Shrimpsvoices

ockers wrote:The culprit wasnt Steven Hewitt as he no longer works for the paper and hasnt for quite some time
i think you need to read it again and edit your post

Sammy h wrote:Anyone read it yet. They published an e-mail/letter from Matt Deighton and the editor added his notes at the end.

The culprit was Greg Lambert.

Morecambe Visitor Wed 18 Aug 2010 p.5 wrote:Editor's Note - There have been several posts on Shrimpsvoices.com since last week's Visitor article 'Net knockers are ruining my club' making similar points to Matt.

We believe this WAS a legitimate news story.

Mark Swindlehurst's comments about Shrimpsvoices reflected that we live in a culture where a small minority of people mis-use the internet to attack and abuse others, or to make negative upsetting and unconstructive comments.

This is something that is happening far too regularly - not just on football club forums. We agree that it's unacceptable and believe the issue is worth highlighting.

We also do not feel this was a 'lazy' article merely because we reported something written on the internet. When deciding what is 'newsworthy', we make a judgement call on each potential story on its merits, and then write in as fair and balanced a manner as possible.

Mark's comments were already in a public forum and available to anyone, just the same as if someone had made comments on the radio, the television or on any other forum of public media and we had every right to report them accurately and fairly, which we believe we did.

It is our opinion that, as a respected member of the football club’s community, Mark’s views were interesting and thought-provoking enough to feature in the newspaper.

The article was by no means intended to ‘spin’ that “everyone moans” on Shrimpsvoices.com – which is not the case as most members post well-reasoned articulate and positive comments about Morecambe Football Club.

We did portray the other side of the story by including a quote defending Shrimpsvoices, and said only a minority of fans were responsible.

In recent past we have featured a number of positive articles mentioning Shrimpsvoices.com and this week have featured members’ views in our report on the new Globe Arena (pages six and seven).

The vast majority of our stories in The Visitor do not have ‘reported bylines’ and there was certainly no underlying reason why the reporter’s name (Greg Lambert) was not used in this instance.

We would like to stress that The Visitor is incredibly supportive of Morecambe Football Club and its fans in general and will continue to provide balanced coverage of the club and issues surrounding it.

which is not the case as most members post well-reasoned articulate and positive comments about Morecambe Football Club.