Petersfield paper upsets reader with 'news agenda'

The head teacher at Bojangles School addresses

the press following the expulsion of six pupils

A Petersfield busy-body is up in arms after a news story about a posh school appeared in this week’s Petersfield Proust.

Local landowner Lucinda Forty-Acres dedicates her time to ensuring hundreds of pictures of her friends’ families get featured in local papers every week.

But this week she was horrified to see coverage of yet another end-of-term prom relegated to the back of the paper to allow for four paragraphs of coverage on a school drugs story leading her to believe the paper had a 'hidden news agenda'.

Six pupils from £10k per-term posh Bojangles School have been expelled after being caught in possession of cannabis and the town’s leading paper with a red masthead afforded the story coverage on page three.

This outraged Ms Forty-Acres who said: “There were plenty more pretty prom dresses to be featured not to mention at least a dozen local fetes which didn’t get featured in this week’s Proust – all so they could dedicate six paragraphs to this non-news event.

“I don’t spend 42p a week on my Petersfield Proust to read about things which are featured in national newspapers like the Daily Telegraph.

“The people at the Petersfield Proust should remember who their readership is: we want lots of line-ups of youngsters partaking in American pastimes, women-who-lunch giving up their time free-of-charge to smile at cameramen and animals, lots of animals.

“Stories like the one about Bojangles School are not of interest. After all cannabis is such a working class drug – at a fee-paying school they should be taking heroine like my daughter Jocasta.”

A spokesman for the Petersfield Proust refuted allegations that there was a ‘news agenda’ at the paper owned by profligate publishing company I’m Alright John Press.

He said: “I’m sorry Ms Forty-Acres is upset, but if she looks carefully at this week’s edition, she will notice there are only three or four stories which could ever be described as news.

"As always we have concentrated on contributed material largely made up of firing squad pictures of middle-class youngsters and ladies, who should, by rights, be members of the Women’s Institute.”