The sad and untimely death of court agency boss Tony Asciak highlighted one of journalism’s most disappointing trends. Much of his career had been spent covering London’s magistrates’ courts. But in more recent times Asciak, like other agencies, had found that such stories were falling out of favour.
It’s a sad indictment of our values that a picture of a D-list celebrity shopping is considered to have greater worth than dramatic accounts from the press bench produced at breakneck speed by highly skilled professionals. How many important stories are being missed because it’s no longer considered financially viable for agency reporters to cover the courts, or for newspapers to send their own staff? All the bloggers in Christendom won’t be able to tell us that.
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