Sloppy Journalism - the Express & Echo

The Express & Echo – the local, evening newspaper for the Exeter area – is based in Sowton, in a nice shiny, bright new building, about three miles from the city centre. It shows in their journalism. They are always at least two days behind the real news.

Take the massive flooding in November 2000. The worst point of this flooding was in the early hours of the morning of 1 November 2000, at about 3am. I walked around Exeter later on in the day, about 9am, with my camera to record what must be the worst flooding seen around Exeter for decades.

At Exe Bridges, the River Exe was a mere five feet below the road itself and at the steps leading down to the river, on the St Thomas side, you could count thirteen steps up towards the top before you saw the pavement (I calculated this later on when the flooding had gone as it is so many steps down from the top, I forget how many). But there were no pictures at all in the Express & Echo except some taken at least a day later when the flooding had receded. Their pictures did no justice to the danger.

I wrote to them about this later on and one of their correspondents – Rob Sims – phoned up and enquired about the photographs I had taken. He expressed an interest (although he never rang back). But the photos showed the River Exe lapping at the doors of the On the Waterfront pizza restaurant by the quay. Where were the similar pictures in the Echo?

My theory is that Echo reporters just sit at their computers in Sowton, gaining all their information from outside sources. They might take information from the Met Office or Environment Agency and then present that as true reportage in the newspaper itself. But it is not. It is shoddy, fake, lazy journalism. What happened to the days when journalists would actually walk around town and observe what is going on around them? Why didn’t an Echo photographer AND journalists go into town that night to see for themselves what things looked like?

The other week – November 2004 – another desk-bound journalist, Paul Matthews the 'Business Reporter', published an article in which he stated that the new Wetherspoons pub in South Street would open by the ‘end of the month’. But, today, if you walk past the place you can see that it cannot possibly open for at least several more months. It is a shell, shrouded in scaffolding. I should know because I'm waiting for this place to open more desperately than anyone else in Exeter! It'll be a fine, worthy addition to the Exeter drinking scene - though a disaster for the ancient White Horse Hotel opposite (their bar, at least). Probably the best new pub in Exeter since the City Gate re-opened, under Youngs of Wandsworth, about two years ago.

Actually, I also asked a member of staff at the Imperial when it was opening and she says ‘next year’. All the journalist had to do was get out of the office and actually use his eyes in the city centre, something that they just don’t do anymore. They are all lazy morons.

Paul Matthews displayed the same shoddiness when he wrote a piece on the landlady of the Jolly Porter pub in St David's, who complained about no street parking outside her pub (if you please!). In the article, the only parking is the £20 a day stuff in the square outside St David's Station. Yet you only had to walk about one hundred yards along Cowley Bridge Road to find plenty of vacant, cheap parking. About a one minute walk from the Jolly Porter.

The Express & Echo used to be based in the High Street itself and then in Sidwell Street, still in the city centre. In those days, their journalists would mix with real people in the city centre and would travel around for themselves, perhaps even by foot, and would notice what was going on. They would drink in city centre pubs and restaurants and meet real people. No more! We now have, in effect, the Barn Owl circular, an evening paper based on a meeting of Echo workers in the local pub along with staff from their love affair, the Met Office (that ugly, 'flagship' edifice, hidden away behind some hills near the Barn Owl pub).

Is it the same with the decline of Fleet Street in London? Probably not, since London is a city thirty miles wide and most of the action was always in the City – one mile away the Stock Exchange – or in the West End, the Law Courts and Temple near-by. Plus, most of the national papers cover stuff from hundreds of miles away, as well. Would Boswell and Johnson write about places and news that they had never seen themselves?

What is the Exeter equivalent of the famous Old Bell Inn, Fleet Street? I think there should be a campaign to make the Turks Head the spiritual home of journalism in this city. It is on the High Street itself, next door to the Guildhall, and near Cathedral Close. It is the centre of gravity of all the pubs of Exeter, too.

It is time for journalists to rediscover the traditional art of knowing your own patch and literally seeing the area you work in. A bit like being a bobby on the beat, perhaps. They must get out of their cars and the Exeter by-pass and actually discover the city that they represent.

The following excellent website, by Stuart Callon, contains some totally brilliant history and photos of Exeter, all themed around the city's pubs. It covers the historic parishes of Exeter and the modern suburbs, a wealth of Exeter history, all brilliantly and meticulously researched, all in a suitably humorous manner. Find the Features pull-down menu on the left and select 'Floods and Flooding' for some pictures of the flooding and a description of the flood problem in Exeter.

UPDATE
Express & Echo, Thursday, 25 November 2004:
FLATS SCHEME, Page 14, a small box in right hand column:

"PLANS have been put forward to redevelop a three-to-four storey building fronting Verney Street and Red Lion Lane, near Exeter's Sidwell Street, for 67 flats"

This is yet more sloppy, unprofessional, bog-standard journalism from the Express & Echo. I walked past this very site - it is the corner where the two roads meet - on the Monday before this article and happened to notice that the former building has been demolished. NO mention of this in the slap-dash Echo piece, written by some moron in their Sowton offices, just taking it from the Council planning notices, no doubt. How can you 're-develop' a building that no longer exists? Anyway, you 're-develop' a site, not a building; to re-develop a building is to alter a building that already exists. The plan is clearly to demolish the existing building and replace it with an entirely new building.




Exeter Through the Bottom of your Beer Glass:
http://www.exeterbeerglass.co.uk/

For a rubbish website, over-run by sales and the stupid 'Fish For' concept, have a look at this:
http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/