Was this deliberate? The news page of the Croydon Guardian website on Thursday afternoon led with a story about a Surrey Street cannabis factory, placed right next to a jolly picture of the Mayor of London holding a pot of … weed? Surely they can’t be that witty?

Over time, this may become one of the themes of this blog, a critique of the local media. Well, snoozepapers, actually, and their accompanying websites.

Let’s face it, you’ve never picked up the Advertiser and exclaimed: “Wow! That’s covered much better than anything I’ve seen or read on the BBC website or in the Guardian/Daily Mail/Sun” [delete newspaper title as applicable].

The truth of the matter is that too few people are picking up the Advertiser each week, or even its freebie local Guardian rival. The South London Press, meanwhile, while not necessarily every Cockernee’s cup of Rosy Lee (see what we did there?), remains a vibrant local newspaper covering the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, and with reasonable sales.

Maybe it’s got something to do with the Advertiser‘s news sense. Or lack of it.

I’ll never forget the Advertiser bill (the newspaper sales banner that newsagents and street vendors have at their pitches, offering the tastiest teaser from the latest edition) outside my local newsagent one Friday morning:

“Traffic Chaos in Town Centre After Murder”

As if the murder was an afterthought, a mere inconvenience to motorists driving around George Street.

For me, that summed up the Advertiser then, and it has not got any better since.

Not that the Croydon Guardian, or the papers’ websites, are any better. Both were leading on the cannabis factory story today, June 3, some eight days after the police incident that uncovered the indoor farm.

Hardly first with the news, is it?

But at least a bored sub-editor somewhere had some fun, posting that story alongside the picture of Boris Johnson holding a much-loved pot plant.

(with thanks for teccie picture assistance to Jason Cobb, of the esteemed onionbagblog from up Lambeth way)

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