What I learned from death knocks, jewellery heists and a lot of standing about in the rain
With an invitation to find out where news is heading these days. Read all about it...
“GET yer Standard…”
As long as the newspaper men (they were always men) were shouting that in the high street, you could feel like newspapers were still thriving, an editor I worked with once remarked. Of course we were all too aware of the reality behind that comment. And now the newspaper men don’t shout that every night any more.
On Thursday, London was greeted with the final front page page of its daily Evening Standard. As a reader, I had absolutely loved its mix of grit and glamour - the brilliant writers, features ideas, crime reports. So, once I got into reporting, I was exhilarated to spend a few months shifting on its news desk, pinging about the city in my tin can car to cover protests, jewellery heists, and more.
It was the opposite of sit at your desk and churn it out. The starts could be brutally early - the first edition went to press at something like 11am - and you’d almost always be sent out. It seemed like it was usually raining.
On one dark night, in every sense, I was outside someone’s front door shielded by a - brace yourself - umbrella decorated in newsprint that was the only one I could find in my car, trying to see if the grieving family member would like to say anything about his departed mother, when an alarm started going off loudly. “Is that your car alarm,” said the late woman’s adult son, eyes like gimlets. This was the last straw for him, understandably. “It is, yes, sorry,” I said, and squelched off.
Which shocks people now - even just the knocking on a stranger’s door. How intrusive! Just lift it all from their socials instead. Yet you were as likely to be welcomed in as turned away, and you could never predict which - in an earlier job in Birmingham, I was once ushered straight into the conservatory just for the bereaved family to start a press conference broadcast live on TV.
The first time I ever wrote about someone’s death, I was 21 and being paid by weekly cheque to fill in on the Hendon Times in north London. I rang someone up and asked some questions about their late husband, fairly well known in the area, then wrote it up for the paper. All quite straightforward. But a few days later, the widow turned up wanting to see me. I was filled with panic. What had I got wrong? I went down to the little lobby to face the music, where she thanked me with deep emotion for writing about her husband’s life and death with care.
For me, that encounter summed up the essence of local, regional journalism - maybe all, at its best. The responsibility; the weight of people’s feelings and experiences. You were up close and personal in a way that was hard to hide from.
It was exciting too. Shifting meant I didn’t have a steady job at the time, but was paid by the day, or night, wherever I was - the traditional route to “breaking into” bigger papers. So I was hunting around for stories, keen to impress.
One quiet night at the Standard, I pitched a story about some off-message comment from a politician that I’d found in a corner of the internet. It was the height of the MPs’ expenses scandal, and no one had picked it up. The news ed - we were the only ones on, from memory - decided it was just about interesting enough to leave in the folder for the morning team. The next morning, I woke up late to a text from a friend asking bleary-eyed me something confusing, could I share a contact for someone. What was she on about? “Have you seen the news?”
I switched on my little pink TV set, and saw my story was rolling news on Sky after they'd splashed it - with my byline!* The most exciting moment you can imagine for someone starting out. All day the headline rolled by - as I went to the gym, watching the ticker on the screen above me - and it was followed the next day by a round of front page splashes across all the big papers.
Later on, it was more death - a toddler falling out of a tower block - that signalled the end of my days as a general news reporter. For the first time in my so-far short career I let the desk think I’d knocked the door when I hadn’t. I couldn’t face it, not even canvassing the gathered neighbours for comment.
Not because I was particularly scared of the reaction, although I was not gung-ho (when people are very upset they can want someone to shout at). I had just had enough of covering the absolutely grimmest and saddest parts of life. I had never intended to do it forever. But I had known, with that slightly masochistic instinct that makes us do the thing we do not want to do, I needed to.
Off I went into the tidier worlds of the business then features desks - many more nice lunches, much less up close with tragedy. I didn’t look back, was very happy with my moves - and yet those early years as a local and regional reporter remain among the most vivid of my working life. Nothing was ever quite as personal - not in the same way - or, for those months in London, helped me get to know my city so well.
Waiting in a tunnel under the Thames for the snapper to get his photograph. Trekking miles through sun-baked south London to the tidy suburban home where the teenage daughter of the house helped beat a man to death. Driving home by Hyde Park under a still moonlit sky. Walking down Kensington High Street hearing the newspapers seller chorus, "GET yer Standard...”
They say all you can count on is change itself. And while I am personally sad that London no longer has a daily newspaper - and will be supporting its new weekly incarnation - I think there is a lot of reason to be hopeful about the future of local and regional journalism, hard-pressed in recent years but desperately essential.
That’s why on Monday evening I am hosting an online panel chat in my role at Substack UK, speaking to the people who are now at the forefront of local and regional news:
Will Hayward, WalesOnline's Welsh Affairs Editor and author of The
NewsellterMichael MacLeod, founder of The Edinburgh Minute and
newslettersJonathan Heawood, Executive Director of the Public Interest News Foundation and journalist
So, if you’re interested in what’s happening - and maybe want to get more involved in the world of local news yourself, details here. I’d love to see you there.
Really interesting read, thanks, Emma. The local news landscape has changed so much. But I share your hope that it will thrive in other ways. As you say, it's desperately needed.