I read The Hyperlocal Landgrab article over on the New Statesman site yesterday, I have tried to post a response to the article twice without success. I’m not sure if the comments go to moderation and get deleted for being dismissive of the piece or what, so for the benefit of whoever I have copied my response here.
This is one of the most badly written pieces I have read in some time. Aside from the glaring error Joseph points out above, my particular favourite sentence is:
“Tony Wallely, the founder of Pits n Pots, the hyperlocal known for its hard-hitting coverage of Stoke on Trent”
Some many things wrong in one short sentence.
‘Hard hitting coverage‘, of what?
- Apples?
- Kittens?
- Chainsaw juggling chimpanzees on tricycles?
- Local political news?
- Polar Ice caps melting and sending icebergs floating down the River Trent and the Trent & Mersey Canal?
‘Stoke on Trent‘, even the most cursory glance at a map will tell you Stoke on Trent does not exist, Stoke-on-Trent however, does. We like our hyphens here in the potteries you know. Up until the late 1960′s hyphens were one of the major exports after pottery & coal..
‘Tony Wallely‘ I’m sure Tony or ‘Wol’ as he is affectionately known, would much prefer it if you spelt his surname Walley as his parents intended.
If you are going to use other peoples research (Tony has not spoken to you and we both believe the quotes you attribute to him are at least 12 months old) at least do some fact checking.
Feel free to come over to pitsnpots.co.uk and pick holes in our content, we don’t however, profess to be journalists, communications professionals nor copywriters.
Update 24 March 1415
I have had some correspondence from Alex Klaushofer who took the time to contact me over on Pits n Pots rather than here. Alex said ‘I am genuinely quite stunned by the hostility so publicly expressed on Mike’s blog about my blog for the New Statesman.‘
I didn’t think that it was a hate filled rant, more a robust and slightly sarcastic response. Anyway Alex pointed out that I wrongly stated ‘Tony has never spoken to you‘, what I didn’t do was a quick search of our E-mail archive on Pits n Pots, if I had I would have noticed that Alex contacted us in July 2010, so Tony had spoken to her and I am guilty of what I accused Alex of, lack of research.
Alex said she had tried to contact us via Pits n Pots prior to publishing her article, we can find no record of this nor is there any reference to her not being able to contact us in the article. If the article had stated that it was revisiting a previously published piece it may have made more sense.
I still stand by my points on the post that Stoke-on-Trent should-be-hyphenated, Tony Wallely is in fact spelt Tony Walley and that ‘hard hitting coverage of Stoke on Trent’ is ambiguous.