Readers are to be consulted on “exciting plans” and changes to a weekly’s print and online editions.
The Northamptonshire Telegraph has launched a “reader panel” with the aim of getting feedback on what the Johnston Press-owned title is offering.
Participants will be asked to complete online surveys asking for their opinions on various topics relating to the paper.
An announcement on the Telegraph’s website says panel members “can help shape the future” of the title by joining.
It reads: “We have got exciting plans and some changes we want to make after feedback from readers and website viewers.
“But we need more opinions to make sure we deliver the news, views, sport and advertising service that you want in print every Thursday and on the internet every minute of every day.
“So, if you have something to say about the Telegraph, tell us about it.”
The piece adds: “We want the newspaper and website to be the very best they can be, and you can help us do that.”
Telegraph editor Neil Pickford declined to comment further on what changes were planned when contacted by HoldtheFrontPage.
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Wow. Going from daily to weeky, moving from its imposing (but incredible shrinking) offices in Upper Mounts. Now this. How much more excitement can the readers take?
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Wasn’t a reader panel the prelude to the readers writing the copy for the paper at a JP title in East Yorkshire?
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Upper Mounts used to be home to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, ‘Idle Rich’. The Northants Telegraph is based in Kettering.
Go on – have another go…
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The traditional method of measuring what readers thought of your paper was counting how many copies they’d bought. I suppose now that as the desperately low figures make such bad news for management they have to resort to nonsense like this, which will provide them with ‘feedback’ that can be manipulated to reflect anything they want it to.
No doubt in a few months time they’ll do a piece on how well the operation is doing, ‘according to our readers’.
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Use of the word ‘exciting’ is usually a bad sign…
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Oh great, more “exciting plans” from Johnston Press. How many newspaper staff are the suits planning to make redundant this time?
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‘We don’t want loads of ads cluttering up the website’.
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Where are the LEADERS in editorial departments these days? All this checking and consultation before acting – any editor worth their salt knows their audience and makes sure the content is right for them. Simple. Re-designs, reader panels, focus groups, online surveys…all the editing equivalent of moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic. It’s the content, stupid.
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I agree with Golam Murtaza – as soon as ‘exciting’ is mentioned you can remove the ‘c’ from that word to describe what many members of staff will soon be doing. Northants is a mystery to me but there must be plenty of ‘thrilling’ Job Centres to accommodate new entrants to the remuneratively challenged arena there.
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Couple of decades ago my evening paper (before JP got its hands on it) had a year-long reader consultation involving a highly paid team of pollsters, focus groups, redesign, everything and the kitchen sink thrown at it. The editor worked on it full time for many months.
We were told the readers were mainly women and they wanted things that interested them, so fewer court stories and more human interest – bit like Hello crossed with supermarket celebrity junk fodder. The more headlines we could write with “I” in them the better.
So what happened? We went all pink and fluffy, readers deserted us in even bigger numbers and the million-pound research project was a waste of time and money.
What did we learn? That readers lie basically. They tell pollsters what they want to hear but it doesn’t make them more likely to buy the paper and their choice of content alienates everyone else.
Can we stick to news please? That’s what newspapers are for.
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Give them a chance. I know the industry is in self-destruct, run by incompetents. But the few good people (journalists) left have got to try something, and need the constant friendly-fire sniping like a hole in the head. When the last paper closes we will all be sorry.
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I don’t know whether its a good thing or not for the plans to be “exciting”.
But I’m not convinced that excitement is primarily what people want from a local paper. Personally, iwhat I like to see is some solid coverage of what’s happening: some professionally-reported stuff mixed with (edited where necessary) “pour-it-all-in” community news
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Suggestions for any weekly.. Get reporters out in the beat covering local events including court and council meetings and sport.
Write in proper English. Use only very good photographs, taken by professional reporters or only the very best of occasional submitted.
Have an office in the biggest town on your patch, with at least one reporter who lives on the patch and therefore knows what makes it tick.
Have local office open to public, instead of sacking receptionists.
Be 100 per cent impartial politically.
Never, ever, put a press release on a page without rewriting it and expanding it if needed.
Never let a shop bill go unchanged (some are weeks old).
Can JP manage this?
And can I have a job?
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If that is the best way to ensure having news of interest to readers, then they might as well just replace all editors with ‘reader panels’ or should I say ‘non-reader panels’.
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Nothing ‘exciting’ happens in Johnston Press these days, only cutbacks. Go on JP, launch papers, increase your editorial staff, keep photographers, that would be exciting. But won’t happen.
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Journo Turned Reader – was that the same market research that concluded that readers were more interested in what was happening at the local sports centre than what was happening at their city’s two major
football clubs?
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Whoops! I meant pictures by professional photographers. Whatever made me think of reporters taking pix. How stupid.
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I’ll be interested to hear the results from this exercise. But I will be surprised if the true feelings the Tele reader will ever be published.
I was axed from this paper last March, in one of JP’s notorious photographic purges.
As we were generally the face of the paper, Northants readers weren’t shy about their criticisms of the way ‘their’ paper, as they seen it, was being treated. Not once did we get a positive viewpoint.
In my view, the biggest mistake (and there are many) the oracles at JP made was to make these dailies into weeklies. Combining the Northants Tele with the Chronicle and Echo and creating one regional daily, with a sprinkling of dedicated local pages, would have made better sense. But hey, what do the staff at a locally produced paper who know what their readership and advertisers really want, know anyway?
The good folks of Northants (and other local JP publications) deserve better than the ‘Template of Crap’ and the god-awful ‘UGC’ that AH & Co seemed to be obsessed with.
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Hey JP. You want to make this paper a success? Then sell it!!!
Give it to someone who cares about it, who knows their readership, what they really want. Give them what they deserve… a product they can be proud of, interested in and are happy to pay for.
After all, it’s not like you couldn’t do with the money.
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Readers don’t know what they want until it is put in front of them. Good editors know their market and target their papers accordingly.
The great thing about regional dailies – as opposed to nationals – is that they have the potential to appeal to all sections of the social spectrum.
Strong local news content, hard-hitting investigations, excellent pictures, compelling features and good old-fashioned gossip are what newspapers ought to be about.
Add to these trenchant comment and unrivalled sports coverage and you’re on your way to producing a ‘must buy’ product.
Reader panels generally produce airy-fairy, idealistic nonsense – ‘let’s write only good news etc’ – that does not translate into newspaper sales. UGC means ‘Unbelievably God-awful Crap’ produced by people who wouldn’t know a story from a stairlift, have no idea how to write and produce poorly composed photos.
All of this is obvious to real journalists, but the ‘suits’ don’t get it. Where do they get these people from?
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It’s quite simple, pick up a weekly newspaper circa 1900, take a look at the content and writing style, and replicate it – they were in a different league then in terms of detail, coverage and ability to write with style.
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