Almost 25 years ago, I was left mortified on the first day in my very first full paid journalism job when the biggest bunch of flowers turned up for me in the newsroom.
It was a good luck and well-done gesture from my parents for bagging a trainee position straight out of university. Sure, it was super kind and thoughtful… blah blah blah… but my plan to just blend into a newsroom which was wall-to-wall grown-ups was thwarted by the Interflora delivery that was squeezed onto my desk in between the mounds of press releases and notebooks.
It’s hard to blend in and hide when that’s the first impression. Love my folks… but my gosh I can still feel the mortification now that I felt then!
But I needn’t have worried because it was a local newsroom full of heart, kindness and warmth – with a team who thankfully didn’t take the piss out of the young 21-year-old none of them could really see over the cacophony of coloured petals.
It was a supportive team which had fewer resources and money than its national counterparts, but that didn’t stop it. The newsroom was always punching high when it came to its content – investigating the truth, and telling the myriad daily news which tell the story of the patch, on behalf of viewers deep in the South East of England.
It’s exactly the same sentiment and words that I’d use now for the local news team I currently work for, in London. We are small and we are mighty – and every now and then we annoy some MP or local councillor with an investigation they’d rather we didn’t look into and share. But that’s the point.
Local news doesn’t exist to placate or kowtow to authority, or to make friends, it exists to hold them to account on behalf of viewers, the same viewers who pay council tax. The same council tax which funds local councils. Local press can get to the heart of a local story in a way national broadcasters cannot.
Which is why when the leader of the Nottinghamshire County Council Mick Barton decided to ban the local paper the Nottingham Post, Nottinghamshire Live, and employees from BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Service from speaking to him or any of his councillors with immediate effect – it raised eyebrows both in the industry and out.
The fallout was reportedly sparked by a disagreement about a story on local government reorganisation. Senior editor Natalie Fahy said she was “very concerned” by the “unprecedented ban”. In response, Barton said the party would not “allow misinformation to shape the narrative of our governance”.
The situation simply highlights the importance of local news in a way that is sometimes forgotten in an era where social media has made current affairs so much more globalised.
We can call the Nottingham move “Trumpian” because we’re well-versed in the American news cycle, but how much attention does social media give to local political affairs, how our money is spent, and on what.
In fact, as of February this year a record 30 English councils have been granted Exceptional Financial Support to stop them from collapsing – and one of the jobs of local press is to identify who’s at fault, why, and to tell the story of how this all affects local constituents.
National and international news has its place, of course, but local press is unmatched in terms of its tenacity, drive, and ability to really annoy public servants. Let’s not forget what being a public servant actually means: someone who serves the public, and is therefore accountable to the public. Accountability, one could argue, is not demonstrated by banning members of the press. There’s a whole other word for that.
From newspapers, to radio, to television… almost half my life has been spent in local news. A fact I’m very proud of. That very first newsroom in which I was left mortified on day one by a kind (yet very annoying) gesture from my parents, sparked a love for local news which lasted a lifetime.
I get to tell the stories of the place I call home. And in an era when some national press can relentlessly skew the stories of the places we call home, we have to be mindful of what we take for granted.
