Gonzo blast for Hammers media department

I left the written Press just over ten years ago for personal and professional reasons.

The ‘personal’ involved a serious illness in the family which needed my total attention at that time but professionally I realised the golden age of newspapers was coming to a very distinct end.

And so it has proved. Pixels not print, the internet not newspapers and periodicals, were the currency in which more and more people were dealing.

At that time such magazines as Goal, FourFourTwo and various others which had flourished were showing distinct waning signs and the newspaper industry was shrinking to the point where journalists were being shredded and lumped onto the dole queue at a rate of knots. THEY STILL ARE!

Followers of clubs such as ours turned more and more to websites dedicated to bringing them as much Hammers news as they could find.

The internet – just as it had done and is doing to the retail industry – was seeing off the traditional news outlets quickly and, more importantly, with instantly accessible news 24/7.

Newspapers will always have a place but to a much lesser extent and certainly not one of privilege they are still offered, which is why they are trying so hard to catch up on the net themselves.

Neither TV or radio can bring anything like the amount of news wanted by fans following West Ham or whoever  their favourite outfit might be.

That is now the province of sites such as ourselves, Football.London, KUMB, WHTID, West Ham Way and various others.

It’s a new industrial revolution – just as cars took over from horses – so is the net replacing newsprint. Fact of life, no denying it.

Football club media departments, however, seem very slow to catch on and continue it seems to court the national newspapers whilst tending to ignore the internet revolution.

We at CandH have no axe to grind with anybody but to be honest turning one’s eyes from what’s happening in our world and believing in the old days and ways is just more than a tad misplaced.

You will find no player interviews on sites such as this, you will find no internet journalists in the London Stadium press box, you will see no access given by the people controlling the media department to those who simply want to bring fans the best they can.

It is very much time the club’s media department changed all that- not just for us at CandH but for every internet site  – the net is the now and the future.

For reasons best known to themselves, however, the internet and those working within, it really don’t matter and no access is given – a rule they apply to all and about as short sighed as it gets.

But whether they change or not we will continue doing what we do. We ain’t going anywhere!

Now CandH’s partner Gonzo of Hammers Chat has produced a video which you can view above in which he takes the Hammers media department by the scruff of the neck as he shakes home a message which may be anathema to their ears.

It’s a brave video and Gonzo says a lot of things that need saying.

It rams home the point that in this technological revolution there will only be one winner – the net – and to think otherwise resembles those who refused to travel in automobiles all the while horses were available!