Inside Story: Snow news is good news...
This amazing whale snow sculpture was created by (l-r) Names l-r:Ryan Scott,Connar O'Hare,Jason Eastaff, Amy Mawby,Cain O'Hare and Owen Carter.
WHEN judging the relative merits of a story, one of the key questions we ask is “how many people does it affect?”.
We deal with dozens of stories each day and decisions have to be made as to which articles will be given the prime space at the front of the paper. Relevance to readers is of paramount importance to us as a newspaper and the more people that are affected by a story, the greater its chance of earning a good spot.
This week we have seen the best possible example of this in action. Nothing affects more people than the weather, and no weather is more newsworthy than snow.
It is a peculiar quirk of this country that we traditionally grind to a halt at the first sign of a small flurry, with schools closing down, roads more akin to an ice rink than a suitable highway and office workers downing tools in favour of a snowman and a sledge.
When the first flakes began to fall last Saturday we in the newsroom prepared ourselves for the inevitable “Snow chaos” and “White out” headlines to accompany tales of six hour journeys from hell, broken bones from slips on icy pavements and schools shutting their classrooms for weeks on end.
But it never materialised.
Maybe it’s because it happened on a weekend and by the time we all went to work on Monday morning conditions had significantly improved. Maybe the authorities finally got their act together and gritted the roads accordingly.
Whatever the reason, the predicted chaos never happened.
This welcome change gave us the chance to report on the weather in a really refreshing way. Contrary to popular belief we in the media don’t just love bad news. We embrace the opportunity to report good news as well and this week’s snow has bought out the best in the Northampton public.
On Monday we compiled a Facebook gallery of snow pictures sent in by readers. We received more than 60 images of snowmen, excited youngsters sledging in the park, snowball fights and all sorts of beautiful scenes from a winter wonderland.
Some of the more creative readers had taken the opportunity to indulge in their artistic side and had produced stunning recreations of the Titanic and an icy Buddha statue.
But no picture stood out more than “the Southfields whale”. This incredible snow sculpture took a group of youths more than two days to make and really was a labour of love.
Shaped into a deep sea creature, complete with razor sharp teeth, fin and tail, the whale’s body was dyed black with charcoal and its tongue a blood-curdling red with food colouring.
The picture became a Facebook phenomenon, with almost 600 “likes” and more than 100 comments.
It was fantastic to see a picture provoke such a response. To give those figures some kind of context our previous record for “likes” on any Facebook status was about 150.
The level of interest revealed two things. People love snow stories because it affects every single one of us and readers love to see positive stories about their community.
Southfields has endured a tough time over the years but it is an area with immense local pride and the response to these youngsters’ brilliant work was overwhelmingly positive.
A big well done to all those involved and many thanks for sending in the picture. Keep ’em coming.
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Weather for Northampton
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: East
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