Whatever happened to the local papers?

Bill Montgomery - A local press giant

In the London Borough of Barnet, there are three main local papers. There is the Times Series, The Press and The Ham and High. By clicking on these links, you can see a digital copy of the paper edition (although the Times group seems to have given up on putting all but the Barnet edition on the website since last December). At one point all of these papers have won awards for the highest quality of local journalism. For many years, Bill Montgomery used to write an award winning column on the Times, where he'd report on the shenanigans at the meetings of Barnet Council.

I originally started blogging on the Times group, before the Barnet Eye existed. I used Bill's style and column as an inspiration. I believed that the local papers in the Borough of Barnet were neglecting the goings on at the Town Hall. The public agreed with me. To my amazement, my blogs were constantly in the "most read articles" list on the website. This was an online, realtime list of the stories receiving the most hits. As my blogs were not complimentary to Barnet Council, this attracted the ire of the Conservative Councillors running the council and they pressured the editor of the Times, Phil Crowther, to get rid of my services. Rather incredibly, the pretext they used was that I had written an inflammatory blog, detailing how Barnet Council had uploaded a youtube of a BNP sympathiser spouting anti semitic bile onto the Council website as the reason. Amazingly, the council objected to my requests that such an obnoxious piece could be given a slot on the Council website and demanding its removal.

As a result, two things happened. Firstly I set up the Barnet Eye and the Barnet blogging scene was well and truly established (although to be fair, David Miller, AKA Don't Call Me Dave, had set up his own right of centre blog in response to my column, and Dan Hope had also made various efforts to cover Barnet Politics, prior to this). The other Barnet Bloggers soon followed suit, Vicki Morris was first, and Mr Reasonable, Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard soon followed, and the Barnet Bloggers became the voice of the people of Barnet. Whilst that was the good thing, the bad thing was that it seemed to mark the end of the local papers attempt to cover Barnet Politics properly. A new low occurred last week for Barnet's old fashioned press. On Tuesday, there was a meeting of the committee responsible for childrens services at Barnet Town Hall. The committee was reviewing the most serious scandal in Barnet in living memory. OFSTED have issued a report that the councils childrens services were not fit for purpose. The council were debating this. The Barnet bloggers issued a joint statement last Monday to ensure that the issue was given a serious response. However not one of the three papers carried a report in the paper version. These go to hundreds of thousands of local households. The local Conservatives crow that local residents have given them a good rating in a recent survey. I believe that the local press have been complicit in ignoring the failures of the council and not covering council meetings properly. The argument is that "people are not interested in local politics". This is nonsense. I proved this when I had a blog on the Times website and I've proved it again, with the enormous number of hits I receive on this blog, as have the other Barnet bloggers.

Time and time again, we've had huge scoops. Some of the individual blogs on this site have gone viral and had tens of thousands of direct hits. I don't make any particular efforts to publicise the blog, other than to tweet them when I post them. Anyone who looks at the blog does so because they are interested. Over two million hits says  that there is a huge interest. I believe that if the local papers carried proper local news, they'd get more readers and sell more advertising, but there is nothing worth reading in them, whilst huge stories are ignored.  I was disgusted to read on the Barnet Times paper edition on Page 11 a virtual reprint of the press release about high satisfaction in last weeks edition, whilst no mention at all was made of the torrid meeting on Tuesday, where the council had to own up that they have failed vulnerable children. At the end of the cut and paste article it says "what do you think, call our reporter Jenny Desborough". Let me tell you what I think. I think Jenny Desborough should do what local reporters such as Bill Montgomery did. Get down the town hall, get out and  about, read the Barnet Blogs, as we have the stories before anyone else. Work with us and make the local papers of Barnet win awards again. Once again, I will repeat my offer. I'll happily write a guest column or regular blog for any of the local papers that are interested. I won't charge a penny for it. It's not as if I haven't proven two million times that people are interested in what I have to say!

Stalinism at the Barnet Tory Bugle

The Edgware and Mill Hill Times. My local paper. I used to look forward to it popping through the door on a Thursday. In the 70's & 80's, back when Dennis Signy was the editor, it used to be a great local paper. It used to win awards. Being a muso, I especially liked the local music scene coverage. There was a column called, among other things, "Pop Round the Corner". I can still name the writers. Kevin Black - a gregarious Scot who used to write great reviews of my band, The False Dots (without ever turning up). Then there was Joy Bentley. I suspect she didn't much like the False Dots, but she still wrote nice things. Then there was the superstar - Clarence Mitchell. He went on to ITN and was last heard of working as PR consultant for Madeleine McCann's parents. Clarence actually used to turn up. He was also a very nice bloke.

There was also a guy called Bill Montgomery, who was the Barnet Council reporter. He would attend the most boring of meetings and find something to make it seem interesting. He'd make & break the careers of up and coming politicos with a well placed wry observation.

Fast forward to 2009. The paper has morphed into the Barnet Tory Bugle. I detailed this in a blog recently. Whilst the paper is happy to run overtly racist and anti Irish articles and letters, hagiographic peans to promenant local Barnet Cabinet members and verbatim Barnet press releases, it doesn't put letters from opponents of policies such as sheltered housing warden cuts on it's website. Strangely the Barnet Press is full of such letters.

For those of you with an interest in 20th Century history, you will recall that in Stalinist Russia, once someone fell foul of the regime, they became a non person. Artists would carefully airbrush every trace of them out of pictures. References in books would be removed. In short they would cease to exist. Well it seems that following my criticism of the Bugle, they've airbrushed me out. As you may recall, I used to write a blog for the Times, until their in house psychic deemed that at some point in the future, I may get them into trouble. My services were dispensed with, but the blogs remained. I put a link at the side here, so that if anyone was interested they could have a look. For my audacity to criticise them, they've zapped me, if you click the link, you'll see I've gone. Now you may think that this is just a tidy up, but Mike Freer's blog, which ended around the same time is still there. I'll tell you a funny story about Freer stopping his blog. He announced it at a council meeting. I mentioned this in a blog and a reporter from the Times emailed me to prove the allegation. I immediately emailed back with a link to the written answers, posted a week before on Barnets website. I've spoken to David Miller, author of Barnet Council Watch about the Times on a number of occasions and he says they are always moaning that he beats them to stories. I've also noticed that many stories are nicked, with no ackowledgement from the Tory Troll website.

I don't know if you've noticed how thin the Times has got recently. I suspect that this is due to advertisers deserting it. The Press meantime seems to get fatter by the week. I suspect that this is due to the more balanced coverage. I find it rather sad, to see the paper deteriorate by the week. One final twist of the knife from the Times to me. I typed my name "Tichborne" into the Times search engine, to see if any of my 61 blogs had escaped the cull. I found 3. The top one was

The Tragedy of Lady Thatcher - a personal view

This details my sympathy for the Thatcher family on a personal level, coping with their mums dementure.

The second was

The Big Match - Councillor Brian Gordon meets his nemesis !!!!!

Detailing how a local Tory Councillor had done an OK job chairing the Hendon Residents association meeting.

The Third was

Great Expectations (the male view) Part 2 - What's in a name?

Detailing my experiences naming my kids.

In short, anyone looking for my blogs would probably conclude I was a Tory childcare expert. Oh well, catch them while you can, I'm sure they'll be gone soon.

Well how does it feel to be Stalin'd??? In the words of the Rolling Stones

Who reads yesterdays papers, who wants yesterdays news
Who reads yesterdays papers, no one in the world.

I've no pretentions to be Shakespeare or Dickens, I find it rather funny.