Britain’s biggest selling regional daily was the first print publication to carry the news of the Leveson Report yesterday.
While the release of the report brought few time pressures for most newspapers, for whom active afternoon deadlines are a thing of the past, for the Express & Star, it literally was a case of “hold the front page.”
The deadline for the Midland paper’s City Final edition is 1.30pm – the exact time the report was being revealed to the world.
Political editor Daniel Wainwright, who was in the QEII conference centre in London for the embargoed press briefing, filed his copy right on deadline with the story rushed on to a front page that had been largely cleared for the report.
It meant the E&S was the first newspaper in the country to report on the findings of a report that could potentially impact on the whole industry.
The newspaper, which had also put together a two-page special report on the Inquiry together with a fresh leader page comment, was being printed within minutes of the report’s release.
Editor Adrian Faber said: “It was great piece of traditional journalism. Our team had got themselves prepared, the copy came across on the dot and everyone worked together to make sure our coverage was clear, informative and interesting to the reader.
“We were the first newspaper in Britain to be on the streets with the story and that is something we can be proud of.”
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Not sure of the local interest in the story but a good PR exercise
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Great effort but sadly misguided.
Anything they squeezed into print I could have watched live on TV. In fact their report would have been behind the story as soon as it was printed.
Rolling news reports followed all afternoon.
The print media’s continued niche, outside of its many exclusives, is setting providing the reflection and analysis – usually a day after the event. The regional press serves its local community – something nobody else does.
Neither of these things are exploited by rehashing the afternoon’s news report. Sadly it’s a common trick at the E&S.
On a trip to the Midlands for a football match on Saturday I noticed they had splashed on Larry Hagman’s death.
Local news for local people…
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Lovely to see Spongebob is heading back though
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Traffic Chaos makes some good points. However… given that the Express & Star is the best-performing (OK, least-worst performing) daily regional with sales still at 100,000, is there not a chance they might be doing something that their readers appreciate? Wolverhampton is not the biggest regional city – Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and several others are larger. But Wolverhampton is the base for a paper – a ‘live’ paper – with the largest daily sale. Long may it prosper (and that’s not easy to say as a former Birmingham Mail man!)
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Fair play to the Express & Star for its coverage. TV news will never match newspapers for in-depth coverage like this. TV news only ever skims the surface.
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Strange for a paper to crow about being first ‘on the streets’ with a story about curbing press freedoms. Seems rather like a pre-Christmas turkey celebrating reaching the abattoir first as its equally unfortunate companions dawdle behind.
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I bet that’s what everyone down the Dog & Duck were talking about last night.
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“Onlooker” made me laugh out loud but I still think the E&S should be applauded for their effort.
Loads of their commuting readers won’t have had access to radio or TV during working hours and not everyone has a smartphone.
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Speaking of last chance saloon, I see a brewery chair has left the building.
Called them bar stools in my day……
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Hmmm, isn’t this just media navel-gazing? Not sure the public care about any of this. If the NotW restarted tomorrow it would sell as many copies as it did when it was scrapped. The less ‘ethical’ a paper is the more copies it usually sells.
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