EDITORS BLOG: We Try Our Best

As the editor of Vital Swindon Town I`ve felt that I need to explain a few things and respond to a few questions.

I`ve had several Tweets and emails from Swindon Town supporters over the last couple of days saying "where do you have basis for this", when we put up a story that Huddersfield were set to make an approach for Paolo Di Canio.

I have had some sites accuse Vital Swindon Town of "sensationalist headlining" and some fans on message boards say "just ignore them as they know nothing and are just a fans site".

Yes we are a fans site and no we are not privy to a lot of private information or wires which local and national newspapers may have. We get our news from various local news establishments and news reported directly from the club. As we are a fans site, we would hope that a newspaper like the Daily Mail for example where the Di Canio to Huddersfield story began, would have an accredited source to report such a thing.

An example we would like to add where it did work was in the week when the local rag in Bournemouth reported that AFC Bournemouth were close to signing Matt Ritchie, whilst we all thought and hoped it was rubbish, we were the first site that was able to confirm that the bid was ACCEPTED by Swindon Town (not that the deal was done), via our Twitter feed. We have a few sources but not those of a national or local newspaper.

As the Di Canio story wasn`t reported elsewhere we thought we would post it to make other Town fans aware of the possibility. In the text of the story it does say that Huddersfield would only approach SHOULD they not be able to get Nigel Adkins to agree a contract. That doesn`t say Huddersfield have already been on the phone!

You will notice that Vital Swindon Town rarely has player interviews, why is this? Because we don`t have press credentials to do interviews. You can read the same interviews re-written on other sites. We like to offer something different, hence the "Time at Town" interviews on the site asking former Town players for their Swindon Town memories.

We don`t copy news but if we source news from somewhere we credit the source direct and as a local journalist said to us "They normally don`t have any issues with our stuff" but on the occasion of the Huddersfield article we were advised of a few inaccuracies.

Going forward should we report anything along these lines again we will add "RUMOUR" to the article title. We would also like more input and would invite and budding journalists to contact us as we always have voluntary positions available.

Yes we are a fans site and yes we do try to make sure articles are written to full accuracy. We are first and foremost Supporters of Swindon Town Football Club and if the club came to me or enough fans said "your ruining the name of the club" or your "damaging the club" with what your doing then we would more than happily re-sign from this site as that is clearly not our intention, we love to brag about how well we are doing under Paolo.

Unfortunately during times of uncertainty yes we all want answers and we want them now so I can certainly understand people saying "what`s your source" etc. Sometimes you can`t say who your source is. As we know HP can sometimes be wrong and Ketchup can be right.

We try to stay positive at Vital Swindon Town and hence why we didn`t really report on the doom and gloom administration story and that side of things. We have agreed going forward to try and avoid the politics in the game being a fan site and leave that to the local and national news papers and we concentrate on football.

If there is anyone who feels annoyed about our reporting, we do apologise however we do not write to wind up or annoy fellow supporters.

COYR!

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