There has been a lot written lately about the relationship between new and old media. I have been keeping an eye on the debate but don’t feel involved: I don’t have aspirations towards being a ‘citizen journalist’ myself, or indeed any sort of journalist and I know that my readership is dwarfed by even the local papers.

However, I feel just a little less impartial about it all today, after reading this weeks Crawley Observer. On page 10 there is a photograph of me in a story about the Broadfield Neighbourhood Forum on July 3rd. There is a little pre-amble about the meeting and then it says:

Broadfield resident Andrew Skudder (pictured) said the meeting was a partial success.

He said “It may be that the meeting served a purpose by letting frustrated residents let off steam and vent some anger directly at the police, although that is not really moving towards a solution.

“A few of the people there really do seem to be living in fear and its depressing to see that happening. Doubly so, because one or two obnoxious and aggressive youngsters have probably got these familes to regard all youngsters in the same way.”

Anyone who read the post I made about the meeting will be having a sense of deja vu, because that is exactly what I wrote.

I can’t see a single bit of the whole article which could not have been got from what I wrote. To me it looks like lazy journalism where a chunk of my text was cut & pasted, then surrounded by other bits of my post paraphrased.

I do not mind being quoted. I don’t even mind them using a 6-year-old library photo of me – lets face it, I looked a lot better then than I do now! What I mind is the poor manners of lifting material from here with no attribution at all. If a fellow blogger refers to anything I write here, they make a point of linking back, and I do the same if I am referring to someone else’s posts.

Apart from anything, the Crawley News did have a reporter there but the Crawley Observer did not. The article does seem to be trying to give the impression that they did have a reporter there who talked to me and got a quote off me. On the plus side, whenever I have talked to reporters from either of the papers they have ended up mis-quoting me one way or another. At least if they have the option of just cutting and pasting it is going to be accurate. Also, its a bit of a shock to turn the page of a newspaper and see your own face staring out at you unexpectedly. I never quite got used to it when I was a councillor, and should have been expecting it.

At least they did not have the nerve to credit the story to any particular member of staff. Its a dangerous game though – what if I was wildly inaccurate about something like the number of people there? Or if I had made up a quote by one of the police inspectors and they had repeated it?

The irony is that on page 15 of the same paper it says “Find out what happens at the Observer with our new blog”. Good to see they are jumping on the bandwagon, but I do hope they learn some of the etiquette pretty sharpish.

PS. If anyone from the Observer wants to defend the article, feel free to leave a comment!