Whatever Happened to the Liverpool Echo?

[Black Belt Jones]

It's garbage but prob a wider trend. Doubt there's a decent city / regional paper left in the UK.

 

[grandjoeblue]

I think Joe Thomas is the best of an appalling bunch but it's not much of an accolade in itself. I know Reach Media controls it and drives reporters to produce cheap clicks but where is the self-respect in any "reporter" wanting to identify as a journalist at Echo? They don't have any do they? No pride in their work and no self-respect at all. I wouldn't put my name to the garbage they put out.

They all seem to be young who work there. It's probably a first journalism job for most of them.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

Owned by the mirror group I think, who basically bought out tons of local newspapers and filled the sites with terrible click bait and a million ads

Absolutely this. That's also why there's a lot of non-local news recycled in the respective websites / social media feeds of 'local' media.

Click-bait hell.

 

[chrismpw]

Garbage from their reach overlords.

My local one is the (Swindon) Grimdon Advertiser owned by the same bunch. I've been actually banned from commenting on their Facebook page because I kept calling out clickbait when they'd run the same "local news" article that I'd seen the echo and the Bournemouth local paper too.

Unreadable websites full of popups too. Honestly don't see the point of their existence. I feel for their editors though. I'm sure they worked hard for their GCSE English and wanted to build a career in writing, only to become employed by some faceless giant group dictating how everything should be done. They surely know its a model that is doomed to fail, but are utterly powerless.

 

[Connor]

Yep, its the Reach way of doing things. It's pretty poor and know people who work there who hate it.

However, the industry is on its arse, so its hardly like you can quit and quickly find something else.

 

[Bombonera]

That is understood @Connor but then they have no self-respect do they?
Would you put your name to what they put their name to? I certainly wouldn't.

 

[jackyboy]

Absolute shambles, on par with the athletic

 

[tommye]

Ceased to be a 'local' paper a long, long time ago.
Click bait clusterf**k of a website. Horrendous.

 

[degsy]

I thought about posting it directly in the Everton forum given I'm only interested in the demise of the Echo in that regard but I guess there's a wider perspective.

I'm an old fart and that's how my perspective forms.

When I was growing up, the Echo was the go-to resource. The journalists had connections at the club, they fostered those relationships so that they could deliver first-hand news quickest and honestly and accurately.

And now the Echo seems to rely on second/third-hand sources that most of us paying any attention have already read first or second hand elsewhere. They're a shameless bunch conning a living it seems to me.

Chris Beesley being the worst Everton reporter I've ever come across in 50 years.

Where've you been for the last 20+yrs...they don't even wrap chips in it now

As you say - it Used to be OK... Back in the days of B&W tv and old money. The same as Journalism as a whole.

RIP the echo

 

[Martin Alvito]

Worst website in the world, i dont read it anyway but sometimes get sent links

Fully sold out to advertisment, even more than our very own GOT

Be nice, and let the man sell his jigsaws. Remember, he can punt us into orbit whenever he wants.

 

[Littlesue]

To be fair it's the same as all local papers, I'm on half a dozen around the country and it seems pop ups and adds is what they need to survive.

 

[Nightman]

Same with my local online paper, that seems to be affiliated with Wetherspoons, owing to the number of advertorials written about that pub chain.

I mainly skip the articles anyway and head to the comments section. That's where the fun is - proper moaning, cantankerous, nimby types.

 

[gonetomorrow]

Wherever I go I try to buy the local paper. There are still some good ones around with interesting features, lively letters pages and useful local info re shops, traffic problems etc.

A lot of local papers are feeling they have to compete with the tabloids and the internet however.
In Edinburgh for instance the Edinburgh Evening News is now on sale at seven in the morning and brash headlines cover the front page.
Inside you'll find lifestyle and health stuff which contains nothing local whatever.
In a city with such a long and colourful history there must be a thousand interesting articles waiting to be written but it's just not happening any more.

 

[atrottel]

Left journalism many decades ago now (I loved the job but took a year off which turned into a lifetime) and quite horrified at how it has changed. Reporters writing up stories created on other papers or other social media platforms. I guarantee you that any reporter with any skills and contacts knows exactly what is going on at EFC. Yet do we hear anything? Just the incessant rewriting of dubious transfer target links from 'reputable sources' such as FootballInsider. Or 'stories' using some sponsored software to show how player X is similar to player Y in his stats.

The two regional/local papers which were always held up as examples in my day were the Yorkshire Post and the Ham&High in London.

One of the things not really discussed with the Echo (and other papers like the Daily Hate) is the way they fake impressions these days. Go to any page on the Echo and then click the back arrow and look at how many times it has refreshed in your browser history. I think the record was broken today with about eight or nine refreshes of the Lukaku story but it is always a minimum of two. I wonder how many real visitors advertisers think they are paying for?

 

[Charro]

Absolute shambles, on par with the athletic

Nah, The Athletic is good and moves the industry forward and has some very good people working for it.

The Echo is a terrible piece of clickbait, run by people wanting clicks and nothing else.

They're nothing alike.