Local news for local people
David Ottewell of the Manchester Evening News flags up the radically different treatment of the rescue of a police officer attacked by a mob when Glasgow Rangers invaded Manchester for some football match.
Glasgow’s Evening Times hails the cop’s rescue by a ‘mystery Rangers fan’ and plays down his injuries, ‘just sore ribs and a puncture wound to his arm.’ While the MEN has a different spin.
All of which illustrates the importance of a local angle, something clients often fail to see. It’s not unusual for an organisation to find itself keen to support a national, or even international, initiative but be unwilling to research local statistics or dig out human interest stories involving people living in the target media’s circulation area. Sometimes there’s a fear that that localism will divert somehow from the national message.
However, while daily regional newspapers will include some national news, local media will almost certainly not. Stories must be directly relevant to their patch; happening to clearly identified people who live (or, at a push, work) in the circulation area or with facts and figures that are specific to the locality.
And then, as this incident illustrates, it’s worth remembering that local papers love a bit of us-against-the-world championing of where their readers live.
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