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THIS IS THE SAINTS
Editorial comment: no-one comes close to our level of information
23-02-04
AT the weekend, Saints' official website and programme took the opportunity to hit back at the Daily Echo for our coverage of the football club.
Clearly the handiwork of the chairman, Rupert Lowe, it is the second time in little more than a week that he has thrown his toys out of the pram.
The man is patently rattled by a newspaper which continues to ask questions, to challenge and represent views across the spectrum which you won't find on the Saints website.
Lowe has already shown his utter disdain for the views of the fans by insisting at a press conference on February 12: "The popular movement is usually wrong, but the crowd is always wrong on the whole."
And now he's thrown another tantrum, this time at the Daily Echo which is, coincidentally, a media partner of Southampton FC.
Could this be a ploy to install Glenn Hoddle as manager in the coming weeks by rubbishing firstly the fans and then the most influential media operation on the south coast? We shall see.
If Chairman Lowe had his way, he would want the sort of relationship with the Daily Echo that the Kremlin enjoyed with Pravda - the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union.
The club would want us to roll over by meekly reporting everything served up by the chairman. If we chose to publish anything controversial or the slightest bit negative it would be treated as disloyal.
Saints' much-vaunted website is just that - a mouthpiece for what the club wants you to know and nothing else.
Lowe clearly does not understand the workings of a newspaper.We wonder when, without the Daily Echo, Saints fans would have learned the news that Gordon Strachan did not want to sign a new contract and would be leaving the club at the end of the season.
We wonder whether they would have known about Glenn Hoddle and Lowe's phone call to him.
Or would fans ever have known about the amazing turn of events on February 11 when the chairman was forced to make an embarrassing Uturn and postpone plans to unveil Hoddle as the new manager on February 13.
The Daily Echo has never said that Hoddle should not come to Southampton.
The Daily Echo has never attacked the club.
The Daily Echo has never attacked the chairman.
All we have done is to report the facts, and provide an opportunity for the fans to voice their opinions, including those who have supported the chairman and his moves for the former Tottenham manager.
In fact, since February 11, the Daily Echo has published ten pages of readers' letters - 34 anti-Hoddle and the chairman, 27 for Hoddle and defending Lowe, with a handful extremely critical of the Daily Echo.
In his website attack, Lowe appears to criticise highly-respected people such as 1966 World Cup winner, Alan Ball, for voicing an opinion. Why?
Surely it is for the fans to make up their minds?
It is not the newspaper which is being critical. We are providing a platform,whereas the club would prefer to shut up the fans.
Lowe claims that the Daily Echo's sales are falling. Wrong! The Daily Echo is one of the few newspapers in the UK to show a rising sale. Last year's circulation increased by 1.6 per cent on 2002 with an industry-audited daily readership of 132,760 - hardly the signs of a declining readership, and a figure which is more than four times the capacity of St Mary's!
And that's on top of the 200,000 hits we get on the newspaper's website each week.
As for declining profits, where is Lowe getting his figures from?
The Daily Echo continues to make a reasonable healthy profit year on year, as would be expected from any company.
That is more than can be said of Southampton Leisure Holdings plc, Saints' parent company.
Last year, for figures up to May 31, 2003, the company made a loss of £500,000 (with Lowe drawing a basic salary of £207,000, picking up a performance bonus of £155,250, taxable benefits of £23,563 and pension contributions of £20,700.)
The chairman makes great play of the fact, he says, that the Daily Echo's readership and impact within the local community is slipping.
If that is the case, why is he so rattled and worried about what we are writing?
Our increased circulation figures show that the fans do want to read us, they trust us, and we provide coverage of Southampton FC which is unrivalled by any other media.
We devote more than 40 pages a week to Southampton FC in the Daily Echo and The Pink. That's the first team, the reserves, the youth team, women's side and Team Saints, along with the club's Football in the Community programme.
We publish Saints' ticket news, betting tips, merchandising information and away travel details.
We print fans' letters and devote space to columnists such as Chris Marsden, Lawrie McMenemy and Alan Ball.
We provide forums to the likes of the Southampton Independent Supporters Association, and cover local community events which Saints players attend.
We also offer a platform for the chairman on a range of subjects, but curiously, at key times, Lowe chooses not to answer our calls and persists with the line we have not approached him for comment.
Interestingly, no one from the club came to the Echo offering the right of reply to their weekend articles on the website and in the matchday programme.
No one else, not even the club's website comes that close to the level of information which the Daily Echo provides six days a week.
It is on the back of that coverage that front line companies such as Friends Provident are prepared to plough their millions in sponsorship into Southampton FC.
Quite simply, Lowe has attacked the Daily Echo for doing its job.
At the end of the day, we remain puzzled by the football club's approach.
We have never attacked the club.
The fans know that, Rupert Lowe knows that. And it is a cheap shot, as the website suggests, that the Echo should switch its allegiance to Portsmouth - that is something we would never do.
We are bewildered as to why Lowe attacks us for printing facts and information for our readers, the Saints fans. As we have written many times before, Rupert Lowe is a very good chairman of the football club.
We suggest he sticks to that job and leave the publishing to the experts.
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