{"id":847,"date":"2012-12-16T09:31:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T09:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=847"},"modified":"2012-12-17T15:46:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T15:46:38","slug":"the-importance-of-local-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=847","title":{"rendered":"The importance of local knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bristol, for its sins, is afflicted with The Post as its (ahem!) newspaper of record.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s online edition carries a glowing report<\/a> of the opening of “a new £7 million care home which will treat patients with dementia has opened in south Bristol. Private firm Brunelcare has opened the new home in Whitehall after years of planning”.<\/p>\n

However, there’s one major problem with this story: Whitehall is a district of east<\/em> Bristol, not one south of the river, a mistake which even the much-maligned Wikipedia<\/a> manages to avoid.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this absolute howler drew some very pointed comments from readers, of which this is perhaps the most sarcastic and biting:<\/p>\n

I suppose we must be grateful that the Post didn’t describe it as being in Plymouth. What a truly dreadful “newspaper”!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another comment drew comparisons with BBC Radio Bristol:<\/p>\n

Radio Bristol’s just as bad.<\/p>\n

Every weekday morning their travel woman tells of us of traffic queues IN KEYNSHAM on the A4 between Hicks Gate and Emery Road.<\/p>\n

This means that the Brislington Park and Ride, St Brendans College and the Brislington cricket and football grounds have all moved out of Bristol into Keynsham.<\/p>\n

Hicks Gate to the city boundary is a distance of 400 metres; city boundary to Emery Road is over 1200 metres.<\/p>\n

Another Radio Bristol presenter told us that Shirehampton is near Bristol and they all seem to believe that Avonmouth is outside the city too as it’s described as ‘near Bristol’ routinely on Radio Bristol and on the local ITV and BBC news programmes.<\/p>\n

Where do they think is it? North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Gwent, Greater London?<\/p>\n

Oh for the days of Roger Bennett and John Turner, two highly competent broadcasters with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Bristol. Nowadays we get people who aren’t very professional (with one or two exceptions) whose knowledge of the local area is nil.<\/p>\n

Clearly the Post hacks are no different.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, both The Post and the BBC have shed staff in recent years and the wealth of local knowledge that former staff or those with long service has vanished, as a result of which the quality of local media has clearly suffered.<\/p>\n

To conclude here’s a bit of free advice for Bristol Post journalists: just because the paper’s now printed in Didcot<\/a>, don’t make it look as if it’s written there too! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bristol, for its sins, is afflicted with The Post as its (ahem!) newspaper of record. Yesterday’s online edition carries a glowing report of the opening of “a new £7 million care home which will treat patients with dementia has opened in south Bristol. Private firm Brunelcare has opened the new home in Whitehall after years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[40,10],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","tag-bristol","tag-facepalm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}