Local daily goes downmarket on story

Following my piece yesterday about the policeman posing as Osama Bin Laden I see that today's Western Morning News has decided to cover the whole of their front page, and a substantial part of page 5 as well, with this story. Time was that the WMN used to be very middle of the road with its reporting even if typically somewhat right of centre in its political outlook. Sadly of late it has elected to go toward the London tabloid way of doing things, definitely downmarket from where it once was. In many respects it is still quite a good paper but surely in the great scheme of things the Osama Bin Laden business didn't merit taking up the whole of the front page and space inside to boot. From what I can make out the locals at Grampound weren't taking offence at what he did; apparently Colin Terry lives at Grampound and always dresses up for the carnival which of course raises money for charity.

I wonder if those berating Mr Terry would have shown similar venom if the carnival date (last Saturday) had been significantly further away from the 9/11 anniversary date. To me the whole thing is a bit of a non story and I hope it soon blows over.