Another week, another negative news story about football fans in the city. When, for the love of god, will our local media stop printing such utter rubbish?

Before I start, I’m sure many of you have already seen it but for those that have not let me give you the overall gist. I’m not linking to it because that would give them the clicks they desire and this story deserves nothing but contempt. I also appreciate it came under the banner of Lincolnshire Live, but it’s the Echo all the same.

Essentially a reporter has seen some tweets by Lincolnshire Police about a confrontation between fans (not a brawl, a confrontation) and has delivered it as a story. He’s talked about taking resources from other parts of the city being deployed before relaying a conversation on social media between the police and fans. There’s no eyewitness reports, no actual discussion about what happened and nothing that hasn’t already been in the public domain. Worst of all (and this is the bit that has me typing now) they’ve paired it with a video of Leeds United hooligans kicking off abroad.

There’s all manner of things wrong with this story, but the first element I’m going to get insanely angry about is the association between the ‘confrontation’ and Leeds fans fighting. Where on earth is the link here? What happened in town wasn’t a fight, I know because unlike the ‘reporter’ from the Echo I was actual in the area. It happened just off the High Street close to a pub in which Dad, Mo, myself and Fe were eating dinner. The was no large-scale disorder, no threat to the public and nothing of any note at all. A few Port Vale fans turned up in Lincoln with cans of beer looking for trouble, a bit of shouting ensued before it was all broken up. They then kicked off with door staff who were having none of it. Genuinely, I’ve seen worse confrontations on Tritton Road when a driver cuts up another.

How is that linked directly to the scenes they put up from Leeds fans? It is, by association, suggesting there was fighting and disorder on the streets of Lincoln, again. There wasn’t. How can a supposed ‘proper’ media outlet get away with publishing such scandalous rubbish? There is nothing of journalistic merit here, no quotes other than those from Twitter, no eyewitness accounts, nothing. If the Echo truly feel there is a problem in the city with hooligans, why is there not a reporter out on the High Street on a match day looking for himself? Why do they not try to actually report facts or investigate them properly? If they did they’d find a large number of good, honest fans enjoying the pre-match atmosphere in many different ways.

Also, what police resources were pulled from where? Police attended an incident that meant extra officers were drafted in, isn’t that their job? Are they not paid to keep law and order? These idiots from Stoke, about eight of them, rocked up on a train and could have been anyone from anywhere. It could have been a stag night from Grimsby that brought them here, surely if they come and cause disorder that is the police’s job, is it not? If they attend a break-in do the Echo report it as ‘officers attended after being drafted in from their desks’? No. Again, it was sensationalist rubbish that suggested there had been disorder at a level that required significant extra policing.

Once upon a time The Echo was everything I aspired to. I’ve always wanted to write since I was nine or ten, my first published work was in the Echo and I used to ensure we got it as a family every day. In the mid 90’s I used to go into their offices every Wednesday and work voluntarily on a free supplement they had (I can’t remember what it was called). I would be given the task of interviewing a local musician or reviewing an album and I’d look enviously over at Brian Halford at the Sports Desk hoping one day that would be me. In my later years I still went in occasionally, thanks mainly to John Pakey who offered advice, encouragement and guidance.  I only ever used holiday from my ‘proper’ job, but always hoping that I’d one day make it to the local paper, reporting on the Imps.

The Echo used to stand for something. One story I remember was corruption at Lincolnshire Council. I believe a councillor had planned the by-pass at Cowbit to go through his own land, thus inflating the price. The Echo dug, delved and probed to get the facts out there in the public domain. They investigated properly and each day the story unfolded on the front pages of the paper. I loved it, not because I gave two hoots about Cowbit or greedy councillors, but because it was a paper doing what it should do, serving its readers interests and investigating stories.

Every Saturday after matches I’d rush back to Wragby to get the green ‘in in order to look at the scores and reports. It is the Sports Echo which inspired A City United, my expanding magazine featuring local football. Every day I’d get the proper Echo, saving cuttings from it when we did well, hoping to one day be a part of it.

Now? I’d rather read a Jehovah’s Witness leaflet. I’d rather have them round explaining the leaflet. That isn’t meant to be a slur on Mark Whiley by the way, Mark’s is a decent guy working under very different conditions to his predecessors. Alan Johnson, a friend of mine, covers the football there too and he is also a decent guy. However, what must the sports guys think when some lazy bloke sat at a computer is slurring the game in the city in this way?

I’d hoped that my magazine might get some coverage in local media, a bit of a leg up or something, but no. They’re not interested in good news or local endeavour these days are they? When I made the Blogging Awards in 2016, BBC Radio Lincolnshire covered it, as did the other local radio stations. The match day programme carried a piece, even John Pakey, now at Look North, contacted me to wish me luck. The Echo? Nothing. Mark Whiley caught wind of it the day before and contacted me, but I’d already emailed the news desk a couple of times with no reply. Again, I wasn’t expecting a red carpet or fanfare, but surely it was a good news story around the club wasn’t it? I bet if I’d slapped a Barrow fan on the High Street I would have got some coverage.

My chance to be a part of the publication I admired so much has gone, not just because I’m now a critic but also because the publication itself has gone. It’s all about clicks now, there’s very little journalistic integrity left. Where is the pride in rehashing a few twitter posts as a story and linking it with a completely unrelated video? I could do that here all day long, but what would be the point? Have they really got to a place where clicks of hate are just as valued as people reading stories and being interested and entertained? Where has journalism truly gone? Again, this isn’t aimed at the Sports guys who do try their best to bring stories, but with Radio Lincolnshire filming the press conferences there is very little in the way of exclusives now. Mark doesn’t have the time to dedicate to Lincoln City like Leigh, Brian, John or even Maurice Burton used to.

Finally, why are our local media so keen to highlight the negatives all the time? I didn’t see a similar story about the big match with Coventry passing off peacefully, about how their fans and ours mixed in the packed fan zone in good humour. I didn’t see the same when we played Cambridge, nor Crawley. Why are the positives not receiving the same coverage? Those people in Lincoln who do not go to games won’t have a clue that the crap the Echo are publishing is such a small minority. My partner, Fiona, has always been very critical of drunken football fans, violence and the like. She also tells it as she sees it, if she thought I was wearing my blinkers I’d be told. However, last night after reading the story she said it was ridiculous and that even she didn’t feel that it was worth reporting. The spaced-out drug users up and down the High Street, slumped in phone boxes or vomiting on steps is far worse, yet ‘football thugs’ gets more clicks doesn’t it? How dare they. How dare they try to demonise Lincoln City fans, causing friction between us and authority, painting a thoroughly incorrect picture of us to the wider public. Remember, when they print ‘football thugs’ that tars each and every one of us. If you wear a shirt and go out on match day, their story affects YOU. It is misleading and wrong.

Sadly this isn’t the first time reporting has been lazy in recent weeks, certainly not surrounding the so-called problem we have in the city. I didn’t notice anything about football arrests dropping for a sixth year in a row in the week, but when we played County the trouble was hyped all over, even the Lincolnite got involved. To their credit they haven’t done since, I imagine mainly because since Notts County NOTHING SIGNIFICANT HAS HAPPENED. I’d wager there has been more confrontations on a Saturday night in town than between football fans, yet we’ve been getting 9,000 fans at games almost every week. This ‘problem’ is being magnified and is tarnishing every football fan that chooses to sing in a pub or drink before a game. The Echo have no damn right  to paint the boys walking up the High Street with flags with the same brush as the handful of idiots travelling into the city with beer in a carrier bag.

I’ve complained to the Echo, enough is enough. I’m a football fan, I go on the High Street before games, I travel on trains and I see much of this so-called disorder and confrontation. I often mingle with some of these ‘thugs’, certainly on away days and I see what happenes, unlike the ‘reporter’ sat behind his desk rehashing tweets.. The stories emerging from this season are wide of the mark, lazy and abhorrent. I feel for Mark on the sports desk, but the Lincolnshire Echo as we knew and loved it, has gone. The fine institution that used to be synonymous with Lincoln City is dead and buried. We’ve been left with a media outlet with morals no better than the Sun and the Mirror.

The Lincolnshire Echo 1893-2017 RIP