EDP strings along with a 150ft banjo 
 - with barely a moment's thought

giant banjo





Wednesday 9 April, 2014

Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley working together on a 50 metre high  "Banjo of the East" statue to rival the Angel of the North; a banjo as tall as the Forum in Norwich and the City Hall. Wow! 

And not only that, it's being put together in a little factory in the city. What a story! Surely a shoo-in splash for the local paper? Nope, the press release hangs around the office for a week and finally finds its way into the business section as a page lead. Pity that. The date on the handout was April 1.

Red faces all round at the Eastern Daily Press, which has apologised to readers for falling for the spoof. The Great British Banjo Company has also apologised to the newspaper.

Perhaps the Press release was a little too straight, but a glance at the "artist's impression", above, published on the company website,  should have given the game away. 

Didn't anyone think it a bit special that two such renowned artists of such different styles should be working on a collaborative project - and in Norwich of all places? And if they were, wouldn't  the resulting structure need planning permission? 

It's easy to mock. After all, SubScribe fell for Gorkana's alert on a new Bookseller job for Paige Turner. 

But this goes beyond falling for an April fool's joke. It shows a complete lack of news sense by everyone concerned. The press release came, the paper says, from a "usually reliable source". But that didn't absolve the paper from making basic inquiries.  And, indeed, it turns out that it did. The handout arrived on April 1, someone with a functioning brain called the company and asked if the story were true. The banjo makers fessed up and that should have been the end to it. 
In the days of the spike, wastepaper bin and green baize noticeboards, it would have been. But we are in the email era. Emails are sent out like scattershot and deleting is not enough. When the newsdesk is happy that a story is safely tucked away - either in the paper or on the virtual spike - 
business, features or sport can still do their darndest with another version.  This can result in the occasional double if one department is not  thinking beyond it's own remit and doesn't recognise that the  story may be of interest to another section. 

Even when only one email has been sent, it can still be dangerous, since it will most likely land in a communal inbox accessible to all commissioning and reporting staff. A news editor may read it and act on it - or not. But if they simply close the message, rather than deleting or filing, it will sit in the inbox, ticking like a bomb, waiting to blow up in someone else's face.

This time it exploded in a comedy fireball. But the fact remains that, from the editor down,  no one involved in handling the story anywhere along the line  was thinking at all. And that isn't funny.

A fool's guide 
to April 1

  1. Read it
  2. Believe it?
  3. Check the date
  4. Check the story
  5. Print
It must be true, 
it was in the papers
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