The Post- mouthpiece of establishment in Shirebrook

‘The Post’ (TP). You can find it more or less every month on your doorstep. For many community members it is the only source of information about what is happening in our town. The problem is that the authors of this publication, either consciously or not, conceal their connections with Shirebrook Town Council (STC), so each word printed there should be approached with caution or better yet, suspicion.

I have to admit – I used to work in a publishing house and I know how difficult, time consuming and expensive it can be to piece together a single edition out of multiple elements, especially when you work to tight deadlines. So the fact that there is somebody who actually wants to do that, is praiseworthy. However, a publisher who wants to be perceived as a serious publisher should follow certain generally accepted technical and ethical norms. I am afraid TP might not be following them. They might even breach some of them.

Firstly, any self-respecting publishing house has an ISNN assigned by The British Library in London. Secondly, any self-respecting publishing house publishes the date of issue of each subsequent issue. Thirdly, any self-respecting publishing house has an e-mail address. Fourthly, any self-respecting publishing house has the so-called ‘Masthead’ (also known as ‘imprint’), i.e. a small area (usually on the editorial page) containing the editor’s address and names of employees and collaborators. There is an address for the TP’s printing press at the bottom of the first page, but Google search comes back with the information that it is permanently closed (?). The fifth and most important issue: any self-respecting publishing house publishes the names of the authors of their articles, even if just by using abbreviations (with initials or pen names), which then make it possible to check the name of the author against the list of collaborators in the masthead. TP does not have a masthead, so…

Masthead should also contain information about the publisher’s legal status – for example, whether the company is a limited company, a public limited company or a company of a different type. The lack of this information makes it impossible for me to check their financial statements. And why would I want to do that? – I will explain that some other time… For now, let me just say that one can find adverts in TP that look as if they were paid for with taxpayers’ money. The issue of business entwining with politics is a slippery one, so before I write anything else on the subject I need to sniff around so as not to write something I will regret later. This is yet another thing I learnt while working for a publishing house.

But going back to the authors of articles in TP… Having leafed through issue 110 I concluded that the following pages have articles with no author listed: 1, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29. Zero! Nul! Nada! Cero! Nula!ਜ਼ੀਰੋ ! صفر ! No authors whatsoever!

I was able to find only five (!) articles in issue 110 that had the author’s name next to it. The funniest thing is the fact that two out of those five articles were written by councillors, one was written by an STC employee and one by a local police officer. Do you now understand why I stated in the title that TP is the mouthpiece of the establishment? Do you really expect to read about the multiple scandals related to STC in this “newspaper”?

This is why Shirebrook residents NEED an independent source of information about the town. This is why with every new article for www.shirebrooknews.com I realise how important the job ahead of us is.

The cherry on top in case of issue 101 of TP is the „Political Comment” on page 2. It is only initialled with SWF. I bet my boots that the author is also part of the establishment – my favourite boots! The whole article is… (it took me a long time to find a word that would accurately reflect its tone and message). Let me say this: the author writes so much nonsense, so many half-truths and manipulations, that I decided to spend some of my precious time on penning a polemical response to the article in a separate entry. You can read it here: https://shirebrook247.com/the-post-political-comment-polemics/

Sylwester Zwierzynski

Lead Photo by Danya Gutan from Pexels