Southampton S
Ruth Addicott anchor at Europe’s sailing capital
trolling down the waterfront past multi- million-pound superyachts might sound like a scene from Monaco, but for hacks in Southampton, it’s just another end of a shift. Along with its extensive maritime history
and recent football success following its promotion to the Premier League, Southampton is at the heart of the UK’s sailing capital, the Solent, and has plenty to offer, not just for holidaymakers queuing up for a cruise but also for journalists looking for a better quality, more ‘outdoorsy’ way of life. Although staff jobs have reduced significantly in recent
years and both broadcasting and print have been hit by strike action, the city’s location and commuter links to London provide plenty of earning potential. Southampton is the regional broadcasting base for BBC
South and daily news programme BBC South Today, which covers Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Oxford, Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire and the Isle of Wight. The building on Havelock Road in the city centre is also home to BBC Radio Solent, the local radio service for Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight. The BBC’s plans to cut programming and jobs in local radio
have affected Southampton like other areas and journalists at BBC South Today and Radio Solent have taken part in strikes. Kate Taylor, planning editor at ITV News Meridian, says there are broadcasting jobs around, but there is a lot of competition. “Resilience is the key,” she says. Although ITV Meridian no longer has a base in
Southampton, it has studios at Whiteley, off the M27, with around 33 journalists, plus technical staff. There are additional journalists at ITV’s other regional locations in Brighton, Didcot and Maidstone.
Taylor has worked for the broadcaster for 28 years, based
between Southampton and Portsmouth, and covers a huge area from Weymouth to Margate and up to Banbury. She has worked on all kinds of stories, from a piece about
climate change in Antarctica, for which she flew to the most southern point of Chile, to a Royal Television Society- nominated programme last year that shone a light on forgotten carers. The investigation she is most proud of though was exposing the crisis in NHS intensive care beds. “People were dying,” she says. Daily newspaper the Southern Daily Echo and its website
,
dailyecho.co.uk cover news across Hampshire and are owned by Newsquest. The Daily Echo, founded in 1888, became an evening paper in 1958 and was renamed the Evening Echo. It reverted back to being the Daily Echo in 1994. Staff are now based in Ocean Village, a modern
development surrounding the marina with superyachts, restaurants, hotels and shops. While the annual Southampton Boat Show – the largest
on-water boat show in Europe – attracts big crowds, the front pages recently have been dominated by football, following the Saints’ promotion to the Premier League. Even Rishi Sunak is a fan (having grown up in the town), and said he used The Echo’s news app more than any other to keep up with the coverage. The Daily Echo produced a Saturday football paper, Sports Pink, for 119 years until 2017. Other papers in the area include the Hampshire Chronicle, Bournemouth Daily Echo, Basingstoke Gazette and Romsey Advertiser. Sally Churchward worked for The Daily Echo for 20 years
and says “it shrunk from being a huge operation to a ghost town”.
As mother of chapel, she supported colleagues through
redundancies and significant cuts and took part in industrial action. She was made redundant herself in 2019.
10 | theJournalist
Spotlight on... PAUL JACOBS
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