For many years now, Spurtle readers have noted a curious journalistic phenomenon.
News items in Scottish print and online media – even the very phrases and quotations used in them – have a tendency to reappear soon after in the Edinburgh Evening News without the slightest acknowledgement of their provenance.
The effect – surely, quite accidental – is to suggest that the Evening News is the source of these stories.
Consider a trifling example – Spurtle's Briefly item of 1 November in Issue 200. We wrote:
Admirable brevity: a recent notice in Bellevue Cres. read 'LOST CAT. VERY FLUFFY', followed by a telephone number. Remarkably, cat and owner were soon reunited.
On 2 November, the Evening News's 'Talk of the Town' column wrote:
BREVITY, so the Bard had it, is the soul of wit – although when it comes to looking for a lost pet it’s not generally the best idea.
Nevertheless, one concerned cat owner clearly felt a few bold facts would be enough to secure the safe return of their missing moggy, and so created a poster in Bellevue Crescent reading: 'LOST CAT. VERY FLUFFY'.
Amazingly, Talk of the Town understands that cat and owner were quickly reunited.
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but on this occasion – it seems – necessity was the mother of invention. Paradoxically, the exhausted, time-pressed hack wittering on about the Bard was not even as concise as the original source.
Trivial as this particular example may be, it will once again disquiet those remaining Evening News readers who want their 50p per issue to buy new stories not recycled ones already produced better elsewhere for free.
If you spot something oddly repetitious about Evening News coverage, please let us know as we are always eager to help our friends there to improve.