Comic strip hits headlines

8:58am Thursday 28th August 2008

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THE Northern Echo’s comic book response to being banned from Hartlepool United’s ground went national yesterday.

The paper is banned from Victoria Park after supplying pictures to the Hartlepool Mail, which had been denied access to the club for refusing to sign a commercial agreement.

So, in the absence of live photographs from Tuesday night’s Carling Cup victory over West Brom, the Echo carried a Roy Of The Rovers-style cartoon strip, featuring incidents from the game.

National radio stations, including Talk Sport and BBC Radio Four, featured the story and the Press Association sent out the Echo’s comic strip on its national news wires. It was also the lead story on the newspaper industry’s national website www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk.

Bob Satchwell executive director of the Society of Editors, said: “Some football clubs are biting the hands that feed them.

“Local papers are their biggest supporters, reporting on them and encouraging them in good times and bad.

Without them the clubs would have precious little publicity and with gates that are pitifully low they need all the help they can get.

“One day the bubble will burst but it is important that editors work together, as they are in the North-East, to apply some common sense in the interest of the clubs’ fans and their readers. Heaven knows what sponsors make of this damage to local goodwill and the unnecessary curtailment of exposure of their brands through photography.”

Peter Barron, editor of The Northern Echo, said: “We have twice offered to attend a meeting with Hartlepool United to try to find a constructive way forward. That offer stands.”