London’s (dire) newest “news” site

About a year ago The Mirror group decided to “rationalise” their media titles across London. It closed some such as The Wharf and merged others to operate under a new MyLondon banner.

Since then the output has been, shall we say, a little poor.

The strategy of MyLondon and sister sites operating under the “Live” banner, such as KentLive, appears to have clickbait at its heart. It’s like a 10 year old rubbish imitation of Buzzfeed with alluring “articles” such as 29 things seen on London buses.

Posted across various social media

One of the biggest examples of clickbait right now from the site is the endless “it’s going to snow soon” drivel they are going nuts with at the moment. They are posting it *every* day across just about every form of social media going. As The Mirror (or Reach Group as it is known) now own The Express after a 2018 buyout perhaps that’s no surprise.

The MyLondon strategy on Facebook and Twitter appears to have various members of staff post up anything – whether related to facts or not. Headlines rarely match content.

With it now coming up to winter, the gist currently is to take something the Met Office say and twist it out of all proportion and claim imminent snow. That or use a bloke in a shed as a source.

What gets me is how such a large media group put out so much rubbish. They have funds. It’s just so lazy. There’s so much to cover in London and so many stories. Even a small amount of time and effort towards useful public interest news would give it some sort of meaning.

What will be interesting to see is if public money now goes to this title to cover real news. If it does then questions need asking. A major company sets up a site, puts up utter rubbish for a year then receives public funds? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Anyway, lets see what the story is tomorrow. Seven feet of snow on February 31st anyone?

 

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J Smith

I've lived in south east London most of my life growing up in Greenwich borough and working in the area for many years. The site has contributors on occasion and we cover many different topics. Living and working in the area offers an insight into what is happening locally.

5 thoughts on “London’s (dire) newest “news” site

  • It’s a truly abysmal source of “news”. Iffy too with reporters pretending to be the public when advertising articles on Facebook. The snow thing is a staple of rubbish newspapers.

    Reply
  • I stared getting MyLondon stories appear in my Google news feed recently, and initially assumed the writer *was* a 20 year old. I’ve a rule with local news sites – of they publish a lot of stories with titles beginning “This is”, some click.

    Reply
  • The content can easily be put out by one person sitting at WeWork (while it’s there) requiring little more than an Internet connection and some templates. None of the news is consequential so there is no percentage in sending a human being to verify the information. The level of analysis required is often the exact analysis that the local know-it-all at the pub would offer: a foolish statement delivered with absolute seriousness followed by a discreet tapping of the side of the nose.

    Anyway better hurry it will snow today and I heard parts of London are no-go areas…

    Reply
  • I’m pleased to see someone with an identical view to my own publicising this more widely than I can! It drives me berserk on a regular basis. The latest stories on this subject can’t even position the current date correctly in the month and a Sun story today claims temperatures on Halloween night will fall to -3C but when you read the story it refers to Thursday morning (not evening) having these temperatures! The main idiocy is that temperatures and weather that might occur in the Scottish Highlands is regularly referred to the entire country when there is 600 miles+ between north and south!

    Reply
  • It’s frightening that a lot of people get their ‘news’ from sources such as this.

    Reply

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