By Phil Editions
THE Christmas spirit did not last long at Scroogequest – overlords of a series of piss poor “newspapers” here in Cumbria.
Instead of working on finding actual news for its newspapers, the command from High Office is to have young churnalists drumming up “page views” across its websites – probably to conceal its plunging print audiences from increasingly sceptical advertisers.
That means any old regurgitated or manufactured trash can be uploaded onto local news sites here to inflate the readership. The more shock value or lightweight the content – the better!
Boxing Day had barely passed when the News & Scar; The Wasteoftime Gazette and The Evening Snail were posting this cheery little compilation piece for its online readers:
“DRUGS, MURDER, RAPE & MORE – THE MOST SHOCKING CROWN COURT CASES HEARD IN 2024…”
The paper had chosen to take a distinctly unfestive “look back” to the most awful court cases of 2024.
Hardly what readers have in mind between Christmas and New Year and a big two fingers up at the victims of these horrible crimes!
What’s worse was that salivating readers were required to subscribe to Scroogequest to read this unashamedly mouldy “news”; which stunk out the place like old blue cheese!
MEANWHILE, on Christmas Day, there was an article doing the rounds on Scroogequest titles about “Cumbrian Hotspots undergoing a festive transformation and being given Christmas nicknames!“
In the article, Ullswater was named “Clauswater”; Whitehaven, where it rarely snows became “White Christmas Haven”; and Grasmere was inexplicably renamed “Grinchmere” by the newspaper.
Who could possibly invent this silly idea?
Why desperate Churnalists looking to UP their page views, of course!
Therefore, readers were informed that for the Christmas season, Maryport could be called “Merryport”; Catbells could be “Jingle Bells” and Scafell Pike was clumsily dubbed “Santa’s Peak”.
(Is it any wonder touroids get in trouble climbing England’s highest mountain over Christmas?)
And how did this festive rebrand of local place names go down with readers?
“What absolute nonsense!” remarked one of the more kinder contributors to the article’s comments section.
A range of other comments were mysteriously “disappeared”.
THE print versions of our “newspapers” were no better.
Jammed into its ridiculous eight-page “Nostalgia” section, The Crumbling News took a lovely wander down memory lane to the, er, devastating Cumbrian floods of December 2015.
(This might have been forgivable on a 10th anniversary but nine years after the fact struck a bum note; especially at Christmas.)
And it seems that none of the gifted wordsmiths on the paper know the meaning of the word nostalgia.
Nostalgia is defined as a “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period”.
Readers coughing up £1.90 will be feeling nostalgic for when the paper wasn’t owned by an American-based asset-stripper and employed actual trained journalists & professional photographers to stuff its hefty 90-page “Twixmas” editions!
thecumbriachronic.co.uk 
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