A video of rioting football fans after a local Derby match has now chalked up 9,000 downloads on an evening newspaper website.

Swansea City football club played their historic rivals Cardiff City in a round of the Carling Cup in September, winning 1-0.

Given the history between the two teams, South Wales Evening Post journalist Ben Wright was there with a video cameraman to film any trouble after the match.

As predicted, violence flared with Swans fans throwing missiles at the police after the Cardiff fans had been bussed from the scene.

The footage of the trouble, posted on the Evening Post’s www.thisissouthwales.co.uk site the following day, has since had more than 9,000 downloads.

Web content editor Paul Turner said: “We knew there would be a huge amount of interest in this game as there is a big rivalry between the two clubs.

“It was clearly disappointing that there should be trouble following the match, but the threat of it was anticipated, so we had a cameraman and a reporter there ready to cover whatever happened.

“Because it had been a number of years since the two teams had played each other, this was the first time we had been able to carry video coverage of events outside the stadium.

“It was very satisfying to be able to bring the news to our readers in another format and the number of downloads of the video reveals just how successful this kind of journalism can be for regional newspaper websites if the subject matter is of a compelling nature, which clearly, this was.”

The nine-minute-long video can be viewed here.

Comments

Puzzled (18/11/2008 09:17:28)
Lord knows, I don’t want to denigrate good work by other journalists, but 9,000 hits? My paper (a weekly) had 38,000 downloads on a video of a few wobbly lights in the sky.
Seeding.

HoldtheFrontPage (18/11/2008 10:08:27)
Dear Puzzled,
We are always keen to publicise regional press success stories so do feel free to tell us more about your video via [email protected].

Paul (18/11/2008 10:16:59)
It makes you weep that journalism has come to this. Hanging round filming violence for the titillation of cyber-hooligans.

Puzzled (18/11/2008 12:05:31)
Dear HTFP – I’d be happy to let you know if I thought we had done anything particularly outstanding outside the normal day job of doing what we ought to be doing anyway.

AL (18/11/2008 12:40:31)
Paul – if you want some real journalism just read the story above this one.

Darren (18/11/2008 13:10:00)
Welcome to the Danny Dyer / Ross Kemp/ Chris Ryan school of journalism guys !!

AL (18/11/2008 18:07:42)
” we had done anything particularly outstanding outside the normal day job of doing what we ought to be doing anyway”
I know this is simply people writing on a website noticeboard.
But I can’t help wanting to sub it.
Um, right, I’ll get me coat…… and P45. Perhaps one of the executive associate multimeeja content platform editors could film my leaving party.

taffy mctaffy (19/11/2008 16:15:36)
This is why excitable local paper reporters and their shaky twitchy camcorder mates should stick to trying to re wrtie press releases and let true photovisual journalists cover true stories, not ‘many police stand in a row’ non stories

Jaydid (20/11/2008 15:02:45)
Taffy – do you actually think most reporters choose to use video technology and think they’re any good at it? It’s now a requirement in a lot of newsrooms that they upload so many videos each week to meet targets, regardless of whether any of them are really trained in the use of multimedia. This often results in your “‘many police stand in a row’ non stories”.
Don’t blame the reporters for the fact “true photovisual journalists” are not given these jobs. It’s the managers who have created the situation through lack of foreight and investment.