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October 2007 Archives

October 31, 2007

Conquering the multimedia mountain

I have been rightly ticked off for not updating the blog for three weeks. That the reprimand came from someone who works for a different newspaper company only adds to my shame.
It's been rather busy, to say the least. I've been running rings round the headless chicken. Much of the activity has surrounded developments online and I'm glad to say that it's paying off. Tens of thousands of new readers have logged on to dailypost.co.uk in October so it looks like the relaunch has paid dividends.
We're still on an Eiger-like learning curve as we enter the multimedia world but we're making our ascent steadily. Lots of shiny new kit has arrived so we can get out to shoot more videos and make more podcasts (in English and Welsh).
The biggest change of all is in deadlines. For years the deadline has been late evening. Now the deadline is...now. And this brings with it the pleasure of beating the BBC to breaking news stories.
I see that Auntie's massive shakedown of staff (which will seriously hurt its excellent broadcast news output) will still allow for massive investment in online activity . And here's me thinking I paid my licence fee for the telly and radio.
I tend to stick to Sky these days. All the BBC channels do is talk about Strictly Come Dancing and I don't give a monkeys about that. No wonder Dermot Murnaghan is clearing off.
Tomorrow's front page includes the tragic tale of a young musician from Llandudno who accidentally took a methadone overdose just after signing a dream record deal. We're featuring a recording of some of his music on the website.
We also have the story of a councillor who has been savaged by an alsatian in the Conwy Valley plus the first reports of another fatal motorbike accident, this time near Prestatyn. That takes the total number of biker tragedies in North Wales this year to eleven.
On a different note Ian Parri is taking a look at what might happen to S4C in the next 25 years - on and by the way, Happy Birthday S4C.
Take it easy. I'm off home to feed Haribo sweets to trick or treaters. That'll learn 'em.


 

October 10, 2007

Baby tape/drugs and the law

We are just getting ready for afternoon conference. Another motorbike accident, this time close to St Asaph, which has left a man very badly hurt is likely to feature on the front page.
Chief constable Richard Brunstrom will also make his second prominent appearance this week as he unveils his submission to the police authority for a response to the government's latest consultation on drugs policy.
I am just ploughing through the 34-page document which at first glance makes a very detailed and cogent case for the decriminalisation of drugs and the intoduction of a strategy to regulate all drugs (including booze and tobacco) and minimise the harm they do.
There's the usual Brunstrom posturing ..."I prefer (JS) Mill's view on liberty rather than the quasi-religious and paternalistic regime based upon the countering of evil hitherto prevalent" and "if policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma"...by which everyone who disagrees with him is made to feel like an idiot or a bigot.
But the evidence, that fighting the tide of drug imports and drug misuse is as doomed as Canute's attempt to defy nature, is presented in a compelling manner. This time, he might just be right.
What I would like to see is a more detailed appraisal of how society can regulate and control drugs use to minimise the harm they cause. To be fair, that will involve many more agencies than the police, but it would be interesting to see and test a detailed plan of how such regulation would work.
I hope you've had a chance to listen to the audiotape of the phone conversation between an ambulance controller and an expectant dad. Baby arrived in a hurry and dad had to play midwife, guided all the way by the controller. It makes for a compelling, and rather moving, couple of minutes. Go to the video screen on the homepage of dailypost.co.uk to have a listen. We've got a sequence of pictures of mum, dad and baby, plus our 999 hero, to run with the audio.


 

October 2, 2007

Squid under shellfire

Just back from a week in Mallorca. The island was choc-a-bloc with holidaymakers - including a huge number of families with kids playing truant. It rained so hard the Palma underground flooded and the local English language paper reported on the coldest September night on the island for more than 20 years.
Still had a great time, though. When the sun came out it was glorious, the Med was warm, the rosado and San Miguel cold and as for the paella...fantastic.
It's great to see the tradition of mad translations on menus still survives. We sat outside a beach restaurant on Saturday lunchtime and mulled over the choice of "mussels to a sailor's blouse", "pike pike" and "small squid attacked".
The mussels were actually mariniere style by the way, elsewhere described memorably as "mussels in a sailor sauce"..first take one sailor and strain through muslin, no doubt.
Anyway, back to the cold reality of autumn in Britain. Two stories are contending for the front page at the moment. We have a lorry driver in court for smoking in his cab - he was nabbed under the new smoking laws afer being caught lobbing his cig end out of the cab window. Company-owned trucks are now deemed public spaces, of course.
But we have a breaking story about a nasty looking crash near Abergele involving a car and a couple of bin wagons. We'll await further information before deciding how to present the front page.
Our leader comment will be looking at this afternoon's announcement on the future of transport in Wales. Sounds at this stage like it's turned out a bit of a damp squib.
Let me know what you think too.


 

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Hello, I'm Rob Irvine, editor of the best -selling newspaper in North Wales - the Daily Post. I reckon mine is one of the best jobs in newspapers - editing a paper with an incredible history, with fantastically loyal readers. And I get to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth with wife Julie and our dog Max. I'll tell you in this blog about life at the Daily Post office in Llandudno Junction together with some s

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