A regional daily journalist’s pet tortoise successfully predicted the winner of Saturday’s University Boat Races.
The Cambridge News found a novel way of previewing the annual event on the River Thames by calling upon the services of the shelled reptile to help decide who would be victorious in London.
The tortoise, called Jack, belongs to News crime reporter Raymond Brown’s son Eddie.
Jack was put in front of two signs showing the words ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Oxford’, with piles of lettuce leaves placed by each sign, in the News’s office on Friday afternoon.
A video of him making his decision was then broadcast live on the newspaper’s Facebook page.
After 12 minutes of deliberation, Jack crawled over towards the ‘Cambridge’ sign to the sound of applause from the newsroom. Cambridge went on to win both the men’s and women’s races.
Editor David Bartlett told HTFP: “At Cambridge News our ethos is to ‘love Cambridge’, and that means entertaining as well as informing our readers.
“We know that Fridays are a time of the week when people are looking towards the weekend, and lighthearted fun content is popular.
“The idea was floated during a planning meeting for the boat race and Raymond volunteered to bring in his son’s pet tortoise, Jack.
“More lettuce was placed next to Oxford so there could be no claims of bias – naturally as you’d expect we were delighted that Jack predicted Cambridge to win.”
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This is the sort of journalism that can save our industry.
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Really? Is this what things have come to – print resources being sacrificed for this sort of ‘story’?
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FFS.
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Lighten up folks, it’s just a bit of fun. Isn’t there a Trinity Mirror cuts story you should be enriching with your dull naysaying?
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OK, he can pick the winner of a two-horse race. Now let’s see him pick the winner of the Grand National. That would be impressive.
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Wonder if Trinity Mirror used the same tortoise to decide between ‘print’ and ‘digital’?
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And that,dear readers,along with ‘do seagulls have a vendetta against our reporters’ is what’s become of the country’s regional press
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