Media Notes: Birmingham Mail To End Staff Coverage Of Warwickshire Cricket

The Birmingham Mail is making its cricket writer redundant and will not replace him, meaning that "the paper will no longer have a staff reporter at Warwickshire's matches." The decision "has upset" the Sports Journalists' Association, which commented, "We never thought we'd see the day when one of Britain's oldest newspapers decides that one of England's oldest first-class cricket counties is no longer worth the bother of a dedicated writer" (London GUARDIAN, 9/8). ... Barcelona is launching a new way of communicating with its fans via two new channels, in English and Chinese, on WeChat, one of the leading instant message platforms in the Asian market. WeChat began in China in '11 and now has more than 600 million users and 438 million active users (Barcelona).