MUCH back-slapping this week on struggling Penrith snoozepaper, The Slumberland & Westmorland Imperilled.
Its North Lakes Living magazine (left) – used every month to fatten up the thin and weedy weekly organ – has just won a “Supplement Of the Year” award.
This minor success prompted Oscar’s style gloating in the Herald, whose nosediving circulation figures won’t be winning any awards.
There followed a front-page story and photograph; self-congratulation across its social meeja accounts; and a general atmosphere of journalistic summits having been conquered.
However, less impressionable readers will know that the “Supplement of the Year” award is largely about commercial/advertising success, rather than recognising editorial excellence.
The magazine is a shameless revenue-raiser by the struggling paper to winkle ever more advertising income out of local businesses.
The Regional Press Awards generally exist to honour the “Grit, determination, and sheer talent” in local regional newspapers.
Of all 22 prizes up for grabs at the awards, “Supplement of the Year” would probably be in the bottom three of prizes most Editors would want to take back to the office.
Trophies are handed out for Front Page of the Year; Scoop of the Year; Campaign of the Year; Journalist of the Year; and Photographer of the Year, among others.
(The Imperilled was at least canny enough not to blow dough entering categories that it knew it wouldn’t win.)
As for the paper’s award-winning monthly mag, don’t expect too many illuminating reads or bombshell investigations.
The latest 32-page edition was full of the usual puff and fluff.
It contained four full-page adverts; five half-page adverts and five quarter-page adverts.
Jemmied in around these were personality-driven articles/barely concealed free adverts.
Most of the subjects featured have something to promote or flog.
One wonders if the distraction of stuffing this 32-page supplement every month is starting to take eyes off the actual newspaper?
Mistakes are noticeably creeping in.
In this week’s Herald, dated 15th March, the newspaper ran a five-column headline to lead its Letters Page: “Questions put to MP are legitimate.”
To the bafflement of readers, there was no letter corresponding to this headline.
A quick check through back copies reveals that this very same headline was correctly used to lead the Letters Page a month ago in the 15th February edition.
No one spotted the error.
As with many things these days, the Regional Mess Awards, are not quite the big deal that they used to be.
Newspapers with dwindling readerships and deflated staff sometimes seek out these easy-to-win awards as a morale-booster.
But it comes at a price.
Newspapers are charged hundreds of pounds for each category that they enter, which is why Editors are choosy about which category they enter, as they must believe they stand a chance of winning.
Tickets to attend the glitzy prize-giving ceremony are also charged at a ridiculous £345 per staff member.
(Replica trophies are flogged off by the awards organisers for £300 a time.)
Perhaps as a thankyou to those struggling newspapers coughing up what in some cases can amount to more than £1,000 to participate in the awards, very few entrants to the Regional Press Awards walk away empty-handed come the end of the night.
Cynics might consider it the Award for Entering Our Awards Award!
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thecumbriachronic.co.uk 
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