June at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web 2009 at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

On May 5th 2009 my local newspaper The Surrey Advertiser ran this prominent story: New arthouse cinema planned for Guildford. Go there and take a look, and read about “a film loving entrepreneur” who had “come up with an ambitious plan to open an independent cinema in Guildford.”

Fair enough, I thought. But as I continued it became apparent to me that this wasn’t a piece of news reporting but an unobjective, idealistic fantasy. The reporter does note, almost as an aside, that

“Not having ready funds for the project, Mr Gudgin will be organising a bank loan, but to raise the extra cash he is hoping that future patrons of the cinema will also be willing to help.”

Sounds like the planned arthouse cinema isn’t really off the drawing board yet. A couple of paragraphs later comes the revelation, uncommented upon, that,

“The borough council is currently set to decide whether it would be willing to changing[sic] the use for the site, from a shop to a cinema.”

Hmm, I’m starting to think neither our entrepreneur nor the Surrey Advertiser have really gone into this cinema plan in any real detail. The story ends on a note of hopeless idealism,

“Mr Gudgin believes that if everything goes his way, it could be open within six months.”

This non-story could have been summed up in 5 words: Man has idea for cinema. Anyway I’m no journalist but it took me about 5 minutes to see this story for the empty conjecture that it was, and predict exactly what was going to happen…

It took 1 month for Mr Gudgin’s ill-prepared plan to hit a wall. But not the wall you though it was going to hit. In a story on June 4th 2009 titled Businessman ails in bid for new town cinema, the Surrey Ad says, “…the council agent responsible for selling the property [which he hoped to use for a cinema] told him that a deal had been made with another retailer.”

So the businessman did not actually have a lease or own the property, it didn’t have the correct commercial zoning and he had no money or bank loan to put towards the project. In what crazy journalistic world was this story seriously allowed to take up 2 whole pages in a local weekly newspaper?

The story just gets more pitiful as it goes on. The businessman had planned a tiered ticket package system, ranging from £1000 for a gold package down to £150 for a bronze package. At the time he discovered the property he was interested in had been sold to someone else he had had 16 people express interest in the ticket packages (1 for the gold, 15 for the bronze, a total of £3250).

Lazy, uninterested journalism, condescension to its readership and increasing irrelevancy are the reasons why I so very, very rarely buy the Surrey Advertiser.