I’ve asked a group of people well placed in media, music, arts and other general culture vultures to venture their high- and lowlights of Liverpool in 2009.
40 years of lies – don't buy the Sun
There’s a tricky duality as a journalist to slating other journalists and newspapers.
As a human being I despise The Sun for its lies, prejudice, snideness, cynical politics, nepotism and the way it glories in being a kind of dunce’s comic.
Liverpool's big breasts
Falling squarely into the ‘nice work if you can get it’ line of research, or the ‘headline-grabbing waste of everyone’s time’ line of research if you prefer is the news that Liverpool has the biggest breasts in the country.
Livtwest
I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter, for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere. Simply put it’s an amazing tool for connecting with interesting people, and it’s invaluable from a professional point-of-view, a hotline straight through to valuable marketers, PRs and journalists.
So, once in a while, I turn up to Twitter meet-ups to put faces to names, names to handles and handles to faces. That’s a lot of information to juggle in your head while making small-talk with someone you’ve never met before, but I like a challenge.
Images of Michael Shields release
Dave Evans has sent over some images of Michael Shields’ release, a story that look sure to dominate headlines for some time to come.
The local media has waged a vociferous campaign to have Shields freed, and local celebrities, clergy and footballers have also rallied to the cause.
Shields was freed following a Royal Pardon that was issued by Justice Secretary Jack Straw after receiving ‘fresh evidence which the Bulgarian court did not consider’ that indicated that Shields was ‘morally and technically innocent’ of the attack on a Bulgarian national.
Gerrard prosecutor speaks, but still no clue as to what music Stevie was seeking
Stevie G’s entirely proper acquittal last week for delivering up to three uppercuts to a DJ in what was termed ‘pre-emptive self-defence’ – a term that could have been coined by George Bush – was not due to a friendly local jury, according to the prosecutor in the case.
In an article in the Daily Post’s legal section, Ben Schofield writes that Exchange Chambers was surprised that Gerrard chose not to employ their services, but lavished a reported £250K on London QC John Kelsey-Fry rather than the eventual prosecutor David Turner.
Turner, a former cabaret director of the Cambridge footlights, is described in the article as ‘charismatic raconteur’ and thought the evidence that Gerrard acted in self-defence in the Southport punch-up ’strong’.
Liverpool crane collapse
This extraordinary image comes from Sparkle Media and shows a crane collapsed across a building near the Albert Dock in Liverpool.
This is by my reckoning the third crane collapse in Liverpool in recent years. There are reports that the driver is injured but alive and there are people trapped in the building. Here’s hoping everyone gets out unscathed.
Liverpool’s citizen journalists are providing superb coverage of the event, which you can follow here.
Trinity Mirror move pitches Echo and Post against one another
It seems the Liverpool Echo is to become primarily a morning paper – a move that puts it into apparent competition with the Daily Post.
The Echo will still retain an on-day edition, but the first will be printed overnight.
Reading between the lines, the change in deadlines is to accommodate a switch from printing in Liverpool to Oldham, at least one hour’s drive away.
The consensus – right or wrong – in Liverpool’s media community is that The Post is on its way out, with sales down to under 10K according to various reports I’ve heard.
Given the difficulty regional newspapers are experiencing, and recent moves by Trinity Mirror to axe several Midlands titles, the writing would appear to be on the wall for Liverpool’s second daily.
But in moving the newspapers into almost direct competition with one another, Trinity Mirror seems to be delaying that move – but is it simply delaying the inevitable?
Barebones.tv – a completely tedious and futile endeavour
An email has reached me to tell me about barebones.tv – a live feed of a household of scousers going about their daily lives.
If you’re waiting for a catch, there ain’t one. It’s not a PR campaign, stunt set up by a local radio station or porn channel (more’s the pity). This is a shame, because the reality of watching people doing absolutely sod all for 24 hours a day is exactly as mind-numbingly tedious as you’d expect.
Liverpool.com 'is no more'
It seems like Liverpool.com has gone the way of so much print media, following a statement on Twitter that the mag ‘as you know it is no more’ and a tip that most of its editorial staff have been made redundant.
This is a shame, most obviously for the journalists involved, as it was a good effort in a genre that’s frequently utterly useless, but the news is hardly that surprising.