quotes? Did they get the reporter’s permission? My own experience suggests not.
    Why are the nationals allowed to get away with this? They should get off their a*ses and find their own stories. But I bet the sad truth is they can’t.
    If the nationals didn’t lift other reporters’ stories and didn’t write pages and pages of features and comment about the same blo*dy thing (exactly what Dyson accuses the Chronicle of) their pages would be empty. So much for all these meeja courses!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • July 18, 2012 at 10:01 am
    Permalink

    For info Steve – I spoke to the mother on the Tuesday, H&P spoke to her on the Wednesday. Neither of us knew the other had spoken to her, hence the two ‘exclusive’ tags.
    I would query your claim that the leads on p10,11 and 12 were not worthy of a page lead, all three focused on big local stories (particularly p11 and 12 which were exclusive new lines on what have been huge local issues). For other readers, here are the intros to those stories so you can make your own minds up…
    p10 – Nail varnish factory fire ‘is not arson’ – Staff who cleared out offices at a nail varnish factory on a Northampton industrial estate following a fire have vowed to continue trading
    p11 – Why are shoppers leaving? – The number of shoppers who visited Northampton town centre in the first five months of this year fell by more than 800,000 compared to five years ago.
    p12 – Bins firm given £250k fine – The company responsible for collecting bins across Northampton is due to be handed a massive fine for “poor performance”.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • July 18, 2012 at 3:52 pm
    Permalink

    Wow, the vultures are squabbling over the spoils even when the body’s more than a year old. How distasteful.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • July 20, 2012 at 11:49 am
    Permalink

    Everything that follows focuses purely on the design of the front page we’ve been presented with, not the copy.

    I’ve needed a few days to reflect on this front page. It’s too busy: the eye doesn’t know where to go and it’s not helped as it reads round the page.

    The first thing I see isn’t the splash head but the wine bottles.

    Because of the way the puffs have been designed down the right hand side, my instinct is to treat the splash head as a separate story to the picture and WOB bottom header. If this had been boxed in somehow – all WOB? in a box? – it would have pulled the headlines with subheads together and made more of an impact.

    The idea of using red for the the first word in the puffs doesn’t quite work for me: instead of reading as one head, it seems to be at first glance two separate elements.

    The type and treatment of the page is modern, so why is the masthead retro? It doesn’t need to be, especially after this revamp.

    All that said, I like the concept, it looks like an engaging paper that wants to be picked up and read.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)