This perfectly sums up appalling state of ‘local’ Newcastle United media these days | OneFootball

Difficult to believe the change when it comes to local Newcastle United media.

Things have now hit rock bottom.

Back in the day, the 1970s and 1980s, The Chronicle was how we found out all our Newcastle United news.

When it was delivered through the letter box late afternoon, straight to the back page to find out what was happening.

Whether it was new signings, injuries, team news, anything, those at Newcastle United told John Gibson what was happening and he wrote it down to go in The Chronicle.

Mad to think that at its peak, The Chronicle sold as many as 200,000 copies each day. Now they sell something like 5,000 paper copies.

Reality is that The Chronicle is now just another website competing with countless others for attention, with the paper version surely set to be binned very soon as sales are ever diminishing and will soon be all but invisible.

Real nostalgia at times for me, when I think of how big a part both The Chronicle and The Pink played in our Newcastle United lives, I just checked and it is now 20 years since The Pink was brought to an end in 2005.

Anyway, back to the present day and what we have now.

A story caught my eye online from The Chronicle early on Wednesday morning…

Latest Newcastle United transfer news with an update on Nick Pope and Andriy Lunin

‘Manchester United are eyeing a shock move for Newcastle goalkeeper Nick Pope, according to The Sun. The 33-year-old has been excellent for the Magpies since his move from Burnley back in 2022, but Howe is targeting Southampton’s Ramsdale to become the club’s new No.1.

As a result, Pope now faces the prospect of losing his place to Ramsdale and United are considering making a move this summer. The England international has less than 12 months left on his contract at St James’ Park and could be an affordable option for United as they look to provide competition for Andre Onana.’

This is obviously just absolute rubbish what the article is about, made up transfer stuff in media elsewhere in the UK and overseas. In Spain this nonsense about Real Madrid keeper Lunin coming to Newcastle. The same with Pope going to Man U, Eddie Howe is bringing in Aaron Ramsdale to compete with Nick Pope so we have two high level goalkeeping options, not bringing in one and getting rid of the current first choice!

Anyway, that isn’t what this article is about.

Instead, if you look at what The Chronicle journalist has written, not once but twice, he refers to Manchester United as ‘United’…

We are United! Newcastle United are United!!

The Chronicle is a Newcastle United reporting newspaper/website and that club at Old Trafford are Man U, Man Utd, Manchester United at a push. They are NOT ‘United’ when writing for a Newcastle United audience.

So why is a journalist writing for Newcastle Upon Tyne newspaper The Chronicle, referring to Man U as ‘United’?

Well, the journalist in question is called Kieran King and he is described as a ‘Sport Central Audience Writer’.

Looking at his profile online, Kieran King is writing ‘local’ Newcastle United media stories whilst based in the Midlands.

Looking back these last two weeks, he has also written ‘local’ media stories on Chelsea, Leeds United, Manchester United, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, Leicester City, Tottenham, Fulham, Derby County…

This has been an increasing trend in recent years for Reach (who own The Chronicle and numerous other local newspapers/websites, as well as national papers such as The Mirror, The Express and so on).

Employing young journalists to write for countless different sites they own.

However, surely when it comes to ‘local’ media, especially for your football team, you are looking for that extra local knowledge and expertise that comes from being based in the area and focusing on the one club, maybe one or two at a push.

How can there be any local expertise if the same journalist is writing from the Midlands about football clubs all over the country?

I understand the pressures these days on the media, trying to maximise revenues from online traffic and using ever more desperate measures to do so.

However, you have to ask yourself the question…