Watford Observer v WD Sport

WD Sports running an article about twitter reactions to their article.

We're through the looking glass people.

 

Seems like all the articles are written by Kev now. I thought now that he's back the other writers would take up their previous roles?

 

Well, I for one really enjoyed that article and it shows that WDSport can move with the times. Sports journalism these days isn't just about providing useful information, interesting interviews and insight into the workings of the club - it's just as worthwhile to do a quick search on Twitter and collate the reactions of fans, or take articles from foreign media outlets and run them through Google Translate without the need to even tidy them up. It's all about getting the info that we all want out there as quickly as possible, even if that's at the expense of spelling and punctuation - a small price to pay! People need to accept that this is what cutting-edge professional sports journalism looks like these days, it isn't just something that any idiot can do in five minutes. Viva WDSport!

 

Gavin Effleck is the indisputable best poster of 2016.

 

Because Twitter represents the majority of fans of course... :notimpress:

 

Probably true. They need to pick up fluency in a handful of romance languages and start buying a different set of blokes pints of Peroni or some such....

 

I think Gavin Effleck needs his own spin off series .

Or spin off forum should I say .

 

Hmmm. They peeled away the onion layer of twitter trumpeting some time ago. They have never been too proud to invoke the HITC click bait protocol.

An Afflek's gotta get clicks...

 

Odd, isn't it? We' d all be up in arms if we thought the club were broadcasting their intended transfer targets all over, but somehow we expect accurate reporting..

 

Why does the link to their 'rolling blog' sporadically appear and disappear from the front page of their website?

Its probably the most interesting and useful part and its unnecessarily hard to reach at times

 

I thought that was just me...

The other thing I find is the mpagepage never updates when I bring it up without manually refreshing it. Weird.

 

Bookmark it.

 

Just clicked on the WDSport Rolling Blog and it says it's now restricted to "members" of the site. Ok, fair enough you want to do a bit of data mining but to register you have to give your postal address, email and phone number. Seems like quite a lot of information and given Affleck's history of berating people down the phone, I wonder how many people will be happy to provide all this data?

Edit: It appears that the link to the Rolling Blog currently takes you to a Beta version of the site where you need to register to see anything. If you delete the Beta part in the address bar, it takes you back to the regular site.

 

See advice in red. on the other hand, don't bother. After the initial excitement of having an alternative to the Wobby, because Affleck had some sort of inside track, they are now just as dismal as each other.

 

But where will I get exclusives like how Craig Cathcart wanted Portugal to win the Euros?

 

Oh come on.

Today's interview with QPR's Championship defender Nedum Onuoha about Watford's 'new' formation was the sort of insight that we could have only dreamed of having before WD Sport arrived on the scene.

 

Says WDSport's latest article...

And the previous article on the Boufal deal (which claimed both wages and a fee had been agreed) has now been updated to remove references to a fee being agreed:

http://www.wdsport.co.uk/2016/07/watford-edge-closer-to-deal-for-sofiane-boufal/

Am I going crazy? I'm 100% sure the original article said both fee and wages had been agreed. If they've gone back and now changed to cover their own backs then that is very poor journalism

Edit - just checked the page source... they've edited the article today, this afternoon (look at the last line below)

 

I have a cached version in my RSS reader. The original first paragraph was:

"A senior representative from the club, believed to be chief executive Scott Duxbury, sat down with the player this week after the Hornets met the French club’s asking price of €20m. Personal details are thought to have been agreed with the Moroccan playmaker, 22, who has emerged as Lille’s successor to Eden Hazard."

Which has been changed (after the event) to:

"A senior representative from the club, believed to be chief executive Scott Duxbury, sat down this week with the player who the French club value at €20m. Personal details are thought to have been agreed with the Moroccan playmaker, 22, who has emerged as Lille’s successor to Eden Hazard."

 

You aren't crazy. You've also answered all of your own questions.

Don't leave your mobile number lying around.

 

I don't really see the issue unless it's a deliberate attempt to make themselves look more clued in than they are, which would be difficult to prove.

In general, I think competent news websites should be going back and editing articles as they get more concrete info (although it doesn't hurt to state in the article it has been updated based on new information).

 

Agreed

They could also acknowledge the original mistake and correct it in the new article "It was initially thought a fee had been agreed, but this was premature" etc. Rather than simply trying to rewrite history and cover up their incorrect report

 

The general rule is that you do this in a transparent way, adding extra information in an 'update' section or striking through text you no longer know to be true. WDS are rewriting old articles to appear like they were right all along. In the grand scheme of things it's fairly inconsequential but it's just not considered best practice by anyone.

 

As I said, you'd have to be able to prove there was a deliberate intention to obfuscate in order to draw the absolute worst conclusions.

Chances are that someone updated it in good faith and just didn't think to add a note that the article had been updated. Hanlon's Razor at work.

 

Exactly, wholeheartedly agree. It's not as though they wrote that part of the story so that it would get picked up by all the transfer sites and get more traffic to the excellent WDSport site. Also, they hardly seem like the kind of people to go about doing a bit of surreptitious editing - these guys are professional sports journalists not some glorified blog that spends a fair amount of its time making snide comments about how much more "in the know" they are than the Watford Observer and even their own readers. I'm sure they were just correcting some slightly incorrect information for posterity rather than trying to edit a large amount of "egg on the face" out of history.

 

Shameless stuff from Affleck once more.

 

Who cares?
If you don't like it, don't read it.
They are a modern social media site reporting on Watford FC and that's how they go about their business.
The WO on the other hand is a newspaper with a website who report on all things including lost cats and they have a sports section that has Watford FC stories. These 2 media outlets are completely different animals.

 

I agree, and Affleck owes me nothing, I pay him nothing. Who cares?

His business will survive or fail on the quality of the info he imparts. Take it or leave it.

PS, Didn't like his phone call to 352 though.

 

WD sport broke the Peryra story 24hours after it was posted on this forum .

This forum is the place for breaking news .

Affkeck just wraps the same 20 word info into 200 words of poorly written schoolboy journalism .

 

WDSport's only USP is being 'in the know'. Retrospectively editing articles that demonstrate quite plainly that they are not is shameless, but totally to be expected.

 

Hertfordshire Mercury has entered the mix.

http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/WatfordFC

http://www.wfcforums.com/showthread.php?58512-Hertfordshire-Mercury

 

I've no idea why you lot keep going to the WD website if you hate it so much. Buncha masochists.

 

We're British. We complain and we moan but we'll put up with ****.

 

And we'll queue up to complain about it.

 

And apologise for doing so.

 

Sorry but I never apologise.