At first glance, not a bad week for the Herald. A tragic front page story opens an edition with a good mix of community pieces, obligatory court cases and Remembrance Sunday coverage.
But on reading through the paper, I begin to wonder if at 60p I am getting ripped off. From page 11, news fills between 25 and 50 percent of each double page spread (erring toward the 25 percent mark on most pages), the rest given over to advertising. Times are hard and at least advertising keeps the paper going (and the bosses in clover).
Page 3 has a good scoop about Tesco planning a store in Foord Road. This was rumoured in the Herald a couple of months ago, and now the rumours have been borne out: “Tesco chiefs have admitted they plan to run an Express store in Foord Road.”
The next paragraph goes on to explain ‘planning applications were submitted to the council this week.’
Sounds like an odd admission to me.
Still, if we go back to the Shepway applications, we can see that the Tesco applications are included in the November 2 planning lists (http://www.shepway.gov.uk/webapp/query/planning-lists/index.php). Surely this could have made last week’s paper?!?
For an even more accurate date of when the plans were submitted, UK Planning shows them as submitted on October 29 (http://www.ukplanning.com/ukp/findCaseFile.do?appNumber=Y09%2F0952%2FSH&action=Search).
Initially suspecting the journalist was being a little coy with the dates, on reflection it seems more likely that the story was submitted last week and held then inserted in this week’s paper without proof reading and alterations.
Given the amount of adverts this rationing of news could be welcome, ensuring an adequate drip feed throughout the month to keep the punters buying.
The Herald also carries a letter from David Lay, regarding the potential Sainsbury’s development on the Smith’s Medical site, which opens ‘I must object to the article in the Herald on October 28, supposedly a news item but really nothing more than a blatant piece of advertising…’ This is of course the Channel Chamber piece referred to in ‘Monbiot launches…’ post, below.
Oddly, the news that Dungeness will NOT have a new power station built, affecting thousands of jobs directly and indirectly is not covered at all. Michael Howard references it in his column in the very same edition, and the Kentish Express (the ‘other one,’ without the base in the town remember?) managed almost two full pages complete with pictures on this story.
How on earth did the Herald miss this one? Answers / suggestions below please, because I haven’t got a clue. Comments that I really should get out more will not be deleted.
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I haven't seen any of this week's papers but I'll take an educated guess that the Herald didn't miss the Dungeness story; it probably went in the Romney Marsh edition and poor planning meant there wasn't room for more condensed coverage in the Folkestone edition.
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