Front Page News: The End of the Sentinel is Nigh

Have you ever seen anything like it in your life? The Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent Live) and the Daily Express featuring the same, whole front-cover headlines (in the form of an advertisement) on the very same day (30th September 2026), on the very same newspaper stand in Hanley. Surely, this is the beginning of the end for those managing/controlling/owning our local historical periodical? It just about says it all and where Reach (the owners of the Sentinel and the Express) priorities lie. I mean, teasing readers with a front-page reveal, in order to compel customers to purchase, is what the bread-and-butter newspaper industry is all about, or used to be all about.

The penny still hasn’t dropped (for all companies) that customers are on the edge with advertising overload and feel saturated by it. Nobody minds one or two tasteful, well-polished adverts, do they? Nonetheless, at advertising school, media moguls must drum into those eager, career-driven novices that implanting product notions inside the subconscious mind of the gullible masses will resurface when the dumbed-down customer is ready to purchase. Not the case, I’m afraid. When viewing programming online or on TV, who else turns down the sound and purposely looks away from the advertising bombardment? What’s more, where are the stats for purchasing preferences of customers not subjected to the annoying, cringeworthy advertisements deluge?

The Sentinel and the rest have chosen their preferred business strategy, haven’t they? Out with good news stories and in with advertisements. This is in light of the recent clickbait customer uproar regarding their online news. In contrast, the growing number of smaller local news broadcasters have all but taken the ads out of their platforms, realising this is the way forward for quality journalism. The reality of the situation is that, at this juncture, the Sentinel is so weak and anachronistic that if all the current local news platforms could agree on one common strategy and converge, our 172-year-old periodical, originally called the Staffordshire Sentinel, would be taken out.

Then we have owners, editors and staff alike who use their newspapers to espouse their own political views (take former Sentinel editor Martin Tideswell for example). By and large, local newspaper bigwigs also employ those in the same clique for senior roles. Whatever one’s ideological persuasion, individual political preference has no place in the dailies or the tabloids. Political impartiality and objective reporting of events are what qualify good, honest journalism.

The culture of the Sentinel is also under critical spotlight. Instead of giving ordinary people a break, some Sentinel journalists seemingly take pride in trying to make fools of local people through crass, futile stories, but we never seem to see them publish stories themed on our native politicians' ‘freebie’ gravy trains (which includes sitting on multiple committees). Is it because some of the top Sentinel earners like Eleven Jobs Jenny (Amphlett) have several posts themselves? It would be like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t it?

It’s not just ordinary Joe Bloggs who has had enough of The Sentinel. Institutions like Staffordshire Police recently raised specific concerns that hyper-focused regional crime coverage, such as overdoing live blogs of everyday neighbourhood disturbances, was frightening residents unnecessarily, and as a result, residents were loath to visit parks, pubs, and high streets, which was unnecessarily damaging the regional economy and community cohesion. The standoff peaked when Staffordshire Police blocked an FOI request from the paper, who were demanding reams of data on new digital speed cameras (pretending they were actually acting for the people). The force refused to comply, arguing it would harm road safety, which effectively stopped the sensationalists from using the data to manufacture more meaningless and detrimental headlines to dumb down the populace. North Staffordshire and its dog know our police force is understaffed and underfunded, a situation compounded by the recent rise in crime and the explosion in police call-outs involving people experiencing severe mental ill health difficulties, where no crime has necessarily been committed.

More importantly, The Sentinel takes pride in covering the regular tragic pantomimes taking place in the north Staffordshire court arena, with the star actors being the drug addicted and mentally ill (some who are not even fit to plead). These low brow accounts, complete with images, are sometimes repeated and embellished by the shallow and exploitative Deputy News Editor Hayley Parker as features. It was not so long ago that Ms Parker went out of her way to highlight, picture and serialise 11 of Stoke-on-Trent’s most wicked women (as she called them) as some kind of warped, medieval instrument of shame. See link below:

https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/crazed-killer-11-more-stoke-5984340

Yes, wrongdoers have to be punished for their offences. Still, further humiliation for themselves and their innocent families through being photographed outside our courts and then pictured in local newspapers cements the notion in the offender’s mind that they are ‘undesirables’, so, more often than not, they behave like undesirables and offend once again and so the criminal cycle continues. Those said journals are doing the general public a disservice because crime rates are not reducing.

Newspapers should not be in the position to influence crime.

In conclusion, the Sentinel has become so commercially driven that the distinction between journalism and advertising is becoming increasingly blurred. Meanwhile, the growing number of smaller local outlets are providing an alternative, demonstrating that there is another way forward. Besides, if the Sentinel continues along its trajectory of using its privilege to humiliate residents of north Staffordshire (and their families), one day, the tables could well be turned on them.