I'm always amazed how some people sound off at half-cock about our coverage.

Derrick Cockman, from Brighton, had a good old go after we led the paper on Monday with the story that Brighton and Hove is the business city of the future. The town has the highest percentage of profit-making companies in the country.

Mr Cockman complained 90 per cent of the article quoted councillors and Simon Fanshawe, chairman of the Place to Be campaign, "claiming credit when business leaders achieved those results in spite of such people." He went on: "You probably quoted such people because you couldn't find any local business people who would give you the quotes you were prepared to print."

Didn't you see our Page Four special report, Mr Cockman? Praising the Brighton business buzz were town centre manager Tony Mernagh, chamber of commerce president Judy Parkes, a spokeswoman for American Express, Donald Clark, of multimedia group Epic, and David Goldin, of estate agents Fox and Sons. I think we did the business with our stories.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but when Mark Bitton, from Brighton, sees a photo of Hove MP Ivor Caplin in the Argus, only one word springs to his mind - enough! Must we keep printing his picture? We all know what he looks like by now, said Mr Bitton.

Headshots, as we call them, liven up our pages but I agree we too often reach for the same picture of Ivor, and a few others, come to that. We'll try to find some new faces.

I am disturbed by an implication in a letter from Mr and Mrs Wilkins, of Brighton. We made a mistake in a story last week about two teenage boys who were arrested after smashing a bus window. The bus was on its way from Brighton town centre and we said it was going to Whitehawk. In fact, it was heading for Woodingdean.

The Wilkins ask: 'Is there a reason for printing this or does it sound better to write teenagers and Whitehawk?' Please don't think we deliberately changed the story to pile more misery on Whitehawk. This was an unfortunate mistake, nothing more. We weren't trying to make mischief.

We upset the committee of volunteers who organised the Festival of Family Fun at Hove Lawns last week by wrongly saying it was a council-run event. They have discussions with the council but the hard work to make it a success is down to them. My apologies.

I must leap to the defence of Adam Trimingham after a letter from Viv Webb, of Worthing, and correct a common misconception with many readers. Usually, reporters do not choose the pictures that go with their stories or write the captions. That is done by the picture desk and sub-editors.

Adam is exonerated for the photo slip-up with his piece last Friday about the future of the Essoldo cinema in North Street, Brighton. He didn't write the caption. As Viv pointed out, that was not the Imperial Theatre, later the Essoldo, in its heyday. It was a Victorian building on the site that was pulled down in the Thirties.

Adam was irritated by the mistake, too. So I don't think there is any need on this one, as Viv suggested, to "put the ole lad right".

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.