After a long period of considering my future as co-editor of The Little Gazette, I have decided to relinquish control of some key areas of the website to spend my time concentrating on Southend United’s reserve and youth teams, as well as continuing to keep the little things that go unnoticed up-to-date.
Over the previous month or so, it has become increasingly difficult to keep the day-to-day running of the website informative and quickly updated. No doubt many of you have noticed this, and I thank those of you that have enquired about the site, and appreciate your comments of support.
By the same token, I have been slightly surprised and greatly saddened by some people’s increasingly vindictive comments about TLG which, after all, is a website run fundamentally by two Shrimpers supporters with the assistance of a few more extremely helpful friends. To them, I thank you wholeheartedly once again.
Situations change, and whilst I was at University, it was extremely easy to contribute a great deal of my time to the website; perhaps even so much as to concentrate on it a little too much. However, even since I have started work at the Essex County Football Association, I have still been willing to put in hard hours keeping the site amongst the premier websites on Southend United.
It would be wrong to put this change simply down to work, for there are a number of other responsibilities that I have also taken on that mean a lot to me. I have a number of tasks to undertake for the Shrimpers Trust, and for Southend United Football Club in terms of articles for the official matchday programme, ‘The Blues’, and wish to continue this, and perhaps even increase this in the future.
I also wish to retain my position of co-editor of both ‘Blues’ Twos’ and ‘Blues’ Youths’, which are produced by myself and Mark Wallis as the official matchday programmes of Southend United Football Club’s reserve and youth teams, although this has eaten up even more of my time, especially producing massive publications for Essex Senior Cup and FA Youth Cup fixtures. This is something that I will passionately continue to do.
All of this means that there is very little time for anything else. I will continue to cover both Southend United’s reserve team and youth team for TLG, and hope to, if anything, actually increase the coverage we already give them. I also intend to keep the player statistics updated, re-initiate the Injuries & Bans page, updated player profiles and contribute a number of features to the site.
I am merely relinquishing control of the ‘day-to-day’ running of the site, so that features such as matchday previews, stat-packs and Day Tripping that take up an awful lot of time. I have already ceded the writing of the Marks Out Of Ten to Matt Donohue, who has started off by doing a fantastic job.
At such time as I am out of work, or other responsibilities recede, then I may take them up again. To balance this, I hope to contribute more one-off or serial features to the site when time allows.
For a period, there may be a time where first-team details on TLG could be compromised as neither myself, nor Mark, will have time to do them. I hope, in time, that people will come forwards, and decide that joining the TLG team is an option. I am sure that my colleagues Mark Wallis, Terry Jeffreys and Matt Donohue would join me in welcoming new blood to the team.
I will not lie and say that joining TLG is a straight step to becoming a journalist, as I found out in the summer – contributing to an independent website for no money is not deemed as something worthy of merit by even tiny local newspapers, but it does offer a good chance to practice journalistic techniques. Please enquire to robertcraven173@hotmail.com if you are interested in writing to us.
This has been a tough decision to make, and one that I have tried to make without the comments of those closest to me for fear of them trying to talk me around. Indeed, I only mooted it first in public yesterday morning at the youth team fixture in Monks Risborough.
It has not been a decision that I have taken lightly, but in two-and-a-half years with TLG, my role has changed a lot, from simply being a reviewer of matchday action to becoming co-editor. I have never received monetary reward for my work on TLG (which makes some people’s comments all the more hurtful), and nor do I expect any, or any praise for what I have done. I have done it all because I love Southend United Football Club, and because I have had the means to do it.
I hope that my decision is not detrimental to the future of the website, and do not believe it will be.
Once again, I thank everyone who has supported TLG over the many years that it has been running, and hope that that support continues into the future.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I will see many of you, I am sure, on Boxing Day at Adams Park,
Robert Craven
www.thelittlegazette.com