It is a tough job to walk the line in journalism. The patch you cover will have moments of drama and at the heart of all drama is conflict. Over the last year Andy Cryer in the Lancashire Telegraph has walked the line between criticising the club and risking a more difficult and fractious relationship with his biggest source of stories, or appearing as a poodle and losing all credibility with his readers.
A good journalist seeks to live by fairness and accuracy. It's that simple really. I think Cryer has done pretty well. David Conn on the Guardian rates him, which is high praise. I think he's a good commentator on the club. He made the point that sacking Sam Allardyce was a mistake, that the owners had blundered and made some basic mistakes including the appointment of a manager hopelessly out of his depth. There's probably a whole load of other rumours he could have gone with too - comments from the dressing room he could have used, but he's been fair and stuck to explaining what the facts were showing - a winless run.
Now the season is over I think he makes some good, fair points here. In a nutshell he's saying Venky's have done better in the last two weeks - and the tide of opinion may have leant a little in their direction. The free pies and the cheap tickets at Wolves helped, so too have the new season ticket prices.
I think he needs to turn the gas up on Venky's now. There were 25 questions in the last issue of 4000 Holes fanzine, all of which are still valid. But a very basic question still remains - what are they doing this for?
No comments:
Post a Comment