Keep Harty Get Rid Of Ward Thread

[Brovion]

Maybe Harty could write a column for NSC instead.

That is actually an extremely good idea. Maybe we should have an 'Ian Hart' forum where Ian could write his column (only he would be allowed to start threads in it) and the rest of us could comment on it.

 

[Jam The Man]

Sign here if you think the Argus should keep Harty's column and not give column inches to the Glory Hunter Johnny come lately Mike Ward

Harty is Through and Through

Ward is a gooner

Signed Dave The gaffer

YES!!! Jam The Man and Dave The Gaffer agree on something!!!!

 

[Yorkie]

That is actually an extremely good idea. Maybe we should have an 'Ian Hart' forum where Ian could write his column (only he would be allowed to start threads in it) and the rest of us could comment on it.

He gets enough flack for his phone in.

It could be a rocky ride

 

[Lush]

Maybe Harty could write a column for NSC instead.

He probably has a life he'd like to get back to.

Unlike the rest of us.

 

[Harty]

Can I start by saying how overwhelmed I'm been with the support I has received today via NSC, e-mails, phone calls and text messages, thank you all very much.
Basically about 6 weeks ago I was called over to the Argus office and told about the re-launch and the fact that as a result of this all of the columnists apart from James Poulter were being changed.
No one likes being sacked, replaced or whatever but then again after almost 5 years maybe it was time for a change on both sides.
It was all put into perspective when I got back to the office and the next funeral through the door was that of an 8 year old boy.
And I thought I had problems!
I have enjoyed my time on the Argus and hope have gone a long way in continuing what we set out to do with Gulls Eye all those years ago.
A combination of the fanzine movement and Mrs Thatcher aboloshing the NUJ closed shop has meant that a large number of writers and braodcasters have made it into the mainstream media.
In the past I have on more than one occasion been a little miffed when I've had the allegation that I'm not a 'trained' journalist thrown at me.
Whilst I admire anyone who has gone on to further education the only qualification neccesary in the media is to be able to string a group of sentences together and to be passionate or at least knowledgable about the subject, the dinosaurs from the pre-fanzine days would have you think differently only to protect their cosy closed shop.
The trained journo line is usually used by the either the very arrogant or the insecure, but its basically a tired excuse.
As for Mike Ward I think he's coming in for some unfair stick, someone was always going to replace me, and what some of you might not realise is that Mike Ward, along with Paul Hayward, actually talked me out of walking out on the Argus just over a year ago when I was getting pissed off at the sub editors ripping my work to shreds every week.
I'm looking forward to reading his column just as he will be looking forward to reading my new one, yes you can't get rid of me that easily, within days of getting the dreaded news from the Argus I had a couple of calls from two other Sussex based publications and I will back very soon.
Once again thanks to everyone,

Harty

PS It happens to the best of us rumour has it Southern FM are stopping Sports coverage from next season so Millard is next for the chop.

 

[Kenhead]

Id rather read harty than ward

 

[portlock seagull]

Interesting update Harty, football's all about tradition and you've become a part of the Albions like it or not (Bet you absolutely love it actually!!) simply because "you woz there" - as a non NUJ journalist might say - leading from the front. That's why Mike Ward gets some stick - he wasn't. And Gullhanger isn't that interesting. Still he's got enough going for him for all of us to be talking about him on the internet, a delicious irony indeed! But is he Brighton's "Rudeski".....?

That AND more to be discussed this week everyone! On BBC SCR's very own FANS FORUM (plural eg kick anyone off who starts talking about anything other than football - let the 'shock' in the 'jock' of you come out!). I'll be calling in for one, once I get within range around Leatherhead, becaue it's also my b-day!!

These are my burning questions/topics for discussion:

When is Falmer decision-day?

Beer-keller/marquee at the "west end" (to hell with seats...we need a bozzer!)

Get Withdean Singing suggestions - Esther RANTzen got the whole bloody country going after all

Will ticket prices ever come down, even at Falmer?

How to generate more revenue for the club......

Mike "Rudeski" Ward - fan or "glory-hunter(!)"

Was the dread-locked woman who scores in the old Body Form/tampax advert off-side?

 

[north stand falmer]

Thank god he's gone. The bloke is a total wanker.

Hart ? You total pipe!

 

[Lord Bracknell]

At least the Argus spoke to Harty before replacing him. Some columnists get the news from a third party.

Whatever. Here's his final column:-

WHAT’S that saying about bad decisions evening themselves out over the course of a season? I would really like to know how that is going to work for Albion after the ludicrous decision not to award them a penalty at Queens Park Rangers on Saturday. The referee, Mr Cooper, wasn’t unsighted or unsure about Clarke Carlisle’s handball on the line from Charlie Oatway’s goalbound shot. The match situation and atmosphere in the stadium made him bottle it.

He didn’t have the courage to give Albion an early spot kick and reduce the home side to ten men. Seagulls ended up with nothing from a game that could be pivotal to the rest of the season.

Mr Cooper now finds himself alongside the likes of Phil Prosser and Ron Challis in the Albion referees’ hall of shame. I’m sure he’s looking forward to his next visit to Withdean.

I couldn’t help but get all nostalgic the other day when I came across a bundle of old Gulls Eyes up in the loft. I am proud to have been part of the fanzine movement because I believe it played a big part in the way supporters are now perceived by the club and media.

When Albion’s first fanzine hit the streets in August, 1988, the gulf between the club and its supporters was almost as big as the one between the media and fans.

The club and media were in league with each other. Granted, there were the occasional fallouts but ultimately the public were treated with a fair amount of contempt by both parties.

Giving the supporters a real voice was one of the main reasons for founding Gulls Eye.

God bless Mrs Thatcher because in the Eighties she abolished the closed shop scenario in the media and 16 years on the Albion fanzine network has spawned. Gulls Eye broke one of the biggest local sports stories ever about the sale of the Goldstone while several of its contributors have gone on to great things.

Roy Chuter edits what is widely thought to be the best programme the club has ever published, Paul Camillin is the Albion Press officer, Nick Szczepanik works on a national broadsheet and don’t forget that ropey old BBC Southern Counties Radio phone-in host. I still believe there is a place for a fanzine at the Albion and I sincerely hope that somewhere there is youngster ready and waiting to take up the baton.

If someone does attempt to do it, pick up the phone and get in touch so I can give them as much support and advice as former Albion writer John Vinicombe offered me.

But, so far as Hart Of The Matter is concerned, after five years it’s time for a change so goodbye, although I hope it’s more like au revoir. Thanks to everybody who took the time and trouble to read the column. Judging by the e-mails and letters, some of you liked it and some of you didn’t but what a boring world it would be if we all had the same opinions.

Quite simply, readers of The Argus, thanks for everything.

 

[north stand falmer]

The argus replaced Ian because he's utter shit!!

 

[Bwian]

I strongly believe you do not swap the team you have followed all your life. Ward is a Gooner, not an Albion fan in my mind.

But was he a 'real gooner'?

By that I mean an Arsenal fan who went to games week in, week out or was he one of the typical Premiershit 'fans' who formed a loose allegiance to a club because they were nearby/successful/liked the look of them? Maybe he then went to an Albion game and realised that there is something in following an Albion/Plymouth/Barnet in person rather than a plastic allegiance to just one more glamour team?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

From the back cover of Gullhanger:-

"Before their promotion as champions of Division Three, Mike Ward hadn't given a monkey's about the Albion. He'd rarely glanced at their match reports, could only name one current player, and had always reckoned theirs was a rather odd name, most notable for being an anagram of 'albino'. But with the Seagulls suddenly flying high, he realised they could be just what he needed - a team to help him rediscover his youthful fervour."

 

[London Irish]

A combination of the fanzine movement and Mrs Thatcher aboloshing the NUJ closed shop has meant that a large number of writers and braodcasters have made it into the mainstream media.

God bless Mrs Thatcher because in the Eighties she abolished the closed shop scenario in the media and 16 years on the Albion fanzine network has spawned.

Harty, this is right-wing drivel. No wonder some accuse you of being a Tory, you've swallowed all their anti-union propaganda. I've enjoyed your Argus columns a lot for the last 5 years but if you're intention was to do a Julie Burchill (her last few columns in the Guardian recently were so dreadful that even fans of hers were glad she was going), then you've succeeded with me.

The breaking of the unions by very aggressive managements, backed up by Thatcher's anti-trade union laws, in the 1980s was a disaster for journalism and for newspaper quality in the this country.

All that has happened is that wages have been driven down in the industry, training programmes have been gutted, spawning a whole generation of poorly-resourced, poorly-trained and poorly-motivated hacks working at local newspapers like the Argus.

Newsquest, the UK branch of the newspaper multinational Gannett, which owns the Argus, pays its new journalists £12K and its qualified journalists £14k. The average wage for non-manual workers in the UK is £27k.

If people are wondering why local newspapers like the Argus are so poor in quality, and to a large degree they are, it is because many of the journalists working for them live a semi-student existence wondering where the money for their next meal or pint is coming from instead of concentrating on the facts of the story they are writing about. You pay peanuts, and you will get monkey journalism.

Most journalists can only afford to live on these wages for a couple of years before they have to f*** off to London or into PR to try and earn some decent money. So 95% of journalists who work on local newspapers tend to be newbies, with no names in their contact books and little knowledge of the area(s) they are writing about. When they leave, more monkees are hired in their place and the treadmill process begins over and over again, producing the kind of sh1te local journalism we are all familar with.

Harty, it is tragic that you praise Thatcher. Instead of producing media diversity and more viewpoints (your sadly deluded view), her influence has encouraged greater concentration in ownership in newspapers (rich bastards owning more and more) that has driven down newpaper standards and excluded individualistic journalistic voices.

The Daily Telegraph is up for sale and I'm sorry to break this to you Harty, it isn't going to be taken over by a fanzine co-operative from Whitehawk, it is going to a pair of billionaires who already own newspapers in this country.

But of course national newspapers have always been owned by the rich and powerful, the big change has come in local newspapers. Twenty or 30 years ago, most local newspapers were owned by smaller local companies that did make some effort to ensure that their journalists reflected the life of the community that their business was rooted in.

Thatcher smashing up the unions allowed the owners to drive down wage costs and turn local newspapers into sausage factories for producing fat profits for shareholders. That's when the massive media multinational companies moved in and bought up local newspapers. The Argus is a US-owned newspaper, those of you sending protest letters about the Argus to Paul Davidson at Newsquest, you are just sending them to the bag-carrier of the Americans. The Argus' sister paper is not only the Leader, but the biggest paper in America, USA Today. Send you emails instead to McLean, Virginia http://www.gannett.com/map/gan007.htm

Now Harty, you peddle this deluded Norman Tebbit fantasy about NUJ closed shops. The reality is that journalists across Britain have for 15 years been battling with employers to get their unions recognised so some decent wages and conditions can be negotiated with companies that have been making huge f***-off profits.

One of the few decent things that New Labour tosspot Blair has done is to pass legislation making it a requirement for employers to recognise unions where a majority in the workplace vote for recognition.

Guess what Harty? Such a ballot is due to take place soon at the Argus and at last those poor sods working there will have the right to be represented by a union. How fitting that an anti-union bigot like yourself will be long gone from the Argus by then. I'm guessing that Garry Nelson was a member of the PFA so that already puts him one-up in my book ahead of you.

But it is not too late to change your ill-informed views. You are welcome to come along at any time to an NUJ meeting at Sussex Arts Club if you want to learn a few facts about the industry you have chosen to work in. One of the members is the Guardian's Steve Bell, so if you don't like reading long and weighty histories of the British media, then Steve could draw you a few cartoons illustrating how Thatcher and the fat-cat owners screwed journalism in Britain.

The one great white hope of the British media isn't newspapers or the fanzines that you bizzarely think still might have a future - it's the internet, where it is still possible to publish relatively cheaply, hence this fine forum we have here. The fat-cat billionaires haven't quite thought of a way of privatising or owning that yet, but give 'em time, they're working on it.

 

[Harty]

Sorry London Irish if I offended you, the Mrs T quip was tongue in cheek, having lost £12,000 in 2 years on a property because the price crash and other related incidents like periods of unemployment, problems with my kids over the NHS the last thing I am is a Tory.

 

[El Presidente]

There should only ever be one 'Ward' associated with the Albion

 

[BUTTERBALL]

Very eloquent words from London Irish. I think Harty was the catalyst for his outpouring - but it's all very true.

My guess is that London Irish has either worked for the Argus or currently works there so is well in touch with these issues.

 

[Bozza]

The one great white hope of the British media isn't newspapers or the fanzines that you bizzarely think still might have a future - it's the internet, where it is still possible to publish relatively cheaply, hence this fine forum we have here. The fat-cat billionaires haven't quite thought of a way of privatising or owning that yet, but give 'em time, they're working on it.

Please email all offers to:

bozza@northstandchat.com

 

[FG aka Football Genius.]

""There should only ever be one 'Ward' associated with the Albion" - you mean its not THE Peter Ward writting the articles now, mite as well get Harty back!

 

[Southy]

I think the thing that winds people up about Mike Ward isn't that he changed his allegiance to the Albion from the Arse (a fine decision in my book), but that he has been appointed bt the media as some sort of national expert on the Albion. No one can talk about this club properly without having the perspective that going through the Archer/Bellotti era gave us. Therefore when he writes or speaks about the Albion he sounds hollow as he cannot understand what it is that defines this club and makes issues such as Falmer. playing at Withdean and losing Zamora so important and different to other clubs. Good luck to the guy, but he should take a back seat, watch the team and stop giving the impression that he is kickstarting some sort of 2nd career as a football pundit.

 

[attila]

Agree with you Steve. No problem with Ward per se (it's brilliant when people become Albion fans, whenever, however) but he doesn't have the full picture, that's all. Despite his Bernard Manning fixation (now cured, I believe, Ian?) and his permanent wind-ups, Harty is the real deal and Gull's Eye played a phenomenal part in saving our club.

And he KNOWS that football fanzines were an offshoot of the punk fanzine movement and absolutely nothing to do with deregulation of the print industry...