Locals Give Birth To Children In Hospitals

With the number of pages covering the royal baby birth hitting double figures in the local press today we are wondering if we missed a trick in our coverage.

Out of the three local news sources we were first with the news in terms of the Duchess of Cambridge going to hospital and the birth itself, however we opted for a lower key method of spreading the news.

Yesterday the Daily Post dedicated its frontpage to the news of Prince George who was born on Monday, whereas the Leader opted for a local story. However we don’t know if that was a deliberate choice or if the official announcement was too late for inclusion. On our 8am tweet about the impending birth we did jokingly say:

Oh, to be clear we are *not* going to be camping out at the maelor to find a tedious ‘Wrexhams Royal Baby’ link…! #lastbabytweet

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) July 22, 2013

Thankfully we got the impression that such things would be avoided and that papers would have better things to be doing. One joke doing the rounds on social media said: “Are you called William or Kate? Have you had a baby? Have you ever seen a baby? Were you once a baby? Please call newsrooms now”. Sadly going by today this has actually taken place.

Today’s Daily Post dedicates not only two pages inside the paper to the birth of the now finally named baby, but has a eight page souvenir pull out attached. The Leader also went for similar coverage, without a supplement, saying local parents were ‘Royally Proud’.

The two papers had visited various hospitals, however with both being at the Maelor there was a discrepancy in birth numbers – the crux of the story!

The Daily Post reported eight babies born at Wrexham Hospital, whereas the Leader reported just six. Pictures included beaming parents, plus babies with tiaras.

Sadly we were unable to confirm the correct number of newborns at the Maelor or any other hospital on Monday, as we did not ask.

The Daily Post does get the (royal) title of best coverage for actually printing the following twitter interchange in today’s paper:

@dailypostwales their links to Anglesey are tenuous at best. Like getting pregnant on holiday in Greece and calling the kid Stavros

— Lionel Air (@lionelair) July 23, 2013

Coverage locally and nationally has certainly created a debate, and one question we have been asking is which local posts would people like to see become hereditary. Possible options could be a Member of Parliament or Assembly Member chosen by birth, or Police Commissioner. Another suggestion was to decide on an heir for the Mayor of Wrexham to move to a birth based lineage to decide the role.

What do you think of coverage of the royal birth? Would hereditary systems work at a local level? This forum thread is ready for your thoughts…