A shift in policy?

Looking at the BBC news website today, there are another two stories on the Merseyside portal that feature Chester news.

The first is another zoo story, of which we seem to get an inordinately high amount. I refuse to believe Chester's sole claim to fame is its zoo. Granted, it's a very nice zoo and doing groundbreaking work in the conservation of rare species, but I remain unconvinced it's worth the high level of coverage every time another creature is born there or gets given a new home.

The other item is about the change in prescription charges for Welsh and English patients. Now this is definitely interesting, as the Welsh border runs through the north-west of Chester and thus the legislative change affects many Cestrians depending on where they live and with which GP they are registered. I would imagine that this change affects quite a few other places on the Welsh-English border - the BBC could have chosen to feature any of them. But it opted for a Cheshire focus instead.

In the three years I have been monitoring news coverage of Cheshire on BBC News Online, I cannot recall ever before seeing 4 stories in the space of 3 days where Chester was the source of the news.

Are we seeing the beginnings of a tentative shift towards more balanced coverage of our county? Could this be a result of my email exchange with Hugh Berlyn? It would be nice to think so, but let's not jump to conclusions just yet. More monitoring is required, including on the news portals for Manchester and Staffordshire to see if there is a shift there too...