A regional daily was the first in England to carry front page images of last night’s tragic fire in London.
The Oldham Evening Chronicle, which still prints on the same day as publication, ran photographs of the inferno at Grenfell Tower, in Kensington, which has claimed the lives of at least six people.
More than 60 people have been taken to hospital as a result of the fire, which was reported shortly before 1am this morning.
It is not yet known how the blaze was started.
Chronicle managing editor David Whaley said: “Whilst we are first and foremost a local newspaper and lead on local issues most of the time, the breaking-news nature of the London blaze and its seriousness very quickly promoted the story up our news agenda.
“The Press Association did an excellent job with news and pictures and we felt justified that this was the story everyone was going to be talking about.
“We pride ourselves on being able to deliver on overnight stories and evening meetings etc in real time.”
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Perhaps this is a reflection of my ignorance, having worked almost exclusively on rural and suburban weeklies rather than city dailies, but wouldn’t it have been better to keep the focus on a local/regional issue rather than something happening in London, however massive and tragic it may be?
I know it’s not unusual for dailies to splash on national / international news but I’ve never understood why – aren’t people more likely to buy a national if they want to read that sort of thing? And shouldn’t a regional paper’s USP be its strong local flavour?
Please enlighten me. Yours sincerely, Confused of Berkshire.
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I thought the Evening Standard was a regional daily?
The Oldham Evening chronicle is barely a regional daily, sells less than 7000.
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I have to agree with jimbledon, why a local paper in okdham felt the need to splash an ( albeit tragic )event in London I can’t guess, unless it was to impress others on the ‘first with the news ‘angle as this type of event wil be better covered and in greater depth in abdvon the national news media, I doubt people would pick this up to read about it, if anything it would in all likelihood, just act as a pointer to online news sites
The strength of a local paper should be localness, so to jump aboard a national tragedy such as this with no real local angle is, to my way of thinking, pointless
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The Chronicle covers national and international stories every day – like a lot of regional dailies.
The press around the world covered this dreadful fire – and its relevance extends beyond being a local tragedy. Anyone living in a tower block anywhere will have been affected by this.
What’s sad, industry-wise, is none of the others now has a morning edition for live news: they all offer, at best, news from the previous evening. In age when people want the latest info. not what happened yesterday.
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Dave S: The Oldham Chron’s regional and it’s a daily. Ergo, it’s a regional daily – barely or otherwise. On the other hand, the Evening Standard may claim to be a regional daily but it’s clearly not up to the job it should be doing.
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Ho Hum is perfectly right – that is the job of any daily paper; to show it still has news values and the passion for live coverage which override local relevance.
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I know it is some time since I worked on the daily Bradford T&A but occasionally we would splash on a national story. For all we know there may be people in Oldham who have relatives/friends caught up in the disaster and will come forward with follow up stories. Regional dailies also used to have at least a page outlining national/world events thanks to the Press Association where I also worked. Sometimes being too inward looking can backfire.
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First to print, amazing! Imagine if there was a medium which allowed me to see these images, plus video and much more about this fire throughout the early hours when it was actually happening…
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Whilst accepting the valid points made by other commenters on this thread I still maintain a local regional paper should lead with a major local piece or direct relevance to its readers and communities.
I’m sure most of the people in Oldham will have caught up with this unfolding tragedy in tv, on line or via news feeds making this coverage old as soon as it was on the streets.
In a digital age local papers are not sought out for instant and breaking news,they have their strengths but being first to press, unless it’s local to the publishing paper, isn’t one of them
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Jesus…just imagine the treatment that would be meted out by this HTFP hanging jury if the Oldham Chron had done something wrong! How about we all just light a scented candle or two and celebrate journalism being done in a tried and tested way. Not everyone is glued to a digital device 24/7. Another consideration is this: as with countless other towns and cities, Oldham has a number of tower blocks and residents of these will be paying close attention to the story. Their local paper will be a trusted source. So there is a sound journalistic and commercial imperative driving the editorial decision-making process. Yes, commercial – if things don’t get sold, there is no profit and no-one gets paid.
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What a sad lot you are! Armchair critics of an enterprising regional daily. Yes, it is true local news is the life-blood of regional dailies but to ignore a disaster the scale of London’s towering inferno would be doing not only a disservice to the paper but to the readers who are still prepared to dig into their pockets to pay to be informed! There must be a lot of similar high rise blocks in Oldham with very worried tenants and this is an angle to be explored on the back of a national story.
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It’s pretty much a sad fact of life that people actually are attached to digital devices or tv monitors 24/7, the worlds moved on from news being first in a newspaper so the race to be first is somewhat irrelevant, however it will be very interesting to see how the chronicle,and other regional papers who have tower blocks on patch, respond and follow up in their own communities.
As for kevin Duffys point about commercialism and the paying the wages line, it might have been more appropriate, if running with an image such as this, to drop all adverts on the cover and let the image speak for itself.
Follow up sound, back to basics investigative journalism seeking answers and reassurances and forcing direst action if any is needed in the wake of this tragic event ,on behalf of local tower block residents across the regions really will be something worth shouting about.
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Old Hack, by that logic, every local newspaper in a town or city with concert venue or a bridge should have splashed on the recent terror attacks. There was no doubt about Manchester or London papers running with them but I’m not so sure about anyone else unless they’d got a specific local angle.
For me, the problem with running a generic splash on such a fast-developing story is that it was at least hour old the second it hit the stands. Its value as a front page in making people pick up the paper would have diminished more and more quickly as the story progressed.
By mid-morning, it might as well have been last week’s news and, as a result, I suspect fewer copies were casually picked up as the day progressed. If it had been a local story, there would have been more of a of morbid interest in having a local paper from the day it happened despite it being ‘old news’ before lunch.
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No mention of the fact this was in London in header or strap, a cynical tease to make people think it was local?
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