Weekend Without Makeup

Just a quick one to draw everyone's attention to some fine & worthy words from the Liverpool Echo editor Alistair Machray when he relaunched & rebranded the fine, august publication...coming up for two years ago this was.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=42317

And...This was welcomed almost unanimously across Merseyside because... even its loyalists would have had to admit through gritted teeth it had a got a bit tabloidy & OTT at times.

There was of course all that stuff about Frank Bruno playing knock-a-dash in Walton.

That story was hyped & reported in quite a coarse manner.... I think he alarmed Pete Price at one point during his anti-social spree, Bruno in his distress at coming to his senses and realising - horror of horrors - he was in Walton, and he knocked over some bins in the entry. Pete then hit back in a ferocious & characteristically catty column, rejoining "I don’t mind being disturbed in the dead of night by a ferocious bashing in the back-passage....but this was unacceptable...I used to know Elvis. We did Widow Twankey together in Bournemouth in the 80s...”

Quite lurid and indicative of the 'old Echo' style at that time. So, the statement was very reassuring, including as it did words like this...

"(A) new emphasis on being positive and telling readers the truth". Just what the doctor ordered.

Even more so the next bit, because people from Liverpool can be pilloried by the wider world (wools), teased and stereotyped by outsiders (wools) very easily - we can all imagine the type of sneering mock-up of a local Liverpool newspaper would be like :

a headline about some superstition-based new dreadful threat to the area...then something about Liverpool FC...preferably some mawkish angle about how great they used to be...absolute must would be a Beatles link - the spuriouser the better...and then some more about LFC and how great they're going to again any minute now.

So it was heartening to know that people weren’t going to be treated like sops for who any of the above would be good enough. In the article Mr Machray says how much he respects the readers and that the “truth project” would ensure that the writers & editors "don’t push it and betray the trust of our readers. They regard accuracy as being ahead of sensationalism.”

He also has a blog, which is prefaced by another commendable & praiseworthy statement , where he raises the stakes in an effective 'call-out' to any other media moguls who may think they're doing a good job; http://echoeditor.merseyblogs.co.uk/

"I'm Alastair Machray, editor of the Liverpool Echo. I believe, I truly believe, it's Britain's best paper in Britain's best city."

Britain's Best Paper. Quite a claim. Britain’s Best City. Again, no mincing of words. You sense that he was driving at giving as he sees it the best citizens in the country a level of journalism befitting that status;

They’d been condescended and considered ignorant for two long - now they were going to be treated as adults.

In another soothing and sound comment he explained that he knew that maybe the previous regime had dumbed-down unacceptably at times (I think they even allowed some really dubious, and basic-level 'gay' 'bum' type attempts at humour - and it was just insulting to people's intelligence. Readers deserve better than that.) It was time to grow up and engage the readership on a more intelligent level;

“Readers look to the Echo to tell them the truth about what’s happening when the rest of the world is throwing information at them from all quarters.”

And this was really crystallised yesterday I think. All the fine, noble words above were realised and the long, brave drive to a higher ground was finally concluded with this front page;

“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.” Oscar Wilde