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An Open Letter To Lyonsdown

The folks at Lyonsdown [1] didn’t take my criticism of their (supposed) AV Supplement [2] lying down and we received on Thursday a polite letter from their Managing Editor, Lucie Carrington.

Whilst it would not be fair to publish her letter to us (it was ultra-polite, ultra-nice and much better written than we would ever have done if we were in their position) we feel compelled to publish our response to them which is as below…

Lucie

Thank you for your email. I shared my early thoughts on your prospective piece with Aidan months ago and I think I have critiqued the AV supplement more than enough in my post Thursday [2] – there really is little I can add to what I have already written.

I do however firmly believe that you have done my industry (digital signage and DOOH) and the AV industry a great disservice with what I can only describe as the worst fluff piece I have ever seen.

While companies such as yours muddle editorial and advertising and sponsorship there is no no space for ‘independent editorial’ as you so describe.

I know it is difficult to get advertisers and sponsors for supplements, as I explained to Aidan several months ago my team were heavily involved in the planning for a Mediaplanet supplement earlier this year on Digital Placed Based Media [3] (and indeed were paid to write the foreword and bring relevant journalists on-board) BUT that is no excuse for muddled thinking, blatant advertorial and using journalists who 100% know nothing of the industry or sector in which they write. You also end up embarrassing the journalists that you do employ (“Beam me up Scotty” will surely go down in supplement history).

If you should ever wish to do a proper AV supplement there are more than enough respected AV journalists which you could turn to and we’d be happy to share with you who those are.

As it stands at the moment I think you owe the AV community an apology and all of your advertisers their money back.

Best regards – A

Adrian J Cotterill
editor in chief
DailyDOOH.com [4]
NUJ Member

Aidan is Aidan Neville a Project Manager at Lyonsdown, who many would have liased with during the production of the supplement and who we had many conversations with leading up to publication.

2 Comments (Open | Close)

2 Comments To "An Open Letter To Lyonsdown"

#1 Comment By Robert Lewis On 2 December 2011 @ 07:19 @346

Don’t writers of independent DOOH blogs also have to be objective, and not favour certain companies?!

#2 Comment By Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief On 2 December 2011 @ 07:32 @356

Robert. Thanks for your comment. In reply we’d answer “Not necessarily”

The NUJ Code of Conduct stresses that a Journalist ‘Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair‘ but also ‘Differentiates between fact and opinion‘

It’s okay to have an opinion you just need to let people know when you are expressing it and let them know that it’s not fact.