London-centric toffs getting it wrong about the regions
One of the things that annoys me most is London-centric toffs getting it wrong about the regions.
It happens too often... Longbridge, the infamous Brummie accent, pork scratchings, warm ale and flat caps. You name it, they presume anything north of Watford Gap is stuck in the 1950s.
Well they pushed me too hard this weekend with this ill-informed diatribe
OK, journalism is changing, but there are so many generalisations, inaccuracies and rose-tinted spectacles in this pontification that I think I'm going to write a letter to the Editor!!
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Steve Dyson - Blog from the Editor on recent issues and events.
The central point seems pretty unexceptional to me. Your own move out of the city centre illustrates one of the things he is talking about.
The central point is that things have changed since Victorian times! My offence was at the presumption that regional editors are not local. The first seven I thought of after reading that sentence were born in the towns/cities they serve! Re. your point about the location of head offices, how many nationals are based in central London? (The Guardian, where the article appeared, is about to move to 'N1').
Nice piece in the Guardian! You make a good case. Ignore my comments above.
The Guardian is a national newspaper It should be able to operate from anywhere, you on the other hand are a local Birmingham group of newspapers, who have taken the golden carrot and sold up your city centre real estate. After speaking to staff no-one is happy with having to travel out to the Fort especially the one's without any parking space's of which i'm sure your not one?
A few years ago you sold a plot of land also on Colmore Circus next to your last office's which is full of empty office space, surely it would have made more sense to move in there? close to the public, courts (real news stories), city centre (for all those vox pops), somewhere for the readers to walk in, of course the Queens.
As mentioned previously, we have opened a new city centre office in the Great Western Arcade. A number of staff start there every day to ensure we can respond to city centre stories (and be better placed for south city). Courts and council staff use that office. Ideally, the new office would be great if we could have had that in the city centre. Economics meant we couldn't. You only have to read the news to see why (try Googling Chicago Tribune, and then try New York Times... the former bankrupt and the latter selling its HQ to finance the future). I'm happy with our HQ somewhere we can afford.