Hello Lilly
Regarding the spelling errors, there is no excuse. Part of this has been because of significant staff changes/redundancies. To put you in the picture we have a team of staff working on the Accrington and Rossendale papers as there is quite a bit of cross over. We have also had a number of management changes and obvious things like street names and areas have gone unnoticed.
We have also gone onto a new computer system which is causing no end of grief for everyone, putting even more pressure on the stretched resources.
Since relocating the office to Manchester (nobody is unaffected by the credit crunch) we have reporters out in Accrington every day, gathering local news and speaking to people in the various towns and villages.
The Manchester office is simply a base - mainly for the sub editors (who place the stories on pages and write headlines) and the big wigs. The reporters are out there grafting every day.
We do not work for the MEN, but we are part of the same group. As you are probably aware, we are part of the Greater Manchester Weekly Newspaper group (even though we're in Lancashire) and therefore the company as a whole does concentrate on Greater Manchester. Our team isn't really interested in what's going on in Manchester, we care about Hyndburn. But sometimes, the company bosses put their foot down and there's not much we can do. It has been a bit of a learning spike for everyone.
As for the 'Manchester bit in the middle', this has been another sore point of the staff covering the area. It's not local. We know that. We are currently in the process of changing that though and are working towards making it much better and much more local.
Just this evening, I have been out to review a local restaurant as we are replacing the more remote reviews with ones of local businesses in the near future.
We are also making a big push to get more local events mentioned in the paper - especially in the What's On section.
As for moving out of Accrington, I would love to move back to the Blackburn Road office. However, as mentioned above, it's a decision the company has taken - way above us lowly staff. We were (and are still) not happy about this but the business had to look at how it could survive the recession.
Feel free to get back to me if there's anything else.
