The K's In Point

Re: Still Vomiting

By SDG (SDG (Ks))24/11/2019 12:22Sun Nov 24 12:22:47 2019In response to Still Vomiting

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It's very sad what has happened not just to the Comet but to local news full stop, locally and nationally. I often have to go on local papers' websites in researching my away day guides and almost without fail, they're of patchy quality and so full of intrusive ads that you can barely use the website.

The business model just doesn't work any more outside of the big cities and across the country titles are either shutting down or stripping back to a bare bones operation. That's what the Comet now is and it just seems to take content about Chelsea, Fulham, AFCW and Brentford that they presumably use right across South London. But when they have no staff there's nothing else they can do and it's very much about management and the difficulty of the internet age - I feel sorry for the few remaining staff who I'm sure are doing their best to cover a wide area among far too few of them.

It's devastating for clubs like us. When I was a kid the Informer and Kingston Guardian would be posted through the door every week, always containing proper Ks coverage on the back page. It's probably how I ever found out about the club in the first place, and about the first game I ever saw (which was the Peterborough Cup game, I've written a piece about it for the Fylde programme). It was weekly advertising for the club to thousands of homes in the borough and they also had a role in holding the ownership to account in difficult times. The Comet was of course paid for but had a wide circulation and even more in-depth coverage. Yes we have social media these days but it's no substitute for Ks being delivered through people's letterboxes every week.

It's hard to really blame the staff - as I understand it there are so few of them left that they just don't have the resources to cover clubs like Ks. At times over the years when they've wanted it, myself and other fans have sometimes provided content but I've always felt quite torn about that. As a Ks fan I of course want us to get good coverage but it still feels a bit uncomfortable to provide stuff for free that they used to pay journalists to do.

It's all very sad and I don't really see it turning around, either for The Comet for local newspapers more generally. But we do at least have to do our best to keep engaging with them in the hope it might turn round and to get whatever coverage we can. Shunning them is definitely not going to help and if they do want to send someone on Saturday we should welcome them - we are, after all, the only London or Surrey club playing in this round of the competition.

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