local journalism


Benedict Cooper describes the scramble to cover the Nottingham murders


Local knowledge critical in news


T


hrough the dim light of the pub, I noticed a group of people slumped over a table, looking tired, sombre


and shaken. If you didn’t know the context, you might think they’d just come from a wake. But I did know the context and who


they were. This was a table of local journalists who had come from a vigil – the same heartbreaking vigil that I and thousands of people from all over Nottingham had just attended. Here we were, coincidentally in the same pub, trying to process it all over a pint. Two days before, Nottingham had


woken up to shocking news. Three people were dead and three more injured, brutally attacked in the street by an as-yet unidentified person or persons. In those first, nervous hours, there was more confusion than clarity. One person had been left dead on Magdala Road, a quiet residential street north of the city; two students had been killed on Ilkeston Road in Radford, a rough, rackety area near the university, and three more had been mown down by a van in the centre of Nottingham. Shortly afterwards, the alleged attacker was arrested in Hyson Green. If you know Nottingham, you know all these names, where they are and how far apart they are from each other. Geography was key to this story, certainly in those first hours. But to the national reporters freshly


arrived, it was all new. Even – and here’s what grated – to those whose patches included Nottingham. So I found


myself being asked where all these places were and why that was so important. I had to point one journalist in the direction of Old Market Square – the soul of the city, and the setting of the vigil – from 200 yards away. Newspapers have cut staff back to such an extent that reporters are now spread dangerously thin around what their editors might call the provinces. At some national papers, regions where millions of people live are covered by one lonely reporter. Meanwhile, publishers continue to


hack away at budgets, leaving papers run by skeleton staffs, while closing whole offices. Hundreds of local reporters now work entirely remotely, denied the vital, formative experience of working and learning in a newsroom. On Wednesday June 7, BBC East Midlands journalists joined NUJ colleagues nationally in walkouts to protest against cuts to regional radio programming. Six days later, they were doing their best to cover one of most tragic events in Nottingham’s history. The sudden and horrifying attacks highlight just how vital expert local journalism is. They also exposed how vulnerable and remote communities will become with more cutbacks. Reporters shouldn’t need to ask for directions around cities in their own patches. It should not be the case, as it is in the East Midlands, that a major


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To the national reporters, the city’s geography was all new. Even – and here’s what grated – to those whose patches included Nottingham


publisher has one overwrought photographer covering an entire region for several papers, none of which have offices. And it is unforgivable when community programming is being slashed by a publicly funded broadcaster as part of an obtuse cost-saving agenda. It is one thing reporting a major, hopefully rare event – but that was only one day. As an experienced local journalist and friend puts it: “Real journalism is about doing that every day. It needs to be talking about the caretaker who takes disadvantaged children fishing and teaches them about life, or the young students in Nottingham who can’t afford their debt.” There was no joking that morning.


But I do remember a sardonic comment that it had taken a tragedy of this scale to get national journalists to come to Nottingham. Sadly, this wasn’t far off the mark. They did come, and they muddled through mispronounced street names and geographical blanks with the help of local reporters. But if publishers and broadcasters continue to neglect local journalism, those people simply won’t be on the ground when it really counts. Major events might receive only


facile coverage from overstretched, here-today, gone-tomorrow journalists, satisfied too soon that the story is wrapped up – when really, locally, it is only just beginning to sink in.


theJournalist | 08


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