A regional daily’s exclusive which revealed David Cameron’s hypocrisy over cuts in his constituency has finally gone national – nearly a week after it was first published.
The Oxford Mail reported last Friday how the Prime Minister and MP for Witney had written to Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth criticising “unwelcome and counter-productive” plans to close children’s centres.
Labour leaders in Oxfordshire described the letter as “staggering”, and claimed Mr Cameron did not understand the impact of the Government’s policies “in his own backyard.”
However, it was not until this week that national media outlets began to pick up on the exclusive, written by Mail reporter Matt Oliver, with the story finally making it onto BBC Breakfast and the Today Programme yesterday morning.
The front page of last Friday’s Oxford Mail
Mail editor Simon O’Neill told HTFP: “It has come as a bit of a surprise that this story has only just been picked up by the national press as we broke it last Friday.
“Put simply it’s a very good story from a talented regional newspaper reporter with great contacts and a nose for a story.
“Stories like this are being broken by regional newspapers up and down the country every day and feed into the nationals.
“It’s not rocket science but a good example of bread and butter journalism.”
Mr Cameron’s letter, which was leaked to the Mail, also revealed his disappointment with other cuts proposed to elderly day centres and libraries and claimed Oxfordshire’s spending had actually increased over recent years.
Mr Hudspeth responded by sending a six-page response defending plans to make an extra £50m of savings and accusing Mr Cameron of “inaccurate” comments.
Meanwhile the BBC, which has pledged to do more to credit local newspaper stories it uses on its websites, was criticised yesterday for initially failing to credit the Mail in its reports.
Croydon Advertiser chief reporter Gareth Davies tweeted the corporation’s political correspondent Chris Mason about the issue, who responded that he had believed BBC Oxford had the story at the same time as the Mail.
Gareth posted on the social networking site: “The Oxford Mail’s Cameron letter story a lead on BBC Breakfast. No credit to paper. Another example of that ‘partnership’ in action. If the BBC had to explain where each of its stories came from (it should) local/regional papers would get a name check every day.”
Chris later apologised for the mistake and pledged to credit the Mail when covering the story on the BBC One later on yesterday.
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Call me a cynical old woman, but I just read through this whole article and thought ‘so what?’.
Happens every day.
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Matt Oliver should have sold the story to the nationals as soon as his own paper published it.
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All stories are local to someone and most start in good regional newspapers. No surprise to see it snowball into a national. Not sure about this article or the editor’s ‘surprise’. Happens every week as he later points out.
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Doubly odd; that the reporter didn’t sell it and the editor didn’t immediately push it out to national media to promote his paper.
Definitely not odd that the BBC lifted the story, and then claimed its local station already had it
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In days gone by, Pete, the reporter would have sold it to the nationals with the involvement of his news desk. In my case, myself and the deputy editor would have shared the proceeds. I’d be surprised if it happens now.
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In the old days – before the accountants took over running newspapers – reporters on the regional daily I worked on were encouraged to sell a good story to the nationals after we had published it. The reason was to stop the local agency from doing it. The money earned by the reporters was welcome.
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The clue is the phrase “in the old days”. I’d be very surprised if today most reporters know that it used to be possible to sell on stories to the nationals and keep all or part of the proceeds. Even back then, it very much depended on who your editor was – one of mine used to make a fortune hawking the contents of that week’s edition round Fleet Street (as it then was!) but we were absolutely forbidden to do the same as the stories were the paper’s copyright!
Today “Fleet Street” picks up its stories from regional websites and the less scrupulous of them wouldn’t dream of asking first, never mind paying, but if they do, the money goes into the paper’s coffers, not that of the reporters.
Second, most reporters on most regionals – clearly, with a few honourable exceptions – are employed to fill the holes in their templates with content gleaned from the web in the first place. They have little time to do anything else & therefore they have little time to learn what makes a good, saleable story.
Third: betcha that there are house rules banning this sort of enterprise anyway. Managements caught on years ago.
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Newspaper prints a half decent story which then gets picked up shocker. Nothing to crow about. The very fact that the editor feels this is worth commenting on shows how far many regional papers have fallen. Should be a weekly, if not daily, occurrence.
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We have our own syndication unit selling stories to the nationals – the Daily Mail is full of articles from the Birmingham Mail, Sunday Mercury and Coventry Telegraph.
It makes us a tidy profit, even though the nationals are paying for stories that are available on our websites, which the BBC tend to just lift and re-nose without paying a penny.
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Well done Oxford Mail – brilliant scoop. Thinly veiled theft of stories by the BBC – especially in the regions is embedded in their culture.
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I think the editor was expressing surprise at the fact it got picked up nearly a week after it was published, not that it was picked up.
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At JP, we have an agency called Newsteam that has access to all our news lists and page layouts before they even hit the news stands. They sell all our stuff on to the nationals and we get a cut of the profits*
*one half of the last sentence is not true.
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Don’t know what the situation is now but years ago JP put a stop to staffers flogging their stories – once they had been printed – onto the nationals via a third party. JP got a cut – but not the individual hacks.
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On one paper where I worked, the editor banned the reporters from selling their own stories to the nationals so he could do it himself. The cash raised was then used to fund the office football team’s annual summer tour with whatever was left over put towards the office Christmas party.
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Theft of stories? Come on. It’s news. No one owns that and it should NEVER be credited. Remember your law exams – there is no copyright on information. As soon as it’s out there, it’s up for grabs. It’s not a turf war, it’s just about getting there first every time – and not blooming well sending press releases to holdthefrontpage.co.uk when you do. That’s your job. News. Get there first. ‘Ends’ of.
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Regarding selling stories, when I was coming up I did it all the time, as other commenters did, with official encouragement; it was how you learned what a good story was and how to write one, and developed contacts with the nationals’ stringers. Contrast that with the experience of a colleague on a Plymouth paper which shall remain nameless who gave away – he didn’t even sell it – a story he’d brought in which the newsdesk had already rejected, and was promptly dragged into the editor’s office and threatened with the sack. Lions led by donkeys…
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