Come back Charles Watts

[Forbury Lion]

The trend with sites like getreading.co.uk is to keep costs down by not having experienced staff on board and dispensing with roles such as photographer, editor, proof reader etc etc. Most articles seem to be written by part time reporters, probably on zero hour contracts who are paid per article, hence quantity rather than quality. I suspect many do not even live in the local area and work remotely writing articles for various local newspapers.

The stories probably come from following various twitter accounts, official e.g. Thames Valley Police and unofficial, Some articles probably land in their inboxes and then it's a copy/paste, add an often unnecessary timeline of events and a google street view image of the location and/or a photo/video from a member of the public off of twitter.

I'm not knocking the staff, they do the best job they can but seem to be unsupported. In the printed days you had reporters and photographers at the scene and that often resulted in a better quality article. They also had more time to break the stories as they were working to a printing deadline and not expected to provide live updates as a story breaks.

[Cureton's Volley]

The trend with sites like getreading.co.uk is to keep costs down by not having experienced staff on board and dispensing with roles such as photographer, editor, proof reader etc etc. Most articles seem to be written by part time reporters, probably on zero hour contracts who are paid per article, hence quantity rather than quality. I suspect many do not even live in the local area and work remotely writing articles for various local newspapers.

The stories probably come from following various twitter accounts, official e.g. Thames Valley Police and unofficial, Some articles probably land in their inboxes and then it's a copy/paste, add an often unnecessary timeline of events and a google street view image of the location and/or a photo/video from a member of the public off of twitter.

I'm not knocking the staff, they do the best job they can but seem to be unsupported. In the printed days you had reporters and photographers at the scene and that often resulted in a better quality article. They also had more time to break the stories as they were working to a printing deadline and not expected to provide live updates as a story breaks.

If we can read thorough, well-reasoned prose on The Team board, then surely the professionals can muster something with more factual substance than:

[NewCorkSeth]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... ier-league
This is quite a good article. Nice to read about how the staff operate.

[Wimb]

The trend with sites like getreading.co.uk is to keep costs down by not having experienced staff on board and dispensing with roles such as photographer, editor, proof reader etc etc. Most articles seem to be written by part time reporters, probably on zero hour contracts who are paid per article, hence quantity rather than quality. I suspect many do not even live in the local area and work remotely writing articles for various local newspapers.

The stories probably come from following various twitter accounts, official e.g. Thames Valley Police and unofficial, Some articles probably land in their inboxes and then it's a copy/paste, add an often unnecessary timeline of events and a google street view image of the location and/or a photo/video from a member of the public off of twitter.

I'm not knocking the staff, they do the best job they can but seem to be unsupported. In the printed days you had reporters and photographers at the scene and that often resulted in a better quality article. They also had more time to break the stories as they were working to a printing deadline and not expected to provide live updates as a story breaks.

Pretty much this.

Oh and thanks for the kind words, and not so kind words about TTE. Your fivers are still in the post....

JL is doing a job he was dropped in at short notice to do, for an organisation that's shrinking at a rapid rate. Presumably he's still got his former responsibilities to deal with plus Reading FC.

For those complaining about the quality of coverage, all I'd ask is, do you actually contribute money to Get Reading, or the group?

It's fine if you don't, but I'm confused how those people expect quality journalism without paying for it? The only way GR make money is by clicks, ads and more clicks. That's why so much stuff is clickbait and that's why they have to spam your timeline. If you were still forking over 40p on a daily basis for the actual paper, or paying a website subscription, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't have to scrape the barrel. Likewise as Forbs said, without that money how can they afford to pay for extra journalists to go find stories, or come up with long-form articles?

We do what we do on TTE because we've got a passion for the club and enjoy doing it, but there's a bigger group of us to share the load and we don't HAVE to earn clicks to survive. We do our best to produce the highest quality possible and it helps that a fair few of us are either trained media folk, or are someway down that path. We all have 'proper' jobs though, the revenue the site generates is minute, even with the kind generosity of those who contribute to Patreon every month. For a club the size of Reading, there really isn't the fanbase to support a dedicated site, at least not unless a big chunk start forking over cash on a regular basis.

Sure GR could ask passionate fans to write articles, on the angle that they provide a platform for young journalists and fellow passionate fans, but I can tell you through personal experience that it's very, very hard to keep quality people on over a long period of time without them losing interest. At TTE that doesn't matter as much, you just move on but for a 'professional website' they can't just keep churning over volunteers.

Charles was the last Reading FC journalist for the Reading Evening Post, he was hired as a written journalist with those appropriate skills. As for who follows him, be it JL or someone else, they need a very different skill set for a 100% online operation. Moreover, with the uncertainty around the place, few quality journos are going to gamble and go there. I certainly wouldn't right now, even if it seems on paper to be a dream job. The best you'd get is a hungry young journo with nothing to lose, or someone on the way down who doesn't really need the money.

Anyway for those TL;DR out there, the equation is simple.

Want better coverage? Start paying for it, or lower your standards.

[Hound]

Fair enough, and my problem is more with GR than JL - e is clearly not a football writer

However it's not like we can contribute to the running costs to improve the quality - and of course they make their money by advertising and clicks etc. So every time we visit the site we are in some way paying for the pleasure

I think there is enough interest in RFC for GR to invest in better standard journalism and try to drive more traffic to the site rather than go bargain basement and wait for it to eventually die away - as it will unless quality improves to a level where it makes it worth the casual fans while to visit

[Wimb]

Fair enough, and my problem is more with GR than JL - e is clearly not a football writer

However it's not like we can contribute to the running costs to improve the quality - and of course they make their money by advertising and clicks etc. So every time we visit the site we are in some way paying for the pleasure

I think there is enough interest in RFC for GR to invest in better standard journalism and try to drive more traffic to the site rather than go bargain basement and wait for it to eventually die away - as it will unless quality improves to a level where it makes it worth the casual fans while to visit

I don't know the exact ad rates for GR but unless it's something ridiculous, something I doubt, your individual visit means pretty much nothing, especially if you don't then click an add or two. Of course it all helps and the more visits the better, but in the grand scheme of things it's an absolute pittance compared to what they used to get for a paper sale.

I don't think its a case of going bargain basement, it's just a sad reaction to the amount of money even top journalism can generate for a particular website that provides free content. Consider why the Reading Post died in the first place, it clearly wasn't making Trinity Mirror money, or else it would never have been shut down. GR is probably much, much cheaper to run and even if they lose 25% of the readership due to 'poor journalism' it's still going to make as much, if not more money than paying the best journalists for content.

As a football club, Reading's fanbase is still pretty small, thus the amount of readers even the best journalist in the world can attract, is going to be limited. The 40,000 thousand (at an absolute push) people interested in regular Reading news is totally small fry to those interested in Chelsea, Arsenal, Man Utd etc, who have that global fanbase of millions to make the click count stack up at a rapid pace. I see it myself with the number of people who visit our site compared to the Chelsea or Tottenham blogs on our network, it's not even close and the standard of writing is pretty close (in my admittedly biased opinion).

People have slowly got out of the habit of paying for news and I'll admit that we at TTE are part of both the solution and the problem. Yes we're trying to fill the gap left by a shrinking local media but at the same time, the fact we're all doing it for peanuts only continues the cycle of decline. Again, we're lucky in that we're not in TTE for the money but I do wonder if ultimately we're making it harder for those of us who want a future media career.

The answer seems to be super serving your dedicated audience through paid for content. The Liverpool Echo have gone down that exact route with a service that provides that extra quality of journalism and content, but you have to pay for it.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/liverpool-echo-launches-anfield-extra-12641425

Get Reading could do something similar, but again do they have enough Reading fans out there to make it financially viable?

I'd say you'd need at least 2,000 Reading fans paying £5 a month to make the sums work. That would generate £120,000 a year, which after costs is maybe going to allow you to employ 2/3 people to produce the level of content you'd hope for.

[Hound]

well yes, paid for content is certainly an option, but trying to persuade people to part with a subscription on the basis of current standard of reporting is not going to work. TM have to make the investment first, or at least demo the quality level of journalism that people can purchase.

Either way, I can understand the economics and reasons for the decline of GR/Reading Post, but I'm sure the majority of people are not satisfied with the current product. And when that happens, inevitably it will shrivel away. I'm sure I'm not the only one who rarely looks at the site nowadays, where it was once my 'go to' destination