Sub Standard paper sheds even more readers

With what now seems like remarkable prescience, we reported a few days ago on the decline in our local newspapers.
Now comes the news you won’t read in your Boston Standard - its sales since the last sweep by the Audit Bureau of Circulations have fallen by exactly five per-cent, and now stand at 9,412.
Of course, the Standard is not alone in throwing away readers as if there were no tomorrow - 90% of paid-for weekly local and regional papers in the UK recorded year-on-year falls in circulation in the first-half of 2010.
There are a number of reasons for this.
The first is that a couple of decades ago, some 200 companies owned Britain's local papers. Today, just five own 740 - or 61% - of the surviving titles.
Another reason is that journalism is not what it was. Hacks these days can easily acquire a media studies qualification for little effort, and as a result the courses are eagerly sought by people who fancy a quick career path from college to television.
By the nature of things, these jobs are hard to find, so many journalists are forced to resign themselves to life at the bottom of the food chain - a life as a lowly paid weekly newspaper reporter.
Of course, this is true of most weekly papers, not just our locals - but that’s no consolation.
The Boston Standard is owned by Johnston Press, which produces 18 daily newspapers and 253 weekly newspapers, and which has a history of cutting costs to the bone, which means employing as few staff as possible - but that’s no excuse.
A look at this week’s Standard is a good example of why readers are deserting in tsunami-style waves.
A total of 44 “news” stories
The “Brighter Boston” feature. When this first started, the logo was peppered throughout the paper. Now it appears just once a week. Does that mean Boston is dull - or just that nothing much good ever happens? Oddly, a couple of places where the symbol should be displayed is on the Boston Enterprise Week feature and the news of a £24 million contract for Magnadata.  But it isn’t.
Our heart sank when we saw the return of what used the be called “The Mess of the Month.” This critique of local eyesores was provided (as it will be again) by Boston Preservation Trust.
Then, the contributor was a former Town Clerk* of Boston, the late Ron Coley. Mr Coley, a diminutive man with a squint and a tendency to wear a cossack hat in almost all weathers, would prowl the town, locate his target, write a piece of blood curdling invective, followed by the sentence “Enough is enough” - after which he would demand a host of expensive improvements usually well beyond the reach of the property owners. Unfortunately, he often targeted the wrong people, and the Standard, on more than one occasion, had to apologise to occupants of properties who were as eager to have them improved as Mr Coley, but were powerless to get anything done. The feature wasn’t much cop last time. But the Civic Trust has shrewdly guessed that no one at the paper remembers that it’s all been done before, and will welcome a regular contribution that they don’t have to write with open arms. Doubtless they’ll assuage their consciences by calling it “citizen journalism.”
Back to the Standard.
Once a month a column appears entitled “Comment.” Usually this means that a paper has something to say - and heaven knows, there’s enough subjects in Boston which need serious comment. But no. The “Comment” is always from a financial adviser - and this month’s contributor tells us that a monthly investment of £62.50 over 45 years at interest of 10%a month (find a rate like that if you can) will generate “over £500,000.” We’re not experts on compound interest, but we feel that £50,000 is nearer the mark.
Read on. On page 14, the smiling faces of pupils from the Giles School at Old Leake beam out at us as they celebrate their A-level results. On page 15 we see similar delight at Boston High and Boston Grammar schools.
Turn the page, and you can see err ... the smiling faces of pupils from the Giles School at Old Leake. C’mon it wasn't that good a story.
In short, most weeks, the Standard is a slapdash disgrace that’s filled with whatever stories fall easily to hand.
In a town the size of Boston, its circulation should be around 15,000 copies a week - but it is no surprise that it is falling like a stone.

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*Town Clerk - the title now known as Chief Executive. It ought still to be in use today in many authority areas as a lot of smaller authorities are little more than towns, and the present job title is more often a piece of aggrandisement which does no more than justify an inappropriately high salary.