[Drew]

Just curious how hard an ascent has to be in order to be deemed newsworthy? For example Kaluza Klein sounds like it's becoming a bit of a trade route (correct me if I'm wrong), but a female ascent - ala Katy Whittaker - is newsworthy? Maybe the thing with Katy is her age too? How about Midget Matt Segal decking on (or rather off) it, before successfully climbing it?

How about bouldering? What grades would be interesting enough to make it onto the news pages? And I don't just mean new problems for the interest of locals. For example, UKC have news items about Leah Crane climbing Bus Stop (v9/7c), Mina Leslie-Wujastyk climbing Brad Pitt (7c+/v10), and Alex (DFBWGC) Puccio climbing her 4th 8a+. Now these are, in my mind, interesting. I don't know why though. Obviously the fact that they're female ascents makes them worth Mick's time, but if they were male it wouldn't.

So my question is this: What grade does a male/female have to climb in order for it to be 'acceptable' for the news pages? And while I'm thinking about it, how many ascents are repeats? It's always "first repeat". When does it just become a "ascent"?

Just curious really.

[bob]

hmm you seemed to have sparked off an interesting debate here drew.

by the way hows life in the peak? done anything newsworthy yet?

[uptown]

So my question is this: Where does a male/female have to climb in order for it to be 'acceptable' for the news pages?

Apologies Drew, only just seen this thread, but it's an interesting set of questions. It sounds like you're living in the right place now to make the news pages. I reckon this thread is more deserving in 'bouldering' than 'shooting the shit' though.

UKC is weird, I think they probably have a target number of "news" posts to meet daily, so I don't think you could apportion grades to what is or isn't newsworthy, more about timing really.
Their "news" posts might also correlate with the amount of sponsors involved in the ascents - it's a hand in hand thing.

UKB is rightly or wrongly Peak biased, but presumably that stems from the insular nature of other scenes and the fact that their websites occasionly like to 'scoop' their local news.

I'm all for a national forum, and I don't think grades matter really - only quality and style. All worthy new things should turn up in the news, and although we should be giving headlines to these incredibly impressive repeats, we need to remember that time has moved on and the interweb is making big numbers and better styles much more accessible.

I, like you, would be interested in what other peeps think on this subject....

[Drew]

So my question is this: Where does a male/female have to climb in order for it to be 'acceptable' for the news pages?

Apologies Drew, only just seen this thread, but it's an interesting set of questions. It sounds like you're living in the right place now to make the news pages.

A good point. Don't worry, I'm not expecting to climb hard enough to be of any interest to anyone. I was merely curious what other people's opinions on this were.

hmm you seemed to have sparked off an interesting debate here drew.

by the way hows life in the peak? done anything newsworthy yet?

Tell me about it! Responses flooding in!
I've done my first 7c! Pressure Drop next to Satin. Felt about 7a Maybe I'm just a slab master? 

[slackline]

There are two sets of  (intertwined) answers to this..

1) What is newsworthy to any given individual : this is going to vary from person to person and be somewhat subjective, although overall there is likely to be a general consensus on whats newsworthy.  Tricky to gauge without responses from people (but see below).

2) What is newsworthy of reporting on by the media in its various guises : this is fairly straighforward to gauge, look at what gets reported.  This will in part be determined by the editors, but their choices will be based on whats been popular and grabbed headlines in the past, i.e. 1).

BUT 1) is influenced heavily by 2), how can people know/get excited about something if they've not heard about it.  Its a bit of a Catch 22 situation.

One possible way to assess whats newsworthy would be to sit down and trawl through the past years worth of news reports/articles on UKC, note down grades, style of ascent, ascentionists sex, age and finally and most importantly the number of comments in threads.  This won't be a completely unbiased representation, but its a start, is cheap to do and should give some idea of the relationship between these factors and "public interest".

[Kim]

Remeber UKB has a news FORUM, not news pages, which means whatever anyone thinks is newsworthy can go in there. At least until dave/dobbin have passed judgement anyway 

[dave]

kims right. with the news forum basically if you post something and no-one responds or its gets shouted down then you can guess it wasn't noteworthy. if you post something and everyone pops up with support then it was newsworthy, generally speaking. its a bit like knowing the amount of time to cook toast for. wait till it starts to burn then 30 seconds less.