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Accrington Observer launches search for Hyndburn Honey, prompts online backlash | Print |  Email to a friend
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
The Accrington Observer, a paid for weekly newspaper owned by MEN Media, has launched a competition to find ‘highstreet honeys’ from within its catchment area. However, the idea, although seemingly very popular locally, has not been universally well received.
The Accrington Observer, a paid for weekly newspaper owned by MEN Media, has launched a competition to find ‘highstreet honeys’ from within its catchment area. However, the idea, although seemingly very popular locally, has not been well received in all quarters.

Earlier this month the title announced that a preliminary outing of its Hyndburn Honey initiative had been so successful that it was transforming the concept into a regular competition slot, whereby ‘girls of the week’ would appear in the paper.

According to the Observer’s editor Mervyn Kay this is now set to continue for “as long as entries come in” with the girls then competing against one another via an online reader’s poll (maybe ‘a vote’ would be a more appropriate expression under the circumstances - Ed) to see which has stolen the most Hyndburn hearts.

The winner will receive a cash prize of £100 and a portfolio of pictures from Accrington Observer lens man Tony Cross.

However, despite the feature’s apparent success (Kay told How-Do there is currently a waiting list of ten girls set to appear), the competition has already taken a degree of flak online, with some commentators lamenting the paper’s “gross disservice to the women of Accrington.”

Image
Honey or slapper? Romi in trouble
A post on popular Manchester-based blog Action Without Theory noted: “it’s sad to see one of the Guardian’s sister papers – the Accrington Observer – taking us back to the fifties with its new Hyndburn Honey feature encouraging young local women to pose in their swimsuits.”

It concluded: “Yet another generation of Lancashire lasses having their aspirations skewed by stereotypes. And all to make profits for the Guardian Media Group.”

Kay, however, shrugged off any suggestion of sexism or exploitation, claiming that he had "not received a single complaint” and saw nothing wrong with bringing the ‘Honeys’ idea “down to a local level.”

He added: “The whole thing started after we ran a piece on a local girl that had appeared in Playboy. We asked if any of our readers knew anyone as glamorous and the whole thing took off from there. To be honest we were surprised by the response.”

Kay concluded that the team were simply responding to their readership and may be tempted to do so once again with a new idea… The Hyndburn Hunks.

We’ll have to wait and see what the bloggers make of that one.


(In an interesting side-story it appeared as if, at the time of writing, one of the Honey’s was on the front page for slightly less glamorous reasons. Romi Jane Young is clearly being a little over zealous in her quest to be a hit with the locals.)

 

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  Comments (4)
RSS comments
 1 By April, on 01-04-2008 10:25
Papers will always use pictures of scantily clad females to shift units (doesn't harm websites either!) and appeal to a core demographic.  
 
What the Observer is doing is a natural continuation of that to a local level. 
 
Exploitation? I think not. Sexism? Maybe.  
But the girls of Hyndburn are undoubtedly influenced by far greater social/cultural powers than the Accrington Observer - the buck doesn't stop with a local paper. 
 
Regardless... at the end of the day they should be able to make up their own minds about participating in this kind of competition. 
 
Implying that they can't is doing them a greater disservice than any competition ever will.
 2 By Tameside Eye website, on 01-04-2008 12:25
Urgh I can imagine a Miss. Tameside... not a pretty sight. You may say it is the reason I turned out to be gay. 
 
I wonder though if there would of been as many objections if it was pictures of men being published? I doubt there would of been. 
 
It is not as if that some bloke held his smack head wife by the neck and forced her to enter the competition is it? For the feminists to say it is derogatory towards women is an insult to those women who made their own mind up on entering the competion in the first place.
 3 By Tameside Eye website, on 01-04-2008 12:27
Where as in Tameside they are looking for Tameside's sexiest animal: 
 
http://www.tamesideadvertiser.co.uk/news/s/1042717_is_your_pet_the_cutest_of_them_all 
 
Figures...
 4 By Diane, on 05-04-2008 16:55
Who cares - i read the accy observer not every week mind you but often enough that i would say that i am a regular reader but if the hyndburn honeys want to pose in bikinis and have their picture in the paper then its their decision. The accy observer aint forcing them - and in fact one of the recent ones is a mum of 3 or is 4 cant remember of the top of my head. Are the ones who are complaining about it jealous of the men of hyndburn? Seems like it to me

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