The Newsquest papers are particularly guilty of this, mainly because they don't employ proper reporters any more and just have teams of people recyling press releases in a news hub miles away from the area they are covering.
Hence the number of News Shopper stories of the nature of "lollipop lady helps children cross road" accompanied by a Street View grab of the road in question. Adds nothing to the story but breaks up the text in an online piece.
A surprising number of them are just Street View, culled from Google and cheekily re-sold by the picture agencies.
ReplyDeleteThe Newsquest papers are particularly guilty of this, mainly because they don't employ proper reporters any more and just have teams of people recyling press releases in a news hub miles away from the area they are covering.
ReplyDeleteHence the number of News Shopper stories of the nature of "lollipop lady helps children cross road" accompanied by a Street View grab of the road in question. Adds nothing to the story but breaks up the text in an online piece.
"A surprising number of them are just Street View, culled from Google..."
ReplyDeleteYes, I've noticed this a lot. It's as if, in the absence of actual reporters & photographers on scene, they feel they have to have something there...
"Adds nothing to the story but breaks up the text in an online piece."
Exactly!