31/10/10….When does a Letter to the Editor become front page news?
Dear Editor, The controversy over future housing for Thame is distressing for everyone. I find it difficult to offer an opinion on the alternative sites currently being discussed. I?m also aware, for example, that the house I live in (at Fanshawe Road) was built on what was once someone else?s view.
However, as your site states: ?TNN aims to create and sustain a genuinely Thame- focused news website which all users can truly be a part of …?
On October 29 you headlined a story: 29/10/10……’Last nail in the town council’s coffin’ says Thame resident – 29 October 2010 .
In this case the resident who criticised the council was not (repeat not) Robin Gibb (see the current Thame Gazette front page headline) but Mr Raymond Powell of Union Way, who, like Mr Gibb, of the Prebendal, opposes the building of housing on the pig farm.
There is some controversy, it seems, as to whether a letter to the editor can be regarded as news. I write as a retired Press Association hack – and debate as to what is and what is not news has gone on as long as I can remember.
However, your mission statement (if I may call it that) declares that your service is for all its users. It is your judgment alone as to what is news. Mr Powell?s comments were relevant, interesting and probably representative of his neighbourhood – and your headline served to convey the fact that you were introducing the piece as a news item.
To be strictly objective, in a newspaper format there would probably have been a paragraph or two about Mr Powell on the front page, with a reference to the Letters page. In your format, and according to its own constraints, you compressed the process into one. But the headline was clear. You dealt with the piece as news. As indeed it was.
Without entering into the planning controversy I would say that I sympathise with the mayor in his rebuttal of the tone of some of Mr Powell?s remarks ? and also with Councillor Buckland?s tribute to the service your site does to our town.
Norman Brand
