Month: December 2013

Categories
News

Closure of Liverpool Post a warning shot for local newspapers

Article from The Liverpool Post headlined '4,000 Mersey health jobs facing the axe'

Trinity Mirror’s decision to completely close the 150+ year old Liverpool Post was a shock in December, but is surely a sign of further consolidation in the local newspaper sector in 2014.

Not good news for journalists, newspaper readers or local democracy. All those local councilors who regularly blast their local media for “getting everything wrong” and misrepresenting them might start having different concerns if their local paper suddenly disappears.

The challenge then for local authorities, as for companies, is to build their own networks online and communicate directly with residents and businesses. Many are ahead of the game – look at the social media presence of the likes of Monmouthshire or Northumberland or the excellent case studies showcased in the Comms2point0 blog – and you can see the great work already happening.

For those behind the curve the culture change and resources required to deliver social media services effectively can prove a shock, but with local media ever further stretched it is local authorities’ online networks that will become the key communications platforms as we move throughout 2014.

Categories
News

It was the night before Christmas…

They say never work with children and animals, but we at DTW recently broke both of those rules when we decided this year to produce a Christmas video instead of a greetings card.

But could we really pull it off in such a short space of time? Despite many a dubious glance, and at least one “I’ll eat an elf’s hat if you pull this off!” we got everyone together for…an interesting couple of hours.

Trying to direct a one-year old to “Crawl like this”, and explaining to at least three separate six year olds what their motivation for the scene was, you might have been mistaken for thinking you had walked onto the set of a Hollywood blockbuster film.

But, you wouldn’t have been mistaken for too long, with mince-pie encrusted carpet stains and tinsel coming out of our ears… literally, I thought, maybe, this time we had gone too far, reflecting back to the night the idea was born, I asked myself ‘Had someone had too many wines on a school night?’

However, despite the crying noises of several tired and frustrated babies, chocolate handprints all over the photocopier, dog hairs on the Christmas Tree, and the curious case of the missing chocolate coins that never made it to the bright lights of the tree branches, (a mystery still to this day) we somehow managed to get all the footage we needed.

But, chaos and stress aside it was a lovely afternoon… Hopefully not to be repeated too soon, and the lesson we all learnt was when you prove people wrong…make them eat their elf hat!