..As you may have heard recently Johnson Press who own the titles such the Yorkshire Post and the Wakefield Express have issued a profit warning which has seen a slump in their share prices.
Now I’m not normally one to crow at someone elses misfortune but in this case I’ll make an execption for this bunch.
You see if you are a Rugby League fan you cannot fail to have heard of the recent and sad passing of David Topliss. His funeral was on Wednesday last week and the Cathedral at Wakefield was packed to the rafters with mourners. The Wakefield Express was there taking pictures from which they put together a montage of the shots and placed it on their website…fine and dandy you may say - a fitting tribute to a local lad done good. Well you’d think so until you heard that they placed a lovely little advert on the end saying you could buy pictures of the Funeral from the Express office!! So they were taking what was a private moment for many and were profiteering off it. Now I know the profit warning is dire but to stoop so low as to make money from pictures of a funeral???!!!
So Steven, my husband and co director wrote to the Wakefield Express and expressed his dismay at their actions…here’s the email he sent below:
I have just sat down and watched the photo slideshow tribute to Mr Topliss on your website. I was at the ceremony yesterday and had the privilage of sitting with some rugby greats and and paying tribute to a rugby legend. I thoroughly enjoyed the photos and thought it was a fitting way to remember the day (as I had i tunes on in the back ground for suitable accompanyment)
Then I get hit with “if you want to buy any of these photos please visit photos today”
Come on, this is classless and has shown this slideshow to be nothing more than an advert selling the photos and in no way a tribute to a great man. It has shown you in a very bad light and can only be seen as tastless money making during people’s geniune showing of respect to someone who was held as a hero in some eyes and a dear family member in others.
Show the same level of class and decency as Toppo had and either pull this shameless plug or at least give the profits from the photos to the Charity that were collecting on the day.
….So the response back from Scott Merrylees who is the picture editor was:
All our slide shows are put together using our masthead at the begining and the photostoday icon at the end as a matter of course. This adds uniformity and usually people like to know where they can order photographs of our slideshows. However on reflection I agree that in this case it is inappropriate and I have had it removed.
…Lovely I’m sure you’ll agree…that is until you scroll down the page and see that Steve’s original email didn’t go directly to Scott but went via a third party who forwarded it to Scott Merrylees and Rebecca Wright with the message on there about Steve’s email:
Cheeky feck wit.
…Nice huh? Real respectful eh?
I frankly don’t think that Steve spoke out of turn in his pointing out that attempting to make money from someone’s funeral is out of order…but to call him a cheeky feckwit for making the point is out of order. But for Scott to then reply to Steve with the comment on the email is just plain stupid.
In case you’d like to make your feelings about this issue known to Scott then please feel free to leave a comment here as I shall be making him aware of this posting. In much the same way that the Wakefield Express clearly have no respect for the deceased or indeed their current readership - I would encourage you to be as upfront as they are with their “cheeky feckwit” comment.
So this… along with a couple of other issues I have with Johnson Press is why I’m not sorry to see them giving a profit warning.
They ought to hang their heads in shame at the levels to which they will stoop to make money and the dizzy heights from which they will sneer down on their readership from.