Friday, 19 September 2008

Metro - Last Week's News Today

When I was at university and Metro Newspaper was a relatively new phenomenon, we used to marvel at how much of the content was re-hashed from the previous day's Sun (and other newspapers when we were feeling intelligent). 'Yesterday's News Today' was the tagline we gave it.

Admittedly it has improved greatly and, as a commuter, I don't know where I would be without it. Not reading The Sun, that's for sure, but you get the picture. As a media owner they are brilliant to deal with and do wonderful things in terms of marketing and entertainment, pushing back boundaries all the time.

As a business model it has been flattered by numerous imitators, from London Lite and thelondonpaper to Shortlist and Sport, and it has now extended its online offering to those frustrated when they miss out on their daily dose with E-Metro.

I'm not going to go on about the E-Metro itself and the merits or pitfalls thereof. Ryan Fitzgibbon covered it last month around its launch, and the only thing I would add is that they may have missed a trick by not having the ads as clickable links.

Today though, Metro has disgraced itself in a journalistic way, ironically given the reasons, by reverting to its former self. Over-reliance on news feeds and press releases can see you way behind the times these days, and Metro this morning ran the story on page 8 that Monster Munch had gone back to its roots by reverting to the old pack designs and making the snacks themselves bigger. Sound familiar? That's because this news appeared on this very site a full week ago.



Also I find the new showbiz guy a bit of a twat. Take off your hat you fool you're in the presence of Pamela Denise Anderson.

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