Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

The Haringey Advertiser is the most recent of many local newspapers to go belly up.

The Crouch End focussed Broadway Express (an offshoot of the Ham and High) is struggling along with weekly sales of just 595. The most recent figures for online views show that the Ham & High (presumably incorporating Broadway data) gets under 6,000 unique views daily (for comparison HoL gets just over 2,000). This doesn't suggest a title in rude health.

To the east, the Tottenham Indy manages to give away approximately 8,000 copies each week (compare that with weekly unique views on HoL of 8,500). No figures for online viewing are available, but my understanding is that by ratio they're less skewed towards online than the Ham and High). 

It seems possible that we'll have no local news papers left before long.

Bad news for local democracy.

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I enjoyed reading the local rags. You used to have a link on HOL that seemed to have disappeared. Nevertheless, I found the quality of journalism over the last few years has been really poor. Still, its a real shame this has happened. I hope the staff find employment soon.

Glad to see other printed media still around. E.g.; https://boutiquemags.com/ who do Hunger, who also have an extensive on-line presence ;

Issue12

Meanwhile the Standard magazine has a ridiculous article on why Tottenham is the new Hackney. Writer doesn't seem to know the difference between an area and a borough. Contains usual references eg Craving Coffee, Redemption, ChickenTown, Skepta...

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/why-tottenham-is-th...

Not simply ridiculous but the work of a Council-funded Lies Factory called the Comms Unit.

"Usual references", as you say Josephine. With the work of people trying to run a businesses - some with their own money and some subsidised with public money - being harnessed, co-opted, to fit into the construction of a fiction without regard to any sort of wider truth.

As usual the key question is the old one: Who Benefits? Cui bono? 
And by implication who is harmed? What is harmed is easy to answer: the attempt to find out the truth.

A few years ago someone who is now a local councillor tried to justify to me the need for the "Haringey People" magazine. They said that the Council used to face unfair, one-sided and inaccurate criticism. Meaning that it was necessary to balance this with clear objective factual information. The Haringey People magazine no longer has any such justification. And it has been co-opted and turned into Party-line Pravda. It's funded by our money with staff, production costs and free door-to-door distribution which real local papers unsuccessfully failed to maintain.

Using the subsidised PR the Council leadership tell the same big lies. For example about billions of pounds of public and private money being "pumped into Tottenham". Presumably they think that if these are told often enough, people will believe it, however true or untrue.
The Standard, because it partly relies on churnalising the same PR handouts that the local freesheets depended on, churns out the same fictions. Is there a ten year old "warehouse community" in Markfield Road and Fountayne Road?  Is it really dead easy to get a 4am licence in Tottenham?  If that is the pitch the Council, estate agents or anyone else is using to attract businesses?  If it is, members of HoL might like to start worrying.

It's a real conundrum Alan. Back in the late 70s I knew a group of art/performance people who lived and worked in Martello Street in Hackney. The sole reason they were there was because it was the only place they could afford. Their work became better known and that attracted more people to the same area and so rents shot up, the tatty houses and warehouses were done up and the very people who created the "scene" in the first place were forced out. Now it's London Fields and only Jarvis Cocker and the like can afford to live or work there.

I'm not sure what can be done. If properties and sites are in private hands the owners will of course try to get the most from renting and selling. If it's in public hands and rents are controlled you end up with a waiting list of people who want to be in that area. They eventually give up and move to the next place, as happened in Dalston and now, it seems, Tottenham.
Many interesting points. A while ago I became aware of the council funded 'no junk mail' campaign, including circulating stickers to put on your letterbox. I was leafleting about coming to watch, or maybe to join, my community choir. 'Well this ISNT junk' I thought to myself, posting the leaflets. And I meant it. It was a great community event bringing people together. And hardworking pizza takeaways etc, none of them consider there products 'junk'. Who are the council to lable other communications 'Junk' whilst happily churning out and posting their own through letterboxes?

My son encountered this when leafletting for the local farmers' market - the households who would probably have liked to hear about it were precisely those with 'no junk mail' signs. You break the law if you ignore them.

I've actually taken my notice down and get relatively few leaflets (3 or 4 a week), nearly all of which go in the recycling. If I happen to catch the delivery person I politely hand them back.

I don't think it's illegal to ignore a "no junk mail" sticker?

It's not illegal to ignore the signs. Just rather rude

"Any 'No Junk Mail' sign is not more than a polite request not to push commercial leaflets through your door. Whereas you have a legal right not to be bothered with addressed junk mail, you can't force individuals or organisations to stop delivering unaddressed junk mail."

https://stopjunkmail.org.uk/shop/about-letterbox-stickers

Hackney. The borough or just the area around the two neighbouring stations. Anyway here's a timely piece by the Mayor of Hackney on their development strategy, focusing on housing:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hackney-council-housing-governm...

One factor in the decline of newspaper sales may be the decrease of old-style newsagents - I know there are still lots on Green Lanes and two near Crouch End Broadway, but if I shop on the High Road near Bruce Grove, I can't find any - only Aldi sells papers as far as I can recall.

Well bad news for

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