South Wales Argus subscribers questions to the editor answered

Why having purchased a subscription am I still bombarded with Google adverts which cannot be deleted no matter how many times I click their link to stop them? - anon

Digital subscribers get an advert-light experience, ie considerably fewer adverts. The adverts you do get will be the more locally sold ones. But you have to be logged in to get the benefit and it sounds like you might not be. Check in the top right of your screen for the little person icon. If you hover over it, does it invite you to sign in or sign out? If it says sign in, then do and you should stop seeing those Google adverts. If you are, email me. You might also want to try downloading the subscriber app - which has no adverts at all. More on that later.

Why do you allow so many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors to go unchecked? - Kim

Please can I be allowed to help your proofreaders, genuine question as sometimes I read a report and see errors which other readers have a good moan about. - Debbie

I'm going to answer these two together. To start with, spelling mistakes shouldn't happen and I'm sorry that they do. We expect our journalists to get things right and there is a spell checker on our content management software.

Stories are checked by a content editor before they published, unless they are live reports or some urgent breaking news stories. The work hard and mistakes do happen. We're publishing thousands of words every day and mistakes do creep in. 

Thank you for the offer to proofread. I appreciate the suggestion, however it's probably not workable in practice. We have a team of around a dozen people producing the Argus and our sister titles in South Wales. We publish typically 30-40 stories per day, seven days per week. It's a lot of articles to research, write, check and publish and we work at a pretty flat out pace, so there isn't time to send them off for you to read them and send them back. 

I understand this is important to you and the reading experience and we'll try to do better.

Why are your subscription rates different? I wouldn't go into a shop and expect to see an item advertised at different prices. - John

Thanks for the question, John. We know that our readers are price-sensitive and so sometimes we will do testing and trial offers to allow new customers to get a taste of the subscriber experience before renewing at full price. We believe our digital subscription holds a lot of value, not least because of the local news content we deliver, but also the ad-lite website, ad-free app, digital replica of the printed paper, monthly competitions, reader rewards and puzzles access. The continued support of our paying subscribers will allow us to continue for years to come so I'm grateful that you support us.

If there is a “Police Incident” in an area, how are you informed of this,and how do you decide whether to publish or not? - Rhian

Good question, Rhian. There are different ways we might hear about something. The first is official sources - the police communications team might alert us to something directly, or put out a public alert or appeal via their social media channels, which we monitor.

The second is from the public. A reader might see something happening and tell us about it, or post something on social media. We will then look to confirm this with official sources and if possible go to the scene ourselves.

We don't necessarily wait for confirmation before starting a live report because sometimes that can take a long time, but we don't just report speculation either.  For example, we might start a live article saying "There are reports of a significant police presence in Newport city centre. We've contact Gwent Police for more information and a reporter is on their way to the scene" and then we'll update as we get more information. 

We cover a pretty large patch so that's not always possible, but if we can get a reporter there then we prefer to.

And the third is our own eyes. If you look outside and see it's raining, you don't need to check with the Met Office whether it's true, you can see it for yourself. If a reporter or staff member sees something they are out and about, they'll flag it up back to base via our team WhatsApp group and a reporter will get on the case.

Hi Gavin, why is the msm afraid of free speech, and at every opportunity to cancel people who have different opinions to theirs. - David

I don't agree with the premise of your question, here David. MSM, for anyone not aware, stands for mainstream media. It's often used as a derogatory term towards the media, sometimes by those who feel they aren't represented. I am a supporter of free speech and I welcome different opinions in the Argus but freedom also comes with responsibility and that means being respectful of others and not stirring up hate.

The South Wales Argus app is advert-free and only for subscribers. (Image: Peter Williams)

You have a comments section where readers can submit their usually unhelpful observations on the various stories in the Argus. I think it might be useful on occasion if your journalists could respond to or correct some of these comments.

Interesting point, thank you, Bob. It's a good idea. There are two reasons why it probably doesn't happen now. First is that reporters are very busy and have moved on to the next story they need to file. The second is that the comments can be pretty nasty to some of the reporters at times so some of them will, to be honest, avoid reading them. 

I'd like to make our comments section a more respectful and interesting place to be and perhaps getting me and the reporters to engage with them might help with that. Watch this space and I'll give it some thought. 

I've use the Argus  app to read the news but there doesn't seem to have viewers comments at the end why is this as other the other swa app does have comments could you please explain. - Christopher

First of all, great to hear you use the app. I read on the app every morning before I come to the office and I find it's a joy to read. It's a very clean, easy reading experience without any adverts - and it's only for subscribers.

The decision not to have comments within the app is mostly a technical one, that comes back to the different way people can subscribe to the app and the need to have commenters register so that we can ban those who persistently break our rules. At present commenting is not available within our current newspaper apps but we are reviewing this and will be looking at whether we can build this functionality in moving forward.

Thank you to everyone for your questions. Anyone who isn't a subscriber but would like to get the benefits, you can do so here.