Pitching tomorrow’s paper today, with news from yesterday

0Daniel Ionescu • 4th Nov 2009 • Media

My local newspaper, The Lincolnshire Echo, whose online practices I criticised before, is pitching tomorrow’s newspaper today, with news from yesterday. Let me explain:

In an article on their website on Wednesday, November 4 2009, sensationally headlined ‘City’s binge drinking crisis‘, there are only (exactly) 50 words of text, which are trying to sell me the printed version of the paper for Thursday, November 5. Here they are:

“New alcohol profiles for England have revealed Lincoln has the second worst rate for binge drinking in the East Midlands.

The statistics reveal that the city came second out of 40 local authorities in the region.

It also came fourth for alcohol related crimes and fifth alcohol related sexual offences.”

The article continues with one last paragraph:

“See Thursday’s Echo for more on the statistics, plus reaction from alcohol prevention groups and city MP Gillian Merron.”

So they are basically telling me that they sourced news yesterday (or possibly today), but they are only going to tell me more about it tomorrow. Well, here’s why I won’t buy your newspaper tomorrow:

1. I use Google search
I will type in “alcohol profiles for England” and (2.) click on the first result (see image below)

3. On that website I am going to look after some press release or spreadsheet with the numbers and I going to look for myself (approximately 45 seconds). You can download the spreadsheets with the data I believe they used, which looks like it was last updated on October 22, almost two weeks before the Echo report was written (corrections for this fact welcomed).

4. So I already learnt about the “more statistics” pitched to me in the article, and I can pretty much guess what alcohol prevention groups will say about binge drinking and the local MP will probably say that she’s working on it.

My point: If I can find and pretty much guess the news that you are pitching to me for tomorrow in about 5 minutes, what makes you think I will buy your paper the next day?

–Later edit: One commentator (Martin, Lincoln) on the article rightly points out: “Let’s hope the source of the figures is revealed, so that we can check them out for ourselves minus the sensationalist, scaremongering tripe that they’ll inevitably served up with…”