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Regional daily falls for rival publication’s April Fool’s Day story

A regional daily reported on a rival publication’s story about a disused railway line reopening – only for it to be revealed that the article was an April Fool’s Day joke.

Independent news website Brighton & Hove News published a story on Sunday morning claiming Brighton’s Kemp Town branch line, which closed in 1971, was set to be reopened.

The site further reported that a Sainsbury’s supermarket would be demolished to make way for the line’s reintroduction.

After the story was published, Brighton daily The Argus ran a piece later the same morning with the headline ‘Sainsbury’s to be bulldozed as Kemp Town rail line to reopen’.

Kemp Town

The story was later deleted from the website of The Argus, although Brighton & Hove News has documented its rival’s coverage of the story.

Brighton & Hove News editor Jo Wadsworth told HTFP: “On one level, we were very amused we had managed to fool the competition.

“But on another, it is worrying that the city’s longest established news source is simply lifting stories without carrying out even the most basic of checks.”

HTFP has approached The Argus for a comment.

14 comments

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  • April 4, 2018 at 8:35 am
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    Yep, a bit of a laugh but also a bit of a worry that papers are just stealing rivals’ stories without checking. And it’s not just the locals either – it wasn’t long ago The Sun lifted a story from Southend News Network without realising it was a spoof. Yet another consequence of fewer people expected to do more and more.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 8:57 am
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    I’m sorry, but we now seem to be in an age of rank stupidity and a failure to carry out the basics of journalism.
    This is a corker, but there are examples up and down the country.
    In my home town the paper has become a dreadful joke, but the editor still insists he’s working with the best team ever, producing the best and most relevant copy ever – except online it appears clickbait is best and in the paper it’s clear the writers have no idea about their patch or its history.
    Cuts, cuts and more cuts are the reason. You can blame the current generation of journos all you want, but they haven’t got the help and advice that people like I had in the 1980s.
    It’s the bosses and there is no antidote until somebody else wakes up and realises that the newspaper barons have had their day.
    The money men would be well to ditch the likes of Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and Johnston Press and start supporting real journalism, with facts being checked and double checked, rather than rumours taken from Facebook or Twitter.
    Now, I’m going to cry into my cup of tea,

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  • April 4, 2018 at 9:27 am
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    OK, it is not the worst disaster to befall a paper, but this is a low point for a paper that I believe was once judged the best in England. While it is funny in a way, it illustrates how poor the quality of journalism is on many local papers. JP will love smirking over this cock-up by a NQ paper.
    But then on another front radio and television often read out stories from newspapers without checking if they are true.
    The disease is catching.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 10:35 am
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    Fairly typical, if my last stint in a regional daily newsroom is anything to go by, of the sheer desperation to generate clickbait content at maximum speed and minimum quality.

    Juicy Facebook rumour? Get it online fast. Sensational Twitter gossip? Re-post it and get the clicks, pronto. Don’t bother making any checks. And if it all turns out to be utter rot? Well, we did just report it was being claimed on social media so can’t be held responsible. Now, forget that and move on to the next batch of clickbait….

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  • April 4, 2018 at 10:44 am
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    So the office junior on Sunday morning thinks they had better get something up on line quick so they can’t be accused of missing out. Except there’s no-one senior on hand to be able to look more closely at the story…
    Reminds me of our local regional daily, whose website had carried this part of an intro, as later shared on Twitter: Just 25 years ago steam engines were still being used to get people to work on time.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 10:57 am
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    I’ve always enjoyed creating April Fool spoofs, but now that “Fake News” is so prevalent, perhaps the time has come to put a stop to this tradition.. Still, no excuse for the failure at The Argus. First rule of journalism completely ignored! They should hang their heads in shame.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 11:05 am
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    The Argus should obviously have checked before running this piece. But the Brighton & Hove News has a weird idea about ‘jokes’ and ‘spoofs’. What’s funny about telling your own readers a lie about a (presumably) much-needed rail line being re-instated and a (presumably) much-used supermarket being demolished?

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  • April 4, 2018 at 11:05 am
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    What we have here is, I suspect, an unfortunate Sunday duty reporter (and Easter Sunday too!) who has seen a story the Argus hasn’t got and followed general orders to pinch it and slam it online as soon as possible.
    While that in itself is not much of a crime these days, what this episode does do is brutally expose the credibility of the modern Argus as a news organisation. This lack of substance can also be seen in the paper’s barely-designed poster-style front pages. Bish bosh, get it out there quick. It’s a sad plight for a once mighty paper and the hard-working journalists are not to blame.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 1:32 pm
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    @BobHaywood “the article was an April Fool’s Day joke” Hmmmmmmm.
    In the word’s of the eminent Dr Sidney Freedman from M*A*S*H “Pull down your pants and slide on the ice.”

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  • April 4, 2018 at 2:47 pm
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    Don’t suppose Sainsbury’s would have been too pleased about it.

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  • April 4, 2018 at 3:38 pm
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    OK so the spoof was a dumb idea. So why copy it? I think the panic-stricken junior duty reporter theory is a good one. If it was a senior I despair.

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  • April 9, 2018 at 5:03 pm
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    Illustrates that under pressure lazy staff in Brighton are slipshod and lift tales from another publication and don’t check facts out first.

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