Wednesday 10 February 2010

Hyper-local in 1986...until Fleet Street called

Interesting post from George Dearsley on his blog  about how he went hyper-local in 1986 by launching the Stockport Sport and Leisure Guide after being made redundant by a national newspaper.
George says: "I ran the thing for 10 issues and was still breaking even financially when I received a call from a Sunday Mirror executive asking me to come and work for it full time. Playing safe in this Brave New World of entrepreneurship I chose the reliable option and was back in tabloid journalism. Little did I know what Robert Maxwell was soon to do to the Mirror Group and indeed to journalism in general."
He adds: "So I see now how hyper-local might work. The issue for me, however, was quite simple. Having worked on a national paper, having interviewed Joan Collins, Take That, Oliver Reed and so on, having exposed corruption at the highest levels of society, did I really want to go around collecting advertising revenues from hairdressers? No offence to the crimpers. The lure of what was then still Fleet Street was too great. The buzz was there, not working largely alone, detailing the triumphs of Stockport harriers and golfers."

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