Working the new, remembering the old

Well, it's got to be success of a kind - six weeks after the launch of personal Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/wordsmithforhire/ it's notched up its 150th visitor.
This may not seem too great in the grand scheme of things but for a site with 20-odd images of a fairly random nature it ain't bad. My opinion of spreadin the word via the internet is quickly being coloured brightly by the power of social media.
This new-found enthusiasm - or more accurately the evangelistic streak it's triggered - has led to Swansea Council and Dyfed Powys Police requesting reports into the pro's and cons of them using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. That's work in progress ... so thanks to the creatives at Cult Cymru who introduced me to the power of e-marketing.
This way of communicating seems so essential that the days of simply putting a newspaper together on a daily or weekly basis seem distinctly old hat. Not that nostalgia doesn't kick in every now and again. Indeed, yesterday I was commissioned to pen a few hundred words on my time as editor of the Llanelli Star. The paper is celebrating its centenary this year and plans a supplement to mark the fact.
Good luck to all - and here's the poetry they've had from me.


Andy Pearson
Llanelli Star editor, Oct 2002-April 2006

It was early one October day seven years ago that I drove into town for the first time as editor of the Llanelli Star. Too early.
At 8am, it seemed, the town was still snuggled up in its autumn duvet. The traffic was limited to one car – mine – and the pedestrian throng along the chicanery of Stepney Place, Upper Robinson Street and Murray Street numbered one living being. It had four legs and was sniffing a lamppost.
Having been based in bigger towns and cities for the previous 19 years, with visits to Llanelli restricted to Stradey Park Saturdays, the initial reaction was: “Bloody hell, what’ve you got yerself into here, my boy?”
A whole can of worms, that’s what! The rugby club faced falling off Welsh rugby’s top tier, hospital bosses had gone anti-media due to a tragic story that had (damagingly) gone global, the burghers of Burry Port were tamping that there wasn’t enough Burry Port news in the paper … and the county council were deluging journalists’ in-boxes with wordy press releases about blue boxes.
The surface didn’t need too much scratching to reveal that every human drama, every Establishment conceit and every type of joyous occasion was there - ready to be reported, edited and headlined.
What fabulous fun! We helped win the long, bitter battle that kept the Scarlets in top-flight sport, we gave more localised pages to the people of Porth Tywyn, the Gwendraeth Valley and those on the dark side of the Loughor Bridge, we rebuilt bridges with the NHS and we virtually eradicated the use of repetitious PR snaps featuring the grins of County Hall big-wigs.
Magical supplements were introduced featuring the faces, thoughts and memories of thousands of local people. Circulation rose.
The secret? Nothing more than a motivated, eager, competent, friendly staff knowing what was the singlemost crucial thing in their working lives – the man on the street.
The Star staff of 2002-06 deserve praise as does every Star reader of that time. It was due to them – and the paper winning a newspaper trade national competition – that my last front page carried the headline: “Simply the best … your Star!”
Andy is based in Swansea and runs his own editorial services and public relations company, Hope Street Media. He’s written two books – including Faces of Stradey Park - and would love to hear from old Llanelli acquaintances. Check out his blog!