Ruth Addicott talks to journalists about what it’s like to live and work in Nottingham
n 1985, the Nottingham Post ran a campaign called The Old and Cold, following a story about 90-year-old war veteran Jack Hobbs, who was using candles to cut his electricity bills. The campaign ran for two decades and
Nottingham I
was a lifeline for Nottingham pensioners. Nearly 40 years on, the reports are still the same, but the
newsroom could not look more different. The daily tabloid, owned by Reach and founded in 1878, no longer has an office and journalists on the paper and
onwww.nottinghampost. com all work from home. While newspapers across the country are rapidly following suit, Diana Peasey, chair of the Nottingham NUJ branch, brands this change “a disgrace”. “Journalists need to meet up together to get their creative juices going and to spark ideas,” she says. “I would like to see a creative centre, a hub, so they can go somewhere and talk to each other and have a creative environment.” One option under discussion in Nottingham is a possible
tie up with Nottingham Trent University (NTU), which is looking at providing space for the reporters. Deborah Wilson David, head of department, journalism and media at NTU, says: “We know that the Nottingham Post – along with many newspaper brands – no longer has a physical office. We are discussing ways of helping with that and are hoping to provide space that they can use – which will also benefit journalism students who will have the chance to work alongside professional reporters on a daily basis.” Wilson David came up with the idea after visiting the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at Arizona State University in the US, where students and journalists work alongside each other. “It was a model I saw work well in the US 10 years ago. I proposed it at my last university and my ambition is to make it happen here too,” she says. NTU offers a wide range of journalism and media courses
and has strong links with local media. Around one-third of journalists employed by Reach in the area are graduates from NTU, many working at the Nottingham Post. The university also has an independent local TV channel, Notts TV. Students can do a year’s placement in the newsroom and many have gone on to work on network news and nationals. Meanwhile where is significant uncertainty about job cuts and proposed changes to local radio; regional or national programming could replace local output after 2pm on weekdays and over most of the weekend. Kevin Stanley, a journalist at BBC Radio Nottingham and
NUJ secondee for the BBC nations and regions, says: “The NUJ is, rightly, mounting a robust campaign to challenge this. It would seem perverse for the BBC to imagine that the appetite for local radio and breaking news on linear radio simply disappears at a set point of the day or that audiences won’t notice. They will – and the listeners in our most vulnerable sections of society will likely lose out.” ITV Central has a newsroom on the NG2 Business Park near Nottingham city centre with three on-screen journalists and two managers. The famous Lenton Lane studios, which used to produce Crossroads, Supermarket Sweep and Central Weekend closed in 2005 and the ITV Central East Midlands programme is produced in Birmingham. On the commercial side, Global Radio has a base and runs some local news bulletins, and there is Gem, a Nottingham-based independent local radio station owned by Bauer. “Commercial radio still covers the big stories really well, with Gem doing a good job with social media platforms as well as on-air material,” says Stanley. “The BBC may still
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