Nairnshire won’t promote Cinema of Dreams site?
Stephen Smerdon, the administrator behind the Cinema of Dreams website, complains that while the Aberdeen Press and Journal, Highland News, and Inverness Courier were all happy to carry coverage of the opening of the new website, the Nairnshire Telegraph decided against it.
Stephen says:
as everyone is aware Nairn is on the map for hosting our film festival last year, and now is running a website www.cinemaofdreams.co.uk of which membership is growing daily. it is with utter shock and dismay that when i approached our LOCAL paper to either run a wee story about it or even accept a “letter to editor” was flatly refused, siting the reason that they do not publicise websites. to which i pointed out that in fact in that weeks paper there were at least two they were publicising, including one linked to a huge commercial operation , the cinema of dreams website is a non commercial operation and has no links whatsoever to any commercial operation, other localish newspapers that i contacted were more than happy to run our story, it sounds in a Way very two faced of the nairnshire to run a huge front page article on our festival (with pic) to sell there paper but will not run a continuation of the story informing locals of the creation of our website . it seems the editor picks and chooses what he considers newsworthy, and because of that many locals here and abroad might miss out on the fun.
If you haven’t visited recently, the site has undergone quite a transformation to make it look more like the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams venue: http://www.cinemaofdreams.co.uk/
plus it now has active forums: http://www.cinemaofdreams.co.uk/forum/
In the meantime, here’s a scan from Stephen of the P&J’s coverage:
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4 Responses to “Nairnshire won’t promote Cinema of Dreams site?”
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Very interesting. I’ve often had the impression that the Nairnshire exists in the last century – and I don’t mean the twentieth!
But seriously, I think their reticence about publicising other locally-based websites is because it will only serve to illustrate that they do not have one; I can only imagine they have taken the decision not to create one for themselves because they don’t have the resources (skills and/or funds) to organise it properly; perhaps also they have decided that having one would only result in fewer people buying their weekly print-edition. By contrast the Inverness Courier seems to have decided to step into the 21st century in the last 2 or 3 years and they still seem to sell newspapers.
On the other hand, with the London Evening Standard having reportedly been acquired today for a nominal £1- it does seem clear that some newspapers’ very future is in doubt in the age of the internet, if a rich market like London sees this happen; too many ‘freebie’ titles to compete with, no doubt.
Maybe the Nairnshire reckons there is no money to be made in going on line? Why give it away for free online if enough people are still willing to pay the price for the paper and the advertising is still coming in?
I wonder how long they have before their time is up? 5, 10, 15, 20 years?
Well, if Ian Bain would like help getting the Nairnshire online, I’d be more than happy to volunteer my company’s services and resources for the community.
Setting the Nairnshire up online would be easy for me to do, so long as Ian & co were happy to keep writing the content.
Maybe the Courier was just following the ‘herd instinct’ Bill? I suspect a few of their advertisers have realised that they can set up their own sites and have not signed up for the on-line version of the paper. No doubt it gets quite a few readers but I have noticed that quite a lot of stories, editorials and letters receive little or no comment from users of the site and it is only the very controversial subjects that attract sizeable interactive debate. I wonder how many local paper sites make a profit?
One of the most interesting sites in the Highlands for news and community affairs, ads etc is Caithness.org
Their forum is effectively another local paper:
http://forum.caithness.org/index.php
It even has a BMD column. Quite an amazing community resource and not in one of the fancy new formats at all. Just shows that folk will go where the info is.