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Sitting alone in a frankly dull meeting for three hours, then waiting for a few hours for a video to render out / upload, as well as type it up…. to see what has popped online at the Leader…
Newsquest (Leader) & Reach (Daily Post) stopped going to council meetings, and don't even bother with the monthly media brief where open questions are possible. They are in effect paid by the BBC to run beeb reporters to do the job now - nice cash/saving for the huge companies!
This week we sat for a few hours in an Audit meeting and produced a report, and a video, that took much longer than usual. The BBC reporter is off, so we were the only ones there as the others can’t be arsed as is now usual.
The Leader knew the meeting was on, and also knew the BBC LDR would not be covering it so they would not get the usual 'feed'. They had a choice to staff it if they wanted to report on what happened. They did not. We did.
Today the Leader have miraculously managed to write a report on that meeting that follows the same structure of our report, and even adds at the end a bit on a unrelated separate topic (“Investigation B”) that amazingly we chose as well.
We videoed one item on the agenda and published it, the first ever such video as we took the time to read the new constitution (!) The video is not referenced, or credited but along with our article is the source.
The Audit meeting also had a councillor query about statutory notices with it said ‘back in the day’ the Leader et alia were ‘mass newspapers, and now they are not’ questioning the point of such notices there 🤓 (A fave topic of ours...!)
Interestingly a Finance Officer said relevant notices had to be in a ‘prominent place’ - with the implication that does not have to be in the back of newspapers anymore. We look forward to reading about that exchange in the Leader (!) and will be asking @wrexhamcbc more on it.
Back to the topic of the meeting report from a meeting we were the only ones at. There have been similar issues before, with Deeside.com being ripped off as well as we retweeted earlier. Others have huge resources, its choice where/when to deploy them.
If Newsquest's Su Perry (or someone else relevant) wants to arrange to pop in for a chat on this give us a shout. It is just really disappointing.
(Obligatory unroll for multi-tweeted thing threadreaderapp.com/thread/1134817… )
@m_r_barra Had a message from someone that says contractually cover should be provided if LDRs are away, able to fact check that, as if so it seems there was an obligation for them to cover the meeting and give us the output! Would be hilarious if true...
