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Midlands daily praised for bid to bring club home

A regional daily has been praised in the House of Commons for its campaign to bring its local football club home.

Coventry City FC is due to return to the Ricoh Arena in the city tomorrow after a year of playing its home games 35 miles away in Northampton.

It follows a long-running campaign by the Coventry Telegraph to bring the club home which was highlighted in the Commons yesterday.

Labour MP for Coventry North East MP Bob Ainsworth praised both the paper and reporter Simon Gilbert who has helped lead the campaign.

He told the House:  “The fans have to be congratulated, having organised a pretty effective boycott of the alternative home venue.  Local journalists should be congratulated, too.”

Highlighting the Telegraph, he added: “It has a first-class local journalist, Simon Gilbert, who has brought straight, unbiased reporting to this issue, which has done great credit to him personally, to his newspaper and to journalism in general. He should be congratulated on his in-depth reporting over a long period.”

Last month Simon, pictured below, took copies of the paper to the football club owners’ base in London as a reminder of what the fans want.

It followed publication of a front page comprising selfies of fans signalling their support for the campaign by photographing themselves with a #bringCityhome poster.

6 comments

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  • September 4, 2014 at 9:58 am
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    Could they wage a campaign to get our city its daily newspaper back?

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  • September 4, 2014 at 11:44 am
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    A praiseworthy campaign and Simon is no doubt pleased with the result. However I’m sure the irony won’t be lost on many – past and present – in the industry. The mere thought of moving employees and the premises of a business out of the town it serves to somewhere miles away is appalling, and I’m sure one that no regional publisher would ever entertain…….

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  • September 4, 2014 at 2:01 pm
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    As good as the Telegraph campaign has been – it’s been excellent – there are two things that need mentioning here.

    The first is that the paper seems to have expelled from history the fact it ever employed award-winning journalist Les Reid. Let’s not forget, it was Les who first put the meat on the bones of this story. When this story was at its toughest and most complicated, there is no doubt he led the way.

    The second is the fact that Bob Ainsworth and Les are well known for disliking each other, and Mr Ainsworth no doubt spotted an opportunity to have a dig in his direction… By referring to Simon’s work as ‘straight and unbiased’ he is therefore claiming that Les’ work before him was not, and that is simply untrue.

    So while the Telegraph has rightly seen bags of praise for its coverage, I hope the paper doesn’t forget the story’s roots, or the reporter who built the foundations for the latest campaign’s success.

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  • September 5, 2014 at 4:57 pm
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    So an pm stood up in parliament to praise a paper and a reporter just to spite another reporter who he didn’t like? Come off it. Surely a truth seeking journalist shouldn’t be making his feelings towards those he reports on so well known?

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  • September 8, 2014 at 12:29 pm
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    Outstanding work by Simon. A campaign worthy of an industry award.

    A little sad, however, that ‘covman’ wishes to cast his shadow over those excellent achievements by feeling this is the time and place to make a political point about a battle with an MP.

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