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Meltdown At The Echo?

By on September 4, 2012

What’s going on at The Echo? First they get into a tizz about restaurants wanting better written, fairer food reviews, then they advertise for ‘non journalists’ to find stories, then this dreadful gaff on the front cover…

This follows another gaff a few months ago - one that prompted Jeremy Vine to tweet ‘Horrendous Front Cover on the Echo. Please never let this happen again…’. Well, it has. Mistakes happen, we all know that. But these are bigger than that, and someone should be accountable. Time for someone at the top to say goodbye?

The Echo is still Liverpool’s premier media outlet. It should represent us. Increasingly, it’s becoming something of an embarrassment. Yeah, we know, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but we’re getting tired of its slapdash, lurid, cynical editorial policy - and the car crash juxtaposition of headlines that can only come because those at the top simply don’t care anymore. If they did, this sort of thing would have been spotted long before the Oldham presses ran.

The ironic thing? The Post is still a decent paper, but at 7,000 ish sales a week the paper gets less readers than us nowadays. The Echo? Well, shock headlines of murderers getting a gig at the Arena still sell enough to keep the advertisers happy.

(Edit: here’s another corker from 6th September, courtesy of @Vicky_Anderson)

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  • shoo

    The cover’s doing the rounds here now - no newspaper is immune to mistakes of course but surely someone has to sign off the proofs before they go to the rip

  • Aaron

    Haha.

    A few years back, my wife set up a children’s summer school (for Acting). We paid quite a bit for a press ad to go in the Echo and they printed it next to a big story about paedophiles in the City.

    Thanks guys!

  • Peter

    “becoming something of an embarrassment”? No, it has been an embarrassment for some time now. A trophy for any scally kid who gets their picture in there. I tell the woman in the newsagents by my work from time to time as I put my purchases down on the pile of Echo’s at the til “I might buy it if it had good news”… and she agrees. Foul paper! Probably not even owned by scousers!

  • Jumbo

    It’s an absolute rag nowadays. It’s a shame Trininity Mirror are so clearly trying to bury the superior Post. (I give it 6 months) in favour of the Echo.

    Unfortunately, mistakes like this happen when cuts are made. Sub editors are always the first in line when cuts are enforced, and it means a newspaper’s often riddled with errors. But overall, the tone and focus of the Echo is shameful. Compare it to the Evening News in Manchester - which doesn’t focus on murder, crime and misery and is a solid read.

  • Vicky

    I LOLed heartily at these. I am a very bad person and I am going to hell.

    Worth it though.

  • Wavertree Warrior

    Certain journalists don’t even have the decency to reply to direct emails, tweets, or even phone messages. If you’re not in their ‘in crowd’ you don’t stand a chance of getting any coverage, no matter how worthwhile the story.

  • http://themonro.com William Lyons

    Totally agree with this post but any business is a reflection of the team at the top. Pity about the Post, a historic and insightful editorial team. Maybe 7 Streets can take over the editorial ?

  • http://www.sevenstreets.com David Lloyd

    If they come knocking, we’ll talk.

  • Romilly Scragg

    It’s only since the Post became a weekly that it’s been a more interesting paper - basically full of features whereas it used to just have exactly what the Echo had as far as i could tell. I do think there’s too much emphasis on murders and stuff in the Echo and then lots of fillers with kids and smiling faces but papers are struggling to afford many staff these days. I think it’s a tough one. I’d like to see more campaigns telling people not to go to loan sharks (payday loans) when they can use credit unions instead rather than ‘catch these killers’ sort of things - but i can understand that it’d be a scary change for them to make.

  • Lance Weir

    So let’s get this straight. Liverpool website calling for a Liverpool journalist to lose their job over a mistake?

    I wonder if Trinity Mirror staff spent their hard-pressed time scanning sevenstreets every day whether they’d find the odd error?

    The interesting thing is that David Lloyd used to work for Trinity Mirror and was made redundant.

    All this Echo-bashing sounds a bit bitter.

  • Marcus Barton

    We hope they don’t start scanning the site for errors. My approach to punctuation can sometimes be described as ‘maverick’.

    Also, it’s kind of irrelevant whether David worked for TM or not. Most of the people involved in journalism/media/culture/whatever in this city have worked for them at one point or another.

  • Rich

    Righty. I know I was never that good a spot the ball/difference. Etc but I have been scanning the Echo front Page and can’t for the life of me see any mistake. If it’s the whole murder charge vs killers gig at the arena thing, I think people are getting their knickers in a twist. It’s patently obvious that the two things are unconnected. That’s not a mistake.

    I’ll reserve judgement until someone points out that there’s an error elsewhere

  • Vicky

    Richypoos, on pretty much Day 1 of Journalism Club, you learn about juxtaposition.

    In composition, juxtaposition is the placing of verbal elements side by side, leaving it up to the reader to establish connections and impose a meaning.

    Of COURSE it’s the Killers/Murderers thing. Being purposefully obtuse just makes you look a bit silly, just as silly as putting a picture of a little boy saying “Boy, it’s hot” with white stuff around his mouth next to a headline about a paedophiles sex crimes makes the Echo look.

    The parents of the little boy could, in effect, take the Echo to task over such little things you deem to not be a mistake… it COULD be inferred, for example, that this little boy was the target or victim of said paedophile. Or that the families of the person murdered in the other article take umbridge with the Echo’s flippant disregard of their relative’s plight, disregarded enough to make a witty pun about the killers v The Killers… that is, of course, if it WASN’T a ‘mistake’ - as you infer. And if it wasn’t a mistake, it was purposeful - and if it was purposeful, it was blatantly disrespectful to those families involved.

    But of course, people are just getting their knickers in a twist…

    The Echo should be more careful… WAY more careful. Maybe it will take a bit of embarrassment to make them see that.

  • Rich

    Vicky. thanks for the reply. I do still disagree that this is an issue, but that’s just my opinion. As someone that lives with a TV/Radio journo who also used to work in print , I have to listen no end to tales of editorial “gaffs” where the journos in question wring their hands at mistakes that most people don’t really think are a big deal. It appears it’s the other way around this time.

    I personally think it’s a little patronising of an editor to assume that we haven’t got the intelligence to identify that two unrelated matters can exist on a page without drawing links between them. Equally, I’d think the editor was worrying too much if he thought those two different headlines would need to be on different pages.

    Like I said, horses for courses.

  • Ged

    Vickypoos

    As a trained journalist there is one thing that drives me mad. It is people who search for something to moan about and, as a result of their search, make absurd claims in pompous language on behalf of victims. If by any chance I get knocked over by a bus and the Echo has a grand prix report next to it, stay well away from my family. You’d annoy the crap out of them.

  • Vicky

    Geddykins…

    If you got run over by a bus and someone (a) thought it was newsworthy and then (b) put a headline next to it about something completely unrelated, but that looked like on first glance it was stating that you were a huge prick, that would be totes hilar and I would love it.

    Er, but I wouldn’t be going around to see your family. No offence like, I’m sure they’re marvellous and all… not sure why you thought it a witty retort. But then maybe I’m missing something, you *are* a trained journalist after all…