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The Demise of The Brighton Argus



wellquickwoody

Many More Voting Years
NSC Licker Extraordinaire
Aug 10, 2007
13,577
Melbourne
My family have taken a copy of The Argus every day that I can remember, at least back to the early 70's. I remember my aunt studiously checking the death notices every evening, occasionally proclaiming ''Ooh, Mrs Soandso from number 22 has lost her husband' etc etc.. It really was the best source of local news, better than Radio Brighton as it did not have to cram both the notional and local stuff into a 7 minute slot. And Albion coverage was excellent with the eloquent John Vinicombe writing the prose.

OK, move forward 40 odd years and the world has changed. Printed media is no longer get king, even TV news is thought too slow and awkward by many favouring the interweb. Westminster Press have long dropped the 'Brighton' bit from The Argus, then moved the printing to Southampton (very local), and latterly to Weymouth in Dorset, our local rag could hardly be more detached from its' true home. Many will point to the ease of communication in the modern world, the immediacy of email, the instantaneous access to the web, I now take The Argus by subscription as it costs just £30 per year but spend zero in my local newsagent now as a result. But maybe distance will kill the newspaper......

The bus crash in Brighton yesterday made national news, BBC, Sky etc, even the Liverpool Echo ran the story! So this mornings Argus would be rammed with the story I thought, just how many pages I wondered, 5, 7 or more perhaps, and a centre pages feature? A real story for the local journals to get their teeth into you would think.

The result? No screaming headlines, not even the major story on the front page, just a small column and a photo on the edge of page. This story of injury and disruption does not even make the next six pages, you finally find it on page 8, mind you it is the whole page. Maybe it is time to put the Argus to bed........
 

Wrong-Direction

Well-known member
Mar 10, 2013
13,375
Only read it for the match reports, which are often bollocks
 

BensGrandad

New member
Jul 13, 2003
72,015
Haywards Heath
What always amused me was the John Vinnicombe articles early season where he gave an opinion that we would gain promotion, few weeks later hold our own midtable, couple of weeks later fight relegation. Come April he would be quoting his previous articles and his prediction. His match reports were quite good and accurate though.
Jobs feature Thursdays Car buying or selling Fridays.
 


tinycowboy

Well-known member
Aug 9, 2008
4,002
Canterbury
My dad was a roving reporter for the Argus in the 60s. It was a good read up to the 90s, but times and demands change I suppose. Maybe newspapers made out of paper will become popular again for hipsters in the 2030s...
 


Gullflyinghigh

Registered User
Apr 23, 2012
4,279
I don't know of anyone that buys it anymore, it's just a pointless and poorly edited rag.

I will go on the website every now and again, but only if someone's highlighted something that's worth reading beforehand.
 


Bombadier Botty

Complete Twaddle
Jun 2, 2008
3,258
Maybe newspapers made out of paper will become popular again for hipsters in the 2030s...

You never know, there might be an internet 'backlash' at some point. Pre-internet I never used to buy a daily paper, but now do so religiously to give my eyes/brain a break from reading from screens.
 

Bozza

You can change this
Helpful Moderator
Jul 4, 2003
55,529
Back in Sussex


poidy

Well-known member
Aug 3, 2009
1,842
Used to love the Sports Argus as a kid. A whole newspaper on a Sunday dedicated to the Albion. Thorough, detailed and concise it was great value for money.
 

drew

Drew
Oct 3, 2006
22,981
Burgess Hill
What always amused me was the John Vinnicombe articles early season where he gave an opinion that we would gain promotion, few weeks later hold our own midtable, couple of weeks later fight relegation. Come April he would be quoting his previous articles and his prediction. His match reports were quite good and accurate though.
Jobs feature Thursdays Car buying or selling Fridays.

On the contrary, when I read his reports I often felt I had witnessed a different match! His book, 'The Albion' had several inaccuracies from matches in the previous season, the result of the home games against Spurs and Blackpool spring to mind, which made me doubt considerable the accuracy of reports on games in the years preceding my support for the club.
 
D

Deleted User X18H

Guest
No. The Brighton Indy is a proper newspaper. Their Albion coverage is penned by people who can actually write - the likes of Dan Tester, Richie Morrie, Brad Stratton and Johnny Cantor.

That's not strictly correct .
 


severnside gull

Well-known member
May 16, 2007
24,540
By the seaside in West Somerset
Time to put the Argus to bed?........surely it put itself there when it abandoned Brighton and ceased to be a properly representative local paper

Mind you, 50 years and more ago it was nationally recognised for the quality or otherwise of its grammatical and editorial cock-ups. One tradition at least that it appears to have maintained!
In those days we had John Vinnicombe - a nasty drunk whose reporting too often reflected his addiction but a character nonetheless. Now bland is all that is permitted and sadly but inevitably it's reflected in their relationship with the club.
 

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