Tag Archives: News

Just a Wee Blether…

About ‘silly season’ news days

In the world of newspapers and media, the Christmas and New Year period is what we call the “silly season”. All the regular story sources have dried up, the courts, local councils, and sensible politicians – if that’s not a contradiction in terms – are on holiday.

Finding stories to fill the festive papers requires a lot of forward planning. Big breaking stories such as the devastation caused by Storm Frank in Scotland this week, relieve the pressure. But reporters have always had to dream up weird and wonderful “space-fillers”.

The review of the year – or the retrospect as we called it – was a major task. Two dedicated reporters could spin it out to at least three days. But some other festive features that have appeared over the years have been, shall we say, a bit desperate.

It’s good to know it happens everywhere. One of the Arizona papers this week had a double-page spread on the top 10 new coffee shops that had opened in Phoenix in the last 12 months. That was followed by “favourite nature trails” – another two-page spread.

These stories used to be called “set and holds” – they were set and then held – but are now put into an electronic file known as the “Christmas Box”. They might be desperate and the products of fertile imaginations but readers often love them. They comment on them as much, if not more, than the important events of the day.

A few years ago I wrote a two-page feature on Clyde-built vessels that were still in operation in various parts of the world. One was on the Mississippi River, another on Lake Titicaca, two were ferries in Guyana, and another was plying her trade on Lake Malawi in Africa.

It got at least a dozen responses, one from a gentleman who said he had travelled on three of them as well as another old Clyde ferry that was still operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

clock

The same happened when I exposed Glasgow’s “untimely” clocks. I used to get on and off the subway at Cowcaddens station. There was a clock on a public building that had never worked in all the time I was there and it infuriated me.

So I found five or six other examples of public clocks in the city that didn’t work. Again the response was amazing. If I was infuriated, then you should have read how “Indignant, Cowcaddens” felt about the situation. The Running Man clock at Buchanan bus station (pictured) really got their goat.

During the 1980s I took part in a newsroom contest with some colleagues to see who could get a story from the most obscure source. I got one from the secretary of Dunbeath and Berriedale Community Council in the north of Scotland – and it was published.

But my favourite response came after I wrote a story about the historical influx of Highlanders to the Partick area of Glasgow. I interviewed a barmaid in one of the traditional Highland pubs who told me that part of town was known as the “Tcheuchy Triangle”.

For the uninitiated, a “tcheuchter” is a name used for a rural dweller, usually from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I had never thought of it as being in any way offensive.

The following day my editor received a letter. There was no sender’s name on it. It simply read, “Dear editor. I resent being called a tcheuchter by your monkey Iain Lundy”.

As the editor astutely observed, “It must be someone who knows you, Iain.”

I hope you all have a very happy 2016 – and continue reading my Wee Blether!