Public relations consultant /blog

The eveining mail in barrow is a second class publication, very little news in the area so they do report on some of the most silly stories. When I moved over here from the “big city” i was often in stitches at the reports, such as, “Dustbin lid stolen during the night”

The campaing against Thorntons only hurt local people that were employed in the store. (the town needs investors to come and not feel intimidated by the “Local Rag”)

Even now, weeks after the event, the Mails web site is still carrying the story. “Blogger goes home”. How sad these little local papers become.

I completely agree with your sensible and balanced views on this situation. The overprotective locals have zealously jumped all over these probably light hearted comments fuelled by the irresponsible local paper. While there may just about have been merit in informing the public of the attitude of the new manager of a local business, the tone and style of their reporting was way overboard, provocative and overly protective of the town.

The manager was irresponsible and unprofessional in displaying his comments on a web page which could be accessed by the public – potential customers. Nevertheless he was entitled to his thoughts and forgiven for thinking they would probably drift off into obscurity in time. Instead, the local paper sick of Barrow being kicked down again, hounds a young man out of his job. Tone cannot be assessed on the internet so clearly as in speech or actions and for all we know his comments could have come at the end of a trying time or have been simply ten-a-penny expletives of little meaning, commonly used by young people.

The Evening Mail should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and the fracas they caused via their hyperbolic reporting of a non-event. In no way was it ever suggested Mr Beall’s perceived dislike of the town transmitted to prejudice of the locals he was serving and may well have been doing his job well. A job he was to lose just before Christmas.

Typical of the barrow in furness evening mail to make up a story out of nothing.

Court cases are sensationalised to make something out of nothing,defendants suffering from depression are described as being mental!

Barrow police are beyond reproach and Dalton Zoos dave gill has regularly been harrased for having one of the few local amenities in the area!

I believe the story was in the public interest as it was a manager of a new store which had been given plenty of publicity in the Mail.
I agree Barrow can have little news sometimes so it rose up the news list.
It was picked up by most nationals and radio so it was quite clearly a good call to run the story financially and it had news value.
Whether it was ethically right given the background and the manager’s age is another question but the paper was covered to my mind by codes of practice. At the end of the day, journalists have a job to do to survive as well.
The Mail is a tabloid paper so bear that in mind with reportage – it’s not the FT.
The reporter who wrote that story has since left the company.

I think the power of the internet can be quite scary, but no one should get run out of a town simply for expressing their feelings, its called freedom of speach.

There is always a less than orderly queue of people lining up to slate their local paper. Normally they can’t spell and wouldn’t know a news story if it served them a bag of Thorntons mixed fudge.
Does the fact there was such a strong public reaction and subsequent media coverage indicate
a) that this wasn’t of interest and shouldn’t have been covered
or b) that the Evening Mail was writing about what people in the area cared about and set part of the national news agenda in the process?
Dull-witted professional whingers like your correspondents wouldn’t last two minutes in a daily newsroom.

It quite clearly WAS a story. The fact that it “went national” and we’re still debating it proves this. Us bloggers and Myspace users are publishers and journalists too. We have to live with what we say.

Once you press that publish button it is “out there”. People might be naive about this but they have chosen to make the statement they have.

We all need to think differently. We do not own our opinions once they are published – they can be replicated and discussed. Millions of people across the world can read them.

Surely, in this respect it is okay for the Barrow evening newspapers to take issue with someone who has bad mouthed their town.

tbh i think that this article was written to fill the newspaper of barrow-in-furness because there was nothing better to put in it. steven was moved from barrow imediatly after the newspaper was published and i think he was probably quite glad to be rid of the place. he did not lose his job and is still working with thortons to this day. barrow-in-furness just needed a page filler which they got and much to the people of barrows discust, went on with his job as if nothing had ever happened. being sucked into this story was pathetic and steven was just expressing his freedom of speech just like everyone else can do on myspace.